by The format of the Q&A is a question, followed by the answer from each candidate in alphabetical order. At the end, there is a set of individual questions for each candidate.
Question 1:
What do you see as LOPSA's biggest challenge in the next year and how would you propose meeting that challenge?
William Bilancio
What I see as the biggest challenge to LOPSA in the next year is getting more people to volunteer to help the board accomplish it’s goals. In the past years the Board its self has been trying to do all the work needed to make this organization succeed, but we need the help of the membership to do make LOPSA grow and gain traction in our field as the goto place for other organizations to go for information and comment about the System Administrator world
Nicholas Brenckle
I think the biggest challenge facing LOPSA is that it needs to stand back and look at the field of systems administration with "soft eyes". Soft eyes is a technique of taking in a landscape or project without focus. It is often used in project management to keep the project from getting stuck on one single task and using all its resources to get over that one task and not taking the entire project into view. It can also be called "the 30,000 foot view". I propose we meet this challenge by stepping back and looking at our goals, our members and our resources from a high level. And only then when we have that "soft eyes" view, we decide how we can meet those goals, how we help our members and how we use those resources. I was involved with one group that had an issue with its web site. Unfortunately the web site was in a data center that only one member had access too, and that member was less than reliable. New hardware had been sitting idle, the old hardware was dying, and everyone was so intent and making this one member "holding everything up", that no one realized we could have easily just spun up the hardware elsewhere, and moved the project along a different path and meet the same goal.
Paul English
LOPSA's biggest challenge is membership. We need more, more engaged members that will renew year after year. I propose we focus on established and valuable programs such as the mentoring program, marketing for new members and sustain local groups and conferences.
Mark Honomichi
The biggest challenge that the organization faces over the next year is defining a mission and a purpose that will satisfy the needs of the membership. It's obvious to anybody that has been here for some time that the organization has not lived up to the goals that were set for it when it split from Usenix all those years ago. Rather than address these failings, they have been ignored.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
I think LOPSA's biggest challenge is figuring out its niche in our rapidly changing world. There are many sites and groups that are competing for a System Admin's attention so how does LOPSA stand out. What does LOPSA offer that the other organizations do not? Once this is figured out, then LOPSA can grow. I feel that LOPSA's niche is as a system admin community focused on education of current and future system admins. This is where LOPSA has been most successful with Locals, LOPSA-east, and Cascadia conferences providing community and learning opportunities, mentorship helping current and future system admins to improve there skills, and LOPSA's IRC and mail-lists creating a community.
Atom Powers
I believe that LOPSA's biggest challenge will be to become relevant. We need a clear and focused answer to the question "what does LOPSA do and why does that matter to me?" Without that answer, and the action to support it, LOPSA will continue to decline until it vanishes. I know we have been fighting with that question for a long time and I hope that it isn't too late.
Question 2:
Do you feel that Locals are important to LOPSA, and if so, how would you propose LOPSA develop more Locals and what can LOPSA do to ensure they are successful?
William Bilancio
Yes, I feel that Locals are important to LOPSA. I have been working with the Locals all the years that I have been on the LOPSA board. To develop more Locals for LOPSA, LOPSA has to be there to guide the organizers and give them advice. It’s hard to get a Local started, I should know I started LOPSA-NJ and it’s one of the longest running locals that LOPSA has, but it also comes down to the people running the local. I am working with a group of people right now in the Portland area to get a new local started in that area, but we need people in areas that don’t have locals to volunteer their time to get the locals started. LOPSA can’t just cold call members and say hey go start a local. It takes time and a commitment from the organizers as well as the people who join that local to make it successful. LOPSA as an organization is there to help all Locals survive and flourish. We are looking at ways that we can help you financially as well as help you get the word out to LOPSA members in the area that you are starting, as well as be there to guide and advise you on making your Local a successful local.
Nicholas Brenckle
I feel that local groups are critical to LOPSA success. LOPSA is first and foremost an organization of Systems Administrators. Without the members, it would not be a very successful group. The local organizations are how we can bring the resources of the nationwide group down to the member. Personally I feel like the days of large nationwide meetings are gone. Budgets are tight and people do not have the flexibility to go to the other side of the country for long periods as much as we used to. I am sure a good portion of our members are attending conferences on their own dime, without employer support. Small, localized, and regularly occurring events and meetings have the most impact for the members. Development of these local events and groups are critical to the success of LOPSA, and something that must be done looking at what resources are in each area. The more I talk to other sysadmins, the more I see we all have something to offer. I think the same abilities that are in the mentor program can be applied to bringing together regional meetings and conferences.
