Finding your professional tribe in IT – Episode 62

This week we spoke about IT tribes with Matt Simmons, university sysadmin, blogger, subreddit moderator, and LISA program committee member. How do people pick the IT Tribes they are a part of?

• Why didn’t Usenix and LISA (Large Installation System Administration) take over the world?
  • “Large Installation” has really changed over the years
  • Enterprise Microsoft vs Unix community divide
• DevOps on one side, Enterprise/Windows on the other – who does that leave in the middle? Sysadmins
• Matt was involved in the LISA program committee
• IT pros tend to become “priests of the machine” and get involved in religious wars. Nobody likes religious was.
• Why keep the name “sysadmin”? It’s perceived as old-fashioned.
• The three kinds of cities: Ephesus (old infrastructure stuck in time), Phoenix (new planned city in the desert), Rome (new infrastructure alongside the old). University infrastructures are like run.
• XKCD #705 on sysadmins: Devotion to Duty
• Both Matt and next week’s guest Tom talked about how LISA program demonstrates how relevant it is to today’s IT pro: “Just look at the program,” they said. Well, here is the LISA14 Conference Program.
• Being a Tech Field Day delegate as an entry into other IT tribes and being a connector
• On picking tribes to be in:
  • Don’t be the smartest person in the room
  • Try different tribes
• Matt is a moderator of /r/sysadmin
• John enjoys /r/cableporn
• John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
• Silicon Valley’s Mean Jerk Time scene
• Matt is looking for networks that are Open, Available, and that try to get things accomplished or try to help people
• The field of marketing as a whole vs individual marketers
• The benefits of having a blog
• If you’re in marketing, don’t send Matt a semi-fake form letter and then get annoyed when he doesn’t reply. Don’t just think bloggers are there to sell your first. What is Matt interested in learning?
• Matt’s tip for bloggers: Don’t Get Emotional.  You will get negative feedback; don’t respond in a knee-jerk fashion. Don’t take things personally. Try to have a thick skin.
• Datasaurus Rex t-shirt
•  More:
  • LISA 14
  • @standaloneSA
  • Standalone Sysadmin blog

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