Ewen works as a consulting sysadmin, network admin and developer, which he finds these are all now just variations on the same design, development and automation skills. Ewen has been involved directly and indirectly with production operations since the early 1990s, mostly in Internet-related networks and organisations. He has been attending Linux.Conf.Au annually since 2004.

Simon Lyall and Ewen McNeill have run the Sysadmin Miniconf at ten previous Linux.Conf.Au (2006, 2008-2016).