I have management and leadership experience. I started in tech support and worked my way up to Director of Operations. I now run a training company that trains sysadmins, DevOps engineers, and adjacent professions. I've also run the Los Angeles chapter of LOPSA ( https://www.meetup.com/lopsala/ ) since Sep 28, 2012 and we're now up to 374 members.

I've been attending USENIX conferences since my sysadmin career started in 1996 and I've been a member of LOPSA over 10 years. USENIX, SAGE and LOPSA are key ingredients in my professional success. I got into professional training through LOPSA: Lois B. Bennett tapped me to teach CFEngine at LOPSA University at Ohio Linux Fest in 2010. After this, in 2011, Mark Burgess asked me to cover his CFEngine class at USENIX ATC. Since then, I've been all over North America teaching hundreds of sysadmins at conferences and in corporate on-site classes.

I believe sysadmins are valuable because they do what it takes to keep the show on the road. Ours is an increasingly computerized civilization and Operations Engineers keep it going to no small extent.

I enjoy mentoring and apprenticing system administrators. LOPSA recognized this and awarded me Mentor of the Year in 2011.

I enjoy the sysadmin community so when the Leadership Committee came calling this year I knew I couldn't say "no, I'm busy" again. Yes, I'm busy, but LOPSA is an important part of my life. I must do more to support it.

Aleksey Tsalolikhin