Re: LISA...how good

[dtl.LABS.TEK.COM">halm]

Tom Limoncelli writes:
> What is the difference between an amateur and a professional?  I'm not
> talking whether or not you are paid, but whether or not you act
> amateurish or professionally and whether you are treated with the
> appropriate amount of respect by the people around you, the people you
> work for, and society.

We in SAGE-AU went through this recently too.  Our discussions followed a
line similar to that your psychiatry-friend seems to have gone through.
We wanted a professional look, both from within (we should act and feel like
professionals) and from without (we should be seen as, and respected as
 professionals).

> One of the goals of SAGE is to
> get more respect for system administration as a profession.

We hit on two primary areas to deal with right away, and a few others for
follow-on work later (a sysadmin just has so much time to devote to things
other than day-to-day operations).  We came up with a Code of Professional
Ethics (it's in the recent issue of ";login:"), and are nearly through
putting together a list of "course agenda" items for a university level
sysadmin class.  We have some members teaching from it already, and it
seems to be working out great.  The intention is to continue on and create
a series of continuing professional education units for folks to read at
their leisure, in order to make maximum use of limited time in trying to
stay up with the profession.

As has been pointed out, we among others created local groups too.  I fully
support Tom's words in this regard (for that matter, I'm not disagreeing
with any of his other points either).

Other work areas we have talked about included certification and
the job description issue (completed first by SAGE-US, thus SAGE-AU just
made use of the results).  I know that there are lots of strong feelings
about certification, and we had no answers yet.  That'll come in time.

I suggest that the Code and course agenda are not "the answer", but a couple
of good starting points.  I concur that this is a very necessary part of
SAGE, and in fact was one of the primary reasons I've been involved from
the start.

HM
former President, SAGE-AU
-- 
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