Difference between revisions of "KWNPSA Past Events"

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Revision as of 20:49, 15 October 2017

(KWNPSA Upcoming Events)
(KWNPSA Past Events)
(KWNPSA Meeting Notes on one page)
(KWNPSA Requested Topics)

Previous meetings of the Non-Profit System Administrators group:

Project Management

Date
Monday, 18 September 2017 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/243066154/
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

What is Project Management? How do SysAdmins provide support to Project Managers? What kind of projects directly affect SysAdmins? Do Non-Profit SysAdmins manage projects? What tools are available for project management? What server-based software exists for project management? Who provides outsourced project management? What standards exist for project management? What certification?

Let's bring together SysAdmins and Project Managers to discuss the state of the art. As always, we'll have round table discussion to ask questions, provide expertise, and share stories of past experiences.

--Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré


Monetization

Date
Monday, 21 August 2017 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/241820045/ iCal
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

How can a Non-Profit organization raise money from their services? Can a Not-For-Profit organization make a profit? Why do some NonProfit organizations have separate corporate entities for fundraising and their core business? How do NonProfit SysAdmins manage crowdfunding? How does monetization affect NonProfit status? How does monetization affect legislation concerning mailing lists? What does the NonProfit SysAdmin need to know to enable monetization on the Internet? What software exists to enable monetization?

Join us to discuss these and other ideas for monetization.

--Marc Paré & Bob Jonkman


Mail Management

Date
Monday, 17 July 2017 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/240752492/
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

Is e-mail obsolete? If not, how can we provide e-mail services to our Non-profit organizations? Do we treat internal, staff e-mail differently from our clients' e-mail? How do we communicate with large groups? What mailing list services are there? Do we just give all our e-mail to Google and Microsoft? Maybe we can use the e-mail from our ISPs? They advertise "unlimited mailboxes", right? Do we run our own e-mail servers? But then, how do we deal with spam, blocklists, and e-mail providers that don't play fair? And, is it "E-mail" or "Email"?

KWNPSA is in the process of setting up our own e-mailing lists, and we have plenty of e-mail system administrators in the group. Looking forward to a lively Round Table discussion!

--Bob Jonkman & Marc Paré


Malware

Date
Monday, 12 June 2017 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/239940239/
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

Breaking News: Dozens of countries affected by ransomware cyberattack (CBC News, 12 May 2017)

Are you protected from malware? On your desktop computers? On your servers? Does your staff have malware protection at home? Is anti-virus software enough? What's "ransomware"? What's the difference between a virus, a trojan, and a phishing attack? Does it matter? How do you protect yourself from malware? What's the best way to react to a malware outbreak? How do you recover from a malware attack?

We'll share our experiences in a round table discussion, and perhaps have a guest from the industry to provide some of the answers.

--Marc Paré and Bob Jonkman


Offsite Hosting

Date
Monday, 8 May 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/237779027/
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

Where are your servers? Are you self-hosting? Have you thought about professional hosting? What services does a professional hosting service offer? Do you need shared hosting? Do you need a VPS? What's a VPS? What's a colocation site? How much will all this cost?

Come share your experiences with self-hosting, shared hosting, and VPSes. Bob and Marc have the questions, and special guest Mark Steffen from indieServe Networks will have the answers.

See you at the meeting!

--Bob Jonkman and Marc Paré


Blockchains

Date
Monday, 10 April 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/237778947/
Location
Communitech Jelly Bean Room 1st Floor, 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, Ontario Map

What's a blockchain? Is this all about math? How do I make Bitcoin payments? How can I receive Bitcoin donations on my Website? Are there other blockchain currencies? What services exist for blockchain currency exchange? Is blockchain technology good for more than just Bitcoin? What blockchain tools exist for Non-Profit organizations?

Marc and Bob ask the questions, and special guest Kris Stinson will be on hand to provide the answers!

See you at the meeting!

--Marc and Bob.


Branding

Date
Monday, 13 March 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/237778855/
Location
Steve Izma's house, 35 Locust Street, Kitchener, Ontario Map

What's your brand? Do you have a brand? How do you choose a brand? Is branding important for NonProfit organizations? What is the value of a good brand? What is the cost of a bad brand? Have you ever changed your branding? How much work was it for the SysAdmins? Did you have re-do the Web site? The e-mail addresses? Business cards? Letterhead? What legal considerations are there for choosing a brand?

