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I just found out from Darren Peterson about the first meetup of Joomla users in Austin. I’ve been hearing about Joomla quite a bit recently — mostly as an alternative to Drupal. I decided to contact Darren and get the details on the meeting as well as a status on Joomla. |
Lynn Bender: Have you been using Joomla long?
Darren Peterson: Not long at all. I stumbled on Joomla about three years ago when a client asked me to customize his Mambo site. I wasn’t familiar with what Mambo was, so I started researching it and found that Joomla had essentially taken its place in the open source CMS world.
Bender: For a local person building a Drupal-based site, there seem to be a lot of local developers with experience in Drupal. What about Joomla?
Peterson: Austin has a great base of talented Joomla developers. There are more Joomla users than there are developers and I’ve found that most Joomla developers are also Drupal savvy. Over the past few years, I’ve attended several Joomla conferences in different cities around the US and have met hundreds of developers and I’d have to say that Austin and Central Texas have some of the best.
Bender:What are some of the local austin websites that are currently using Joomla? What about nationally-known high profile sites?
Peterson: There are so many, its hard to distringuish a Joomla site from other types of sites. You can’t tell just by looking because it is possible to customize every aspect of the framework. Three years ago I developed Twin Liquors (www.twinliquors.com) on Joomla, as well as many other local business sites. On a national level Joomla.org has listed that the United Nations (http://www.unric.org) , MTV Networks Quizilla (www.quizilla.com) , L.A. Weekly (www.laweekly.com) , Harvard University (gsas.harvard.edu) sites have all been developed on Joomla.
Bender:Can you tell me a bit about the licensing model? How does it stack up against other CMS software — like Plone or Drupal?
Peterson: Joomla, Drupal, and Plone are free, open, and available to anyone under the GPL license. I am not has familiar with Plone’s licensing, but Joomla and Drupal both permit users to customize, and contribute code as well as resell the software as long as you allow the purchaser to to modify and redistribute it as well.
Bender:I’ve heard that, unlike with Drupal, most of the modules are are not free. What’s the scoop on this?
Peterson: Some of the modules have commercial licenses attached to them. Some users don’t like this, but I think it’s a great thing. You get a better product, and better support when you pay for an extension. There are many developers who will never charge for their work, and I applaud them, but there are many extensions Joomla would never have if it weren’t for the development teams working hard day and night.
Bender:SEO functionality seems to be lagging behind Drupal. Are there any solutions in the works?
Peterson: The latest version of Joomla has many great SEO features. From SEF urls, individual article meta tags and titles, to turbo charged SEO extensions, the Joomla team has delivered a CMS that drives traffic.
Bender:For someone implementing a new CMS system or collaborative website, what do you consider the main advantages to Joomla?
Peterson: Ease of use, the Joomla community, the customization options, and oh yeah, the local Joomla Austin user’s group (www.joomlaaustin.org) who has their first meeting this Wednesday (http://webdesign.meetup.com/528/) .
While selecting musical artists for the upcoming anniversary party, we noticed that many of the artists we were considering had something in common — they are members of the Austin Electronic Music Grid. So, rather than contact all the artists individually, I sent a note to Mary Abshier at the Grid, and asked if she would like to host a Grid showcase as part of the GeekAustin Anniversary Party. She said: Yes!
Tentatively, starting at 7PM, we’ll have laptop musicians performing in the BoomBoom Room Refresh Lounge. Then beginning at 8PM we’ll have Grid artists performing in the main room and on the roof — most likely until midnight. We are currently making arrangements with the artists, and hope to publish the acts and schedule within the next week.
I encourage you to check out the artists on the Grid. Some of my current favorites are Canartic, Carbon Theory, Dubnautica, My Dark Side, Death is not a Joyride. That’s only the beginning though. Check out the full list of Austin Electronic Music Grid Artists.
Remember, the GeekAustin Anniversary Party is free. Hope to see you there!
