System Administrator Appreciation Day

System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as Sysadmin Day, SysAdminDay, is an annual event created by system administrator Ted Kekatos. The event exists to show appreciation for the work of sysadmins and other IT workers. It is celebrated on the last Friday in July.

System Administrator Appreciation Day
A cake celebrating System Administrator Appreciation Day with Tux the Linux penguin on the top
Observed byWorldwide
DateLast Friday in July
2019 dateJuly 26  (2019-07-26)
2020 dateJuly 31  (2020-07-31)
2021 dateJuly 30  (2021-07-30)
2022 dateJuly 29  (2022-07-29)
Related toDay of the Programmer

History

The first System Administrator Appreciation Day was celebrated on July 28, 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 co-workers as thanks for installing new printers. Kekatos had just installed several of the same model printer at his workplace.[1]

The official SysAdmin Day website includes many suggestions for the proper observation of the holiday. Most common is cake and ice cream. There are many international websites which celebrate the holiday.

Many geek and Internet culture businesses, such as O'Reilly Media, also honor the holiday with special product offerings and contests. Various filk songs have been written to commemorate the day.[2][3][4][5] The songs have reached a level of popularity where they are also covered by other performers.

Attempts to have Hallmark Cards recognize the holiday as a Hallmark Holiday have yet to be realized. Many e-card websites already have special SysAdminDay cards available.[6]

The holiday has been recognized and promoted by many IT professional organizations, the League of Professional System Administrators, SAGE/USENIX and SNIPhub.

Ekaterinburg Sysadmin Day near Keyboard Monument in 2011

"Sysadmin Day" in Russia

Since 2006, the All-Russia System Administrator Gathering is held annually near Kaluga city. In present times thousands of people come there from more than 150 cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.[7] There is also a separate event near Kaluga called LinuxFest which is held on the last Friday in July. There is also an alike regular event in Novosibirsk on the bank of Novosibirsk Reservoir.

Ekaterinburg technicians also celebrate the last July Friday. Before 2010 there were spontaneous gatherings, and since 2010 the event received official permission from Ekaterinburg authorities[8] to be annually held near famous Keyboard monument in the city centre with support from IT companies. There are "sysadmin competitions" between participants: they throw defunct PC mice to reach maximum distance and also throw such mice (with their "tails" cut out) within an empty distant computer case used as basket. Additionally, they powerlift a bundle of unused HDDs.[9] In 2016 during such an event a memorial plaque was set up at the monument to honor Eugene Zorin, the Ekaterinburg FidoNet organizer and Internet pioneer who died recently.[10]

gollark: I do not think altruism/"if no one does them they are not done" is a sufficient incentive to make people do necessary quantities of possibly-uninteresting work.
gollark: You need more formal systems to organize people at scale, and we need scale.
gollark: Many companies doing things will have more people than that in one department.
gollark: According to the widely shared arbitrary estimate of Dunbar's number you can have something like 150 close social connections. This is probably at least order-of-magnitude accurate.
gollark: I'm saying that I don't think you can operate them off altruism/social connections because they involve too much scale.

See also
  • World Information Society Day
  • Programmers' Day

References
  1. Nic (2011-07-28). "Interview with the founder of System Administrator Appreciation Day Ted Kekatos". Spiceworks. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  2. "Happy Sysadmin Day!". Archived from the original (Flash) on 2020-01-30. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  3. "UK Unix & Open Systems User Group: Happy SysAdmin Day". UKUUG. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  4. Sysadmin Appreciation Day 2012 Tribute on YouTube
  5. Always Near: A SysAdmin Day Musical on YouTube
  6. Hoyt, Elizabeth (2001-07-27). "System Administrator Appreciation Day". Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  7. "Geeks amassed". Russia Today. 2009-08-01. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  8. "В Екатеринбурге впервые официально отметят День системного администратора" [System Administrator Day will be officially celebrated in Yekaterinburg for the first time] (in Russian). 2010-07-29. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  9. "Cисадмины Екатеринбурга отмечали свой профессиональный праздник у памятника клавиатуре" [Yekaterinburg sysadmins celebrated their professional holiday at the keyboard monument]. Komsomolskaya Pravda. 2016-07-29. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  10. (in Russian) n:ru:Память уральского общественника Евгения Зорина увековечили на одной из клавиш Памятника клавиатуре [The memory of the Ural public figure Yevgeny Zorin was immortalized on one of the keys of the Keyboard Monument]
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