Re: more on professionalism

[Gabriel Krabbe <gabe@lspace.org>]

On Sat, 2001-01-06 at 21:43:05 CET Strata Rose Chalup wrote regarding
"more on professionalism":

> I'm glad that folks are interested in this, and I hope it leads to 
> a new surge of volunteers to get involved with the existing efforts.
> My hope in posting the original message, as well as other materials, 
> is to get people excited about contributing to BoK (body of knowledge)
> and ethics.  
[...]

> I DO think there's a large number of folks out there who won't choose
> to get involved with certification, but who would be happy to be a 
> part of ethics or BoK work.  And that we need to provide a natural
> focus point for those efforts to come together.  
[...]

> Lee is already tirelessly doing a great job coordinating the ethics 
> roundup, as well as being a major contributor.  But SAGE doesn't 
> have a formal BoK track that I'm aware of right now.  There are some 
> efforts taking place in the community, most notably Geoff Helprin's 
> taxonomy and Rob Kolstad's LISA-workshop BoK matrix.  
[...]

> With the Body of Knowledge matrix and the taxonomy work, both Geoff
> and Rob have tried to start the ball rolling and include other 
> interested parties.  
[...]

> I'd like to see SAGE provide some framework around which to center
> the BoK efforts, but without imposing a huge amount of structure 
> and workload in the manner of certification.  
[...]

> There are a lot of innovative community-building tools out there,
[...]

> It's somewhat ironic that, as an organization of sysadmins, we have 
> limited tools with which to interact as SAGE members.  

The tools required are available, it's just that someone with the access and
the spirit is required to actually set it up. Sure, in his CFT, so that's
way on the back burner.

In the meantime, however, I find myself irritated. "The ethics roundup",
"BoK matrix" - hey, great, two very worthwhile issues over which there's
little, if any, disagreement in principle. Nobody is against the actual
existence, at least; details will hopefully be controversial. 

So there's two areas I'd like to help in. Or at least, where I'd like to
know where SAGE currently is, to see whether I have anything to contribute
that might be useful. Where is that information? There's a BoK matrix
somewhere, but since I wasn't at that workshop, I'll find out any and all
details somewhen. Probably at LISA 2001, should I attend the workshop there,
if it takes place. 

Even more interesting the Code of Ethics. A new version exists in a draft
version, or so we were told at the mentoring BoF. Mentors and Mentees
acknowledge that they support this CoE. And it's nowhere to be found. 

We have the resources for both - http://www.sage.org/ and/or
http://www.usenix.org/sage/ should provide a link. Make it "members only",
and never mind the marketing side of things - sorta-HTML-2.0 would be
enough to let people know what's actually happening. Either keep the
discussion here, where it belongs, or, if you must, create a "sage-bok" and
a "sage-ethics" mailing list, putting the entire archives right there with
it. Presto, instant information. 

SAGE may be concentrating hard on BoK and CoE, but if all the information
available is along the lines of "we're working on it", and even that only
gets passed on every so often by word of mouth, then naturally it will
appear that SAGE is concentrating almost all its effort on certification,
which gets space both online and in ;login: - which is not the appearance
desired, or so I gather.

> SAGE has done a great job organizing and collecting resources so 
> far, and it's time to take that the next step forward.  That 
> includes leveraging the talents of our members more and availing
> ourselves of some of the great tools that have emerged over the
> last several years.  

No, the next step at this point is making the information gathered
available, to let people know what's been done, what needs doing, and where
help is required (everywhere, of course, but what are the priorities?)

Advogato, Wiki, Slashcode - interesting tools. But there lies the problem:
Putting of the entire publication until such time as somebody is found who 
has the time and the knowledge to present The Perfect Medium will do more 
harm than good. Put up what you have, tell SAGE where it is, and maybe 
then volunteers will arise. Volunteering as such is not something most
people readily do, but volunteering for something without the first idea of
how much progress has been made and what might be required isn't something
very sane. Of course, becoming a sysadmin is pretty much exactly that
behaviour, but don't rely on it.

> Now we need to building a process and structure that lets us leverage 
> tools with the reliability that we need but without requiring that SAGE 
> take on a large budgetary responsibility to hire folks to deploy and 
> maintain them.   

No, that's what we need *next*. What we need *now* is above.

</rant>

Had to get that out of my system. It's the main theme of everywhere I've
worked so far: If only we knew what we know. Haven't seen much that hurts
productivity more, and I don't want that to hurt SAGE.


Gabe
-- 
Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.