July 2010 LOPSAgram

Please email board@lopsa.org with any questions, comments, or ideas. We always want to hear from our membership.

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In this memo:

1.   Tom Perrine will chair the Leadership Committee
2.   LOPSA Live --- Thursday, July 29th
3.   Sysadmin Appreciation Day Events and announcements
3a. SPECIAL Membership Offer 40% off - JOIN or RENEW Friday-Sunday!
3b. SysAdmin Day Meetup in NYC
3c. SysAdmin Appreciation Party in San Francisco
3d. SysAdmin Appreciation Day Contest --- Win an iPad!
3e. OpenDNS Announces SysAdmin Award Winners
4.   Special thanks to Trey Harris
5.   Mentorship program moves forward.
6.   LOPSA will be offering 6 Classes at OLFU in September
7.   LISA 2010: Consider submitting a Poster or a WIP
8.   Computing Now article on the Emergence of the IT Discipline
9.   Thanks to all of our LOPSA sponsors!
10. Comments or suggestions?

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1. Tom Perrine will chair the Leadership Committee

The LOPSA board is pleased to announce that Tom Perrine has been appointed as Chair of the Leadership Committee [LC]. Tom has some formative plans to help with volunteer recruitment and support, and looks forward to working with the LC, volunteers and the various other committees (particularly the mentoring program) to improve our outreach and programs.

Tom was the first President of LOPSA serving from 2005 until 2007. As founding President he was instrumental in developing LOPSA from the beginning. Tom works for Sony Computer Entertainment America (Playstation) as Senior Manager, PD IT Infrastructure.

The LC has two roles. Its recurring tactical role is to serve as the Nominating Committee in election years. Its ongoing strategic role is to promote the development of new talent, by giving them a "career path" through the ranks of the organization. The Nominating Committee role is specified in the Bylaws and is incorporated by reference.

More information on the role of the LC can be found in the LOPSA policies. http://governance.lopsa.org/index.php/LOPSA_Policies/Leadership_Committee

2. LOPSA Live --- Thursday, July 29th

Please join us for a conversation with board members about all things LOPSA, Thursday July 29th at 4PM Eastern Time. LOPSA live is held on the #lopsa-live IRC channel on freenode.
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3. Sysadmin Appreciation Day Events and announcements

You surely know by now that the last Friday in July is System Administrators Appreciation Day. (http://www.sysadminday.com) There are parties on both coasts, a great LOPSA membership discount, and a contest. Below are the details.

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3a. SPECIAL Membership Offer 40% off -- JOIN or RENEW Friday-Sunday!

In honor of Sysadmin Day, LOPSA is offering a special membership rate for new members and renewals. We are offering a 40% discount, so if you renew or join any time on July 30, July 31, or August 1, membership will only cost you $30 for the year. If you renew now, we will add a year to your membership even if your membership is paid up, and so now is a very good time to renew. This would be a great time to get your colleagues to join, too.

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3b. SysAdmin Day Meetup in NYC

An informal get-together at The Ginger Man bar in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/sysadmin-day-get-together/

3c. SysAdmin Appreciation Party in San Francisco

We're celebrating SysAdmins at our fourth annual System Administrator Appreciation Party on July 28 at DNA Lounge in San Francisco's SOMA district (375 Eleventh Street) from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. RSVP here: http://sysadminappreciation.eventbrite.com/

3d. SysAdmin Appreciation Day Contest --- Win an iPad!

In recognition of National Systems Administrator Appreciation Day on July 30, Azaleos is reaching out to our brothers and sisters on technical teams everywhere. We want to hear your most outrageous stories about your "bad days" related to deployment, migration and support of Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint and/or Office Communications Server - what went wrong and what you did to save the day. The best IT Disaster stories will be featured on our site, and the winner gets an iPad! http://bit.ly/cjNdxP

3e. OpenDNS Announces SysAdmin Award Winners

Congrats to Paul Dobbs, winner of the 2010 SysAdmin of the Year award! What makes Paul worthy of the prize? He works at the John Howard Society of Durham Region, a nonprofit in Ontario Canada that provides services to nearly 20,000 people per year - and he has a budget of zero dollars per year. Without any annual budget, Paul has increased technology access from 45 computers to nearly 200 computers, from one old NT server to six 2003-R2 servers, unified the network between all offices and reduced Internet costs by more than $6,000 per year.

For a complete list of SysAdmin of the Year winners, click here.

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4. Special thanks to former president Trey Harris

In May Trey Harris resigned from the board of directors because he began a new demanding job and could no longer contribute the time needed to fulfill his role as president of LOPSA. Trey has been one of the notable system administrators in our community for quite some time and has been one of a very few who have been instrumental in furthering the profession and careers of system administrators through many different avenues.