Paul English
Locals are very important to LOPSA as they are one of the better ways of growing and sustaining a community. As a member of the Seattle Local (SASAG), I've helped the community grow and stay active and I've seen how a healthy Local can sustain an annual conference which grows LOPSA membership and engagement.
There is a limit to what LOPSA as a parent organization can do for Locals. Locals require regular local volunteer organizers, space to meet, a steady supply of speakers and a critical density of potential attendees to sustain a group. There are relatively few places in the world with all of these, and there is nothing LOPSA can do about any of these problems.
One valuable thing I believe LOPSA can do is provide "back office" functions. As sysadmins we've chosen a particular career and none of us are good at, or want to be: bookkeepers, clerical workers, marketers, and possibly managers. We have a fraught history on this point, but it is time to move past it. There are people are very good at and enjoy these functions. They'll need some management, and some decision-making, which can come from the Board.
Mark Honomichi
I'm torn on the idea of locals. I think that they are good way for community members to get network and share information, but the data suggests that this type of organization (whether it be a local, area users groups, etc) just are not attracting a consistent and loyal base unless you are in a large metro area (and even then there are challenges). I think that we should take a step back from pushing the locals specifically to building and mentoring a core group of LOPSA members around the country to interact and mingle with Meetup Groups in their area. As we get into the community and demonstrate our value, then LOPSA specific Meetups may follow.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Yes, as mentioned above, Locals are one of LOPSA's strengths. I would like to see LOPSA support Locals with speakers, some financial assistance, advice on how to get local sponsors, and do more to encourage members to create Locals.
Atom Powers
Locals are critical to LOPSA, one of the pillars that can help make LOPSA relevant. I would like to help create local groups where there aren't any and open up our doors to existing local groups that are not official LOPSA groups in cities like Seattle where there is a local group for just about any topic you can imagine. If we can provide them some support in exchange for publicity we all win. I don't know what shape that support would take yet, maybe we can help organize speakers or sponsors.
Question 3:
How would you encourage more volunteers to get involved with LOPSA to help accomplish its mission?
William Bilancio
I first would start asking for volunteers for projects that I am trying to get accomplish. I would encourage the membership to speak up and say yes I would like to volunteer. I feel that all members should try to put aside at least 3 hours a month to volunteer for a cause and some of that time should be put towards LOPSA. So that when the word goes out for volunteers they can say yes I will help.
Nicholas Brenckle
I feel that local groups are critical to LOPSA success. LOPSA is first and foremost an organization of Systems Administrators. Without the members, it would not be a very successful group. The local organizations are how we can bring the resources of the nationwide group down to the member. Personally I feel like the days of large nationwide meetings are gone. Budgets are tight and people do not have the flexibility to go to the other side of the country for long periods as much as we used to. I am sure a good portion of our members are attending conferences on their own dime, without employer support. Small, localized, and regularly occurring events and meetings have the most impact for the members. Development of these local events and groups are critical to the success of LOPSA, and something that must be done looking at what resources are in each area. The more I talk to other sysadmins, the more I see we all have something to offer. I think the same abilities that are in the mentor program can be applied to bringing together regional meetings and conferences.
Paul English
Sysadmins tend to be honest and ethical, particularly ones who are members of LOPSA and subscribe to the code of ethics. Simply making requests is usually sufficient – if a sysadmin says “yes", they will typically go above and beyond doing what they said they would. But what really works here is making direct requests to an individual with a well defined scope. For example, what worked for me is "will you run for Board?"
I think it is valuable that LOPSA is a volunteer run and driven organization. But I also think it is important to recognize that there are things that the membership would simply rather not do, and/or with which we are fairly unskilled. I think we shouldn't be afraid to pay skilled professionals to do these things, keeping in mind that doing so also requires management skills.
Mark Honomichi
I believe that people want to be part of a community, but that community has to provide them a clear direction and add value to their lives before they participate in it. We need to develop a clear mission and then look for ways to accomplish that mission by finding members who are passionate to help the organization succeed.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Right now I see two problems if you try to volunteer with LOPSA. If you try to volunteer it takes a lot of effort to figure out what you can do and then to consistently get responses from the board. The first item can be solved by narrowing our mission as it overlaps with too many other organizations. I would focus it on just Education and Community. Everything else is dropped. The second item can be solved if LOPSA hired a part time office person. One responsibility of this person is making sure communications with volunteers are not dropped.
