Category: References

References – Continuously updated

Current and historic events, talks, interviews, presentations, stage shows and more.  Pretty much constant work in progress.

Markus started working with Linux in 1994, founded his own company at the Millenium and has been writing, teaching, consulting and hosting ever since.

After eight years as deputy editor-in- chief at German Linux-Magazine and several books published, he joined SUSE in 2015 as  manager for the German Linux vendor’s documentation team. Markus actively supports Linux4Afrika!

Presentation on “Bubble Out”- Event of MFG Baden-Württemberg

On October 22nd 2020, Markus Feilner had a presentation on “Open Source in the field of Mixed Reality” in the event “Bubble Out”.

“Bubble Out” is a series of events about new impulses and connection out of the bubble for museums and other cultural and memorial institutions, so-called GLAMs, from Baden-Württemberg. The events include inspiring evening programs with surprising insights and offer the opportunity to connect and discuss innovative topics with members of different branches than IT. Weeks before the event, Markus was on the jury of “Open Culture BW meets VR” and was allowed to present the keynote at the award ceremony. He held the laudatio speech for the winner of the award “Most Innovative”, which was the team of the Game “Apollonia’s nightmare”: Judith Langer, Stefan Bregenzer, Jan Detting, Louis Trouillier, Ben Ruff, all students of Hochschule Furtwangen.

My first Editorial at Heise … it’s Dynamite!

Inseln, Phisher und Dynamit | iX | Heise Magazine … :

“An einem der vielen südlichsten Punkte Europas findet sich eine kleine, unbedeutende Insel namens Gavdos, wenige Fährstunden südlich von Kreta, 250 Kilometer von der afrikanischen Küste entfernt und damit Griechenlands südliches Ende. Auf ihr leben nur eine zweistellige Anzahl von permanenten Bewohnern, Fremde verirren sich nicht oft hierher. Die meisten Einwohner leben vom Fisch­fang, bauen ein wenig Wein, Obst, Gemüse und Getreide an, halten Schafe und Ziegen. Touristen kennen Gavdos in der Regel nur von Vassilis’ Radiostation „Gavdos FM“, die beim Wandern in den schluchtenreichen Weißen Bergen Südwestkretas der letzte Draht zur Außenwelt bleibt. Das Logo von Gavdos FM – Che Guevara im Piratenlook – sagt viel über die Einwohner der abgelegenen Insel.“

“Mythbusting Documentation” – Markus Feilner beim Frühjahrsfachgespräch 2019 der GUUG

Im Programm der Gnu-Unix-User-Konferenz für diesen Donnerstag steht “What’s wrong with documentation?” und “Wie Dokumentation funktioniert” bei meinem Vortrag. Ich denke, der  beste deutsche Titel  für meinen Klassiker “Mythbusting Documentation” ist irgendwas a la “Dokumentation – eine lange Geschichte voller Missverständnisse und Mythen”.

Der Vortrag hat als Inhalt Vorurteile und Mythen über “Die Doku”, demgegenüber die Wahrheit, eine Stellenbeschreibung des perfekten Technical Writer und ein paar Worte zur “Agilen” Dokumentation.

<snip>:

Dieser Vortrag zeigt die häufigsten Mythen, Missverständnisse und Fehleinschätzungen über Software Dokumentation. “Jeder kann das schreiben” oder “Jeder Entwickler sollte Endkundendoku verfassen” gehören da genauso dazu wie “Gute Software braucht keine Doku” oder “Dokumentation ist ja nicht wirklich technisch” oder “Ihr müsst auch endlich agile werden mit Euerer Doku und Eueren Workflows”. Meist kursieren diese Annahmen im technischen Management und unter Entwicklern. Doch wer die Menschen fragt, die beim Anwender, dem Kunden oder Benutzer vor Ort sind, der erhält ein ganz anderes Bild. Warum viele Kunden immer noch Doku ausdrucken, welche Erwartungen sie an einen Dokumentationsspezialisten haben und warum das Profil des perfekten Writers deutlich mehr Anforderungen stellt als das eines Entwicklers oder Projektmanagers, genau das erklärt dieser Vortrag. 

</snip>

Update: Here’s the PDF of my talk, as I plan it for later this afternoon – it’s the German version of the talk I gave at SUSE Labs last year.

Live hacking – a demonstration for military and politicians

… recently, at the german military’s reservist’s club VdRBw :
“Veranstalter: Kreisgruppe Oberpfalz-Süd

Thema: Sicheres Surfen durchs Internet

Wie ich meinen PC besser schützen kann

Bedrohung und Abwehrstrategien für den heimischen Rechner mit Live-Demonstration typischer AngriffeIm Rahmen der Freiwilligen Reservistenarbeit führt die Kreisgruppe Oberpfalz-Süd in Zusammenarbeit mit der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung und dem Markt Donaustauf eine Sicherheitspolitische Veranstaltung in Donaustauf als Verbandsveranstaltung in UTE durch.
(…)
Anzug: Dienstanzug gem ZDv 37/10 oder gedecktes Zivil”

Sir! Yes, Sir!

