Ken Schumacher

I am a Unix Systems Administrator at Fermi National Accelerator Lab in Batavia, IL. I began working at Fermilab in Jan 1997. In Oct 2008, I began working with the HPC Department which oversees several large High-Performance computing clusters, primarily for use by USQCD. My group manages nearly 1700 nodes in 7 clusters. This works out to over 21,000 CPUs and 150 GPUs.

I am available for assurances in the western suburbs of Chicago. I have a local CAcert information page that should answer most questions about how to arrange to meet up with me to be assured. I am an experience assurer capable of granting up to 35 trust points. And I encourage all those that I assure to go through the steps of assuring me as well, once they reach the 100 point level. There is no better practice than doing an assurance for someone who is experienced and understand the process.

My experience with trusted identity and such

I have been a PGP user since 1994. I have attended several PGP Key Signing BoF1 sessions at various LISA conferences and this has allowed me to build up quite a collection of signatures on my PGP Keys.

At the 2004 LISA conference in Atlanta GA, I signed up to host the PGP key signing BoF. I was contacted before the conference by those who were trying to set up a CAcert BOF session. That session was scheduled for right after the PGP session. I collected enough assurance points before the session that I was able to help with assurances at the session. We easily attained critical mass and the assurances went on into the wee hours of the night. I spent most of my free time over the next several days explaining CAcert and the assurance process in small hallway gatherings. I assured 35 people and I was assured by 24 people new to the process, helping them earn points so they could assure others.

I also led both the PGP key signing BoF and the CAcert.org BoF sessions at two recent LISA events. We assured 9 new people at the LISA'09 conference in Baltimore, MD. And we assured 8 new people at the LISA'10 conference in San Jose, CA.

Upcoming Events

I will be attending the LISA'12 conference in San Diego, CA 9-14 Dec 2012. I will be arriving on Sat evening, 8 Dec. I'm staying at the conference headquarters hotel all week, departing early on Sat 15 Dec. I have reserved a room and will host the PGP key signing BoF and the CAcert.org BoF sessions. These sessions are scheduled for Tuesday evening, 11 Dec 2012.

I have updated the presentation I used last year which introduces the CAcert.org community and describing the assurance process. I am reaching out to others who will attend this conference who are qualified as assurers. I believe we had 5 assurers present at the LISA 2010 event. I will be posting an event page on the CAcert Wiki site. I will be available for assurances at the conference all week.

A North American ATE?

I hope to talk to other Assurers who are members of USENIX. My goal is to explore the possibility of holding an ATE at a future USENIX conference (not necessarily a LISA event).

Potential attendees

I know several USENIX members who attend LISA conferences regularly. I have attended six prior LISA conferences and the 2012 conference will be my seventh. I personally have done Assurances for approximately 50 individuals while attending LISA conferences. Several of those assurers are still active in our community and attending LISA events. These assurers already travel to these USENIX events, some traveling internationally.

Past events as a starting point

I have participated in and/or hosted assurance events at three conferences. I am presenting another assurance event at LISA'12. I have a slide presentation that I have used before and have now updated for this latest event. This presentation could be used as a building block for an ATE.

Status

As of 29 November 2012, I am just posting this idea. I have not contacted the CAcert.org Events coordinator yet. All I have done so far is explore CAcert.org Wiki pages related to ATE events. I want to try to gauge interest at the LISA'12 event in two weeks before I put to much more effort into this possibility.

Email: <ken.schumacher AT SPAMFREE gmail DOT com>

-- KenSchumacher ...



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  1. BoF stands for "Birds of a Feather". It is a gathering where people meet to discuss a topic of common interest (1)