by We are social animals, much like the systems many of us run. A Unix system not connected to the Internet doesn’t remain healthy for long; it craves communication with others for it to be useful.
I had dinner with a friend who made the observation that people want to be part of a community but that traditional communities are falling apart in the U.S. from the disinterest in religion, the frequent relocation and dense apartment complexes, and the suburban sprawl. People instead turn to communities built around brands (Saturn, Apple, Linux) some of which exist almost entirely on-line.
I don’t see this as all bad. On-line communities give us opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist. We might be the only one in a town of a couple thousand who cares about some esoteric topic, but that scales to a huge number of people world-wide. Even one in a million scales to a fair number if they can all find each other.
One thing I’m interested in is how to build sustainable on-line communities. Such communities shouldn’t depend on any one person. Instead, the founders of the community should go to great pains to set the tone and help others see the benefit of it and carry it forward. The community stays alive even after the founders are no longer there.
By providing an open organization with minimal barriers to contribution, the LOPSA board has already gone a long way to creating such a community.
LOPSA.Org is a community site for system administrators. It isn’t a brochure site. It isn’t one-way communication from the LOPSA board. It is a place for us. A virtual watering hole where we can come together, get to know one another (such as the sys admin of the week), and share our stories. The gossip is here (and on #lopsa). This is our neighborhood where the fences aren’t too high. It’s up to us to keep it that way.