Mac Admins Mentorship program call for volunteers

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We’re excited to announce the kick-off for planning and the formation of a working group to build a Mac Admins Mentorship program!

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

The goal for the mentorship program is to create a community-driven program that is able to meet as many of the Mac Admins community mentorship needs as possible. To help us get this program off the ground, we need volunteers who are able to dedicate time to being on the working group, and to help get the first iteration of the program ready to help our community.

The Mac Admins Foundation will be providing support for the program, but it will be shaped initially by the working group of volunteers and then by the feedback from the wider community.

📣 Call to action 📣

If you have experience creating a mentorship program, being a mentor, or some other skills you think may be valuable to the working group, please get in touch with us by filling out this Google Form. To participate please submit your information no later than August 31st, 2022.

The Mac Admins Foundation Store 2.0

You asked, and we’ve answered: the Mac Admins Foundation Store is back and bigger than ever. We’ve relaunched our shop on Bonfire with a wider selection of items, and quite a few of them are based on your feedback!

First things first, we’ve relaunched the popular designs from our first campaign that many of you have written in about to make available again. This includes the knockout logo, the horizontal two-tone logo, and two-tone mug. We’ve added new options for these, including a women’s v-neck top and crewneck sweatshirts.

Next up, and what we’re particularly excited about, are all the brand new items we’ve added! We worked with our fantastic logo designer Molly Eckard to come up with some options that we think will look great printed on shirts and other items.

Many of you asked “where is the full-color logo?” Fair question! We didn’t include one to start because we weren’t confident that a direct-to-garment (DTG) printing process would translate the colorful gradient in the logo into a design that would come out well on fabric. But you all kept asking so we got some test prints made and put together a selection of items that we think will work best with the full color gradient logo.

The rainbow gradient logo collection includes logo tops, kids and baby wearables, a stainless-steel travel mug, a stainless-steel water bottle, and a hardcover journal. For the wearable items with this logo, note that the direct-to-garment print isn’t quite as bright and defined on the fabric as a traditional screen printed option would be (like our earlier items). But we’ve found that the prints still look great, are very wearable, and wash well. I (Emily) absolute love the logo on a crewneck sweatshirt (size up for extra cozy factor).

We also came up with a logo option that does work with traditional screen printing that we’re calling a color-block logo. This option is great if you prefer a traditional screen printed look but want a more colorful logo option.

Quite a few of you asked about hats or other accessories, so we took our knockout logo and added it to some great new items like baseball hats, can holders, and beanies.

And last but not least… an option that isn’t just something with our logo blasted on it (as much as we love doing that).

If you know, you know. And don’t worry, the Mac Admins Foundation logo is on the back of the shirt for anyone that doesn’t get it.

The support we’ve gotten with our merch options in our last campaign have been truly instrumental for the Mac Admins Foundation and is helping us pay for things like operational costs that are critical to supporting the programs we’re building (like the training scholarships, which we’ll have an update on very soon!).

But before I ask you all to run to the store to buy new merch, I’ll cover a few things of note:

  • Why are the shirts more expensive this time around?
    Yes, the base t-shirt has gone up two dollars ($2). Why? We wanted to add women’s cut options but the lowest amount we could charge for those was $27. Rather than making those people pay a $2 tax for a women’s cut shirt we decided to make the base t-shirt cost the same for everyone.

  • What about work attire (button-ups, polo shirts) and stickers?
    We really want to offer options like button-ups, polos, and stickers, but Bonfire doesn’t currently offer those in their catalog. We don’t currently have a place to do warehousing, or any personnel to handle order fulfillment and shipping, to make those options possible yet. We’ll get there! Stickers are something we really want to make available and we’re working on logistics for that.

  • How long does it take items I order to ship?
    Campaigns run for 15 days so that Bonfire can produce everything in batches to cut costs and maximize fundraising! Each item page outlines when orders are anticipated to ship and your account on the Bonfire site will show information on tracking once it’s available.

As a thank you to everyone that has ordered so far, and expressed interest in new items for the shop, take 10% off eligible items on orders placed through August 15th, 2022 with promo code THANKS10.

