Fighting "Technical Fires" by Sam Smith
Channel: EuroBSDcon
Date: 2020-07-05

A set of experiences from being a BSD user in projects where the main expertise of the technical staff is Windows, and the vast majority of the staff have non-computer-technical expertise. This is a set of lessons learnt from being the sole UNIX user in some groups, and the sole technical person in some others and being responsible for making stuff work. With BSD, easy things are easy, and impossible things are difficult. Some of the lessons from putting out a technical fire once it's gone wrong, and some from preventing it in the first place. Some of these things were learnt the hard way, some are lessons stolen from elsewhere. Some of them are technical lessons, most involve some non-technical aspects.

Sam is one of the founders of the Manchester BSD User Group, and his day job is in a technical team of 1 providing technical solutions to social science research problems.