BSDCan Trip Report: Barry Steyn

Barry Steyn, Software Development Manager at RedButton, writes the following in his BSDCan trip report:

Let me start by saying that I am from Africa, South Africa to be exact. Free software is very advantageous as South Africa is not a rich country. I am using FreeBSD as a server due to its incredible stability in such an environment. Whilst I have been on the FreeBSD mailing lists for sometime, I have always wanted to meet the community. South Africa is quite far away (geographically) from the first world countries; this compounded with the price of airfare makes it very infrequently that South Africans travel. I was very fortunate to be able to attend BSDCAN 2010 with the support of the FreeBSD foundation.

There were several very interesting talks. For me, the four most interesting talks were the talks on Clang BSD, Security implications of Ipv6, Colin Percival’s cryptography overview and wireless meshing under FreeBSD. The ClangBSD talk introduced me to LLVM – something that I was unfamiliar with, and am now very excited about. Ipv6 is the way of the future; after this talk, I realise that it may not happen all that smoothly! The highlight for me was Doctor Percival’s talk. It was informative and humorous – the perfect combination. My business in South Africa has to do with WiFi hotspots, so I felt that the wireless meshing talk was put there just for me!

All in all, a fantastic conference. I would like to thank the coordinators of the conference (Dan Langille comes to mind, not to forget about all the volunteers) for organising such a wonderful event.