The SCALE Team caught up with John Hixon, a senior software engineer with iXsystems, who will give an “Introduction to FreeNAS development” at SCALE 12X
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is John Hixson. I am a senior software engineer with iXsystems. My background is broad and varied. I've done a little bit of everything over the years. I primarily like to work on open source though, specifically BSD. These days my primary job is working on FreeNAS. Occasionally when I have some spare time I can still be found hacking FreeBSD and PC-BSD.
Q: You're giving a talk on “Introduction to FreeNAS development.” Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: You can expect to learn a little about how you would do development for FreeNAS from 5,000 feet. I've prepared my talk to include adding a new service to FreeNAS as well as adding software to the base system. My hope is that people will take enough away that they will want to get started developing for FreeNAS.
Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: This is my first visit to SCALE. I'm looking very forward to it. I'm expecting to meet a lot of geeks and have a lot of good conversations. My impressions are probably preconceived as lots of folks from iXsystems have gone over the years and told me every single time how much of a blast they had ;-)
Q: Why would someone want to go listen to your talk?
A: So you can learn a little bit about FreeNAS. Even if you don't know what it is, haven't heard of it, aren't technical, you can still take away something from it. Perhaps it will spark interest in it and give you that push to go try it out.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: I'd just like to thank the SCALE committee for accepting my talk and allowing me the chance to give it.
[SCALE Team interview by Hannah Anderson]