Evangelism and ZFS dev summit

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Evangelism and ZFS dev summit

Postby Sharko » Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:18 pm

I've had a couple thoughts rumbling around in my head lately... first, evangelism. I'm wondering if someone from our community would be interested in and capable of presenting at a conference like MacStock:

https://macstockconferenceandexpo.com/

I'm a huge fan of running this software on the Mac, and I feel like it is one of those best kept secrets that hardly anyone knows about. I would love to see it put in front of the enthusiast Mac community that goes to an event like MacStock. We probably would need to get in contact with the organizers pronto if we were to have any hope of getting on the schedule for the event this July, however. I regard myself as still somewhat a newbie with ZFS, but I would consider trying to get on the schedule if no one more capable or more local steps forward. This event is in Illinois, about an hour and a quarter west of the airport O'Hare. I really think we have to consider that we have a window of time in which to sell the advantages of ZFS before APFS hits the streets; I still regard ZFS as the superior technical solution, and we would be strategically better in presenting that solution vis-à-vis APFS before APFS becomes the default easy way out.

OK, second topic: OpenZFS dev summit. Do any of our core developers (Lundman, Brendan, ilovezfs, et al) go to the OpenZFS dev summit? Last year it was in June in San Francisco, I believe. It seems to me that we really should have representation there, right? I think we should have a GoFundMe or similar campaign to help defray the costs for one (or more, I'm dreaming here) of our developers to go to this important event. I'm willing to put up a hundred bucks to send someone there; who is with me?

Here is the summary of the 2016 summit:

http://open-zfs.org/wiki/OpenZFS_Developer_Summit

Kurt
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Re: Evangelism and ZFS dev summit

Postby lundman » Fri Mar 10, 2017 12:50 am

Hello Kurt,

I must admit I am mostly unaware of the Mac events that happen around the world, as I still consider myself a recent adoptee, even thought amusingly I have had osx at home since 2005. If someone would want to speak and promote at Macstock, that would indeed be neat indeed, I am a bit far (Tokyo) to travel to (many) events.

On the topic on OpenZFS Developer Summit, I go roughly every 2 years, so in 2016 I did not go, but 2015 I was there, as well as 2013. I believe there is video of me in 2013 for the platform panel... this was the year we got the first version to work.

I plan to go this year, but they have not yet set the date for the event. If I can get out of doing a presentation this year I will be lucky, but I have a feeling I might just have to.
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Re: Evangelism and ZFS dev summit

Postby Sharko » Tue Mar 14, 2017 9:42 am

Just to provide an update: I contacted MacStock, and learned that they had already (recently) finalized their speaker schedule. The organizer who responded sounded interested in having a presentation about ZFS on OS X. I'm still considering going, and may tell them to keep me in mind as an alternate presenter in case someone drops out. It's a shame that I didn't think about this until recently, because as I said it would have been nice to be out in front of APFS, not playing catch-up as far as promotion once APFS goes mainstream later this year.
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Re: Evangelism and ZFS dev summit

Postby Sharko » Sat Jan 20, 2018 11:53 am

I contacted Mike Potter at MacStock this week, and learned that there is still time to get on the 2018 presentation schedule. However... they've changed the format a bit this year. For one thing, fewer speakers will be arranged because now each speaker does an introductory session and then a deep dive session. That part is fine (actually, perfect) for ZFS, since I really didn't think I could do a decent job of presenting ZFS in 20 minutes. The other change is more challenging: MacStock will now have a theme for each year, and the theme for this year is Productivity.

I've been trying to think of how ZFS might fit into that theme of Productivity, and unfortunately it does not seem as obvious as I would like. The main things that I think about are the fact that ZFS can be automated to create and send backups off-site, freeing up one's time from the drudgery of waiting for QRecall grind away overnight to create a snapshot backup of my system. The flexibility of datasets to grow as needed means I don't run into situations where a partition runs out of room, causing me to have to resize it and copy large amounts of data around. And of course there is the productivity that comes with not having to worry about whether data has been corrupted - ZFS will either give me corrected data if it can, or tell me that the data is incorrect.

So, I would like to invite you to tell me how ZFS makes you productive or keeps you productive. Maybe I've overlooked something obvious, and there is a killer presentation to be written around it. Thanks,

Kurt
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