Google Scalability Conference

Google is hosting a conference this weekend in Seattle on Scalability (see agenda and info). Marissa Mayer and Jeff Dean will be here. I'll be presenting a session:

Lessons in building scalable systems

Since launching Google Talk in the summer of 2005, we have integrated the service with two large existing products: Gmail and orkut. Each of these integrations provided unique scalability challenges as we had to handle a sudden big increase in the number of users. Today, Google Talk supports millions of users and handles billions of packets per day. I will discuss several practical lessons and key insights from our experience that can be used for any project. These lessons will cover both engineering and operational areas.

Reza Behforooz is a Senior Staff Engineer at Google and is currently the technical lead for the Google Talk servers. He's passionate about building large systems and working on communication products in an attempt to make the world a smaller place. While at Google, he has primarily worked on Google Talk, Gmail, orkut, Google Groups, and shared infrastructure used by several Google applications. Reza holds a BS from Cornell and a MS from Stanford in Computer Science. Prior to Google, he held various engineering and management positions at Microsoft and two startups, Zaplet and Epiphany.


As far as the cake puzzle, see the newly added comment (no horizontal cake cutting please).