Y’all are the best and we love you. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall on the work happening behind the scenes and please tag us when you get your swag! We love to see it!

Mac Admins Foundation on Command Control Power →

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Congrats to the Mac Admins Foundation on their successful launch!

We were honored to be joined by several board members of the Mac Admins Foundation including returning guests Tom Bridge and Rich Trouton, and new voice Chris Dawe.

The Mac Admins Slack workspace currently serves almost 50,000 members, with approximately 5,000 monthly active members. Beyond providing for the use of community tools like the Mac Admins Slack workspace, the mission of the Mac Admins Foundation is to foster connections, share and preserve knowledge, protect the the independence of the community, and maintain broad accessibility to all community resources.

TOM BRIDGE, CO-CHAIR

Tom Bridge is the Principal Product Manager for Apple Technologies at JumpCloud. He is also the producer of the Mac Admins Podcast. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Tiffany, their son Charlie, and large cat, Macro. Prior to joining JumpCloud, he was a partner at Technolutionary LLC, where he managed IT operations for more than 60 Mac-focused businesses, including the 9:30 Club, Arcadia, Navanti Group, and more.

RICH TROUTON, TREASURER

Rich Trouton has been doing Macintosh system and server administration for over twenty years and has supported Macs in a number of different environments, including university, government, medical research, advertising and enterprise software development. His current position is at SAP, where he works with the rest of the Apple@SAP team to support SAP's Apple community. Rich has also written for Peachpit, Apress and MacTech Magazine on various ways to manage Apple devices.

CHRIS DAWE, SECRETARY

Chris Dawe is a consultant specializing in Apple technologies and networking. A partner in Seattle-area consultancy Wheelwrights, Chris manages systems for a variety of businesses, speaks regularly on industry topics such as Wi-Fi and IT management, and helps lead the Shadowy Cabal running the regional meetup group Apple Admins of Seattle and the Great Northwest.

SUPPORT CMD CTRL PWR

Command Control Power has reached our 9th anniversary! We have been recording new episodes every week since June of 2013. We are very appreciative of our Patrons and over the next month or so, we are going to do something a little different to show our appreciation.

We will be airing new shows every week on the private Patreon feed. On the public show we will re-air a classic episode from our catalog of almost 500 episodes, along with the occasional new show. Become a Patron today for access to the freshest content, get a peek behind the scenes, and more candid conversations about running our businesses, dealing with clients and fixing tough technical issues.

New on the Mac Admins Slack: Topic Helper

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With so many channels (#too-many-channels) sometimes it’s tough to tell exactly where the right place is to post a question or share some information. To help direct Slack team members to channels that better suit certain posts or topics we’ve added a new Workflow Builder called “Topic Helper.”

So what is the Mac Admins Slack Topic Helper?

We’re big fans of emoji reactions (or reacjis), which are the emojis that can be used in Slack to provide reactions to individual posts.

Example of a post in Slack with emoji reactions (reacjis).

Workflow Builder has automation available to take an action when a specific reacji is used on a post in a specific channel. The Mac Admins Slack has a few channels that have been curated into places for sharing one specific type of information, but sometimes other posts come into the channel that aren’t topical or are better suited for another location. Now when that happens we have a template in place to make a new Workflow Builder to let that person know they should move the post to another channel.

One example of this is our #jobs-board channel. The channel has grown over time to be a place where folks looking for new roles go to see what’s available on the job market. (It’s also helpful for hiring managers and recruiters to specifically find Mac Admins!) Many job-seekers set up alerts for any new post in the #jobs-board channel to help with their job search. Sometimes a general post or question comes into the channel that disrupts the notification scheme set up by folks actively looking for new roles. There is another channel for general job/career conversation called #jobs-chat, and many of the Slack members step in to moderate and suggest the conversation move to that other channel. Now they can simply reacji with 🚚 (:move-it:) and an automated reply will appear, threaded to the original post.

Workflow Builder is currently limited to the admin group in the Mac Admins Slack, but we’re happy to work with you and find a solution for another channel where a Topic Helper would help keep things… on topic. To ask more about this feature or work with the admins on making one for another channel please ask in the #ask-about-this-slack channel.