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SAGE or LOPSA?

I know I’ve got some professional sysadmins reading this, so:

I seem to have slept through the period around 2004 to 2006 where USENIX nearly got rid of SAGE, and then didn’t, and then some people who wanted SAGE to be rid of USENIX formed LOPSA, and so on.

But I was all set to get a SAGE membership and now I’m not sure if I want a LOPSA membership instead, or as well, or something.

So, uh, tell me what to do.

[photo by flickr user “tracer”]

Rich

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5 responses to “SAGE or LOPSA?”

  2. Bill: Well, that’s the idea, but I figure having been there a couple weeks and the whole “professional memberships” thing being a new one that I’d start with one!

  3. I’ve been impressed with the resources and perks of being a LOPSA member. I had initially intended on joining SAGE, but that was sometime in that period where SAGE was up in the air and LOPSA was the only sensible option. Though seeing that SAGE now appears alive and well, I may join it as well.

  4. Highly biased[1] opinion based on first-hand knowledge…

    SAGE was supposed to be spun out into LOPSA. A lot of work by a lot of people went into that effort. It was supposed to hit the ground at full speed as a direct spin-off. Then things went awry.

    SAGE is now nothing more than a marketing brand of USENIX. In terms of operations and governance, it is a USENIX office function. (SAGE ‘co-sponsoring’ a USENIX conference exemplifies the facade.) The only “value” of membership (IMNSHO) is an occasional Short Topics booklet.

    LOPSA, alas, has had to grow incrementally, rather than with the instant momentum it was supposed to, due to the aforementioned problems. Despite that restriction, LOPSA has many of the finest minds in the field, and a number of active mailing lists and other support resources. It has a very active community and a healthy number of volunteer-driven projects. But it is having to re-invent many wheels and grow slowly from scratch, rather than from the large membership and revenue base that we planned for.

    So, instead of one strong organisation serving the community, we now have two much weaker ones.

    I encourage you to sign yourself and your team up to LOPSA.

    -g.

    [1] I was the last president of SAGE and the founding president of LOPSA.

  5. Geoff: I hoped you’d swing by here. :-) I will note that “me and my team” greatly overestimates the size of the company, though.