Happy SysAdmin Day, everyone!
Where there’s IT, there are system administrators, or sysadmins. This Friday is a day to celebrate and thank those hard-working, often-underappreciated stalwarts. Yes, friends, Friday, July 27, is, according to the web site www.sysadminday.com, the 19th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day!
From Humble Origins to Worldwide Celebration
As Wikipedia explains, System Administrator Appreciation Day, a/k/a SysAdmin Day, Sysadmin Day, and Sysmas, was created by sysadmin Ted Kekatos, and first celebrated on the last Friday in July of 2000. “Kekatos was inspired to create the special day by a Hewlett-Packard magazine advertisement in which a system administrator is presented with flowers and fruit baskets by grateful coworkers as thanks for installing new printers. Kekatos had just installed several of the same model printer at his workplace.”
Inspired by Secretary’s Day (now known as Administrative Professionals’ Day), Kekatos turned an annual picnic held by the software company he worked for into the first System Administrator Appreciation Day. Today, it’s celebrated all over the world. In 2009, Russia Today reported some 3,000 celebrants gathered at a camp in central Russia. Friendly competitions included “keyboard and mouse-throwing” to “weightlifting with computer screens replacing the weights.” (Presumably old-style CRT screens; you younger laptop and tablet users can Google it.)
This year, a central gathering point in Russia is expected to be the city of Yekaterinburg, home of an outdoor sculpture of a giant computer keyboard. As The New York Times reported, “Locals affectionately call it Klava, the Russian version of Claudia, which itself is a shortened form of ‘klaviatura’ — the word for keyboard.” “Klava has seized the imagination of Yekaterinburg’s information technology community. Programmers and other tech specialists congregate here every year” to honor “system administrators and technical support personnel, a community that feels it does not get enough respect.”
Indeed.
The Japan-based “SysAdmin’s Group” also has numerous activities planned for what it calls “Thanksgiving Day for the System Administrator.” The group has held similar celebrations since 2008.
SysAdmin Appreciation Day: Don’t Miss the Free Swag!
The celebrations have already started online as well, many accompanied by pretty cool giveaways.
- The Spiceworks community is offering a free surprise gift every day this week. (A highlight so far: the infographic explaining how IT pros and users view the world so very differently. The good news: they agree about beer.)
- The good folks at Untangle are hosting a SysAdmin Day Treasure Hunt Sweepstakes. Five lucky winners will be chosen from among those who successfully complete the online treasure chest hunt. Each of those lucky five will receive a $100 Amazon gift card.
- For the truly dedicated hardcore sysadmins, Virima Technologies is offering its all-in-one Discovery and IT asset management (ITAM) solution absolutely free for 90 days, with no limitations or restrictions. A quick simple online registration form gets you the keys to Virima’s ITAM kingdom for three months.
A bit of online research will reveal numerous other discounts and giveaways associated with this special, special day. So, make sure your sysadmins are properly publicly appreciated on their designated day and beyond. Just don’t give all your sysadmins the entire day off, unless you’ve got skilled experienced back-up sysadmins who have secure reliable remote access to your environment in place. Because threats and problems don’t take holidays. That’s why when Spiceworks asked Ted Kekatos how he celebrates the holiday he created, he said, “I’m a working sysadmin, all I have time for is to go to Subway with my coworkers for lunch.”
