On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 10:46:34 -0400 Ross West <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's been an interesting discussion recently about net neutrality - > one that I hope people start realizing it doesn't have a simple cut > and paste solution. LOPSA is lucky enough that lots of people on > here hold senior positions in different sides of the discussions, so > many viewpoints can be heard/seen. > > Let's bust out the next one. > > Vince Cerf publicly went out and asked why the ACM isn't getting > programmers to join lately: > http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2639990 > > The comment section makes for a very interesting read on the problems > of organizations like ACM (and Lopsa/et al) on losing relevance in > the current online world. > > While ACM focuses on programming, it's fairly obvious that Lopsa is > in the same type of boat. > > Do you (as a reader of this mailing list) have thoughts on what would > make Lopsa more relevant? Ross, Thanks for starting this thread. I hope there are lots of reqponses as we are holding the Directors Face to Face meeting this weekend as can use the input from members. From my experience, LOPSA is facing these issues: - Lots of high quality free content elsewhere and not enough content on LOPSA (content is expensive and hard to create and maintain), - As system admins become less general and more specialized, there are many other websites and organizations that are better suited for system admins (e.g. if you are a VMware admin you attend VMware conferences and user groups instead of LOPSA), - Lack of an external force that makes it worthwhile to join LOPSA such as required training or certifications (like a Nurse or an Engineer). - No need for any formal training for a system admin. Many system admins just learn by themselves and do see the need to join any group. - The general public has no clue what system admins are or do so there is no pressure to have them be certified (like there is with Engineers) and the younger folks do not think of it as a career. So what can LOPSA do to grow its membership? You can do this by: - making it so attractive that they want to join (hard to do in our well connected world where knowledge is just a search away) - requiring membership to access a benefit (e.g. the recent changes to Mentorship requiring both mentor and protegee to be members) - having people join as part of some other thing (e.g. via conferences) - having people required to join as part of employeement Here are few ideas (in no particular order): - Find an area that is not served by current groups and websites and focus on that. This will limit LOPSA's size to that niche. - Expose more people to system administration as a career via public outreach (e.g. local groups, high schools, colleges) - Partner with other technology groups by offering dual memberships, swapping speakers, etc. - Partner with companies to help train and mentor system admins for the company if they will support LOPSA - Work with HR departments to have them require an Ethics certification (which would require a LOPSA membership) for system admins. The idea is that since system admins have access to all kinds of critical data, companies would like some sort of assurance that they understand ethics. - Focus on conferences like Usenix. - Partner with colleges starting up system admin programs to provide mentorship and teaching materials - Create unique content that is not available elsewhere Appreciate your comments and thoughts. cheers, ski -- "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it connected to the entire universe" John Muir Chris "Ski" Kacoroski, [email protected], 206-501-9803 or ski98033 on most IM services _______________________________________________ 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/
