A couiple of months ago, Penton Media (magazine asked me to speak on the TechX World road show (see www.techxworld.com). The topic? Windows/Linux integration. Hmmm. Not exactly my core competence, but what they heck. Penton provided three abstracts (Windows/Linux SSO, WIndows/Linux Identity Management, and Directory Interoperability). I have to say the abstracts didn't really hang together real well for me. For instance, the Directory Interoperability abstract started with the history of LDAP, then talked about how AD supports LDAP, and finally how you use MIIS to integrate directories. I suppose the abstracts came from reader feedback, but I sure wish I had had a chance to tighten them up a bit.
In any case the road show was a lot of fun. There were four cities (DC, Chicago, Dallas, and SF), and four speakers: Mike Otey, Dustin Puryear, Randy Dyess and myself. We each had a track of three sessions, so we pretty much ended up standing in front of a crowd all day. Mike's an old-timer (like me), and Dustin is a young Linux consultant from Baton Rouge who is a leading candidate for "Separated at Birth - The Elvis Edition". Sadly, I only met Randy briefly at dinner so didn't learn too much about him.
Penton held the events in downtown movie theaters, which was kind of cool. The attendees got nice chairs and a 50 foot wide screen, plus popcorn. Attendence was in the hundred-ish range, and I usually had about 30 in my sessions. Mike Otey's virtualization track typically had more, and Dustin and Randy's tracks had a few less.
Feedback was positive, and they've asked me to do it again next year, so I guess its all good. I've learned a ton about Linux authentication, much more than I ever wanted to know. I'll post some of the things I've learned in the next few weeks.