Your Leadership Committee has been working diligently behind the scenes to get you a strong candidate slate for the 2017 election! Your participation is key to us having a strong organization -- please plan to take part in the election. Here's our election timeline:
May 15 - Final slate and candidate statements
May 18 - LOPSA Live
May 31 - LOPSA Live
June 1 - Open election (Election can't open later than June 9)
June 23 - Close election (June 30 at the latest)
I was notified by John's son that he passed away on Jan 14th. John was not only a very active member of LOPSA, its board, and the system admin community, but he was also an incredible friend and a mentor to me. John was always optimistic, kind, considerate, and willing to help anyone who asked. John passed on his knowledge via his stories of working both as a system admin and in his previous career as a machinist and by posting at http://blogs.lopsa.org. He was a typical system admin of his era with no formal training, just a fascination of computers and a talent for troubleshooting their problems. He was as master at making systems work long past their EOL date as evidenced by his work on keeping SCO systems running at his job. Even though John had health issues, I was constantly amazed how he never let them slow him down. At the age most of us would be happy to retire he was still on the board, actively coaching football, and working. Many of you saw him at LISA in Boston. A few days after the conference he had open heart surgery to replace a blocked artery. I talked with John last week and he was so happy as he had more energy than he had in years and was looking forward to attending more conferences and keeping his "little hacker" of a granddaughter out of trouble. John, I miss you very much. Peace be with you. Ski
The elections for the 2016 LOPSA Board of Directors have concluded. The winners are George Beech, Brian Globerman, Scott Suehle, Thomas Uphill, and Steven VanDevender. Big thanks to the Leadership Committee team and the candidates for their time. Without them, we would not have had an election.
The Leadership Committee is pleased to announce that they have opened the 2016 LOPSA board member elections.
Before voting, please take a moment to review the first and second LOPSALive sessions, where the candidates answered LOPSA member questions. Finally, review all the candidate statements.
Vote before the LC closes the polls on June 23 at 12:00AM Eastern.
Here is the chat log from tonight's LOPSA Live session. Thank you to our moderator, our candidates, and our attendees!
Your Leadership Committee (LC) has been hard at work preparing our candidates for the upcoming election. Incumbent Board Members John Boris and Matt Disney will not be running for re-election.
For this election, we have five seats to be filled and six candidates running. Our candidate slate follows:
Hello to one and all. Thank you for considering my for a candidacy for the LOPSA Board. In comparison to the others on this ballot I am a relative newbie but I bring a large history in customer facing and community roles. I believe this history and experience can benefit myself and this organization going forward to the future.
I believe that an organization is only as strong as those that support it and the base we have here is great but like any organization there is always room for improvement. To grow that we need to get out to the community and make sure they know their voice is heard and known. I believe my experience here will be beneficial. The community is strong, but it can always be stronger. The key foundations of the organization need to be built on and fortified. Mentor-ship, Education, and Involvement in the community are where it starts.
If elected I will work tirelessly to help promote and foster the great things we have done and the great things we have yet to accomplish. Help the current generation of System Administrators and help locate and educate the future generations.
I have been working in the IT industry for the past 21 years, and have been a system/network administrator for eleven of those years. I hold graduate degrees in Geology/Geophysics. Current areas of specialization include Windows and Linux server administration, LAN/WAN and wireless networks, cloud (Microsoft Azure and Office 365) administration, and network/host security. Due to working in a medium-size (~260 person) company where I hold a number of roles, I consider myself an IT generalist. This requires ongoing training both to ensure my skills remain current, and to learn new topics as job responsibilities evolve. LOPSA has played a significant role in my career development through professional conferences, trainings, meetings, and networking opportunities with peers. As a LOPSA board member, my commitment would be to expand these opportunities, and ensure that other system administrators recognize LOPSA’s considerable career benefits and become involved with the organization.
Two years ago I ran for the LOPSA board of directors on the central idea of increasing LOPSA membership. I sought to improve our member customer service processes by responding to requests as quickly as possible and reducing the time it took to handle memberships generated from our conferences, especially the Cascadia IT conference. What I didn't know, but have learned during my time as a board member, is that many traditional membership-based organizations are having trouble retaining members, let alone increase their membership base, when competing against the many options for finding like-minded people via social media and other Internet-based services. What this means to me is that we in LOPSA need to embrace these services, improve our relevance to the system administration community, and reach out to communities outside our traditional core audience of UNIX/Linux system administrators. Most importantly, though, I want to continue my focus on service to LOPSA's members, and represent your desires for what the organization should accomplish, through my participation in the LOPSA board of directors.
The League of Professional System Administrators 1200 Route 22 East, Suite 200 Bridgewater, NJ, 08807 USA Email: info@lopsa.org