Atom Powers
In my experience people like to help other people. Let's give them opportunities to do that.
Question 4:
What is the largest problem LOPSA needs to solve?
William Bilancio
The largest problem LOPSA needs to solve is getting members to volunteer to help and get the board to stop being a working board. Right now we as a board do all the work and it burns us out to fast. As we get more volunteers the board can focus on guiding the projects that we feel will make LOPSA a better organization. But without the help of our members we can’t get our projects done because 8 people can’t do everything.
Nicholas Brenckle
LOPSA has a perception issue. Having been involved with user groups for a long time, I know how hard it is to "pull yourself out of a slump". There are some great talents in the group, and it has much to offer its members. It just needs to focus on bringing its resources to where they are needed. LOPSA is a service organization, it doesn't develop things, it doesn't building things. It helps its members be better and helps systems administration as a career. How exactly to do that can be worked out and debated and I bet will change over the lifetime of the organization, but that core mission, of helping our members, will never change. We need to change the perception of LOPSA from "that group that does X" to "That group that helps systems administrators". With a little change of focus, we can be more flexible and achieve the mission goals.
Paul English
I believe growing and engaging membership is LOPSA's largest problem at the moment. There are many people who work in the field that have never heard of LOPSA. And we've had many people not renew membership in the organization. I think this amounts to the same problem.
Mark Honomichi
Relevancy. We need to add value to our users.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Now that we are out of debt we need to figure out who we are as an organization, where we want to be in the future, and how we are going to get there. We need to have that vision that clearly states what LOPSA is and its benefit to its members and society. We need to be able to explain LOPSA in a tag line, in a sentence, and have it make sense to people.
Atom Powers
LOPSA needs to figure out what it is and how it is different from all the other SA-focused organizations like LISA SIG (USENIX), Meetups, LinuxFest, etc., etc.
Question 5:
I believe that past performance is a good indicator of future performance, at least where LOPSA volunteers are concerned. Please point to something tangible that you’ve accomplished.
William Bilancio
I have rebuilt the LOPSA website, started a local conference, worked with locals to become better, I have run the conference/education committee and gotten us involved with SCALE and OLF just to name a few.
Nicholas Brenckle
Connecticut is sometimes called a bedroom state between NYC and Boston. The number of high tech companies and quite a few colleges and universities. During the early rise of Linux as a replacement for big box Unix servers, I founded a group called SCOSUG, the Southern Connecticut Open Source User Group. This group was primarily systems administrators with some developers and programmers. We ran a regular monthly meeting along with yearly installfests. We were fully incorporated as a 501c3. We brought in speakers such as Eric Raymond ad B'dale Garbee. Unfortunately as systems evolved from hand editing your x11.conf file to using automated installers, our operation methodology became less useful to the IT community and SCOSUG folded. I see this as a perfect example of why LOPSA needs to center itself around a set of goals that is static, while making the activities we do more dynamic. Installfests were great in 1998, but much less needed in 2012. The education of the community about open source was still needed, and that banner was picked up by some new groups in the area teaching more programming and PIC hardware such as arduino and pi. SCOSUGs failure was in not seeing its goal was in bringing free software to the community and instead focusing on how we brought that software.
For a few years I was stationed in Herndon, Va working for a nationwide CLEC. During that time I was involved with NoVALug and Tux.ORG. Tux.ORG is the regional 501c3 that helps to support Northern VA, MD and DC areas. One of my favorite things I did those few years was work the booth at the annual FOSE convention. FOSE is the Federal IT Systems Expo held each year in DC. The convention organizers each year would donate a table and booth space to Tux.ORG to spread the word of Linux and Open Source in government. I met generals and senators and plenty of fellow systems administrators working for all areas of government. For 3 days I would stand at a booth talking the benefits of open source with anyone that would stop. I learned of many offices running shadow IT works full of open source software. For the several years I organized the booth, Cannonical send thousands of CDs for use to give away. We would also have goodies from other Linux VARs and solution providers. During the last two years I ran the booth we worked with Dell to loan us their latest hardware to show how great various Linux distributions ran. That made life easier for use manning the booth as we didn't have to bring hardware with us!
