kaiyen online

[NB - As I have been writing and editing this post, Google already updated their Docs application suite to make it a bit more functional.  I haven't done a lot of real-time editing with someone else so I don't know if it's any better, but the point is that this post might be irrelevant before I do eventually hit "publish."

There is also the chance that other items about which I complain will be addressed quickly.  Finally, this is all based on the premise that Google has done little to show true strategic planning from their somewhat haphazard roll-out of products.  Not everyone agrees with this view, and I know that.]

I’ve mentioned before that I think Google lacks strategic planning, and that their tactical moves suggest disorganization and or potentially fatal decentralization in pursuit of freedom to innovate.  First-to-market is an important achievement, and FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE that perhaps that is the one and only driving force behind the release timing of many Google products.  But let’s put that item aside for now.

With the release of Google Docs for Android, which makes their own (half-assed) product on their own operating system somewhat more usable, I thought I would take a moment to examine the number of products that the company has launched that have potential that has been too long in realization or that have just floundered about, without a clear path to success. (more…)

Use a cell phone supporting 3 way calling to record audio interviews « Moving at the Speed of Creativity.

I had never thought about using 3 way calling as a way of recording.  Fascinating.  Great example of rethinking how to use such a feature.

One of the most common “issues” and topics of discussion among IT professionals in higher ed is our potential obsolescence in the face of the changing student population, the infusion of uncontrolled media, and non-university solutions for connection – IM, Facebook, etc.

There are various articulations of this fear, but the gist is that because of all of these changes, the way we have always done IT will no longer be relevant, and we will lose our jobs.  Or, at the least, that we need to watch for and perhaps even fear these changes.

I am, as I begin this post, attending a keynote regarding the paradigm shift that social media, desktop servers, cloud computing, and other technologies present to (university) IT departments.

Let me rephrase that to work better for me:  the SUPPOSED paradigm shift…

As I often do, I must preface the rest of this post with a bit of a disclaimer.  The keynote is by Sheri Stahler,the Associate Vice President for Computer Services at Temple University.  She is clearly an intelligent person and I’m sure she’s a great VP and manager.  She certainly is a very affable and friendly person – at least she was when we ran into each other in the elevator at the hotel at which this conference is held.  This is not a criticism much less an attack on her in any way.  This is about the points being made.  These perceptions are not uncommon in higher ed (certainly evidenced by some of my fellow attendees that raise their hands to certain queries posed by Ms. Stahler) and that truly and deeply worries me.

Ms. Stahler’s points surrounded a supposed paradigm shift caused by web 2.0, 3.0 (2.0 + federated ID via Facebook Connect, etc), social media, and the changing perspectives of today’s students.  This shift jeopardizes the very jobs of IT staff in higher education.  Our methods are no longer effective, and our jobs are in danger.  This is a gross oversimplification, admittedly.

I had the pleasure of convening and attending a presentation by Dr. John Hoh, the Director of Information Technology Services at the Harrisburg campus of the Pennsylvania State University later this same day.  While it’s awfully difficult to describe the entire session, the gist is that one must look strategically and quite critically at one’s service portfolio, identify what are commodity services that can be outsourced, what are high-maintenance, low-value services that should be handled by only a small set of staff, and what is the “meat” of your overall services.  The stuff that you want to be good at, and that you want others to know about it.  Determining this requires a very forward-looking perspective on matters. As Dr. Hoh said, the goal is to become solution-providers, not break-fixers.

Being a solution provider means that one can identify issues, see trends as they emerge, and move to take advantage of those trends as appropriate.  If one is a solutions provider, then one’s job cannot be, by definition, in danger.  It is the very nature of one that needs to see emerging technologies not just for the dangers they pose to our existing duties but also for the opportunities they present that future-proofs such staff from becoming obsolete.

Even without taking Dr. Hoh’s aggressive, progressive stance, I would argue that we are all in the business of analyzing the eco-system that includes technology and higher education.  In the same way that we must now consider how to deal with the emergence (eruption?) of the tablet device or the commoditization of Help Desk services, IT departments had to previously examine the commoditization of personal computers and the emergence of computers as a part of everyday academic life and develop those very same Help Desk services.

