LOPSA-NJ’s PICC

I'm at LOPSA-NJ’s PICC conference in sunny New Brunswick, NJ. I've taken Matt Simmons' challenge to blog about the conference (and restart this long neglected blog).The first session I'm attending is Tom Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrator's - A New Approach. This talk was a whirlwind tour of his classic book Time Management for System Administrators but slightly rearrange, redone and updated.

This was the first time I was able to hear Tom speak formally. I was especially looking forward to this talk since it is based upon the book that radically changed my outlook on doing my job. It was everything I was expecting and more. Sometimes, a refresher course in a subject that you're familiar with can change your way of thinking. A couple of tips that I picked up were:

• Keep a single calendar with your work and personal events. And, be sure to write everything down.
• A reminder that I have to find a todo list manager or GTD app for my new Droid Incredible. Since the Android platform is a competitor to the iPhone, I don't see Apple supporting syncing to the phone in the near future. (More on the phone in a later post.)
• Go over your notes at the end of the day and move incomplete tasks to the next day (or even further out).
• Remind my co-workers about the 30 minute rule.
• Tom mentioned that he keeps a lab notebook. I tend to keep everything on one pad and things can sometimes get lost.
• An interesting idea was to put contact information for the helpdesk onto the desktop wallpaper. I'll have to play around with this.
  

The second session was also hosted by Tom Limoncelli. This one was titled: Help, Everyone hates our IT Department. This was sort of an extension of the first session. The key bullet points for me were:

• How do users get help? And, do they know who to call and when.
• Has the scope of support been clearly defined?
• What is the definition of an Emergency?

The major takeaway that I had from this session was: If you can manage expectations and communications, it will help to manage the perception of the IT department. (I will probably revise this statement later, after I've had a chance to think about it.)

The evening ended with a talk by David Blank-Edelman - Through the Lens Geeky: How SysAdmins are Portrayed in Pop Culture. His presentation showed several film clips portraying SysAdmins from the 50's through recent films. The good, the bad, the unrealistic (of both sides) were shown.

During the second session I texted one of my friends the title of the session I was in. Her response was : Everyone doesn't hate the IT department, they just misunderstand you. Both Tom's and David's presentations drove this point home. When I get back, I'll be musing over this. How do I change perception? How can we (better) publicize what we do?