In my involvement with the Mentorship program, my experience (YMMV! WTFBBQ! Etc) was that besides there being a requirement for the mentors to be a LOPSA member, the mentees DID NOT have to join (it was probably thought that since they would have rec'd the largesse from LOPSA for free, they would probably be motivated to join at some point.) In the time I was a mentor, other than LOPSA Mentorship chairperson being a "matchmaker" and assigning a mentorship-desirer with a mentor (and providing a GDocs document where both parties could write stuff down on, which I or my mentees never used...) I never again heard from the mentorship team about the mentee, and most of the time (with one exception) besides the first contact/discussion, I never heard from the mentee again. (I did not do a lot of "chasing after" the mentees, figuring if they want to ping me on something, they'll contact me.) Anyways, I did not see much value in the mentorship program as a result, and eventually resigned as a mentee (i.e., asked to be removed from the mailing list.) Maybe (hopefully) it's run differently now... IDK. In any case, it's at least one thing that LOPSA could offer people that would be a tangible benefit (be mentored by an experienced SysAdmin!) but I'm not so sure how well it has worked in practice... Probably be hard to quantify, but would be interesting to know if any (or more positively, how many) mentees went on to join LOPSA.
W. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Derek Balling Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 4:08 PM To: Evan Pettrey Cc: Lopsa Discussion Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] Looking for an organizer for the first virtual LOPSA Chapter I would say the mentorship program is HUGE. But, again, to my point earlier, the mentorship program drives membership to some extent (you have to be a member to be a mentor, to my recollection). I might also say that the support they give the regional conferences is a big win, even if the vast majority of the legwork is done by the local folks on the ground. But to be honest, speaking as both a "day 1" member, and as a former board member: I cannot think of any really "great accomplishments" of the LOPSA national org, other than those two things. There's been a number of website redesigns, WAY too much time spent dealing with a lawsuit, and a lot of proposals for stuff that might've been cool but died on the vine, but that's about it. Of course, your mileage may vary. D On May 14, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Evan Pettrey <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Perhaps a good question to ask is: What do LOPSA members feel the most important contributions LOPSA has made to themselves and the industry at large since its inception? (this should possibly be a separate thread of its own) If we know what we've done well perhaps we can at least focus on doing more the things that matter vs. wasting time on things people do not care about. I'd be particularly interested to know in the greatest accomplishments of LOPSA before the past 3 years or (before the mentorship program started). It's all too easy to focus on the negatives, it'd be nice to see what we're doing right as an organization. On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 3:55 PM, Derek Balling <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 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]<mailto:[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<http://constantine.name/> > > > On May 14, 2014, at 2:06 PM, Derek Balling > <[email protected]<mailto:[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]<mailto:[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]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
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