I’m happy to announce that Refresh Austin will be co-hosting the GeekAustin 8th Anniversary Party on September 30th. If you’re on Facebook, you can RSVP here.
When asked to give an example of Austin tech groups have done the most to empower both their members and the greater tech community, a few come to mind. Refresh Austin is one. (Agile Austin and Austin on Rails are the others). Although Refresh Austin is grows by leaps and bounds in membership, it continues to succeed as “an organization of Web professionals working together to foster new ideas and refresh the creative, technical and professional aspects of their trade”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the group, the Refresh Austin monthly meeting is tonight. These are a great group of folks, and if you are in any way involved with design, I encourage you to meet them — either at one of their monthly meetings, or at the GeekAustin Anniversary Party.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of small layoffs in Austin tech over the last month. In most cases, it appears to be members of web teams that are getting laid off. Are local companies cutting back on web initiatives? I haven’t heard similar news among system/network admins.
The first of the free SQL classes that GeekAustin is hosting is full. We will most likely be doing a second class. If you haven’t received a reply yet, look for one later this week. Daniel and I will be putting the curriculum and reading list online.
There are 450+ recruiters on the GA mailing list. How many of them also sell real estate for Keller Williams? Should I be inviting these folks to the GA party? Do you know Java?
-Linear
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Photo from GeekAustin Semantic Web Austin Launch party, courtesy of Michelle Greer. |
Over the next few months, Daniel and I will be focusing heavily on teaching the SQL and other classes that we’ll be offering. We wanted to host one last big event before we jumped headfirst into the new endeavor. We’ll be inviting everyone from all the GeekAustin lists. Last time we did this was 2003. The party will be at Union Park, so there will be plenty of room. I’ll be announcing the musical guests later this week. Expect a few other surprises. The details are below.
GeekAustin 8th Anniversary Party
Tuesday, September 30, 6PM - 11PM
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St (Next to Katz’s)
RSVP at Facebook (strongly encouraged)
Hope to see you there! - Linear
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Following our launch party for Semantic Web Austin, I’ve been wanting to do a follow up interview with the group’s founder, Juan Sequeda. This interview was conducted by GeekAustin’s resident ontologist, Jana Thompson. - Linear |
Jana Thompson: What are the benefits you see to the business community in adopting semantic technology?
Juan Sequeda: Semantic technologies will allow data to be related. It is about serendipity and data reusability. So if the business community is interested in discovering relationships of their data and being able to reuse it, they should consider starting looking into semantic technologies. One of the main examples is data integration. The business community is interested in seeing how this new technology can finally (hopefully) solve the data integration problem. In my opinion, semantic technologies are focused on 1) creating a web of data (aka. The Semantic Web) and 2) data integration in different domains (business, life science, geospatial, pharmaceutical)
Jana: Do you think these benefits are great enough for businesses to adopt the changes?
Juan: The web is always evolving, and semantic technologies are going to be part of the next step of the Web. Therefore, if companies want to be up-to-date with this evolution, they need to get on that boat. In a way, if companies do not start to look into semantic technologies, they will be in a disadvantage, and by the time they do start working on it, it may be too late. In addition, if they are still not satisfied in their data integration solutions, semantic technologies could be something attractive that business should start looking into.
Jana: How large do you think this impact will actually be?
Juan: Right now, I don’t know. We have to wait maybe a year till the research community makes stuff that is more accessible to normal users. Hopefully in the next year we will know.
Jana: I’m imagining a scenario like the dot-com era, when everyone was convinced that everyone would be shopping online, and so there were a plethora of start-up dot coms, offering everything for sale online, that of course eventually failed for the most part.
Juan: Once several apps have been developed, this era is going to come. The research that needs to be done is how to make this easy for the user. For example, the semantic web community is just starting to think about this. Check this: http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/insemtive2008/. It’s the first workshop on Incentives for the Semantic Web. So the community has realized that it does need to do something to incentivsie the world. Let’s see what happens in October at the International Semantic Web Conference.
