Seattle Area System Administrators Guild

Outstanding end-user support is not just a matter of having great technical knowledge. Successful IT pros build great careers by also understanding the importance of human-relations. Part technologist, part psychologist, the exceptional IT professional understands that there is an art to using technology as the solution for workplace problems. This presentation will focus on helping IT professionals deliver great end-user support by knowing how to combine the technical aspects of the job with an empathetic (and occasionally sympathetic) ear. Don will also cover how to use emotional intelligence techniques to manage emotionally-charged situations, and he’ll conclude with a section on stress management.

Don R. Crawley is President/Chief Technologist at soundtraining.net, the Seattle-based I.T. training firm. He holds multiple technical certifications and is the author of five books on various topics for I.T. professionals, including “The Compassionate Geek: Mastering Customer Service for I.T. Professionals”. He has spoken before audiences in all 50 states, throughout Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

Come join us to hear from the attendees of the LISA ’11 conference things they thought were note worthy and that the rest of us might want to look into.

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the
University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the
EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

Discussing best practices with Puppet and technologies around configuration management such as software repositories, data storage, directory services, security, automated provisioning, and how to create disposable architecture.

Will also cover how to structure your version control system to deal with configuration management code and a simple methodology for deploying different revisions across different environments, such as Dev, QA, Staging, Prod, etc.

While this talk focuses on Puppet integration, most of the material is tool agnostic and will be applicable to other configuration management tools.

Garrett Honeycutt has been hacking *nix based systems and spreading the merits of open source software for over ten years. He began using Puppet in 2007 while building out a national carrier grade VoIP system, where he wrote many Puppet modules and acted as release engineer for Puppet code. Previously he has worked on such things as building core internet infrastructure for an ISP and creating mobile media distribution platforms. Currently he works as a Professional Services Engineer for Puppet Labs where he teaches, consults, and presents around the world.

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

At last night’s meeting, per our meeting announcement, we voted on becoming an official chapter of LOPSA, the League of Professional System Administrators.

The vote was 12 for, 0 against, 1 abstain. Therefore, the motion carried and we will begin the process of becoming an official chapter of LOPSA. Watch this space (or come to our meetings) for additional details.

Two things of note about SA Day:

Ben is having an informal, no-host gathering at Pyramid Brewery in downtown Seattle at 7pm tonight.

And LOPSA is giving a 40% discount on memberships (new, renewal, 1 year extension) if you sign up between now and Sunday.

Come join us for a LISA conference report and bring your hard system admin questions to see if you can stump the group.

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I’ll be showing use of a Nokia 810 running linux
on a PDA and doing what Blackberry does and lots
more. All of that, with open source software that any
system administrator can reproduce for his
organization.

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As an engineer, Mr. Banan has over 20 years experience. He is a recognized expert in the design and implementation of distributed systems, especially message handling systems and mobile data networks. Mr. Banan has run Neda Communications as a successful and profitable company since 1991.

Mr. Banan has accumulated a large body of publications. Some of his most recent and influential publications include RFC-2524, RFC-2188, Internetwork Mobility (published by Prentice-Hall), and the ground-breaking industry white paper Operation WhiteBerry.

Mr. Banan holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering (Magna Cum Laude) from Seattle University and an MS degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington.

From Microsoft:

Microsoft is conducting a usability study to gain insight into what you would like to see in the next version of Active Directory Users and Computers and how this tool impacts your job function. We want to learn from you, the experts, to determine what needs to be improved in our software. This is a great opportunity for you to provide feedback and help ensure the features you want, make it into ADUC’s next version.

We are recruiting individuals who:

• Have experience working with Active Directory Users and Computers

• Are available for a 2 hour study session between July 28 to August 1, 2008

• Can make it to Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington

We highly value your feedback and will be offering you a gratuity option in appreciation of your time and participation.

If you are interested or know someone who might be interested in participating, please email us at itusable@microsoft.com with ADUC in the subject line.

Just wanted to drop a line for those who may not closely read the
meeting announcement, but we’ve been moved from our normal room 403 to
room 303. That should be just for this meeting.

–
Scott McDermott