One suggestion, that might of been mentioned already in this thread, is to have volunteers submit articles to various non-sysadmin focused publications. And via these articles, authored by Joe "A LOPSA member" we can bring awareness to the profession and the issues we face.
For example Educause, which is an org that is concerned with technology in education, recently published an article about the Top 10 IT issues (http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/TopTenITIssues2010/205503). Reading through their Top 10: 1. Funding IT 2. Administrative/ERP/Information Systems 3. Security 4. Teaching and Learning with Technology 5. Identity/Access Management 6. (tie). Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity 6. (tie). Governance, Organization, and Leadership 7. Agility, Adaptability, and Responsiveness 8. Learning Management Systems 9. Strategic Planning 10. Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructure I would argue that SAs are directly involved/concerned with 4 of these items (3,5,6,10) and partially involved in another 3 (2,8,9). If 7 out of the Top 10 issues you're facing requires the same person or person(s) then it's important that you spend the right resources (time, training, moral, etc) for those employees to succeed. I would love to see an article written that went through these issues and outlined how they affect SAs. Hopefully it would also help CIOs and others to see that SAs aren't geeks with expensive toys. By having articles like these signed by Joe "A LOPSA member" you start to get the name out, even subliminally. With enough time, and insightful articles, people will start looking for the name. Even if it's just to decipher the acronym. But what happens when they get to the site? What do we offer? I think we need to expand upon the content that is there. I think 'classifications' of SAs was brought up earlier. I would also like to see the various laws that are out there (HIPPA, etc) and how they affect SAs. Yes we are not lawyers but someone has to know one somewhere that could help us distill these laws into something that all SAs (and their management) could readily absorb. Better yet, an article that describes why these regulations aren't some other department's issue. - Damion _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