Jana: I’ve heard, from contacts in the Bay Area, that they are skeptical of how large this impact of semantic technology will actually be on the web itself, but that the best uses of the technology are for fields such as medical information, or as you mentioned, geo-spatial data.
Juan: The Semantic web and semantic technologies is in a research era. Medicine fields and others have helped in this research process, therefore they are receiving the best and first benefits now. But most of the research is done in Europe and the Europeans do not have a commercial mind-like. Companies are skeptical of the impact, because they are not knowledgeable about it, and it is still not easy because it is still in a research phase. Hence, no semantic web killer app exist yet. Twine.com is a US company that is starting to expose what semantic technologies can do. Paul Allen’s company, Vulcan is investing in semantic web companies in the US and Europe.
Jana: Are semantic technologies going to be part of the web because of people championing the cause or because it is actually a necessary step?
Juan: People don’t realize that they have a problem. When they search in Google, they get results that work.. but they don’t know that there is more stuff out there that can be even better. people have so much social data, and have become social slaves of updating their profile everywhere. things like that… are problems that people don’t see them as problems. I believe it will be a common ground that will meet up somewhere in the middle. Where people are championing the cause, and half way through, users will realize that it is necessary.
For example, in the venture weekend that took place at UT couple months ago, came up with a better search experience for live music in austin (turn2live). Believe it or not, call it semantic web or not…. its a problem that people are realizing that they have and Google is not solving it. So problems exist, but people just live with it.
Jana: In the early days of the web, there was an explosion of new websites, due to the ease of learning HTML, from a business to a person to some crackpot talking about aliens. Even today, CSS and XHTML are not so difficult to learn that a determined person can’t learn them from W3C or other tutorials easily. If OWL becomes the norm for websites, what do you think the effects will be on the web? Do you think it is easy enough to learn that it will be readily adopted as part of the standard toolkit for web developers for businesses?
Juan: OWL is an ontology language, and one of the important principals of the Semantic Web is that data should be reused. Furthermore, ontologies need to be reused. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel? For normal programmers and designers, the use of OWL is not necessary, to a certain point. For example, if you want to add microformats and RDFa to describe your website, all you need is to learn some specific options that goes into HTML tags. These options are actually part of the FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) ontology. Therefore, nobody had to create their own ontology, they are reusing FOAF. On the other hand, the knowledge of specific W3C standards like OWL is necessary if you want to do data integration. If your database data describes a specific domain, where an ontology already exist, you may use that. But most commonly, you would want to create your own ontology. This ontology is the semantic layer that describes the content of different databases schemas that share the same domain. So it would be necessary to know OWL to get this done. My personal research work is to automate this process.
Jana: Following the same theme, do you think this will lead to an internet full of corporate-controlled websites, with sites only written by developers rather than individuals?
Juan: It may seem like this right now, because these are new technologies. RDF is less than 10 years old. OWL became a recommendation 4 years ago. SPARQL became a recommendation this year. These semantic technologies are just starting. In my opinion, the semantic web community needs to start creating easy and attractive ways for individuals to be part of the semantic web. This includes creating cool UI’s to navigate data, easy ways to create linked data, etc.
Jana: So, you are imagining technologies such as Drupal or Wordpress, that allow users to manage sites without a great deal of knowledge of the nuts and bolts of current web technologies?
Juan: Drupal and Wordpress are not technologies, they are applications. And these applications will offer stuff that will make users life easier. And they have already started. They do have RDFa and microformats!
Jana: Given all of the buzz, and my own familiarity with ontology, I am just very curious if the semantic web is truly necessary?
Juan: Check this video: http://juansequeda.blogspot.com/2008/08/predicting-next-5000-days-of-web-ted.html
Yahoo, Reuters, New York Times.. they are all doing semantic web stuff. The web is evolving that way. Is it THE solution? I don;t know. Nobody can solve all problems and save the universe. Right now we give stuff to the web (web 2.0.. user content generation) next generation is that the web will give stuff to us.
