PROFESSION (n):
   a: a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation
   b: a principal calling, vocation, or employment
   c: the whole body of persons engaged in a calling.

      (Merriam Webster dictionary online.)

Doctors were once barbers with knives and leeches. Lawyers were courtiers who translated commoners' complaints to their leige lord. Profession after profession started as an offshoot of another job, when the need for the profession appeared.

We once were programmers, secretaries, graduate students, “the person who's good with the computers”...and some of us still are.

System administration was born when computers were first made; someone had to sort through the wires, back up the bits, install the patches, and know how to fix that weird thing with the printers. Someone had to be there to plan for the next computer, and plan against the current one's demise.

That someone is us.

System administration is the type of career that requires a profession. We're hired to tell people what to do; to advise an organization, plan for its growth, and anticipate needs that our management cannot. We serve to bring techology and human needs together. We're at the forefront of the economy and the changes in society.

However, we're still not a profession.

A profession needs a code of ethics, and a set of common wisdom. A profession needs a body of people who uphold those principles. A profession demands of us a higher standard; it requires us to self regulate, to support each other, and to make clear what it means to be a system administrator. Professions regulate themselves, teach themselves, and discipline themselves. System administrators have done none of those things.

Why not?

Because, until now, we haven't had the organization. We haven't had a forum for deciding best practices. We haven't had a body to research and discover what practices truly best serve our clients, and ourselves. We haven't had an independent voice that speaks for us and us alone in wider society. We have not been able to self-regulate, self-teach, and self-improve.

In short, we are not a profession because we're still programmers, secretaries, graduate students, and "the person who's good with the computers" in the eyes of the world, and nothing more.

It's time we were something more.

It's time for the League of Professional System Administrators.

LOPSA began as SAGE in 1993, a group dedicated to advancing system administration as a profession. SAGE spent its formative years and beyond as part of the USENIX association, whose mission is to advance computing research and innovation. However, a profession needs its own independent voice, and so recently, LOPSA was formed as an independant non-profit organization.

Now LOPSA's mission to serve the profession is twofold.

First, LOPSA serves our members by providing them with services needed to become professionals. We serve you best by providing education, networking opportunities, access to the best thinking and advances in system administration, and the chance to participate in a wider community of professionals who face the same problems you do.

Second, we serve our profession by staking out our place in society. LOPSA aims to bring a voice to system administrators to society beyond. We want to educate the public, influence policy both corporate and legislative, and ensure that our voice is heard. We will reach this goal with outreach, research into sysadmin issues, and active efforts to expose the media and public to our viewpoints.

With technology at the forefront of many issues, many companies, and many lives, it's time. It's time that our voice was heard, it's time that more people knew what system administrators do, and it's time that we stand up for ourselves. In short, it's time we grew up as a profession.

It's time for LOPSA.

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