A group of us in Lincoln and Omaha are working on establishing a local SAGE chapter for Nebraska. Our organizing group consists of Dave Burchell (burchell@acm.org), Lincoln; Paul McNally (pmcnally@alltel.net), Omaha; John Eno (jweno@usgs.gov), Lincoln; and Matt Payne (Payne@OJUG.org), Omaha.
What is SAGE? According to its mission statement, SAGE:
is organized to advance the status of computer system administration as a profession, establish standards of professional excellence and recognize those who attain them, develop guidelines for improving the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession, and promote activities that advance the state of the art or the community.
Supporting local groups is one of the seven activities SAGE says it will engage in to advance that mission. We want Eastern Nebrska to host a SAGE group to take advantage of SAGE support . Instead of just having a bunch of narrowly focused groups (e.g. NT, Linux, Security, Cisco) let's ALSO have one capstone group focused on the practice of system administration. This will make our community better, our jobs better, and our salaries higher. And we intend tho have a heap of fun while we're at it.
Here's the plan: right now we are publicizing the group, collecting email addresses for interested people, and working on setting up a Web server and mailing list. Next, we will set a date and time for an organizational meeting, where we will invite anyone interested to show up and help shape the future of the group. From there we will start having regular monthly meetings. Sometime along the way we will want to elect officers and draft people onto committees—the usual "group" stuff.
We want to leave most of the decision making until we can get a larger group together for an organizational meeting, but basically we picture SAGE as being technically focused, with a bent toward the sysadmin's job as a profession, and the unique challenges the sysadmin's career presents.
If a Nebraska SAGE group sounds good to you, send us an email. We'll put your address on our electronic mailing list when we set it up.