Over a decade ago, he was an organizer and director of a predecessor organization. Since then, not only was he constantly mentoring, organizing conference programs, and writing for and about system administrators, but he also found time to play a key role in the founding of the stand-alone, member-driven organization that is LOPSA.

We have waxed and waned and are still struggling through some of the effects of the current climate, but we are still strong in the spirit of openness and community that he has helped instill in us through the bylaws and policies he helped draft.

We will miss him and his assistance and vision as he leaves us for now to tend to his own changing needs and we will heartily welcome him back to more active participation and leadership when he can again offer us some of his time and skills.

Thank you, Trey, in so many ways for all that you have done for us.

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5. Mentorship program moves forward.

After a great kickoff meeting the mentorship program is underway. If you have expressed interest by emailing volunteer@lopsa.org, you should be hearing from the team very soon. The program will focus on pairing up mentors and proteges to work together on specific short term projects. Two or three pairs will be established as a beta next week. Stay tuned for more.

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6. LOPSA will be offering 6 Classes at OLFU in September

Cfengine3 and Configuration Management; Application Acceleration and Cloud Storage; Closet or Server Rooms; Black Magic: Troubleshooting and System Administration; IPv6; and Monitoring/NAGIOS are the titles of the classes being offered September 10th in Ohio. Sound interesting?

More information on the OLFU page. http://www.ohiolinux.org

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7. LISA 2010: Consider submitting a Poster or a WIP

24th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '10) will be held November 7-12, 2010 in San Jose, CA. It's not to late to participate. The deadline for submitting papers is long past but it's not to late to submit a poster! From the LISA 2010 website: Posters are an opportunity to present recent work that is not ready or not appropriate for a refereed paper. The posters will be on display during the conference, and fixed times will be advertised when authors should be present to discuss their work with anyone who is interested. Posters provide an excellent opportunity to make contact with other people who may be interested in the same area. Student posters, practitioners sharing their experiences, and submissions from open source communities are particularly welcome. Authors of accepted refereed papers may also submit poster proposals to supplement the presentation of the work described in their paper. The deadline for submissions is September 17, 2010.

Work-in-Progress Reports (WiPs): Please consider participating in this session in which you are granted 5 minutes to share your current project or an idea with the LISA crowd. Time slots can be scheduled on-site or in advance. More info on the website. http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa10/cfp/workshops.html

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8. Computing Now article on the Emergence of the IT Discipline

Computing Now has a new IT Systems Perspectives article on the Emergence of the Information Technology Discipline. The abstract for the article is:

The past decade has seen the gradual emergence of information technology as a new computing discipline in educational institutions. It's important to distinguish the narrower definition of IT in this academic context from the broader definition of the term, which embraces all of computing and is more or less synonymous with "informatics." IT, in the narrow sense, emanated from other fields of study such as computer science (CS) and information systems (IS). This process wasn't without the growing pains and turf battles that are all too common in academia.

To read more, see the full article at: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/0710/whatsnew/computer-r

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9. Thanks to all of our LOPSA sponsors!

We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA.

Thanks go to individual sponsors

Diamond:
Jennine Townsend

Platinum:
Derek Balling, Trey Harris, Philip Kizer, and David Parter

Gold:
Doug Hughes and Mario Obejas

Silver:
Jeremy Charles, Bob Gill, Ski Kacoroski, Scott Murphy, Amy Rich, Ian Viemeister

Bronze:
Beth Lynn Eicher, Gary Studwell, John Wu, Liyun Yu

Thanks to go to our corporate sponsors:

Thanks go out to our Platinum sponsor Dasher Technologies.
Dasher Technologies is an enterprise IT reseller offering a wide range of computing infrastructure solutions. They provide HP rack and blade servers, storage, networking, workstations, and software, along with many complementary software solutions. Dasher is the #3 provider of HP blade servers in the US and #1 in Northern California.
See more about Dasher at http://www.dashertechnologies.com

This message, our website, and all our online content is brought to you by BitPusher, our Gold Corporate Sponsor.

BitPusher is the San Francisco Bay Area's premier provider of managed information technology services for small and medium-sized businesses. We thank them for their continued, high level of professional support.

See more about BitPusher at http://www.bitpusher.com

Thanks also go to Raytheon, as a Silver corporate sponsor.

Raytheon Company is a technology leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets, employing 72,000 people worldwide. Raytheon provides state-of-the-art solutions for sensing, effects, C3I systems, and mission support services.

Last, but certainly not least, thanks to RIS Technology for sponsoring us.

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10. Comments or suggestions?

And finally, as we close out this month's LOPSAgram, we want to make sure we're giving you the information you want or need. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them to board@lopsa.org.

Happy Sysadminning!