Jana: Will it be worth it to most people to go away from the web in its current form, with keyword searches on sites like Google, to a richer and more interconnected internet with potentially better search technology?
Juan: Semantic Web and semantic technologies is not only about making a better search engine. It may be that adding semantic technologies to current search engines won’t better search results. But what it will do is allow serendipity. It will allow users to discover relationships, things they didn’t know that existed. Search engines like Google will connect users with documents. The Semantic Web will connect users with data. That is what it is all about: a web of data.
Jana: For our more technical readers, I have a few additional questions: If no standardization comes about for mapping relational databases to domain ontologies, how do you see that as influencing the decisions about adoption of semantic technology by businesses? After all, the success of technology often lives or dies on its ease of adoption.
Juan: It would mean that several different solutions will be offered. It will become a business race to see who can offer the best solution.
Jana: Do you have any specific thoughts on a potential solution for the two initiatives of RDB2RDF - any rough ideas that you care to share on sketching out a solution beyond what you discussed in the Nodalities article?
Juan: I presented two aspects: Database and Ontology mapping and Direct Mapping. Both solutions are needed. The case where you have a company that can invest in a person who can be specialized in semantic technologies, who know OWL and knows the mapping languages. That company can make specific mappings. But you also may have the case that you want a simple automated system because you can’t invest in creating personalized mappings.
Juan: I really liked your questions. I understand that is may all sound a bit evangelist (which is what I proclaim what I do)… but its nice to actually get the correct words and reality out of me.
Jana: Juan, Thanks so much for taking the time.
For more info on the Semantic Web in Austin:
Juan’s SemanticWebAustin blog
SemanticWebAustin on LinkedIn
SemanticWebAustin onFaceBook
Daniel and I have been planning this for a while, and are finally ready to launch. Beginning in September, GeekAustin will be hosting a series of free classes on various core skill sets for beginning tech pros. The classes will be held downtown, and will be free. The classes will vary in length, and will cover topics such as SQL, Java certification, and basic object-oriented design.
The first class will be on basic SQL, and will be team-taught by Daniel and myself. This is the same evening class that we taught at Data Junction and Pervasive. The SQL class will begin early in September, and will tentatively consist of one session a week, each Wednesday night, for eight weeks. All materials needed for the class, including sample database, will be supplied. So that attendees will not have to waste time on things they already know, we have a pre-class evaluation test to determine the right session at which to enter.
For more information, or to request a place in the class, send a note to linearb@gmail.com
This is a presentation and party co-hosted by GeekAustin and OWASP-Austin. In the front room at Union Park, we’ll have the usual drinks and shenanigans. In the boom boom room, Mando and whurley will have a presentation and discussion on openSIMS. Although openSIMS has a lot of complicated things going on under the hood, Mando and whurley have a knack for expressing it in layman’s terms. The recruiters probably won’t understand it, but they’ll be up front buying drinks for anyone who says they know Java.
openSIMS
If you have any friends/colleagues who do high-level security work, and tell you the tales, you’ve probably heard statistics to the effect that banks and similar institutions are cyber-attacked millions of times each week. You may also have heard that thousands of those attacks are successful. With the growth of hacking and phishing from bored teenager to organized crime groups, this is the reality.
An institution can have teams of the best IT security, firewall, intrusion detection, and forensics experts. They can employ a range of tools: snort, nessus, nmap, nagios, as well as costly enterprise tools. However, when attacked by an army of bots, it frequently isn’t enough. Some attacks succeed.
openSIMS provides a way to integrate Nmap, Snort, Nagios, and Nessus into a common event correlation framework. More importantly, it provides a way for enterprises to selectively share network threat data realtime. Most importantly, openSIMS is an open-source project that is free to install and implement.
