by Professionals. Trainers. Leaders. Mentors. Friends.
What do all these people have in common? They are all system administrators.
I can easily think of several examples of people fulfilling these roles among the membership of the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA). Those of us who are already members know this. However, not everyone outside LOPSA knows this about system administrators — yet. As part of our mission here in LOPSA, we reach out to the larger community beyond the boundaries of our membership. I have worked from the moment I joined LOPSA to evangelize our message to the greater community that we serve; to educate others on our professionalism; and to improve our understanding of what it means to be a professional system administrator. I continue to do this work, and I will work ever harder at growing awareness of both our existence and our professionalism.
I have always believed in LOPSA’s mission and our vision of a greater future for the profession of system administration. I am a Founding Member, and, technically, I was the first paid LOPSA member. I have served as a member of the Tech Team from our inception, and I have served on the LOPSA Education Committee for years as a planner and, primarily in recent years, as a trainer. I have served on the LOPSA Board of Directors for two terms, starting in 2005, and I look forward to a future where I can serve LOPSA even longer on the Board.
For a while, LOSPA was in trouble. We were having financial difficulties, our membership numbers were leveling off and threatening to decline, and we had a very small number of active volunteers.
With some risky ideas on cost cutting measures proposed by some of the Board members, we started pulling out of the financial pitfalls. I thank my fellow Directors for their brilliance in finding the light at the end of that tunnel. We still have worked to do, but we’re building ourselves up as a stronger organization with a better financial footing for moving into the future.
The other two problems were largely intertwined. Our membership problems were significant and critical in that without membership growth, there is little revenue available for programs and member benefits and almost no hope of garnering major sponsorships that could drive larger programs and provide great member benefits. We still didn’t offer significant member benefits, and our various programs were falling mostly stagnant or fading away. Our crown jewel program, the training efforts of the Education Committee, was struggling with a lack of volunteers. We couldn’t afford to buy our way out of the trap by doing major marketing campaigns and paying for wonderful member benefits.
The answer was simple: get more members to volunteer.
With more volunteers, we can boost up our amazingly successful training program.
With more volunteers, we can start new programs.
With more volunteers, we can generate energy and excitement in our members.
With more volunteers, we can find new people interested in LOPSA.
With more volunteers, we can add more members.
With more volunteers, we can gain more revenue.
With more volunteers, we can get more volunteers.
This process encourages perpetual growth! I advocated changing our recruitment and volunteer management strategy to asking people to do a little bit of work at a time, rather than taking on monumental projects and ambiguous roles. We stopped recruiting people to run whole projects. Instead, we recruited lots of people to help do something together or asked someone to do a small task at a time.
It worked; LOPSA stabilized; and we grew.
At PICC10, I spoke about mentorship. My dream when I joined LOPSA was to start a mentorship program, and I’ve mentioned mentors or mentorship in each of my previous campaigns. My dream was realized last year by a group of amazing volunteers that took up the challenge of taking the seed of my vision into a bigger, better reality. Today, we have the LOPSA Mentorship Program (LMP), and it is already successful. LMP was driven to success by many volunteer members. This is what LOPSA members can do together.
Good leaders find vision and purpose, and they work hard to realize the vision and are driven by that purpose. Great leaders find vision not just within themselves, but they find vision in other people. Bring me your vision, and I will find the people to help you make it real. That is the duty and purpose of a LOPSA Director, and that is the duty of LOPSA as the leader in our profession.
Some of the programs I want to work on or champion to make LOPSA go from good to great are:
- Additional LOPSA Local Chapters
- More regional conferences
- Regular content contributors on http://lopsa.org
- Better member benefits
- Membership growth above 1000 members
In addition, I want to focus on greater diversity in our membership. We appear to be an organization predominantly made up of male unix sysadmins based in the United States, but that does not reflect our profession accurately. We need more women, more MS Windows admins, more DBAs, more people of color, and more people of different cultures and countries. Our organization should not only reflect our profession as it is today, it should encourage diversity in all ways possible going forward.
I have a virtual and physical open door policy, so please feel free to email me at jtrucks@lopsa.org anytime or find me on IRC as jtrucks (leave a message and I’ll get back to you if I am not immediately available). Also, please introduce yourself in person at any event or conference!
Please vote for me for the LOPSA Board of Directors.
A vote for me is a vote for you; a vote for our profession; and a vote for LOPSA.