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

In this memo:

1. Happy Birthday, LOPSA
2. New Founding Member appointed
3. How are we doing? (survey)
4. Phoenix Sysadmin Days
5. Annual Member Meeting
6. New Chapter!
7. LOPSA's LISA plans
8. Tool Catalog needs your input
9. Calendar, jobs board at your service
10. Sponsor Thank-yous

1. Happy Birthday, LOPSA

LOPSA turns one year old this month! This also means it's time for our first wave of membership renewals. Membership renewal isnow live on the web site and we invite all members to renew as soon as possible.

Happy Birthday LOPSA! Believe it or not, we started LOPSA a year ago. As with any new baby, it's been a challenge. It has also been extremely exciting to watch the organization mature and grow.

And grow we have. We're up to about 600 paid members. We've had our first successful training event (see the report on Sysadmin Days). We've exhibited at trade shows and made presentations to other organizations. Our website is becoming a full blown community and we have our first two chapters (Arizona and Madison, WI). We've developed relationships with vendors to give significant discounts for books, training, web hosting and hardware to our members.

Perhaps most exciting is our future. We have two training events planned for 2007. We have aggressive membership goals and new programs we will be unveiling. Our online community will continue to grow and new services will be offered.

So, stick around for another year and watch us move from learning to walk on our own, to charging ahead full steam! Don't forget to visit the website and renew your membership soon.

2. New Founding Member appointed

LOPSA is pleased to announce the appointment of its 5th Foundingmember, Geoff Halprin. Geoff was instrumental in the creation of our organization, and we are grateful to him for all his hard work on LOPSA's behalf.

3. How are we doing?

As part of our continuing desire to serve the members and improve the organization, we've come up with this small, non-scientific survey to help us gauge our progress. It should take no more than 2 minutes of your time. Please visit:
http://lopsa.org/membership_survey

4. Phoenix Sysadmin Days

Sysadmin Days in Phoenix had nearly 50 attendees and received very positive feedback from attendees:

Change Management: "Great information to use when I get back", "Just what I need to get management buy-in!", "I got some ideas I can use right away"

Ethics: "Something [every sysadmin] should attend", "the interactive discussion was great"

"I learned so much in two days, that it will take some time to implement changes at my job. The biggest thing I took away, was how to perform professionally, how to think professionally, but still have a good time doing it. It isn't about being anal, strict, or mean, but organized, dedicated, and aware."

Many thanks to all of the event sponsors (Google, Arizona Tech Council, RedSeven, StorageNetworking.org), presenters (Esther Filderman, Jim Foraker, Trey Harris, Thomas Limoncelli, David Lundell, David Parter, Bob Plankers, George Toft, Jesse Trucks, Eric Thelin), and local organizers (Hans Kugler, Michael Crusoe, and Ed Nicholson), without whom this inaugural Sysadmin Days could not have been a success.

Based on the success of the Phoenix event, we are planning two Sysadmin Days training evening next year. We are considering the Philadelphia area for Q2 2007. Anyone interested in serving on the planning committee, or Northeast corridor residents interesting in serving on the local committee, please let us know.

5. Annual Member Meeting

The annual member meeting was held in conjunction with the Phoenix Sysadmin Days training event on 11/6/06. The Executive Director and members of the Board briefed the membership on accomplishments of the last year, and the plans for the rest of 2006 and 2007.

6. New Chapter!

LOPSA is pleased to announce the establishment of its second Chapter, in Madison WI. Want to start a local chapter?
Visit http://lopsa.org/localprogram

7. LOPSA's LISA plans

LOPSA will be at LISA again this year - stop by our booth (#406) at the vendor exhibition for some birthday cake, participate in the LOPSA Community Meeting Wednesday evening, and visit our LOPSA After Dark suite (Tuesday through Friday) for casual conversation. Hope to see you there!

8. Tool catalog needs your input

Do you have a favorite set of tools? Consider augmenting our Tools database. Can you do a tool a day? A tool a week? Even hardware tools or vendor equipment are reasonable. If you have any issues adding or updating tools, please email toolsadmin@lopsa.org. This is a work in progress and feedback to lopsa-tools@lopsa.org is welcome. Features for this area are still being expanded. If you would like to be a Tools editor capable of
arranging categories, also let us know.

Submit your tools via the form at
http://lopsa.org/add_tool

9. Calendar, jobs board at your service

Have an event that sysadmins should know about? Submit it to LOPSA's Events calendar by using the form at http://lopsa.org/add_event. Going to a conference you think other sysadmins should know about? This is a great way to publicize your local sysadmin group meeting...

Don't forget to check out the LOPSA Jobs Board when you're job hunting or hiring. You can search by job category or geographic location. Best of all, you'll be dealing with someone who knows about LOPSA! Several of our members have already been placed using the Jobs Board.

10. Thanks to all of our LOPSA sponsors!

Thanks again to our Silver corporate sponsor Rackable Systems.

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 and high level of professional support.

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