Jesse Trucks

We read manuals, books, and blogs, but we often need the interactive help of someone with experience in a particular operating system, programming language, or software package. When we need serious help, we ask our coworkers and other colleagues for opinions, explanations, and assistance hoping we know someone with the experience that matters. The strongest asset system administration professionals have is access to other system administration professionals. Outside our immediate coworkers or friends, it is difficult to connect with other professionals in our field. The League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) can provide the human networking and communication channels to make those connections. The way to do that is to start building a strong sense of community among our membership and being open and inviting to non-members and new members. We can accomplish this in many ways. The http://lopsa.org web site is undergoing an overhaul for better navigation and information management. This will be a large part of our online effort toward facilitating communication and community between system administrators. We need to build a stronger sense of mentorship between all of us to openly teach others what we know and to learn from what others teach.

* I will continue to serve on the Tech Team that manages the LOPSA technical infrastructure.
* I will begin work as a Security Content Editor for the site.
* I will work hard toward building our community.
* I will work with content providers, whether article writers or bloggers, and content editors for http://lopsa.org to improve the quantity and quality of information available on the site.
* I will actively encourage openness to facilitate knowledge transfer and experience sharing in the system administration community.

Providing training opportunities for system administrators is a major goal of LOPSA. LOPSA maintains a presence at several conferences, most notably LISA. Also, Sysadmin Days, a two-day training event on multiple technical and professional topics, launched in November 2006. The success of that event brought about Sysadmin Days 2007, scheduled in August. These events allow system administrators of all experience levels to learn, teach, and network. There are classes covering communication skills, Solaris troubleshooting, writing policies, disaster recovery, and more. People from all over attended the first event and are signed up for the second event. I teach four of those classes, and I am on the planning committee organizing the second event.

* I will be open for approach at conferences and events.
* I will correspond with members regularly and openly.
* I will continue the work started by the first board and the planning committee I am already a member of.
* I will continue to encourage networking among the attendees of these events and conferences.
* I will increase the exposure of LOPSA at future conferences and related events.

The practice of system administration is a young, but maturing, profession. Now is the time to come together in the way doctors, lawyers, and other professional trades have already come together. We need an organization that connects us with one another and advocates on our behalf. LOPSA is that organization. I want to help LOPSA build on the work of the founding board so LOPSA can continue to be the organization that connects us together and advocates for our cause.
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In his ten years as a system administrator, Jesse Trucks has worked in a startup, at an ISP in the late 90's, as the single IT guy at a publishing company, and as part of an organization with nearly 250 system administrators maintaining more than 5,000 enterprise servers. Most recently, he managed a team of systems administrators. He has extensive security experience in policy development, monitoring, and implementation management, and he is well versed in Disaster Recovery planning and testing. Trucks advocates for extensive documentation, strong security, change control, and professionalism. In addition, he volunteers for the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) on the Tech Team assisting in the maintenance of the http://lopsa.org site infrastructure and the Crossbow committee organizing the Sysadmin Days training events. Trucks taught four of the 16 classes at the inaugural Sysadmin Days in Phoenix and plans to teach four more classes at the next event. He has served as a Local Mentor in the GCUX course for the SANS Institute, and he currently holds GCIH and GCUX certifications. Jesse Trucks founded the second LOPSA Local Chapter in Madison, WI, USA and is a LOPSA Founding Member.

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