Paul English
I have a record of getting things done, particularly in and for this community. Most notably I've been involved with the Cascadia IT Conference. When it started in 2011 I focused on marketing. In 2012 I was co-chair. In 2013-2015 I again I focused on marketing and sponsorship, taking the lead all years except 2015. Cascadia IT Conference has been a notably successful conference every year since inception, has helped significantly grow LOPSA membership and engagement of Seattle locals as well as community members who travel to attend.
Our sponsors have provided funding to cover conference costs, keep conference fees affordable and the funds we need to start the next conference every year.
Mark Honomichi
I am relatively new to volunteering at LOPSA (having been appointed earlier this years), but have a solid record of volunteering as a Scoutmaster for the BSA (recently retired :), Finance Officer for my American Legion post, and with my local VFW.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Over the past several years I:
- co-Chaired the Cascadia conference
- gave several LOPSA sponsored presentations at Cascadia, SCALE, ACPENW, and LinuxfestNW
- worked the LOPSA booth for several years at Cascadia, LISA, SCALE, and LinuxfestNW
- am speaker coordinator for SASAG Local in Seattle, WA
- mentored over 10 people via the mentorship program and several more at work
- brought in over $30000 of sponsorship funding
- helped to get start a 4 year system admin degree at Bellevue College and taught 3 courses there
- represented LOPSA at WA state Centers of Excellence for Information Technology Board meetings
- created a presentation that members can use to introduce teenagers to system administration
Atom Powers
I managed to chair Cascadia IT Conference somewhat successfully. I hope to do a better job next year. This is what life is about, doing something hard and doing it better next time. I don't know if my contributions will improve LOPSA, I hope they do, and I feel that I would be failing my friends if I didn't try.
Question 6:
What is LOPSA's niche, its value add, its raison d'être?
William Bilancio
No answer.
Nicholas Brenckle
According to the mission statement, LOPSA exists "to advance the practice of system administration; to support, recognize, educate, and encourage its practitioners; and to serve the public through education and outreach on system administration issues." I think those are pretty clear, and very doable as an organization. In the very early days, there was little difference between a programmer and a systems administrator. In fact I can recall a time when the systems administrator was the highest level a programmer could achieve. That was a long time ago, and a systems administrator is now their own function with their own set of skills and expertise. I think LOPSA exists to help its members become sysadmins if they are not, and become better sysadmins if they already are. How we do that is up to the members. We need to find out what the membership needs. I think the next few months might seem a little "boring" as we gather facts and details, but they would help the group to achieve its mission statement. Everyone loves the 3 days spent at OLF or Cascadia, but we have to remember the year of planning that went into making that happen. It falls on the board of LOPSA so do that, the boring year of work, so our members can enjoy the fruits of that labor and achieve professional enrichment.
Paul English
I feel LOPSA provides the ongoing month to month and even day to day community for our profession. Many other professions do not have such an organization and function fine without it. I started my career in the Boston area and attended and valued BBLISA meetings and the BBLISA community. BBLISA existed before LOPSA, as did the Seattle Area System Administrator's Guild (SASAG). With SASAG I strongly believe there has been benefit to having a parent organization willing and committed to supporting the group and our local conference.
Mark Honomichi
This is the problem, when it comes down to it. I don't feel that we have a clear mission.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Like I said above, I think it is a system admin community focused on education of new and experienced system admins. This ranges from training new system admins (my work at Bellevue College, as a mentor, and with the WA State Centers of Excellence) to giving talks, participating in conferences, and encouraging other members to give talks. One thing I am excited to get going on is for LOPSA to help define the outcomes associated with a 2 year and 4 year system admin degree. Outcomes are the goals that a college professor uses to design their course. If LOPSA can define a standard set of outcomes, then it will help the profession by provided some standards for what a system admin needs to know.
Atom Powers
We have a lot of people who know a lot about systems and are, ostensibly, willing to share that experience with others. LOPSA should be that organization that helps people become better systems administrators. For example, we can create training materials and suggestions for individuals and schools, or even just aggregate that information and help publish it; we could evaluate and contribute to projects like linuxfromscratch.org and others.
Question 7:
LOPSA membership has been declining over the last 2 years. What do you think should be done to change this trend?