OWASP-Austin
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a worldwide free and open community focused on improving the security of application software. Our mission is to make application security “visible,” so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about application security risks. Everyone is free to participate in OWASP and all of our materials are available under a free and open software license. The Austin group meets monthly for a lunch talk. http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Austin
If you are interested in hearing about the state of network security (what the folks who hold your online information don’t tell you), and the emergence of the “Community Centric Security” model, I think you will find this an interesting discussion.
Then again, you can also just hang out up front and toss down drinks. Either way, I hope you can make it.
Rebirth of openSIMS - party and presentation
Tuesday, August 19th, 6PM-10PM
presentation at 7PM in the BoomBoom Room
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St.
RSVP (not necessary) at Facebook or Upcoming.
I launched GeekAustin, as an independent website, shortly after closing Desert Books in 1999. My intent was provide a place to keep in touch with all the programmers/admins/techies/hackers/crackers/wireheads who I had gotten to know over the 10 years that I ran bookstores along the drag. The original GeekAustin site ran on Slashcode, and was more or less an Austin version of Slashdot. Half a dozen people were involved in setting up and contributing to the original site. _fool and The Mighty Robbo helped configure the original server and schooled me on system administration. Orion helped configure Slash, set up the mail server, and contributed many of the original stories. Following the first dot.bust, many of the original crew left the velvet rut of Austin for higher pay and better opportunities. By 2003, I was more or less the sole contributor. In early 2008, because of security vulnerabilities in the ancient version of Slashcode I was running, I converted the site to WordPress. Most of the older stories are offline, but are archived.
Because the original purpose of GeekAustin was to stay in touch with the tech community around Europa/Desert Books, parties were always a big deal. Any significant event in the tech world was sufficient reason for a GeekAustin party: whether it was the release 1.0 of Mozilla, the one billionth second of Unix, or Donald Knuth’s birthday. We hosted a somewhat infamous Adult Webmasters’ Party at SXSW (Does anyone have pictures?), and before Brad sold it to SixApart, we hosted an annual SXSW Live Journal party each year, where Brad would fly out to be the guest of honor. We also had the pleasure of co-sponsoring Symbiot’s Linux Top Gun events — which gathered the largest group of network hackers ever seen in Austin.
My fondness for throwing tech parties actually pre-date GeekAustin by about a decade. It can pretty much be traced back to Bruce Sterling’s first visit to Europa Books in 1990. Soon after his visit, Bruce began telling his friends about the store, and over the next few years, Bruce introduced me to Paco Nathan, Steven Levy, Bill Gibson, Lebkowsky, Mark Frauenfelder, the staff at Wired… and the list goes on. Whenever one of these folks came to town, we’d have a booksigning/party/whatever at the store. We hosted events for Boing Boing (when it was a print magazine) and the EFF, among others. It wasn’t until this week, while on my morning walk, that it occurred to me what a huge effect Bruce had upon the direction of the store, as well as my migration into the tech sphere.
The early GeekAustin parties were attended by a pretty hardcore tech crowd. There was a nice mix of brilliant and crazy folks along with the expected zealots, misfits, and CTOs. I did have to ban numerous males who didn’t know how to act around women. I also had to ban the recruiters whose vocabulary consisted only of “Do you know Java?”. But if you knew how to navigate the crowd, you could always count on fascinating conversations.
I’m making a conscious effort to move the GeekAustin website, and the event themes, back into a more tech heavy direction. Call me selfish, but I would rather have a discussion about grid/cloud computing with someone who understands parallel algorithms, than have a conversation about the Semantic Web with a group of advertising/PR people who have no concept of the difference between relational and hierarchical data models.
The next GeekAustin event is a return to roots.
On Tuesday, August 19th, GeekAustin be hosting, along with OWASP-Austin, a presentation on openSIMS — a radical new way to deal with network security threats. Presenting will be Mando Escamilla and whurley of the openSIMS project. Although some extremely complicated things go on under the hood, Mando and whurley have a knack for explaining it at the street-level. The event will be held at Union Park. Presentation in the boom boom room, and drinks in the main room. Details will be on GeekAustin Monday. For Facebook users, the facebook page is here.
