Essentially, I don't think I'm going to agree with you here, and I'm not sure there's a compromise position to be found, so diametrically opposed am I.
I think the reality is that depending on member-altruism as a growth methodology is, to me, a fundamentally unsound strategy that nine years have proven to be a failure. If this organization was going to grow based on altruistic membership, it would've done so by now. But membership numbers have -- if you factor out those folks forced to pay for memberships by going to LOPSA-East or CascadiaIT -- been largely stagnant to the best of my knowledge. We are not a political organization where people are paying us money "for what we do for the industry". In part because there's very little agreement amongst members on what we think an organization SHOULD do for the industry, let alone a position they should take in so doing. And if we're not in that category of organization, we're going to fall into the other category you describe, the "what does the organization do FOR ME" category. And on that front, the answer is "precious little", with folks seemingly hell-bent on keeping it that way. D On May 14, 2014, at 3:15 PM, craig constantine <[email protected]> wrote: > People ask themselves two questions when considering joining a professional > organization: > > What can the organization do for me? > What does the organization do at large to benefit the profession? > > LOPSA will grow if it is overwhelmingly awesome in its answer to either of > those questions. > > It’s in our nature (as people sure, but especially as pragmatic technology > workers), to focus on the first question when we first encounter LOPSA. > Unfortunately, it is very hard for a small organization to muster > overwhelmingly awesome benefits that attract members. > > Instead, LOPSA should do great things which are available to as many people > as possible. LOPSA should be so awesome at benefitting the profession at > large, that it becomes the de facto professional organization. Then people > will join just so they can say, “I support LOPSA!” > > LOPSA should make as much as possible of what it does, and provides, free and > accessible. > > --Craig Constantine, http://constantine.name > > > On May 14, 2014, at 2:06 PM, Derek Balling <[email protected]> wrote: > > This still does nothing, then, really, to answer the "Why should I pay money > to join LOPSA?" question which LOPSA boards have been struggling to answer in > a reasonable fashion for nigh on a decade. > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