William Bilancio
We need to come up with more benefits for the members and be the clearing house for all information pertaining to all news and information for System Administration in the media. If we as a board comes up with more benefits for our members that are worth the membership costs and we as a board stand up and get our message out to the media and LOPSA will see a rise in membership. I know that we the board have been working on coming up with these benefits but we need more feed back from our members on what you want.
Nicholas Brenckle
I believe to update membership two things need to happen. 1) we need to make being a member attractive, and 2) we need to market to our potential audience. Unfortunately we are not going to do too well with number 2 until we get done with number 1. I think we need to take a poll of our current member base and see what they would like LOPSA to do for them. Then take a poll of the potential user base and see what they want. Being a member of LOPSA should eventually becoming something that is almost expected, like any other professional membership. Systems administrators should say "Of course I am a member of LOPSA". There was a time when if you worked in education, and you used a flavor of UNIX, you were a member of USENIX. I would like to see that sort of penetration into the systems administrator field for LOPSA.
Paul English
I've addressed the need for better marketing in other questions and my Candidate statement. I think this is something with which I can help as a Board member and/or as a volunteer.
In addition, I think we need to engage the membership and the best way I can think to do this is by approaching members individually and requesting their involvement. LOPSA doesn't provide much benefit to members who pay their dues and then receive a newsletter for a year. Adding volunteering to those dues actually provides additional benefit to the organization and the volunteer themselves.
Specific needs I see are:
- mentors / mentees
- speakers for Local groups
- speakers for Local conferences
- volunteers for Local conferences
- volunteers for organization functions
Mark Honomichi
Once we have a mission that we can execute against, I would like to see our members get more involved in their local communities, especially non-LOPSA meetups.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
I feel we need to find our niche. There are so many sites and organizations all competing for a system admin's time and energy these days. With specialization of jobs (storage admin, virtualization admin, etc.) many system admins find it more beneficial to spend their time with conferences and communities offered by vendors of the products they use. Many of the traditional services that a professional organization would offer years ago no longer apply today. If you need a question answered go to serverfault, if you want a product review do a search on google, etc.
Atom Powers
We must recognize our limitations. Our conferences can't compete with LISA or free conferences like SeaGul; we can't expect to be the largest or most relevant meetup. Lets communicate and collaborate with other organizations. Getting a booth at conferences is good but if we can't tell people what we do and what we have accomplished then we aren't building anything people want to be part of. Lets try to create more meetups, collaborate with existing meetups, and start helping people become better systems administrators.
Question 8:
How would you describe the goals of the LOPSA, and how does the LOPSA achieve these goals?
William Bilancio
No Answer
Nicholas Brenckle
The goals of LOPSA are stated in its mission statement. I think the best way to achieve these goals are through education and support. Education can be local conferences that LOPSA can sponsor, manage or co-manage, or even just supply some resources and assistance too. Also the mentor program is an excellent resource that LOPSA can use to help the entry level systems administrator grow to become a senior administrator. Education does not always mean a formal classroom and instructor student relationship. It could mean a mailing list, or a friendly call to a fellow admin, or maybe a mentor relationship with a more experienced administrator. I learn many new things just talking to people in the hallways at conferences, new applications I need to check out or new methods of solving the problems we all experience. None of us can be experts at everything, but together we can solve anything! I believe we can achieve our goals by bringing the resources to the members in need, be that introductions to each other on a list, or a much larger event like a regional conference.
Paul English
LOPSA provides community by definition, education through Local chapters, regional conferences and mentorship and a continuing discussion about the profession of system administration.
Mark Honomichi
I don't know that I could describe the goals. We seem to be adrift.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
To me LOPSA has the goal/mission to advance the practice of system administration. The problem is how to do that. I think we are too small and there are too many other options for a system admin for use to be a professional organization with lots of member benefits, to educate system admins, to create certifications for system admin practice. Instead we need to focus on just one thing – a community dedicated to education of system admins. I feel if we do this, we can create a sense of identity and purpose and start to grow.
Atom Powers
I'm not sure what our goals are right now. We have a pretty good and fluffy tag line. It doesn't describe our goals. Lets do something about that. Maybe we can change the landing page for LOPSA.org from a "news" blog to a "what is LOPSA and what does it do" page.
Question 9:
What excites you the most about the LOPSA’s work in the world?
