This past July, I gave my third-ever presentation at a large conference: "swiftDialog for Overworked MacAdmins," at the Penn State University MacAdmins Conference. It wasn't my first time: I also presented in 2024 at MacAdmins on the topic of Compliance, and at the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges as part of our security response team on a phishing response workflow.
I'm not a big name speaker. I'm not a well-known blogger, or tech writer, or popular person on Slack. I'm not on LinkedIn. I don't have any particular expertise, or much formal training. I'm not even a people-person. So what do I think I have to contribute to the community?
I think, like you, that I have a lot to offer. Let me tell you why.
If you're at all like me, and I think most IT admins are, we're just doing the best we can in often difficult circumstances: slim budgets, staffing issues, fractally-expanding scope of work. I don't know anyone who has enough time to do all the professional development work they think they need.
These conditions can either wear you down or they can build you up better -- well, okay, they can both wear you and build you up, and sometimes do it in the same day! But whatever happens, they do create experiences.
These experiences are both like and unlike everyone else's experiences.
And your experiences, if you've learned anything from them, are worth sharing.
Think about it. We're all dealing with the same issues: revolving-door patches, major upgrades, new hardware, old hardware, friendly users, demanding users, management pressures. The list goes on. We all have a unique mix of factors surrounding those issues. And somehow we all make our way through, either with our own effort and ingenuity, or with the support of teammates or the broader community.
We are resourceful.
We are action-oriented.
We are checking things off our to-do lists.
And . . .
How you solve an issue is valuable information to someone who is just as busy as you, but a few steps behind.
How you think of your problems and come up with solutions might be just the framing that someone who is struggling needs to hear, in order to jolt their brain into building their own solution.
And especially if you don't look like most other presenters, or you have a background that is different from the background we usually assume that presenters have, the simple fact of you walking us through a slide deck in front of a room of dozens, or even hundreds of people can provide a powerful example of the value of diversity of voices within the Mac admin community.
That's why I, an average overworked Mac admin, chooses to present at conferences. Why don't you join me?
