February 2016 LOPSAgram

1. President's Corner: Professional Development

At the SCALE 14x conference a weekend ago, I was able to talk with over 100 people who either were system admins or are thinking about becoming system admins.  While talking with them, it became clear to me that LOPSA currently has two separate areas where it helps the system admin community.  This month I will talk about how LOPSA helps out current system admins by providing several opportunities for professional development.

LOPSA runs two well regarded conferences for system admins - Cascadia on March 11th - 12th (http://casitconf.org) and LOPSA-East May 6th - 7th (http://lopsaeast.org). At these conferences, system admins can improve their professional skills in a variety of areas.  For example at Cascadia you can improve your skills in Time Management, Automation, Git, Network Troubleshooting, Wireshark, Vi, and more.  LOPSA-East will have a similar type of
schedule.  If you are in the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast, I encourage you to attend
these conferences.

In addition LOPSA members are speakers at or help to organize other conferences providing
professional development opportunities.  For example at LISA last year, 9 of our members were speaking or chairing workshops and another 9 members were involved in organizing the
conference.  I know of members speaking at or involved with SCALE, LinuxfestNW, OLF.  If you are involved in a conference, please let board@lopsa.org know so we can help to advertise it.

LOPSA members spend time organizing and speaking at chapter meetings where members can come together to learn about new technologies, ideas, and from each other.  A chapter meeting is also a great way to move your career forward as you will meet local system admins and make the connections that can lead to your next position.  Check if there is a chapter close to you at https://lopsa.org/Chapters.  If there is not one in your area, contact board@lopsa.org and we can help you to start one.

The final way LOPSA offers professional development is via our online community of IRC and mail lists. It is here that you can often learn about new ideas on how to solve a problem, of opportunities for classes or training in your area, and what other people have done to solve the problem you are having.  For example, recent maillist threads covered the best way to layout a network with VLAN's and using 10GB copper in a data center.

I encourage you to help with professional development for our system admin community by sharing what you have learned, helping to organize an event such as a conference or chapter meeting, and/or participating in our online IRC and  mail lists.

Next month I will talk about how LOPSA helps out people wanting to become system admins.

2. LOPSA-East - Schedule and Registration Soon

LOPSA-EAST ’16 aims to bring together IT professionals from all walks of life in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond to share war stories, learn for each other’s experiences, and network with industry peers. The conference includes acclaimed speakers and keynotes, expert-lead training designed to build the skillsets and confidence of attendees, lightning talks, and a “Birds of a Feather” track where attendees propose and host their own topics during the event.

3. LOPSA Cascadia - Registration is open! Please retweet..

...or mention it to your co-workers, boss and local MeetUps, or upvote our post on https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/

Register at: http://casitconf.org/casitconf16/register-now/

Your contact at your vendor is probably a sales person. Let them know that sponsoring events like LOPSA Cascadia gives them far more credibility than the much larger amounts they are spending on other advertising, and that sysadmins will favor their products and services. Ask for a strong positive referral to their marketing department, and send both sales and marketing our sponsor prospectus:

http://casitconf.org/casitconf16/sponsorships/

Any questions can be referred to: sponsorship@casitconf.org

4. 2016 Budget Completed

5. Paessler AG - Welcome New Gold Sponsor

LOPSA welcomes Paessler AG as a new Gold Sponsor.  Paessler AG’s award winning PRTG Network Monitor is a powerful, affordable and easy-to-use Unified Monitoring solution. It is a highly flexible software for monitoring IT infrastructure, already in use at enterprises and organizations of all sizes and industries. Over 150,000 IT administrators in more than 170
countries rely on PRTG and gain peace of mind, confidence and convenience. Founded in 1997 and based in Nuremberg, Germany, Paessler AG remains a privately held company that is recognized as both a member of the Cisco Solution Partner Program and a VMware Technology Alliance Partner.

Learn more about Paessler and PRTG at www.paessler.com.

6. Thank You To Our Sponsors

We'd like to thank our sponsors. We're deeply grateful for their continuing support of LOPSA. More information on how to become a sponsor.

Thanks to our individual sponsors:

Platinum: Jennine Townsend, Dan Rich 
Gold: Ski Kacoroski
Silver: Matt Disney, Lee Damon, Scott Murphy, Ian Viemeister
Bronze: Gary Studwell
unique approach to trading in the financial markets. Our company designs, builds and runs a global trading software platform. We take pride in our software craftsmanship and use Python, Cython and C on Linux to run our global trading operations. We also use open-source tools as much as possible - Python, PostgreSQL, numpy, git, Cobbler, Puppet and Ansible are all crucial to our business.

Gold Sponsor Paessler AG

Bronze Sponsor Edgestream Partners is a small group of scientists and engineers with a unique approach to trading in the financial markets. Our company designs, builds and runs a global trading software platform. We take pride in our software craftsmanship and use Python, Cython and C on Linux to run our global trading operations. We also use open-source tools as much as possible - Python, PostgreSQL, numpy, git, Cobbler, Puppet and Ansible are all crucial to our business.

Bronze Sponsor O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism. Check them out.

Some of LOPSA's web content is hosted by ServerBeach.

6. Comments or suggestions?

As we close out this month's LOPSAgram, we want to make sure we're giving you the information you want or need. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to send them to communications@lopsa.org