William Bilancio
No Answer
Nicholas Brenckle
Systems administration can very easily become a solitary confinement. By that I mean it is very easy to sit in a room with your servers and your documentation and solve your problems in a vacuum. I think that is not only a horrible way to work for an individual, but not a very good thing for the systems administration career. LOPSA should see itself as bringing systems administrators together. As a founder of SCOSUG and later member of NYLug, Tux.ORG and many other user groups, I look forward to sitting in a room with other fellow administrators and discussing topics that we all are interested in. A wise woman once wrote, "More problems are solved over a glass of beer with friends than with all the wars in the world." The work LOPSA has done with various conferences, and in bringing systems administrators together, is great. I especially like the recent trend of cross platform conferences. I am a UNIX admin at heart, using primarily Linux but I really enjoy learning how other systems do the same sort of tasks, and how they solve the problems they face. Sibling rivalry will always exist, Ford guys and Chevy guys will always argue over the fastest muscle car, and systems administrators are no different. Still, I think that by getting us all together we can only make each other better as we work together.
Paul English
I'm excited that our community sees a need for an organization like LOPSA to exist in contrast to all the other types of professional and academic organizations out there. It seems rare to me and illustrates the type of community we are.
Mark Honomichi
In the long term, I am excited about being able to help make a difference in the life of our members.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
I am excited by LOPSA's Locals, Conferences, and Mentorship. These are areas where LOPSA has made an impact in people's lives and in the local communities. I have met folks who have new jobs and careers because of LOPSA's Mentorship program.
Atom Powers
Not much at the moment. I think LOPSA has a lot of potential to become a great force for good and unless we can figure out what our super-powers are then we are going to end up like all the other '80s cartoon heroes.
Question 10:
What do you want to accomplish by serving on LOPSA's board?
William Bilancio
What I want to accomplish is to get LOPSA back on track and getting the board to back on track and making LOPSA worth something to our members. I would also like to see LOPSA at more conferences either teaching or having a presence to let more people know about LOPSA and to help get more System Administrators on board with LOPSA. I also want to get more Windows Administrators interested in joining LOPSA and also more junior System Administrators interested in helping in LOPSA.
Nicholas Brenckle
I want to help make LOPSA a great organization. As I have said in other answers, I want LOPSA to be definitive group for systems administrators. I want LOPSA members to be passionate about their careers and excited for the future of the profession.
Paul English
I believe much can be achieved for LOPSA through a focus on marketing. This is not something sysadmins are generally good at or to which we are drawn. However it is key to achieving:
- Brand name recognition for LOPSA
- Increased and sustained membership
- Critical mass for valuable programs like the mentorship program
- Respect in the greater technical community
- Financial health and sustainability through greater membership and value to corporate sponsors
As a Board member, I would ideally not be doing this marketing work myself, but advocating it and facilitating it.
Mark Honomichi
I want to help LOPSA become relevant.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
I hope to re-focus LOPSA as a community dedicated to system admin education. I do not see how LOPSA can survive unless it narrows its focus as our world has become very specialized.
Atom Powers
I want to help LOPSA become an organization for great good, one that helps people help people. I want to try to help save LOPSA from its evaporating membership and to find its purpose. I want to fight for LOPSA's existence as an organization that helps make better systems administrators.
Question 11:
How will you increase member participation in LOPSA?
William Bilancio
If I am elected I will be starting up the conference and education committee again to get LOPSA to more non LOPSA conferences to do this we will be needing volunteers to help coordinate and communicate with our trainers and conference leaders. I will also be looking for a new leader for the Tech committee and volunteers to help work on the team.
Nicholas Brenckle
To increase membership, LOPSA needs to be attractive to its members. We need to find out what our members expect the organization to do for them. While we are not a certification authority, and I am not even trying to suggest that we are, I would like to see LOPSA at a point where a members resume would proudly state their certifications followed with "Member, LOPSA". The group name should carry some weight with our members.
Paul English
I will increase member participation by individual volunteer requests. As an individual myself I can only reach so many people, so obviously I'll be making requests of a few to be "volunteer requesters."
Mark Honomichi
Giving people a clear mission to follow.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
By focusing LOPSA on one narrow goal and then people who are interested in that goal will have an organization aimed at them. By making sure that members volunteers are taken care of by getting a part time office staff to respond to them in a timely manner.
