SAGE (organization)

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SAGE is The USENIX Special Interest Group for Sysadmins, an international nonprofit professional association of system administrators.

SAGE describes themselves this way:

"It 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."[1]

Until November 2003, SAGE was known as the System Administrators Guild.

[edit] Spinoff

In June 2004, SAGE was dissolved as a Special Technical Group to prepare for a spin-off from its parent organization, USENIX. On October 27, 2005, the USENIX Board, by a 4-4 vote, failed to approve a motion to progress the separation of SAGE from USENIX, declaring instead that SAGE is better as a suborganization.

Without any representative body or voting rights in USENIX, it has been claimed by some current and former members that SAGE no longer exists as an organization. Some prominent members have transitioned to a new group, the League of Professional System Administrators (or LOPSA), that was created to fulfill the role an independent SAGE would have filled had it been independent.

[edit] Major activities

Co-sponsors (with USENIX) the annual system administration conference, LISA.
Hosts several technical and professional mailing lists and a discussion website called SAGEwire.
Produces a regular email compilation of system administration-related news articles called SAGEnews.
Compiles an annual salary survey of system administrators' salaries keyed to many variables.
Publishes a series of short topics booklets in the field of system administration.
Establish and promotes a code of ethics for system administrators.
Produced a professional certification called cSAGE, and a future one to be called mSAGE.