On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Tom Perrine <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Mark McCullough <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 2011 Jan 08, at 15:09, David R. Linn wrote: >> >>> Pesonally, I find it far more difficult to explanation what a system >>> administrator is than what a league of such professionals is. >> >> "I keep big computers working. Not your desktops that you would use at >> home, but the kind of systems that would be used to generate your bills, or >> take your orders, or run the web pages you go to." > > Think about the Internet. Then think about the people who make it > work. They are system administrators, network administrators, etc.
For a lot of people who don't already know about servers, the people who "make the Internet work" are the cable and telco guys who show up at your door with a butt set and a clipboard. "Did you bring me the Internet? Mine's broken." I like the direct example method for explaining to less technical people. Mark's example is good. I've used this one before: "You know when you go to amazon.com, you search for things, and you buy things? There are lots of computers running the web site, the search functions, and the ordering and fulfillment. I keep that sort of computers running." My first job out of college was a bit more concrete--deploying point of sale computers for pizza restaurants in the midwest. That's a very specific example that most people (even midwestern vegetarians, all six of them) have no problem understanding on a sufficient level. It's a simple network with multiple "workstations" that most people have seen in some form or another. Throw in web-ordering, or even text ordering (mmm, five guys) and it's a very concise example. Rob -- - Robert Novak - [email protected] - "And when somebody knows you well Well, there's no comfort like that And when somebody needs you Well, there's no drug like that" -- heather nova 12 11 0 1 6 7 8 9 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