Atom Powers
In my experience people like to help other people. Let's give them more opportunities to do that. (Is there an echo in here?)
Question 12:
Do you have any worries or concerns about joining the board?
William Bilancio
No, I don’t since I am already a member of the board.
Nicholas Brenckle
I do have a fear, which is why I agreed to join in the first place. My fear is that LOPSA will get too wrapped up in the how, and not enough attention paid to the what and why. LOPSA, as an organization, should enhance its members, and advance the career of systems administration. I fear we will get so involved in the how we are doing that, change will make the group unnecessary. SCOSUG folded because we were so focused on monthly meetings and yearly installfests, that we missed the evolution to web based video conferencing and the programming explosion created by Web2.0. Had we been more dynamic, we could have evolved into supporting users with thousands of tiny servers behind load balancers instead of focusing on single big iron servers. I do not want to see the same thing happen to LOPSA.
Paul English
Time is always a concern. It is not like anyone is sitting around with a Board-level amount of time sitting available in their schedule – other things will need to be displaced.
Mark Honomichi
My biggest concern is that we will continue to be mired in the past rather than looking towards the future.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Nope – already on the board.
Atom Powers
I have not been following the board's activities very closely so I would be working from a position of ignorance and working fast to catch up. I'm concerned that my ideas are too radical to be acceptable, or have already been debated and discarded. This will be a learning experience for me and I hope that I can do enough things well to have a net-positive impact.
Question 13:
What professional or personal constraints on your time or service do you anticipate?
William Bilancio
I have been working with the board already and plan to keep giving 3 hours a week to LOPSA (these 3 hours do not include the hour every other week for our board meetings) to work on projects and committee work.
Nicholas Brenckle
I am both working and a full time grad student, so time constraints are always a problem. People always manage to find time for things they like to do, and I believe that will be what happens with LOPSA. I will find the time to do what is needed of me, and do it with a smile as I will enjoy it. Except for finals week, I can't say I will be smiling during finals week!
Paul English
My (startup) employer was acquired 1.5 years ago and my job duties have shifted, and my professional requirements have changed such that my work week is fairly reliably 40-50 hours, even when on call. I anticipate working for the same employer over the LOPSA Board term.
My personal time is more available now than it has been as my step-daughter is in college. As a result though, I've taken on some other volunteer positions, so I will still need to make time for LOPSA Board obligations.
Mark Honomichi
None
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
I have cleared out my next two years to focus on LOPSA. I will be teaching a course in spring of 2016 and 2017 along with my work commitments.
Atom Powers
I'm involved with Cascadia IT Conference, the Seattle SASAG group, and I'm starting a new job with unknown time requirements. I'm concerned that I may be trying to do too much and that I won't allocate enough time to accomplish anything meaningful.
Question 14:
Earlier this year, there was some discussion on the mailing list that effectively stated that LOPSA is a failed organization. How do you see the organization as a success and how do you plan on building on that success?
William Bilancio
Right now I see the organization on the brink of being a failed organization, but with the work of the members and the board I think we can make LOPSA a success. The current board has gotten LOPSA out of debt with our former management company, we now have a good surplus of capitol. We need to get the membership to be more involved with helping make LOPSA a great organization and taking it off the brink of being a failed organization. But without the HELP of the members the board can’t fix the problem on its own.
Nicholas Brenckle
I see it as a work in progress when talking to its members. Many of the people I have talked with think the group could do better, and it should. Many organizations suffer from being their own worst critic, and hold themselves in a harsh light. LOPSA is no different. I attended LOPSA-East in 2013 and the excitement in the halls was deafening. Conversations were moving fast and furious at the lunch and dinner tables. I hope to build on that excitement and continue to be a conduit for information and ideas between its members. Grassroots and smaller organizations are not top down, they are bottom up. The board of LOPSA shouldn't be the ones to come up with ideas and decide everything, they should facilitate its mission statement and "encourage" its members to do things that will enhance themselves and the future of systems administration by listening to its members and bringing the resources it has at its disposal to those members and ideas.
Paul English
While membership levels may vary, LOPSA has members who renew, members who engage in the community and volunteers who commit incredible levels time and energy. I consider that a success.
There are clearly those who didn't renew and because they didn't see the value – as well as for a variety of other reasons such as a career change. It would be great to persuade some to come back by providing value for them, and I believe we've got programs to do it. By far the best and easiest way to provide some value is through local conferences where almost anyone in our profession can find some value.
