40-minute Time Management Video
40 minutes of tips from Time Management for System Administrators can be viewed online for free. The video gives a good basic understanding of the kind of information you'll get in the book.
Tom @ PhillyLinux, Wed, Jan 4, 2006, Philly, PA
I'll be speaking at Philly Linux Users Group about Time Management for System Administrators on Wed, Jan 4, 2006 .
More info can be found here.
Tom @ BBLISA, Wed, Jan 11, 2006, Cambridge
I'll be speaking in Cambridge/Boston at Back Bay LISA about Time Management for System Administrators on Wed, January 11, 2006.
More info can be found here.
Tom @ BayLISA, Thu, Feb 23, 2006, Mt. View, CA
I'll be speaking in the SF Bay Area (Mountain View) about Time Management for System Administrators on Thu, Feburary 23, 2006.
More info can be found here.
Incident Command for IT: What We Can Learn from the Fire Department
At LISA2005 Brent Chapman gave an excellent talk "Incident Command for IT: What We Can Learn from the Fire Department". (Slides are webified here or download the PDF).
The ICS methodology has a lot of really good points to it. Adopting it for IT work should have a lot of benefits, not just in emergencies:
If you use it for "routine" and pre-planned events like moves, upgrades, and deployments, your team will be more comfortable using it for "surprise" events like outages and security incidents.Brent has more about LISA2005 in his blog entry.
SAGE/LOPSA Outstanding Achievement Award
Today at the Opening Plenary of the USENIX LISA2005 conference, Christine and I were presented the 2005 Outstanding Achievement Award for our book, The Practice of System and Network Administration. I accepted the award on Christine's behalf, as she is in Switzerland and couldn't attend the conference.
Here is the transcript of our acceptance speech:
Christine wishes she could be here, but this is a hectic time of year; all the aerodynamic components for next year's car have to be finalized very soon.
We do have three things we'd like to say.
First:
Christine and I thank you for this award. We are profoundly, profoundly humbled. Sociologists say that communities pass knowledge from generation to generation by telling their stories. We didn't set out to win an award. We just wanted to pass on our stories.Second:
The book emphasizes the importance of building repeatable processes. Thus, I'd like to explain my formula for success so that others can replicate it. First, be an average guy from New Joisey with an "pretty good" idea to fill a gap in the existing literature. Next, find a co-author that is immensely smarter than you, like Christine Hogan. Then, work with an editor that believes in your vision and promises to hold your hand through the long, dark, scary process of publishing a 700-page book. Someone like Karen Gettman at Addison-Wesley. Lastly, have a support network made up of friends, proofreaders, significant others, and other people that are the best.
Do these things and writing a book is easy.Third:
This book is a reflection of SAGE and LOPSA. We wrote what we know, and what we know we learned from people that are all members of SAGE/LOPSA. Every time I open the book, every time I turn the page, I am instantly reminded of the good lessons learned from a mentor, co-worker or friend. All of whom are part of SAGE and LOPSA. Thus, if this book is any kind of an outstanding achievement, it is simply because SAGE/LOPSA is an outstanding achievement.We look forward to the future of both organizations.
Thank you.
Watch my Time Management video for free on Google Video
Time Management on Google Video Friday is my birthday. Instead of asking for a gift, I'm giving one. For the last month I've been working to produce the following 45-minute video that highlights many of the techniques in the new O'Reilly book "Time Management for System Administrators".
