Tech Track Featured Guest: Sarah Withee
Sarah Withee is a polyglot software engineer, public speaker, teacher and mentor, and hardware and robot tinkerer located in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a passion for technology, and has ever since she wrote her first computer programs in elementary school.
Sarah has given incredibly popular conference technical talks as well as powerful talks capable of making people laugh and cry at the same time. She’s given workshops to teach programming and hardware building to women in tech, as well as to students of all ages.
She’s mentored middle and high school robotics teams to world championships. She’s even helped organize six conferences, and is presently the director of programming for Abstractions conference. She has even been on a Google Year in Search video, and started the viral hashtag #SpeakerConfessions.
She passionately tries to connect with people and communities, both online and offline, and encourage and support new people going in tech.
Track Highlights
Pen Testing with Kali Linux
Join us for an open discussion on Kali Linux, pen testing, and the possibilities of using this distro overall.
FOSS on Wheels: How Autonomous Cars are Being Driven by Open-Source
Since the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, much of the automotive industry have been working toward self-driving cars. Recently, the algorithms and software stacks used by research teams have begun moving into the open. This panel will provide an overview of what makes up an autonomous vehicle stack, what is available to the masses, and how you can help drive the future through open-source contributions.
Agile Escape Room
It’s the agile zombie apocalypse. You and your friends are trapped and all that stands between you and lunch is a locked door and three puzzle boxes. Each puzzle, once solved becomes an important component of the key. Every team must solve all three of their puzzles in order to complete the key. There is one key to rule them all. Only then may you leave the room before it’s you who becomes lunch. Are you willing to stake the lives of your team on your agile knowledge? Oh and by the way, how closely did you follow Scrum and agile principles in obtaining your release?
Senior Sysadmin Ethics Panel
System and network administrators have access to all sorts of data that they really shouldn’t. Except when you should. Except when you’re happier not knowing. And sometimes, there’s no right answer. There’s nobody on your side. It’s just you, a computer, and a decision that you’re going to have to live with. The panelists have all been in technology for multiple decades. We’ve been in horrible spots and had to make hard decisions. We’ve made all the mistakes, so you don’t have to.
Building a Beetleweight Combat Robot
Beetleweight combat robots are the little siblings of the robots that battle to the death on popular TV shows. Learn about how to build these vicious little critters and how to get started in the hobby of combat robotics.
The Fediverse: Decentralized Social Networking
The Fediverse is a loose association of independent, privately owned, interoperable social media servers. How can this possibly work? Multiple implementations like gnu.social, Mastodon, PixelFed, and more allow you to build your own online community that the big social media companies can’t touch. Come learn how this works, how different servers define their culture, how to find the right server for you, and what it takes to run your own server.
To see the rest of the track and all the rest of the events at Penguicon, check out our Schedule for 2019!