Bob and Marc have the questions, together all of us have the answers.

See you at the meeting!

--Bob and Marc


Social Media

Date
Monday, 13 February 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/237362708/
Location
Queen Street Commons Cafe, 43 Queen Street South, Kitchener.
Across the street from our previous meeting place. Map

How can a Nonprofit organization make use of Social Media? Should a Nonprofit organization even use Social Media? What Social Media platform do you use? What sorts of things do you put on Social Media? Who puts it there? A team of SMEs? One person? Is this a full-time job? How much time does it take to maintain Social Media accounts for a Nonprofit organization? What will you do when your Social Media platform disappears? Or deletes your content? Or delivers your content to only a small set of viewers?


Estimating Time and Resources

Date
Monday, 16 January 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/234260371/
Meeting Notes
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/thread/50529155

In IT we are often asked to estimate the time and resources assorted tasks will take. Often these time/cost estimates are tied to funding, grants, and resource allocations. Unfortunately, many of us struggle at coming up with estimates more accurate than "it will take longer than expected". What are some strategies and best practices we can use to come up with better estimates? Under what circumstances does estimating things become easier? Harder? Under what conditions should we spend a lot of effort making estimates, and under what circumstances should we not?

When have you had good experiences making estimates? When have you struggled?

As always, bring your experiences and questions. Also, please spread the word about this meetup so that more people who do nonprofit systems administration will become aware of it.

Documenting Things

Date
Monday, 12 December 2016
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/234260323/

Much of our September meeting revolved around documentation. How do we ensure it gets written when there are so many other priorities? How is it maintained so it does not go out of date? How do we index it so that it is easy to find the information we need when we need it? What tools have we found most helpful in creating and maintaining documentation? What things are important to document, and what things can be skipped? As always, bring your experiences and questions.


Regulatory Compliance

Date
Monday, 14 November 2016
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/233388765/

Many non-profit organizations are involved in government-regulated services such as health care, employment acquisition and training. Other activities require adherence to other laws, such as building codes. How do you keep track of all the regulations that you need to follow? How do you store compliance documents such as sign-offs, NDAs, and contacts? What do you use for secure document storage and transmission? How do the SysAdmins get along with the Lawyers? When is encryption required? What do you encrypt and when?

Promoting Open Source

Date
Monday, 17 October 2016
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/233388573/

Many of us use Free and Open Source software (FLOSS) in our daily lives. But promoting the use of FLOSS within our organizations can be a challenge. What FLOSS does your organization use? How did this come to pass? What kinds of FLOSS is amenable to adoption by non-profit organizations? What is more challenging? What are some of the advantages/selling points you have found successful in promoting FLOSS in your organization? What have been been some of the disadvantages/challenges you have faced in promoting FLOSS?

As always, bring your experiences and questions. Let's use this group to support each other!

P.S. Did you know we post our meeting minutes? You can find them on the Meetup site here: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/


Smooth Succession

Date
Monday, 19 September 2016
Event Announcement
http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232556568/

Sooner or later, people move on. Sometimes they leave for greener pastures and sometimes they just leave. Sysadmins tend to have a lot knowledge about the systems they work with, and often their knowledge is in their heads and their heads alone. As responsible sysadmins, how do we transition out of our jobs without our organizations collapsing behind us? How do our replacements learn the institutional knowledge they need to keep things running? What best practices can we implement to document and share knowledge so that others know what is going on when we are hit by buses?


Financial Software

Monday, 15 August 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/232234165/

What kinds of financial software are appropriate for nonprofits? What does your organization use? What work is involved in supporting it?


The CLOUD

Monday, 11 July 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/228739922/

Every single meeting we mention "The Cloud" but it has never been a formal topic of discussion.

What do you trust on the cloud?

What do you not trust? Why?

How how the cloud made your life easier? How has it made it harder?

What criteria do you use when deciding to use cloud services?

Are there feasible alternatives to the cloud? What are their plusses and minuses?

Are IT admins who don't like the cloud dinosaurs who will be unemployed dinosaurs within a few months or years?


External Services and Consultants

Monday, 13 June 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669505/

What sources do you provide in-house? What do you outsource and why? Office 365? Web services? Email? Phone services? Other things? What are the pros and cons of hosting these services internally versus getting somebody else to do them? What factors do you consider when outsourcing a service?

How do you deal with people providing external IT services to your organization? How do you interact with consultants and other external service providers effectively?


