February, 2008
by Denise P. Kalm
Denise Kalm has 30 years experience in IT including application programming, enterprise systems management and performance management/capacity planning at Pacific Telephone and Bank of America. She moved to vendor land in 2000, spending 5 ½ years with BMC on the EPA product line, then recently became the senior product marketing manager for enterprise job scheduling products at CA, Inc., formerly Cybermation. She is a regional officer of CMG, has held many volunteer positions within that organization and is a frequent contributing author. Prior to entering the IT profession, she was a biochemical geneticist. Her hobbies include flying, Jazzercise, writing and scuba diving. Her book, Lifestorm, on the Oakland Hills fire, is available on Amazon. She is an executive and personal coach as well, offering phone and in-person coaching.
About the Author
Denise P. Kalm, CA, Inc. formerly Cybermation
Most CMG members attend for years before considering writing a paper. Tuli Nivas, Sabre Holdings, attended her first CMG at the 2007 conference in San Diego as an accepted speaker with two papers! Her sessions were well attended and well received and we are looking forward to hearing her speak next year.
Measure IT managed to get a few minutes with Tuli to hear her thoughts on the conference and the challenges (and fun) of creating her papers.
Measure IT (MI): How did you hear about CMG?
Tuli Nivas (TN): One of my team members had attended the CMG conference last year in Reno. He was very impressed with the content and the sessions and recommended that the team write papers and try and attend. That is how I heard about the conference.
MI: What got you interested in creating two presentations for CMG?
TN: Since I am pretty new to the field of performance engineering, testing and analysis, I am in the process of learning the fundamentals of the field. The projects I had been assigned at work along with the material and tools that I was learning to gain subject knowledge helped me write the two papers. I was trying to learn about simulation and performance modeling along with working on OO testing in my day-to-day job. Both these subjects helped me write the two papers.
MI: When did you start creating your papers? How did you decide on doing two?
TN: I started thinking about the papers around the end of January, '07 and once I had decided on a subject, I started working on them. I knew I would have to spend a lot of extra time to experiment and get results to present in the paper, so I started early.
Modeling and performance simulation are topics that interested me right from the beginning and I just thought this would be the best time to learn and play with the different tools available in the market and then present my thoughts in the paper. The other paper dealt with testing techniques, which is part of my job profile.
MI: What was the best part of the process?
TN: The best part of writing a paper is when you have decided on a subject and then try and run tests and experiments to get results for your paper. Sometimes you run into problems and the process of trying to get over those different obstacles is the most challenging. The research along with the entire learning process is the most satisfying.
MI: What was the biggest challenge?
TN: The biggest challenge was to put all my thoughts down in black and white. Writing an industry conference level paper was not easy and I'd really like to thank the CMG editors for helping me achieve this daunting task.
MI: What is your current "day job"?
TN: I work as an end-to-end performance analyzer and developer at Sabre Holdings. My work involves writing scripts, running tests, analyzing results and performance metrics and then giving recommendations for improvements to the application and development teams. I am also involved in building in-house testing tools that help improve the whole testing process.
Along with that I am also currently enrolled in the Computer Science doctoral program. I am doing my research in sensor networks and working on finding ways to maximize their lifetime along with optimizing the energy dispensed in accomplishing their tasks.
MI: What were you doing before that? (school, previous jobs, etc.)
TN: I was enrolled in Masters of Computer Science program. I have done a few internships during my Masters and doctoral program.
MI: What are you working on for next year?
TN: I have two subjects in mind for next year. One deals with benchmarking and comparing the performance of a dual core and a quad core Linux box using metrics that are prevalent in the travel industry. The other is a comparison of clustering solutions - basically a comparison between Terracotta and Oracle solutions.
MI: What one thing could CMG do to improve the experience for you?
TN: I thoroughly enjoyed my first venture out at CMG. It was an absolutely terrific experience. The one thing that I found a little confusing was the schedule. It had tutorials listed as 3 different sessions, without specifying that each session would build on the last. The way it was printed, it looked like they were 3 different sessions that would be repeated one after the other. If the schedule could mention that training sessions are 3 hours long, it would be easier to plan the day.
MI: What would you like us to know about you personally? (family, pets, hobbies, etc)
TN: I absolutely love traveling and outdoor activities. I have tried white water rafting, ice skating and rock climbing. I like watching sports - cricket, basketball, football and play a little racket ball. I am totally into music and movies. I try to enjoy a good suspense or adventure novel as and when I get time. Also, I like to do some painting to unwind.