by I'm happy to announce my candidacy for the LOPSA Board of Directors. I'm clearly not much of a blogger (yet), but this seems like a decent way to start work on my answers to the sorts of questions asked of candidates.
This is not a formal candidate statement.
First a little background on my involvement with the community:
* I've been a member, with some lapses of USENIX & SAGE (now LISA) since I was a Systems Administrator Intern before even graduating college. My mentors at the time informed me of the importance of professional community and I took their advice seriously.
* I'm a Charter member of LOPSA, though truth-in-advertising I believe I let my membership in LOPSA lapse for some periods as well.
* I've attended Seattle Area System Adminstrator Guild (SASAG) meetings since first moving to Seattle in 2000.
* I volunteered with the Cascadia IT Conference (CASIT) in it's first year 2011, primarily focusing on marketing.
* I co-Chaired with Ski Kacoroski CASIT 2012.
* I volunteered again for Cascadia IT Conference 2013, focusing on marketing and sponsorship.
* Each year, attendance at CASIT has grown substantially.
I think the best function I can bring to the Board of Directors is that I feel I have some idea of how to successfully market an IT conference, and a willingness to engage with it. Marketing is not a personal passion for me, but it does address my passion to see membership and participation in LOPSA grow.
That said, I'd like to answer Tom Limoncelli's questions for candidates.
Question 1:
"I'd like to know about your experience with community-based projects. Please tell us about a project that you took responsibility for seeing through to completion. Please, only projects that are "done" or have reached a self-sustaining mode only. One or two sentences is fine. It doesn't have to be a project where you thought of the idea or even did all the work: just one where you assured it reached the finish line."The best example I have in the sysadmin community is co-Chairing CASIT 2012. By all accounts, and our attendee surveys it was a great success.
Question 2:
"Surprise! The day after the LOPSA election an anonymous donor gives LOPSA $10 million dollars. The only condition is that it has to be spent in the next 18 months. What should LOPSA do with it? (projects, not investment strategies)"
I find this a very challenging question and I think I may break the rules of blogging and come back and edit this response to expand my answers.
The foremost thing that comes to mind is marketing. From my picture of the community, there are quite a few potential members that have never even heard of LOPSA, or if they have they have little idea why they should consider being a member. They certainly don't consider membership "virtually required" for a career in system administration. For this reason, first and foremost I'd spend top dollar on:
* A complete centralized graphic design overhaul for all things LOPSA, and all LOPSA affiliated events. This means:
* A new logo, possibly indulging in more than 2 colors
* A complete set of web banners in standard sizes.
* A complete website overhaul, including the new graphics as well as all the "wishlist" functionality we have – most importantly some mechanism for members to sign up for auto-renew. I know that would have prevented my membership lapses!
* A "reasonable" set of matching print media: business card template, trade show glossies
* All of the above for each of the local Chapters and the regional conferences CASIT, LOPSA-East and…?
* A marketing "go bag" of stuff for the regular meetings of the local Chapters.
* Professional recording of select content at chapter meetings and the regional conferences for the YouTube channel
* Trade show schwag ie: "become a member now and get…"
* Membership level schwag ie: "become an X+ type member and get…"
* Fancy trade-show booth(s) (yes, this is a recurring expense, but in practice these wear out after N trade shows)
* Some paying sponsorships of appropriate events. Or possibly some borderline-appropriate events to reach those people we aren't reaching yet. Yes – this is pretty odd, and possibly controversial given that we are looking for sponsors ourselves! But I believe it could be a useful part of a coordinated effort to increase membership and the reputation of LOPSA.
* Market study – how many people really are potential members? How better could we reach them?
I need to get this posted, so I'm not going to tack on cost estimates for all of these items. For some, the sky is the limit – one could spend all $10M on sponsorships for IT conferences for instance.
But I think doing top dollar for most of the "get what you pay for" items such as graphic design, and spending a reasonable targetted amount on the more flexible items I still get somewhat less than $1M.
So what to do with the remaining $9M? More on that as I think of it..