Refocusing the LISA Community

For 24 years, the LISA Special Interest Group for Sysadmins (LISA SIG, formerly known as SAGE) has been a resource and virtual meeting ground for the sysadmin community at USENIX. Despite its sometimes tumultuous history, dedicated members have provided content for Short Topics books, shared insight with colleagues via mailing lists, and helped advance the state of the profession via the creation of the System Administrators' Code of Ethics, contributions to salary surveys, postings to colleagues via the Jobs Board, and nominations for the Outstanding Achievement Award.

With full recognition of this history and value of the LISA SIG, USENIX has made the decision to retire it at the end of 2016. In recent years, our efforts to serve the sysadmin community have focused on reengineering and revitalizing the annual LISA conference to ensure its relevance and long-term sustainability, as well as creating and nurturing SREcon for the emerging, related field of site reliability engineering. These ongoing efforts have been successful and well received by the community, so this is where we are going to focus our energies to help support the sysadmin community.

The USENIX Board of Directors and staff did not make this decision lightly. To inform our deliberation, we convened a committee comprised of community members to explore the possible future paths of the SIG. The committee surveyed SIG members, analyzed the results, and presented their recommendations to us. After weighing all the factors, we determined that the best path forward is to continue building community through the LISA conference itself.

LISA SIG resources, including the Short Topics books and Code of Ethics, will continue to be available on the USENIX Web site. All active memberships will continue to receive the current slate of benefits, including the LISA conference discount, through the end of the year.

We look forward to continuing to serve this community that continues to be an integral part of USENIX and hope to see you at LISA16 in Boston, December 4-9, 2016.

Casey Henderson
Executive Director, USENIX Association

For more information, see the LISA SIG FAQ.