Acquiring Hardware

Monday, 9 May 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669425/

Nonprofits tend to have different budget constraints than other organizations, and often different requirements. Let's talk about them.

What kinds of constraints do you deal with? What kinds of hardware do you purchase? How have those purchases changed with new technology (eg the Cloud?) Do you get equipment new? Used? Donated? What factors do you consider when getting new hardware? How long does hardware get used in your organization?


What should we celebrate?

Monday, 11 April 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669161/

As a counterpoint to last month's terrifying meeting, let's discuss the ways that system administration has gotten easier and more effective. We can share tools and techniques that have made a big difference in our systems administration practices, and talk about our glorious utopian future.


What should we fear?

Monday, 14 March 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669101/

Ransomware. Spear-phishing. Botnets. Dirty USB attacks. Protecting our users and data has always been scary, but things appear to be getting scarier. What threats do you worry about the most? How have you changed your approach to deal with them? What threats can we do something about? How do we deal with the threats that are beyond our control?

As always, we will be sharing experiences and stories.


Organizational Databases

Monday, 8 February 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669340/

Many organizations have internal data that they want to track. What tools do we use to store this data? Hateful Microsoft Access? MySQL? A web framework like Django? Complicated, brittle spreadsheets? Some cloud solution?

How do we migrate data from insane database systems to better ones? How do we back them up? What are some best practices to dealing with internal databases? What kinds of databases have you dealt with, and what approaches have worked for you?


Disaster Recovery

Monday, 11 January 2016
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/226669035/

Sometimes, disaster strikes: lightning, fire, floods or other traumas can wipe out our IT infrastructure. How can we protect against losing everything?

Have you put together disaster recovery plans? Have you conducted disaster recovery exercises? What things are most important to consider? What things are trickiest? What best practices have you learned? Bring your experiences and stories.


Collaborative editing tools

Monday, 14 December 2015
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/223909896/

how do people work together? How do you deal with privacy concerns? What tools work and what have problems?

  • OneNote
  • Etherpad and friends
  • WebEx


Out of band management

Monday, 9 November 2015
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/223909851/

how do you manage servers when the servers are not directly accessible?


Data migration

Monday, 19 October 2015
Note: October 12 is Thanksgiving, so we are deferring the meeting for a week.
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/223909871/
  • Migrating mail servers (different versions of Exchange, GroupWise -> Exchange)
  • Migrating Linux to Windows and vice versa
  • Migrating MS Office to LibreOffice


Backups

Monday, 21 September 2015
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/223908420/
  • How do you test your backups? Have you worked on disaster recovery?
  • How do you synchronize backups across locations?


All about VoIP

Keeping remote systems connected

Monday, 13 July 2015
Event Announcement: http://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/223189124/
  • This month we will be talking about how to deal with multiple locations within an organization. We will be discussing things like file sharing setups for more than one location, communications between locations, different router types for VPN and such, etc....
  • Multiple locations may mean more than one office building, or other situations like employees who work from home or other remote locations.


Keeping Computers Up To Date

Date
Monday, 8 June 2015 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Event Announcement 
Keeping Computers Up To Date/Meeting Announcement 2015-06-08
Location
The Working Centre, 58 Queen Street South, Kitchener Map

Updating Desktops

You thought it would never happen again, but we are in fact holding a second Nonprofit Sysadmin meeting this Monday, June 8. As we did introductions last month I tried to collect some themes as future discussion topics. Somewhat arbitrarily, I propose that Monday's meeting be about keeping systems (specifically desktops) up to date:

  • What tools do you use to keep desktops up to date? (Windows or Linux, or other)
  • What tools do you use for third party updates (Flash? Adobe Reader? Hateful Java?)
  • What tools do you use to monitor and ensure that updates are happening?
  • How do you prevent desktops from filling up with spyware and other nonsense?
  • For Windows people: what are you doing about the Windows 10 upgrade offer?

We will meet starting at 7pm at the main Working Centre building, 58 Queen Street South. Bill says that there is free parking kitty-corner from the Working Centre, on the other side of Charles.

If you know of interested sysadmins who might be interested in our conversation, please invite them to the meeting.

- Paul


Introductions and planning

Monday, 11 May 2015


(KWNPSA Upcoming Events)
(KWNPSA Past Events)
(KWNPSA Meeting Notes on one page)
(KWNPSA Requested Topics)
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