It is good to be excited.
-Linear
I don’t normally do job posts on GeekAustin anymore. However, I make exceptions. Chris Bernard, (blog) (geekaustin interview), one of the sharpest guys I know, just sent me this job rec:
I know, it sounds like a joke right? But think about it, who needs it more than Microsoft? Think how boring this gig would be at a place like Apple, it would be like being the Maytag repairmen. At Microsoft you’ll be challenged everyday and get a chance to play a role in events like our global PhizzPop Design Challenge, SxSW and support local groups that support the design community in the US, like Refresh and the IxDA.
You’ll meet some of the best Web shops, design agencies, designers, user interaction designers, experience architects and technologists in world all from the comfy headquarters of Austin, TX. You’ll have to do some traveling for this job but mostly in the US and in the Midwest with the occasional cool trip overseas.
If you’re passionate about UX, tinkering, building, and teaching folks about rich technology formats such as AJAX and Flash and have an interest in things like Silverlight and want to work at a place where you can have tremendous influence around design, the standards-based Web and simply making cool stuff this is a GREAT opportunity for those that are passionate about design and technology.
In addition to Austin we’ve got opportunities in LA, DC and NYC too. We’re moving fast so give me a shout at chris.bernard@microsoft.com if you are interested and you can check out www.designthinkingdigest.com to learn more about my own experiences in this role.
I have the pleasure of knowing and working with several of the regional UX folks at Microsoft. This is an exceptional gig for an exceptional person. Chris told me that they will be acting fast on the position. So if you think you are what they are looking for, take a look at the job post and send a note to Chris (chris.bernard@microsoft.com) today.
Many of you will remember Symbiot as the lead sponsor for the Linux Top Gun events. If you’ve checked the Symbiot website recently, you see a digital countdown, and the tagline: On March 31st, the rules of information warfare will change forever. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet! So what’s this all about?
Symbiot’s March 4, Press Release entitled “Symbiot Security Announces World’s First Solution to Strike Back Against Network-Based Attackers” gives the brief outline. Michael Erwin, President of Symbiot, says, “Until today, security solutions have been totally passive in nature.”. The best defense is a good offence, eh? Release the countermeasures! For those of you who want more details, Symbiot has a white paper on the new product.
It’s always good to see an Austin company create some excitement. Best wishes to Symbiot for a successful rollout.
LTG3 is Saturday. The guys have had a chance to work out the kinks during the first two events, and I’m looking forward to seeing some fresh exploits this time. Even if you haven’t been following the competition, there will be quite the gaggle of geeks in attendance. Dress for success — ‘ cause the Hot-Tool Fashion Crew will be on hand displaying the latest in metal lingerie. If that isn’t enough, the femmes of Geek Services of Austin will be available for personal consultations. Hooah!
For those of you who were unable to see the ‘xploits during the first two LTGs, this event will feature the hot new visualization software from David Massey
By the way, quit using the H word!
Details:
Linux Top Gun 3
Saturday, 11 January 2003 - from 7pm to 11:30pm.
@Alamo Drafthouse (downtown)
The 2nd Linux Top Gun competition will be held at Mojo’s Daily Grind this Friday, October 11th at 8pm. The organizers tell me that the competition is designed to create a community for individuals interested in information security as well as to raise public awareness about the increasing issue of data security.
I’d like to add that the first Top Gun was a huge blast. I saw lots of friends that I hadn’t seen in ages. It was the largest gackle of geeks I’d seen in one place since the parties at SXSW Interactive. Paco knows how to throw a party. I’m glad to see him back in the public sphere.
The Top Gun competition consists of six defense teams each with 30 minutes to defend a Linux/Apache server against members in the audience trying to crack their system. The event will feature big screen projection of network analysis with live commentary and explanation by experienced security experts. The wireless network will be open to the public for participation in the competition. The event is a great place to learn the basics or work on strengthening your security skills. There will also be several DJs and $1,500 in prizes for the team judged as best defender.
