LoPSA is more than a membership card or a board of directors - it is a community of professionals at all stages of their careers with similar technical, professional, and social interests.

However, ours is a geographically diverse community with members scattered around the globe. The “Sysadmin Days” mini-conferences have helped bring that sense of community to new venues and I predict that local chapters will be the backbone of the organization. To that end, I believe LoPSA must support local chapters by learning where their members' interests lie as well as what techniques and events have been most successful and by sharing that information among the local chapters and working with them to discover new and innovative ways to help them succeed and grow.

LoPSA members have a wealth of knowledge and experience as well as boundless curiosity. I believe we are in a unique position to codify best practices for creating and managing robust, scalable systems. By explaining the rationale for best practices and providing example implementations, we can deliver both tangible and theoretical value and show that we are in fact “leagues ahead.”

I'm honored to have been asked to run for a position on the LoPSA board of directors. I was introduced to the sysadmin community in 1998 at the LISA conference in Boston shortly before I moved from web development to operations at Excite.com. In the past nine years I've learned a lot from the community and I try to give back as much as I get.

I have experience working with a small non-profit (the Austin Improv Collective) where I currently serve as webmaster and holder of the 501(c)(3) paperwork. Through working with the AIC I've found the value of patience, keeping a positive attitude, and taking on only as much work as you can reasonably achieve.

In closing, I believe everyone bears the responsibility of making the organization what they want it to be. I'm running for the LoPSA board to share the burden and share the success of keeping LoPSA a vital resource to the sysadmin community.

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