March 2 nd , 2020

Technology Professionals,

We, the duly elected board of LOPSA, would like to share how we envision LOPSA will prosper and how you can be an integral part of it. The LOPSA organization is evolving and will focus on three core tenets in support of our members: Professional Development, Education, and Community. We are working to provide members the ability to support and expand their job roles and improve their viability. We will expand and codify an educational program that links teachers with learners and provides resources and services to facilitate those opportunities. Furthermore, we are working to create more opportunities to engage and network with your peers. These changes are not easy, nor will they come lightly. Therefore, we are looking for your support and assistance as we work to make LOPSA into a relevant and useful organization for current and future members.

LOPSA traditionally has been focused on the art of “system administration”, and the new board has concluded that it is critical to expand this focus. We seek to include technology areas our members may be exposed to or responsible for during their careers. These would include System Engineering, Security, SRE, DevOps, Networking, HPC, and other similar professions. We will be working hard to encourage these groups to get involved and find ways we can add value and bring us all together as Information Technology practitioners.

As we have been working to consolidate the educational opportunities and initiatives that have been made over the years, we recognize that much of the content needs updating and collating. We are looking for individuals, groups, and established curators to help with this effort. Our objective is to provide excellent educational content that can be used to improve awareness and capability. We are also looking for individuals that are interested in working as mentors to share their experience and knowledge to members with the drive to learn and expand their proficiency.

Lastly, our individual LOPSA chapters have been the backbone and solid foundation of what LOPSA is, providing the unique community for members to engage. We want to better support and assist these affiliates and look for ways to expand and improve the opportunities these chapters provide. We are looking for suggestions and ideas on what those improvements may be, and we hope to leverage LOPSA’s resources as a parent organization to be better able to contribute to the benefit of our local chapters and membership.

A league is a “an association of persons or groups united by common interests or goals”. LOPSA membership and activity has dwindled over the last several years because we have failed to adapt our focus to keep up with the ever changing industry that we operate in. We want to reverse this trend and again provide our members and our community with the support and service that they expect. We can not do this alone, however, and we need your ideas and support to make it happen. Only you can provide us with the perspective and fresh ideas that will keep us useful and relevant. Without our community, LOPSA will cease to exist. The board’s purpose is to make LOPSA amazing and our profession strong, and we need you to make that happen. Please let us know your thoughts; email board@lopsa.org with your feedback, questions, comments, and concerns. We look forward to working with each and every one of our many professionals to bring LOPSA ahead as a leading technology practitioner support organization.

The LOPSA Board