For those of you who keep bitching about the parking in the downtown/campus area: obviously nothing can be as convenient as staying home and downloading internet pron. Log off and show up.
Check out http://www.linuxtopgun.org for more details”
“Linux Top Gun”
Friday, October 11, 2002 - 9:00 PM
THE CONTINUATION MATCH
2714 Guadalupe - Austin, Texas
free admission * open to the public
http://www.linuxtopgun.org/
Imagine one Linux/Apache web server, a bunch of laptops attacking it
over a free-for-all wireless network, visual traffic analysis on big
screen projectors, some DJs, and $1500 in prizes for the team judged
as best defender.
Imagine the competition organized as a community event and held at a local coffeehouse.
Imagine the look on the faces of the people with a wireless LAN next door…
The first “Linux Top Gun” competition was held on September 6th at
Mojo’s Daily Grind, with six teams participating and over 250 people
attending. As reported in Xlent by John Ratliff: “Imagine that, as a
wargame, the U.S. Army occupied an actual city and then issued an open
invitation for anyone, anywhere, to try and take it from them, and
you’ll have some idea of what Friday’s shootout entailed.” There
was so much buzz that Mojo’s ran out of beer and other establishments
on The Drag reported a “quiet evening”.
THE CONTINUATION MATCH will be held at Mojo’s on October 11 at 8:00 pm
and the public is invited. The event is produced by Famous Aspect,
co-sponsored by Austin Community College, Symbiot Security,
SXSW/Interactive, North Shore Circuit Design, and Mojo’s Daily Grind,
with artwork by Anita Pantin and postering by Motorblade.
We’re starting earlier this time, at 8:00 pm. We’ve got a monster
network designed by co-sponsor Symbiot Security. We’ve got more
projectors so the audience can view comfortably. Most importantly,
we’ve got competitors ready to engage in combat: Team Fantastic Four,
Team Wiretap, Team Austin 2600, Team Prime Target, Team Evil Mutants,
Team Forrest.
[ Please distrbute far and wide… ]
Contacts:
Famous Aspect, Inc.
7301 Burnet Road, Suite 102-211
Austin, Texas 78757 USA
http://famous.aspect.to/you/
+1 512 773 8546
attn: Paco Nathan, paco@famous.aspect.to
Austin Community College, Continuing Education
5930 Middle Fiskville Road
Austin, Texas 78752 USA
http://www.austincc.edu/infosec/
+1 512 223 7588
attn: Marcela Nouzovska, mnouzovs@austincc.edu
Symbiot, Inc.
5800 Airport Blvd
Austin, Texas 78752 USA
http://www.symbiot.com/
+1 512 421 4300
attn: Mellie Price, mellie@symbiot.com
SXSW Interactive
PO Box 4999
Austin, Texas 78765 USA
http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/
+1 512 467 7979
attn: Hugh Forrest, inter@sxsw.com
North Shore Circuit Design, LLP
2201 N Lamar Blvd, Suite 200
Austin, Texas 78705 USA
http://www.nshore.com/
+1 512 448 1114 x115
attn: Paul Groepler, paulg@nshore.com
Mojo’s Daily Grind
2714 Guadalupe
Austin, Texas 78705 USA
http://www.mojosdailygrind.com/
+1 512 477 6656
attn: Wade Beasley, mamamojo@mojosdailygrind.com
figment2 writes “Imagine a competition like BattleBots, for computer networks: teams take turns defending a Linus/Apache web server while other teams use their laptops to attack that server over the Internet. After each round, the players explain their strategy to the audience — just like on a sports channel. Imagine the competition organized as a community event, held at a local coffeehouse. Imagine the event being co-sponsored by an accredited, practical, affordable, hands-on program for network security training, with assistance from local firms which offer network security services, along with maybe a little Mexican Wrestling thrown into the mix.
Check out Linux Top Gun
