UNIX Administratosphere

One experience at BARcamp Chicago stood out for me - it was unusual for me. I’m not one to take part in multiuser dungeons (MUDs), or anything of the sort. However, one person who was ran into a person who spoke no English, but spoke French.

Now I speak passable French, and can type, so I become a sort of interpreter. Thus, here I was conversing with (it turned out) a Belgian and helping the two gameplayers to converse.

Learning a foreign language can be a benefit, and it can help you professionally as well. One notable time was when I helped my employer (a bank) to understand a French check that was returned for non-sufficent funds (in English, NSF).

There are a lot of foreign language technical resources as well - don’t forget to visit them and try to understand them if you have the knowledge. If you don’t, then use services like Babelfish to translate them.

If you know a foreign language, keep it up by listening to it often and reading foreign language news. You can start to lose some of your proficiency if you don’t. You can listen to foreign language podcasts, or read foreign language newspapers online, or attempt to read or edit online foreign language wiki entries - or even read foreign language corporate sites.

Here are some possible resources (using French, Spanish, and Russian as examples) - search Google for others.

• French
  • LeMonde - A French newspaper
  • Microsoft France
  • French Wikipedia
• Spanish
  • Spanish Wikipedia
  • Microsoft Spain
  • El Pais - a premier Spanish newspaper
• Russian
  • Pravda - a Russian newspaper
  • Microsoft Russia
  • Russian Wikipedia

Many sites can be found just by using the appropriate domain: the Esperanto Wikipedia would be at http://eo.wikipedia.org, Apple Germany at http://www.apple.de, and Microsoft Germany at http://www.microsoft.de. You could even use Google France (http://www.google.fr) or Amazon France (http://www.amazon.fr) to search for more French materials, for example.

Any system administrator will have to make a presentation at one time or another - or should at least know how to. There are some very good sources for ideas on how to make slide presentations (sometimes called PowerPoint presentations).

First off, you don’t have to use PowerPoint - this should be obvious but isn’t to a lot of people. Macintosh users of recent vintage can use Keynote; also available for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux is OpenOffice (or its Macintosh-specific spinoff, NeoOffice). Note, too, that you don’t need to use slides at all. Use them only if they add something to your presentation.

Secondly, when creating a slide presentation, remember this rule: don’t read the slides. While this is a rule of presentation, it is important because this can be found directly in how the slides are created. Think of it this way: there should be things you say that are not in the slide.

Thirdly, be creative. This can be hard - and overdone. As a very interesting and dynamic presentation, consider this presentation given by Dick Hardt from the O’Reilly OSCON 2005.

Here are some excellent resources about presentations:

• Presentation Zen - an ongoing blog on presentations
• 12 Tips for Creating Better Presentations from Microsoft
• From the people over at the KnowHR blog comes The Best Presentations Ever (a Squidoo “lens”) - which in some ways mimics their Top 10 Best Presentations - but it also leads to The Top 10 Presentations - the Reader’s Choice