A Special Announcement, and a Special Thanks

On the occasion of Sabrina Coy’s departure from the Mac Admins Foundation Board of Directors, the Board offers its heartfelt appreciation for her outstanding service to the Mac Admins community in the founding and guidance of both the Mac Admins Slack and the Mac Admins Foundation.

Back in the day, Mac Admins kept in touch via a variety of social media and technology tools. Some of us relied on email, some on IRC, some used Twitter – it was common to introduce ourselves in person using names and Twitter handles. Conferences allowed us to meet face-to-face, and to begin professional relationships and personal friendships that would build careers and lives out of the challenges and absurdities of Managing Macs. But conferrences ended, shortening our conversations.

Such was the state of affairs in May 2015, when Sabrina Coy and a compatriot signed onto a new service called “Slack” and changed our Mac Admins world. Sabrina and her compatriot named the instance “Mac Admins” and started posting about it on Twitter. It wasn’t long before curiosity kicked in:

Bri Coy reacts to the first users joining the Mac Admins Slack in May 2015.

Two users turned into a dozen, a dozen turned into 50, and within weeks the Mac Admins Slack numbered nearly 100 users. During the 2015 summer conference session the numbers began climbing steadily, then rocketed upward, and by the time of our first analytics report in June of 2016, the number of active accounts in the instance exceeded 5,000.

Through it all – growth of the user base, creation of a Code of Conduct and admin team, promotion of the instance to include unlimited scrollback and history, and conflicts that inevitably occur in a growing community – Sabrina stayed in the middle of the fray, guiding the Slack’s growth and molding its values to embody community and inclusivity for all.

When it became clear that maintaining the Slack instance would require funding, Sabrina joined the ad hoc group that produced the Mac Admins Foundation, driving a plan to form a non-profit that would transform the Mac Admins Slack into a community that stands on its own, beholden only to itself, and which as of today boasts in excess of 65,000 accounts.

After more than 8 years of continuous work, Sabrina spent December and January handing over the keys to the Slack instance, and working with the Board to ensure that responsibility for the community would not remain with any single individual.

In summary, not only would this community not be what it is without Sabrina’s efforts, it simply would not exist. We can not thank her enough for what she has done, but we make it our mission to live up to her example.

On behalf of a grateful community: thank you, Sabrina, for everything.