2014 Candidate Statement: Matt Disney

I'm privileged to have served system administrators over the past three years as a member of the LOPSA Board of Directors. I hope you will grant me the opportunity to continue serving in that capacity.

My previous candidate statement provides more detail about the things I'm proud of about LOPSA and areas where I think we needed improvement. We've had growth in some of those things but I think they all still deserve our focus. To be more specific, I think there are two things the LOPSA Board of Directors need to prioritize:

  1. Identity. I think there is room for LOPSA to be a lot of different things, particularly when you look at how local chapters or affiliates take forms that work well for that area or group of people. However, we really need to continue refining the LOPSA mission, which leads to my next point:
  2. Financial management and strategy. LOPSA is on a healthy financial path. The next Board of Directors will be fortunate in having a level of financial comfort we haven't had in years. That will empower the Board to work differently and better for LOPSA, to take risk to accomplish exciting ideas, and to make more impactful and strategic investments. A more clearly defined sense of mission will help guide those decisions.

I do have some more specific suggestions and opinions on these topics. I'm happy to answer questions about that; you can also find my opinions in action, sprinkled throughout meeting minutes posted on the LOPSA Governance site. But more important than my specific opinion is that the Board will need people that can challenge each other yet still work together to find consensus on these important issues, experiment some, and get things done to make the lives of system administrators better and advance system administration as a profession.

 

Finally, this is an excellent opportunity to express my appreciation to all those in my life who have helped me along the way, including the three LOPSA Boards of Directors on which I have served. There have been so many people that have made a positive impact on my career in system administration, particularly via LOPSA; I hope I can do the same for others.

Please get in touch with me (e.g. mdisney@lopsa.org) if you have questions, concerns, or opinions to share.