SysAdmin Day Australia Competition for 2013

For the 14th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day we asked SysAdmins around Australia to tell us about their greatest IT accomplishment in the past year. There were many honourable mentions but we could only choose one as our winner… so without further ado… congratulations go to Kyle Seton.

As our winner, Kyle has received a one year membership to SAGE-AU, a $40 ThinkGeek.com gift voucher, a Solarwinds prize pack, an official trophy + certificate from SysAdminDay.com.au, and most importantly the bragging rights to Australian SysAdmin of the year for 2013!

Thanks to everyone who submitted nominations, we had a great response, especially given that the competition is only in its first year. We’ll certainly be running this competition again next year.

Also a big thank you to our official supporters:
SAGE –AU
Solarwinds
SysAdminDay.com.au

Don't forget to have a read of the winning entry:

So Kyle, what was your greatest IT accomplishment in the past year?

That is an interesting question. To answer I will give you a little history… After graduating at the end of 2009 with a Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology, I applied and got turned down for network and systems management positions multiple times. Losing confidence in my skills I went in to a service desk role. After about 6 months on the service desk I was promoted into a 2nd-level desktop support role. This role was amazing for my social skills, getting to work with a variety of people from the facilities maintenance team to the CEO and executive staff on a very regular basis. With this interaction and using my spare time to tinker on my own personal projects I started to become a lot more confident in my ability. At the end of last year a position came up in my organisation as Unix System Administrator, which takes me back to the original question - What was your greatest IT accomplishment in the past year? This year I have become a Unix System Administrator and loved every second of it. In my role I have helped my team automate systems via puppet and helped to update our monitoring system. While these may seem like small tasks for other admins, I found them both fun and exciting. So in its simplest form, my greatest IT accomplishment in the past year is that I have finally started my dream career in IT.