1. LOPSA at LinuxFest Northwest

2. Relaunch of the Mentorship Program

3. New Community Manager

4. 2018 LOPSA Board elections

5. Launch of KnowledgePress LOPSA member blog syndication

6. Locals

7. Thanks to our sponsors

8. Comments or suggestions?

April 2018 LOPSAgram

1. LOPSA at LinuxFest Northwest

LOPSA will have a booth at the LinuxFest Northwest 2018. 

LinuxFest Northwest is being held at the Bellingham Technical College April 28th and 29th. Registration is open until April 29th.

https://linuxfestnorthwest.org/conferences/lfnw18

2. Relaunch of Mentorship Program

The LOPSA Board is pleased to restart our Mentorship program on a new platform!

The previous system was a bit of a hodge podge of custom code and volunteer labor, which eventually fell apart last year.  Our new program will run on a SaaS product from Xinspire, and should operate in a much smoother manner.  Please check it out!

https://mentor.lopsa.org/

Our goal is not to make major changes in the operation of our Mentorship program, so there are not any changes into how the program is intended to operate.  Mentees will be able to browse possible Mentors now, though, and apply directly to them to start a relationship.  Mentor engagements are still limited in scope, as before.  Mentors are able to select how many Mentees they wish to allow at any time, and, once that limit is reached, no further applications will be received until their current engagements are finished.

You must be a LOPSA member to sign up as a mentor and/or mentee. Join LOPSA if you're not already a member. Reminder: student membership is *free* with student ID.

Mentors:

* Register at https://mentor.lopsa.org and list your availability and a brief description of your skills and interests.

* Once you are approved, new proteges will request mentors. You may approve and reject their requests.

Mentees:

* Register at https://mentor.lopsa.org/ as a Mentee.

* Once your registration is approved, you will be able to browse mentors and request mentorship.

* Once your request has been accepted by a mentor, you and your mentor should agree upon how often you will communicate how you will communicate if your proposal is project-based, a set of milestones and a timetable for achieving them

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail the LOPSA Mentorship Program Team at lmpt@lopsa.org.

Our First Protégé!

"What excites me the most about this program is the ability to interact with someone who is a currently practicing professional with experience in areas of IT in which I hope to build a successful career. What I hope to get out of it is specific feedback that will help me to establish a focused plan of action that includes careers I should target at the entry level and the most important skills for success. Eventually, I hope this feedback process will repeat itself as I work through my career so that as the specific skills and job titles change, the focus is still on making sure they are in sync so I can continue to advance and add value."

Read more on the LOPSA Blog

3. New Community Manager

Roger Luedecke is a long time Member and volunteer of the openSUSE Project. He has served the Project in varying capacities and events since 2011.

Roger may be reached at community@lopsa.org

4. 2018 LOPSA Board elections

Once again, it is time for the annual board elections with the 2018 Election process beginning on May 1st. The candidate slate and statements will be published at that time on lopsa.org and in the May LOPSAgram. We have two LOPSA-Live sessions tentatively planned for the second and third Wednesdays of May - the times and participation method will be communicated as the dates get closer and we get consensus from the candidates. The election will run from June 1 to June 21 with the voting system closing on June 22. The results of the election will be made public July 1st.

We have five board positions opening up, so if anyone is interested in being a candidate for the board and having a direct impact on the governance of our organization, they should send an email to leadership@lopsa.org and indicate why they would like to be a board member. There are a few criteria that need to be met, all of which are available in the bylaws (http://governance.lopsa.org/LOPSA_Bylaws)

5. Launch of KnowledgePress LOPSA member blog syndication

Are you a blogger? Would you like your knowledge to reach a broader audience? Participate in our new KnowledgePress blog syndication program to get more exposure.


KnowledgePress is a new initiative to feature our Member's blogs on LOPSA.org and through our social media outlets. Submissions will be reviewed by our Community Manager. Approved submissions will be indexed on LOPSA.org and sent out over our social media outlets.

KnowledgePress can be found at https://lopsa.org/KnowledgePress

Submissions should be sent to community@lopsa.org

6. Locals

LOPSA-LA 

LOPSA LA is hosting a meetup on April 17th at CodingDojo in Burbank. The meetup features Asya Shklyar's presentation on Big Data in the life sciences: "From Raw Data To Usable Results, Build, Rinse and Repeat".  

https://www.meetup.com/lopsala/events/248784796/

Los Angeles chapter member Kelvin Vanderlip and LOPSA Treasurer Brian Globerman at the LOPSA booth at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) 16x March 2018

Ottawa Valley SAGE

LOPSA-Ottawa will be starting a series of introductory workshops on containers and micro-services this month (May 17th at the Kanata Dymon Storage Boardroom) that will be running for several months in order to get people new to the concepts a little hands experience on in a relaxed setting. 

https://ovsage.org

LOPSA Columbus

Our very active Columbus chapter recently met up on the 28th of March. Jared Price gave a presentation on "From Sysadmin to CTO." 

"Making the transition from a systems administration role to a technology leadership role is often challenging. Many sysadmins are talented and passionate about what they do and have perfected the art of expertly managing systems, automating key processes, and adapting to a constantly changing technology stack (virtualization, cloud, containerization). The move to a leadership role requires a strong foundation in technology, but also an understanding of business processes and people."

LOPSA of Columbus Ohio can be reached at their website http://www.lopsacbus.org/

East Tennessee LOPSA

LOPSA of East Tennessee held an event on April 3rd. Hosted by TEKsystems in Knoxville, Matt Lindsey of ORNL spoke on 'IoT Hacking for Fun and Profit.'

"The Internet of Things is an increasingly inescapable element of life on the information superhighway in 2018. While this plethora of low power, infrastructure-like devices can provide a lot of user convenience, it’s no secret that security is near the bottom of most vendor’s priorities. This talk will cover the state of IoT industry security in 2018, recent events that shape it, a primer on the unique security considerations of these devices and best practices for organizations that leverage them."

LOPSA of East Tennessee can be found online at http://web.lopsaetenn.org/about-lopsa-etenn.html

Call for Volunteers

If you'd like to start a chapter or volunteer in some way, email board@lopsa.org

7. Thanks to our sponsors

Thanks to our Lifetime Members: Benjamin Carrell, Philip Kizer, Greg Rose, Todd Taft, Jennine Townsend

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, PreOS Security

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.

Bronze Sponsor PreOS Security  offers software, consulting and training for firmware level security for your desktops, laptops and servers. Firmware is the new software, and persistent vulnerabilities and exploits have been growing steadily. Protect your firmware better with software and knowledge from PreOS Security. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter and get a free e-book.

Sponsor DataDog helps you monitor your entire stack. Graphing, alerting and correlatoin for all your systems. Sign up for a free 14-day trial.

LOPSA's web content is hosted by DreamHost .

8. 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