On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Chase Hoffman < [email protected]> wrote:
> [...] > I'm not trying to beat up on LOPSA or its leadership. I renewed my > membership this year - clearly I have a desire to be a part of the group. > But aside from LOPSA East and Cascadia, and these mailing lists, I'm unsure > what LOPSA actually DOES. We're a healthy organization in that we exist, > people join, and we're doing no active harm to anyone. I'm just not sure > what that means in a broader context. > I think that showing what LOPSA does was part of the intent of the org chart Matt Simmons made, since each of those committees have responsibilities. I'd like to see LOPSA be a more productive organization but at the very least I'm taking the point that we can do a better job communicating what is happening across LOPSA. Those are all awesome, but we none of them are advocacy for anything other > than membership, and we haven't done any other advocacy. If we have, > please, point me to it. I've never seen LOPSA take a position or issue a > statement on ANYTHING other than the lawsuit. That's what I'm trying to > find out here. What advocacy have we done? > Again, I think the point is that LOPSA hasn't done enough advocacy. However, here are some examples: o https://lopsa.org/CodeOfEthics o http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/302352-q-a-lopsa-president-philip-kizer-on-why-you-should-care-about-lopsa o Philip again quoted in ComputerWorld (couldn't find it but here's a link with the text: http://digital.digestwatch.com/Forecast-for-system-administrators-Cloudy/ ) o The LOPSA President sitting on discussion panels at conferences This isn't exhaustive but it's all pretty light; you might not think that posting something online is advocacy but I'd say it is. I just think we should also do more. > (As a side note, showing up at events targeted at systems administrators > and noting that there's a group of systems administrator is not advocating > for awareness of systems administration. They already know it's there. If > they didn't, they wouldn't be at a Linuxfest or conference. We're not a > ninja profession.) > Now that you've said "ninja profession," I kind of want to be in one of those, whatever that is. Anyway, I see where you're coming from. Yes, obviously we don't need to tell people in the tech industry that sysadmins exist. But we do still need to talk about the landscape of the profession and ways we can connect sysadmins to solve those problems. So when we go to conferences and have a table, we're advocating for stuff like more local activity (building community and energy) and the mentorship program (helping people move forward in their individual careers and grow through supporting others' development). And those things are part of what I mean when I say we need to do internal advocacy, but there's more we can and should do. I personally want to see the best practices or BoK or similar get traction again. > >> >> *1. Quick position statements on public policy or awareness issues in the >> spotlight, e.g. The Snowden thing.* >> > > Okay, fair enough, though I do question how we determine what our policy > is. > You're right to ask that. That's the next step. The Board is trying to avoid micromanaging the organization, which means getting others involved to do things like this. But if that's going to be a viable model, we have to define scope for that responsibility and then find someone who wants to go after it. > >> >> >> >> >> *2. Technical briefs of things for the IT community, e.g. Cloud, DevOps, >> etc. I think tech briefs should describe a technology in very clear and >> accessible terms as well as explore the composition of that technology and >> factors to consider in its use.* >> > > Again, sure, but part of the problem that we've had with the BoK is that > if you put 10 sysadmins in a room and ask them to define "the cloud" you'll > get 8 different explanations, one blank look, and one cascade of maniacal > laughter. > I'm in the maniacal laughter group, by the way. This is exactly the point. We have an opportunity to explain the myriad different things that someone can mean when they say "cloud." That could be useful and I think we can do that. Another example would be to explain what an intrusion detection system is. This idea of tech briefs doesn't need to solve every problem and it doesn't have to fully explain every facet related to a certain technology. But it can be helpful for newcomers to that technology to have things like that sorted out as a starting point to delve deeper. > >> >> >> >> *3. Position papers on technologies or methodologies, e.g. Control change >> rates and use automated testing in your organization to minimize >> change-based errors.* >> > > See my answer to 2. > My response to this one is different, though. I think LOPSA shouldn't really be sticking its neck out on tech briefs (number two). But we *should* be sticking our neck out on this idea of position papers on technologies or methodologies. I think we should try this out on a specific topic to see what it's like. We can do it with a comments period and/or perhaps in a model similar to IETF RFCs, which would hopefully lead toward more internal advocacy for best practices within the community. And it's likely to stir some controversy but simply the discussions around these things would be useful for sysadmins. - Matt Disney
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