On 07/31/2014 06:45 AM, Denise Adams wrote: > What I mean to tell you is that just having a national group that I > can ask questions to, listen in on relevant discussions to my chosen > career, and have a chance at joining Mentor-ships and extra training > is PRICELESS! And I would have never thought about Systems > Administration unless I had asked about what LOPSA was.
In the medieval ages in Europe, trade was learned as apprentice, until you 'graduated' as a fellow; you then went out and learned what there is to know, until you became a master in the craft, settled, and were therefore eligible to take on apprentices on your own. In this model, if you are a system administrator out 'in the wild', and you're not part of a professional organization (a 'guild' in the above metaphor...deja vu?), you are not only missing out, you are actively hurting yourself; you can only grow so far with information, pretty soon you need knowledge, wisdom and experience, and that is exactly where this exchange of stories comes in that LOPSA can (and does!) provide. Now, in Europe, they basically dealt away with this entire 'guild' business, and converted their educational path to a more structured system involving degrees, certifications and, to much chagrin, 'credits'. But I think there's a lesson here, and it's not that SAs need to follow the same rules as the trades of the medieval ages. I believe that our 'craft' is much more multifaceted than any other job on the planet. It requires the combination of so many skills it is impossible (those involved at the various education workshops, or SESA '13 know!) to firmly categorize it. LOPSA could therefore be seen as the heuristic approach to system administration education. *Because* it is not structured, *because* there is no firm, straight line, statement of objectives/goals/etc. beyond the most basic expression of supporting the profession, LOPSA actually provides, at a 'meta' level, exactly the kind of environment for the 'trade'/'profession' aspect of system administration to be reflected in. (Of course, to get past a certain point, you almost certainly want to go to school and be a little bit more concrete about what it is that you'd like to excel in, but that's another story.) I like LOPSA the way it is. People like Denise get out of it what they want, old-timers get to enjoy time with new-comers, 'war stories' are being told, everyone gets something out of it. Don't expect LOPSA more to be than in reasonably can provide. My $0.02... -Stephan _______________________________________________ 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/