In addition, there are many who have never heard of LOPSA – reaching them is important and I believe a specific marketing push is needed.
Mark Honomichi
I'm not sure that I see it as a success, at least in the context of the discussion that was had. It certainly never met the lofty goals that it set for itself in the early days. Can it be a success? I believe that it can with the right mission.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
This discussion was very interesting to me and in many respects I agree with it. IMHO, As a professional organization like IEEE, LOPSA is a failure. We are not big enough to get the sponsors (need to be over 1000 members) needed to provide many of the services of a professional organization. There are many other organizations that compete for a system admin's attention and who create more content than LOPSA (e.g., Spiceworks, Serverfault). What LOPSA is good at is education at conferences, via mentorship, and via its Local's meetings.
Atom Powers
I don't think LOPSA has failed yet. I think LOPSA has done many good things and is capable of many more. I think that if LOPSA doesn't start doing more things for more of the community then we will eventually evaporate. Lets find those things that have a meaningful impact and do more of those: local groups, mentoring, training conferences, etc. Let's identify the things that aren't meaningful and stop doing them. In the near-term this may mean trying a lot more things that don't work so we can identify the things that do work.
Personal Questions:
Nicholas Brenckle
Q: You candidate statement doesn’t talk about goals for LOPSA. Suppose you are elected. What will we be saying about LOPSA two years from now? 10 years from now?
A: I hope that 2 years from now I will be saying what a great organization LOPSA is, and how proud I was to be a part of the governing structure. Your long term time frames can be compared to the amount of time I did work with SCOSUG and Tux.ORG. And in both of those cases I am very happy what I did with them. While SCOSUG itself does not exists, the impact of what we did as a group is still noticed and mentioned. When I applied to grad school, the Chair of the CS department did not know anything about me personally, but when I mentioned SCOSUG she said she had been to some of our events and help we gave to students at several of the local colleges and universities. I hope that 10 years from now I will be fill of the same great memories, and that others will also have good things to say about what was done.
Paul English
Q: The candidate slate was announced on 2015-06-09 but the announcement was missing your candidate statement until 2015-06-15. Why was your candidate statement not published in a timely manner?
A: I was requested to run on 2015-06-09 due to some withdrawals from the race and did not have a candidate statement prepared.
Hopefully my prompt answer to these questions addresses the concern here, and I will say that I was fully debriefed on the time requirements involved with LOPSA board when I ran a few years ago. I plan on fulfilling those requirements.
Mark Honomichi
Q: Your candidate statement states that “our focus should be on providing value to our current members” but doesn’t give any specific examples of how the organization would do that. Suppose you are elected. Within 6 months what are some tangible things you will have done to improve this situation?
A: That's the rub, really. What do our members want? Is it realistic? Are we targeting the right people? Personally, I would like to see the organization focused on providing value through education. I'd like to see our mentorship program add more focus on the soft-skills so we can help members advance.
Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski
Q: Your candidate statement focuses on success stories that help 1-2 sysadmins at a time. It is very honorable. This is called “retail activism” (as opposed to “wholesale activism” which recruits mass audiences). How can LOPSA use your background to grow even faster?
A: That is a good question. I think the answer is that LOPSA is too small for all the things it tries to accomplish and, as a whole, system admins tend to be very independent and self sufficient folks who d do not need to belong to an organization for work purposes. I feel I can help LOPSA by helping it decide on a single purpose/goal and with my background and contacts in the educational area.
Atom Powers
Q: The main thrust of your candidate statement is that LOPSA should be involved in job training. That’s a billion dollar business. How do you suggest LOPSA break into it?
A: More specifically, LOPSA should be involved in training and supporting the current and younger generations. Job training is a large part of that, so is mentorship, local community groups, and building a support network. One thing we have that very few job training services have is people who are successful in the industry. Threads like "IT roles in 'the company'", "recommended reading list", and "I need a change" exemplify what we can offer that the billion dollar industry can't.
Q: Your candidate statement says “Empower the board to make decisions.” What are some of the decisions the board didn’t make or wasn't sure it could make?
A: I believe debate is critical to making good choices and I believe that we have a board to make the hard decisions for the organization. I don't think the board needs member approval to change the funding structure and I think members should be able to fire me from the board if they don't like me.