Interview: Kristen Carlson Accardi

July 24, 2008

This article was contributed by Valerie Aurora

Kristen Carlson Accardi is a Linux kernel developer for Intel's Open Source Technology Group. She is the maintainer for the PCIE hot-plug driver, the SHPC hot-plug driver, and the PCI hot-plug subsystem in the Linux kernel. She is currently working on SATA drivers, including implementing power management features.

Kristen is the benevolent dictator for the upcoming Linux Plumbers Conference. We interviewed her about LPC, why so many Linux developers live near Portland, Oregon, and life as a kernel developer.

What is Linux Plumbers Conf? And why the "Plumbers" part?

Linux Plumbers Conference is a conference for developers working on the low level programming of Linux, including kernel, libraries, and system applications such as udev, hal, and dbus. We came up with the name "Plumbers" because we wanted to represent these areas as basic system infrastructure which has many connections. Plus these programs are sort of the nasty, grimy, unglamorous underbelly of the system - not unlike the pipes in your house. Essential - but nobody wants to know they are there and everyone takes them for granted until they don't work.

Running a conference is a lot of work in addition to your full time job as a Linux kernel developer. What made you decide to start Linux Plumbers Conf?

Actually, it was the idea of a group of people. The Portland Linux kernel community gets together once a month or so to socialize and drink beer. At one of these gatherings we had a conversation about how difficult it was to solve big picture problems that cross multiple project boundaries. We felt that there are some cases where you really need to be able to just get everyone in a room and be able hash things out in person, but there wasn't really a forum for this. Existing conferences were either too narrow (like Kernel Summit or the X developers summit) or too broad for our purposes.

Then someone said something like "Hey, why don't we just make our own conference". Because we are nothing more than a group of developers with a shared love of beer, we went to the Linux Foundation and asked them to collaborate with us, and it's been a wonderful partnership. It's definitely been a challenge for a bunch of software engineers to try and organize a conference, but we've leaned heavily on LF for advice and we've learned a lot in the past year.

Most conferences are centered around talks in which speakers present their work, but open source developers often skip the talks so they can discuss ongoing projects face-to-face. How is LPC balancing these needs?

Our format for the conference is based on the idea that we would have a bunch of "microconferences". Each microconf is meant to represent a topic that should be small enough to be able to adequately discuss in a few hours, and should preferably span multiple project areas. Each microconf is being organized by a single expert in the area who dictates the content of the microconf. The microconf runner may decide to have a couple talks and an hour or so for discussion, or they may decide to split the group into teams and solve some specific problems. We are leaving this up to the microconf runner to decide, although we are recommending that talks be not more than 25 minutes in length so that there is ample time for discussion and questions.

We also have a general track for presentations that do not fall under our predefined MC topics. In addition to the rooms for the microconfs, we have several rooms that are going to be available for "unconference" style talks. People wishing to get together in smaller groups will be able to reserve a room at the beginning of the conference. Our larger rooms will also be available in the afternoon for working sessions.

For several years, developers have been organizing individual summits and workshops for particular projects, like networking and file systems. LPC microconfs are similar, but they're held all in the same location and time. Why did you want to put the microconfs together into one conference?

We did this to encourage cross project communication. Individual summits are great for solving narrow problems, but they tend to compartmentalize developers from each other.

Who is organizing and sponsoring LPC?

LPC is organized by a group of volunteers from the Portland Linux development community and is underwritten by the Linux Foundation. We are a group of developers who just wanted to attend a conference which didn't happen to exist yet, so we made our own. Because we are all volunteers, we have very little overhead for this conference, and the money our sponsors have given up is being used directly on making the conference as productive and memorable as we can make it, with hopefully a little left over to start over again next year. Our Platinum level sponsors are Intel and IBM, with NetApp sponsoring at the Gold level, and HP, MontaVista, and Google at the Silver. In addition the Linux Foundation and Portland State University and have given us so much more than money - they have been true collaborators and we are so grateful for all their time and effort.

Were there any sponsorships you didn't accept?

Not that I can recall - we actually started fund raising a little late and missed a lot of people's planning cycles. We were extremely lucky that there were so many great sponsors like Intel, IBM, NetApp, HP and Google that believed our conference was valuable enough to find the money in their budget despite the short notice.

How did you decide on the location of LPC?

Portland State University was always our first choice for LPC. We wanted a non-corporate, friendly environment that was downtown. It was very important to us as well to have a "green" conference - hey, we are Oregonians! We wanted a place were there were plenty of hotels and restaurants within walking distance so that people would not have to rent a car. In addition, we didn't want the more traditional convention center or hotel atmosphere, nor could we afford it.

Tell us more about LPC as a green conference.

As frequent conference-goers, we are all a little dismayed by the waste generated from conferences. Disposable drinking cups and bottled water, flyers and schwag that immediately hits the garbage bin when you get back to your hotel, and driving around from event to hotel and back again are just some of the things that we decided we'd like to not have at our conference. As such, we are not distributing printed material at the conference. We're also limiting our schwag to only things we've deemed useful, and we are working with our caterers to reduce paper waste and provide foods from local, sustainable sources where possible.

How did you get started in Linux kernel development?

I started using Linux in college back in 1994 or 1995 - I wanted to be able to work on my homework at home rather than in the lab, and all we had in those days was a horrendously slow modem connection to the school. For years afterward, all I wanted to do for a living was to work on Linux, but it wasn't until around 1999 that I got my first chance to write some drivers for Linux while working in Intel's networking division. I had previously written device drivers for Netware - a job I'd gotten right out of college. After working on out-of-tree drivers for embedded systems and research projects for many years, I finally joined Intel's Open Source Technology Center in 2005 and was able to start contributing upstream in a meaningful way.

Portland is home to many top Linux developers, including Linus Torvalds. Why do you think Portland is so attractive to open source developers?

Honestly - I have no idea. People ask this question all the time, and all we can do is speculate. I know why a lot of us live here - it's a great city to live in. At some point you get enough critical mass of developers that you start attracting others. It could be any number of things. Maybe because it's easier to thumb our noses at Redmond from here?

In your opinion, what are some of the most important technical trends in Linux kernel development today?

Low power features in hardware is driving a lot of kernel development these days.

Tell us about some of the places you've traveled for your job.

When you work in open source, you have to travel to meet your "co-workers". I've had a chance to go to OLS a few times, Sydney for LCA a couple years ago, and Cambridge last year for Kernel Summit and LinuxConfEU. Recently I traveled to FISL in Porto Allegre, Brazil. I've also been to Ireland for Skycon - a fun and interesting conference. I'm actually looking forward to not having to travel to attend LPC.

Thanks, Kristen, for taking the time to answer our questions.

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