The purpose of UNYSAG, is to allow system administrators in the Upstate New York area (roughly centered on the NY Capital District area) a chance to meet on a somewhat regular basis to exchange information and socialize. Sys admins in this area tend to be spread out at a lot of different sites with very few other admins at any given site for peer support, mentoring and just questions and answers.
With UNYSAG, we hope to provide an informal support network for professional systems administrators, supply some faces to go with names seen on the net, bring in expert speakers on topics of common interest (information security, privacy requirements, IPv6, etc) and perhaps just have a bit of fun (where else can you tell a joke with the punchline "And then he compressed /vmunix").
One reason to get together, is to allow folks with common problems to share solutions. For UNYSAG, we are looking for people who administer Unix (and unix like) computer systems, generally on a large scale (multiple machines, multiple users, etc). Providing support for other people and for lots of machines often brings with it, a whole new set of problems and tools that a person running a single machine for themselves will not see.
Basically, UNYSAG is attempting to fill the role of a SAGE-Local group as defined by the Systems Administrators Guild (SAGE), which is part of the USENIX organization. USENIX is best know for the annual USENIX conference, and with SAGE, co sponsors the annual Large Scale Systems Administration (LISA) conference. One trend that many Unix administrators have seen, is a growing number of Windows/NT based servers and systems that need support. I would expect that UNYSAG will also be covering administration of NT servers and large numbers of NT workstations. This trend was strong enough at the past LISA conferences, that SAGE has started a second conference track for Large Installation System Administrations of Windows NT (LISA NT).
If you administer other kinds of systems (MVS, VMS, Novell, etc), we might not have as much to offer you. Some issues (privacy, security policies, computer crime, network configuration) will transcend operating systems and may be of interest. Others will not apply to you. You might want to have someone else in your organization join, or just get on the announcements mailing list.