Whenever you talk about system-administration professional organizations, a very short list comes to mind. If any, I've met admins who've never heard of these.
I'd deeply love to go to LISA 2010, but no one is willing to give me the $3K it'll take to do it all. WWU certainly isn't, it's out-of-state travel and therefore banned this year, and I certainly can't afford it out of private funds. And looking at the session list there is almost nothing that's directly related to what I do for a living. I still want to go because I want to know about those other things, and would like to expand my career that direction.
I recently joined LOPSA since their goals are admirable and I'd like to be a part of that. However, the entire organization shows just the kind of anti-Windows bias you'd expect from an organization founded by a bunch of UNIX admins & engineers in the very pre-Windows 1970's. They say big tent, and I'll take it at its word. But the bias still shows.
Taking a look at the LISA technical-sessions I can find absolutely no sessions that directly discuss Windows installations. A lot of it is networking, which is a key factor in a large installation, but even the one session discussing large scale encrypted laptop backup and deduplication (neat!) is talking about OS X laptops. There are a couple that are tangentially related to Windows, specifically managing VMs and SLAs, but nothing direct.
The Training sessions are better, as there are some things in there that really are generic to the System Administration job, such as time management, better troubleshooting methodologies, and effective documentation. There is a lot of Storage Administration in there as well, which tends to cross boundaries. Also a few Linux-specific sessions, though again nothing Windows specific.
Given the look of LISA's program guide, if I were a pure Windows admin I probably wouldn't look twice at it. I'd see a bunch of Linux/Unix admins and we all know the kind of sneer they get when Windows comes up in conversation. Barely relevant, and not worth the effort. As it is I do have Linux experience and a fair amount of Storage admin as well, so the conference is relative to me. I even have sufficient Linuxy T-shirts for protective coloration! And my laptop is running openSUSE so I wouldn't feel self-conscious checking email in the middle of a crowded hall.
Or maybe it's because Windows admins haven't HAD a professional organization planted in the center of their sphere for decades the way that Unix-land has, and therefore don't consider it important. I don't know. But the SAGE and LOPSA outreach efforts aren't terribly effective either way. Maybe I can change that.
- USENIX.Arguably the grand-daddy of them all.
- SAGE. The SysAdmin special interest group of Usenix.
- LOPSA. League of Professional System Administrators.
I'd deeply love to go to LISA 2010, but no one is willing to give me the $3K it'll take to do it all. WWU certainly isn't, it's out-of-state travel and therefore banned this year, and I certainly can't afford it out of private funds. And looking at the session list there is almost nothing that's directly related to what I do for a living. I still want to go because I want to know about those other things, and would like to expand my career that direction.
I recently joined LOPSA since their goals are admirable and I'd like to be a part of that. However, the entire organization shows just the kind of anti-Windows bias you'd expect from an organization founded by a bunch of UNIX admins & engineers in the very pre-Windows 1970's. They say big tent, and I'll take it at its word. But the bias still shows.
Taking a look at the LISA technical-sessions I can find absolutely no sessions that directly discuss Windows installations. A lot of it is networking, which is a key factor in a large installation, but even the one session discussing large scale encrypted laptop backup and deduplication (neat!) is talking about OS X laptops. There are a couple that are tangentially related to Windows, specifically managing VMs and SLAs, but nothing direct.
The Training sessions are better, as there are some things in there that really are generic to the System Administration job, such as time management, better troubleshooting methodologies, and effective documentation. There is a lot of Storage Administration in there as well, which tends to cross boundaries. Also a few Linux-specific sessions, though again nothing Windows specific.
Given the look of LISA's program guide, if I were a pure Windows admin I probably wouldn't look twice at it. I'd see a bunch of Linux/Unix admins and we all know the kind of sneer they get when Windows comes up in conversation. Barely relevant, and not worth the effort. As it is I do have Linux experience and a fair amount of Storage admin as well, so the conference is relative to me. I even have sufficient Linuxy T-shirts for protective coloration! And my laptop is running openSUSE so I wouldn't feel self-conscious checking email in the middle of a crowded hall.
Or maybe it's because Windows admins haven't HAD a professional organization planted in the center of their sphere for decades the way that Unix-land has, and therefore don't consider it important. I don't know. But the SAGE and LOPSA outreach efforts aren't terribly effective either way. Maybe I can change that.
There was a LISA-NT conference, but it looks like it hasn't happened since 2000 and only had 3 occurrences. Not sure why it stopped.
I would love to see more/better sysadmin conferences. I am always interested in training and presentations and free coffee, if it's good.
This year I skipped the Boston USENIX because it just didn't seem like time well spent...and my employer would have paid! I asked on Metafilter if anyone knew of decent training outside of SANS or the USENIX training of a few years ago, and I got tumbleweeds.
I am not asking about user groups or the more useless seminars. I have been to Sun classroom courses (good), presentations by vendors (CommVault and Cambridge Computers, good; later CommVault: lame), MacWorld (in 1996: good sessions), Learning Tree classes (vile), SANS courses (good), etc.
I agree that platform bias is an element in this: Microsoft sponsors TechEd, which is about their platform. Solaris & Linux users go to...OpenWorld? And where should multi-platform admins go? *sigh*
The biggest reason I haven't joined the SysAdmin organizations is the bias against Windows. Why give my money to an organization that doesn't seem to represent my professional needs.