A praise of Folly: Security Theater – The mostly unknown OSI Layer 8 and above

Early in February 2018 I was happy to give my Security Theater speech at FOSDEM, in Brussels. They booked me after Howard Chu and right before the closing keynote – awesome, and there were a few thousand geeks in the audience – I guess that was the largest crowd I ever spoke to, and it was big fun – have a look at the video. Before that event, I had enjoyed meeting politicians from the European parliament and had given an interview to the Radio Berlin Brandenburg about the darknet.

Here (https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/security_theatre/) is where you find all material about this talk. Theres  the slides, the video and a big thank you goes out to Julia Reda’s for making the video for the FOSDEM Hackers. On top, I was asked for an interview about my presentation way before FOSDEM, here’s the link.

Winning the Microsoft Fussball (Kicker-) tournament 2008 – well almost

I somehow love this story… we had great fun and made it from total outsider with no chances into the final, almost winning against the overlords. My dear colleague Marcel Hilzinger and me were so close to really, really embarrassing Microsoft – but in the end, Sauron’s powers were stronger. Maybe next time, we thought, but they never invited us Linux-Magazine Journalists again. I guess they had good reason to do so. 🙂

Here’s the original (short) reference to the Linux-User editorial with a paragraph about the sensational event.

Do good things and talk about it – Lessons learnt in 20 years of Open Source PR

This is a talk that I first gave as a workshop, together with my wonderfully skilled and experienced colleagues Jake Edge (LWN) and Deb Nicholson (OIN) during the 12. KDE Akademy in Tallinn, Estonia in 2012. Where then we did it as a full-day workshop, this video is from QtCon 2016, and it’s more a presentation of 1:00 hour. This is one of my favourite presentations and the one booked the most – I did it at SUSECON, openSUSE conference and SUSE Labs, too and for a variety of other hosts.

This talk will tell, teach and train open source community members, company leaders, developers and open source project leads how to deal with the press.

Collaborative Editing? Not for Professionals…

Documentation is team work, yes – but can you do it collaboratively? Yes, but not in collaborative editing. Git is your friend, a good workflow needs to be chosen, and then everyone on your team may choose the editor he loves. Etherpad, Google Docs and such are tools for short texts, but not for professional editing. In this article for Linux Magazine Germany I explain how we work at SUSE.

Darknet demystified – The Limits of Anonymity.

The error is on OSI Layer 8, and even the best technology won’t help you if you use it wrong. In this article about the Darknet (Heise I’X, in German) I demystify many “given” assumptions. No NSA, no police, nobody needs to crack your cryptography if you do the same silly mistakes like so many others before you.

Darknet demystified

Update: Early in February I was interviewed by Radio Berlin Brandenburg about the my opinion on the darknet.

Wechselwahn – why it does not make sense to enforce recurrent password changes.

In this article for Heise I’X (in German) I present statistical and empirical evidence why it usually is a bad idea to force your users to change their password regularly. In fact, you’ll maybe push users to use patterns for their passwords that are cracked much easier than their password. What is a good password, and why you should only change it when you have reason for doubt. “You will need good reason to push your users into regularly changing their passwords – and only in few cases or insecure environments this may make sense at all…”

Factsheets and calculations about the right password length.

Hosting Open! 2016 Blockchain panel

Transparent geblockt

Just found these pictures from hosting a panel on Blockchain at the Open Source Business Alliance’s 2016 Open IT! Konferenz,  moderating the OSBAR Award ceremony and the corresponding article on blockchain in enterprise (written for the OSBA/MFG) called “transparently blocked”, unfortunately only available in German: Transparent geblockt :

“Am 7. Dezember [2016] treffen sich Experten aus Industrie, Wissenschaft und IT, um bei der OPEN! 2016 zu (er)klären, ob die Blockchain Hype oder ein echter Game-Changer ist, welche Rolle Verschlüsselung und Peer-to-Peer-Netzwerke dabei spielen und warum immer mehr Branchen der Meinung sind, die Kette aus verschlüsselten Informations-Blöcken lasse sich für neue und alte Geschäftsmodelle gewinnbringend einsetzen.”

More Pictures from the conference can be found here.

OPEN! 2015 – Hosting the Panel “Open Source”

In 2015 Markus was permitted to moderate the panel “Open Source” at the OSBA and MFG’s Open! 2015. I was happy to welcome Malte Spitz and other prominent experts. Well, here’s my report (sorry, German only!). Interesting fact: We were among the first to demand “Public money, public code!”, and I love Malte Spitz’s quotes: “There’s no provable security without open source.” “Data protection is like the environmental protection of the future.”

OPEN! 2015 – Bericht aus den Panels – YouTube

Representing OSBA and SUSE at LPI, Kassel

image

Today I had to get up early (in fact I slept four hours,  one at home, one in the train to Nürnberg,  one to Würzburg, one to Kassel), because I was invited to represent open source lobby group OSBA and my employer SUSE at certification Institute LPI. In their board meeting with LPI members interesting news was disclosed. Read it soon in Linux-Magazin.

Visiting the LPI board of directors

 

Getting up Saturday morning at 5 o’clock isn’t funny, but sometimes it’s worth it.
Today I traveled 400 miles across the country to meet with the board of the Linux Professional Institute, Central Europe Master Affiliate. Those four guys have been running the board throughout the last years… (from left to right) Dimitrios Bogiatzoules, Chairman Klaus Behrla, Oliver Michel and second chairman Reiner Brandt.