In conclusion, we must look at ourselves as solutions providers, and ones that determine those solutions based on our ability to analyze changing scenarios.  We have never just been IT folks, and we certainly should never be people that focus on how the “way we’ve always done things” is or is not threatened by change.  Our jobs should be to analyze and change with new trends.  While our duties might change, our job does not.

BBC News – Cisco shuts down Flip video camera business.

This is quite saddening.  The Flip was a great idea and a great design.  Yes, other cameras with similar form factor surpassed it fairly early on in terms of features, but everyone still had the Flip.  We even use it for check out at work, since it’s just so darn easy to use.

That Cisco bought it as part of losing its way and then has to shut it down is upsetting.

Last week, during my budget meeting, I got to “see” a great tool that our finance officer had put together.  It was a spreadsheet, true, but anyone that has worked with really complex ones knows that a properly designed sheet that has every reference done just right and provides the right data is as valuable as the $10,000 server software running on the $15,000 server in the data center.

What was weird is that, after being told of this great file, I was given a paper copy of what it looks like.  I didn’t get to see any of its dynamic nature.  I didn’t get to punch in my numbers and see how my proposal and/or its variants affects other parts of the school.  I didn’t get to interact with it.  It was an inherently digital artifact in analog form.

This struck me as a classic misalignment of the traditional meeting room and the digital commons (or some small version of it).  Meeting rooms are about handing around stacks of paper, scribbling down notes, and then (hopefully) filing all that away in a place you can find later.

Working together in a digital commons is about interacting with files such as the one described, looking at different scenarios and sharing information via various collaboration tools (maybe I could import the data quickly via a cloud-based sharing tool.  Or have it already in that tool and available as part of the numerous other cloud-based budget folders shared to the finance officer).  Taking notes would be done on, say, a tablet, where one does direct, digital markup of the original proposal.

Everything stays digital.

Not every meeting should go this way.  But one that is based around a dynamic, digital file…that probably should.

[needs some editing, but something I want to get out]

I attended a rather interesting session today at the AJCU-CITM conference on the future of technology and how CIOs at today’s universities needed to respond. We had an article on Gartner’s Predictions for Technology Trends in 2011 addressing the “consumerization” of highly capable mobile technology necessitated a change in how we managed technology. The article itself deserves a long post itself, but the session was the interesting part.

In a room of CIOs at major universities, supposedly all facing tremendous challenges in managing tight budgets, administrative pressure, and creating productive teams that would change the nature of IT, everyone apparently had it all figured out.

“How many of you have Business Analysts in your group to examine processes?”  Lots of hands.

“How many of you have strategic plans that outline your organization’s goals?”  Lots of hands.

“Do any of you have dedicated project management offices?”  Lots of hands.

If, in fact, these are the elements for a successful IT shop, and one that increases the Information part of IT, why do schools still face such challenges?  If everyone has it all figured out, why do we even fact problems at all?  Why are we not already the most nimble, agile organizations that will take higher education technology into the next 15 years?

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have any of these answers.  After the session, I’m not sure whether I’m even doing my part in providing the right information to our students.  I’m not sure that we’re providing the right services to our community, and maybe whether I’m actually doing right by the students themselves.  I’m full of doubt.

But no one else in the room seemed to be.  Yet we all face these problems and no one is perfect.  So why did the conversation seem to repetitive?  And anti-climactic?

the curve of the baylands

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is the last, non-travel, just-because-I-like-photography photo I took. It’s from 2010, and last summer, at that. Almost 7 months ago.

It’s not particularly impressive, to be honest. I like the colors in it, but the curve of the water didn’t turn out the way I wanted and I’m not sure if I wanted a longer or wider lens. Just not quite right. But when shooting on 5×7 and you only have 1 lens you don’t have much choice or mobility.

My love of photography is just coming back now, but it’s been, figuratively and literally, a dark time for my hobby – my passion – for a while.

Maybe I’ll go back to the baylands and see if I can get this done better with different equipment…

About…6 years ago, we used to make fun of our bosses because he always talked about “ubiquitous computing.”  At the time, it was the catchphrase, and was thrown around like it meant something more than just this yet-to-be-realized utopian idea.

The idea that computing technology (define that as you wish, but I think most people will get within striking range of the same definition) would become so common that everyone had it everywhere was kind of the holy grail concept a while back.  It was logical – a generation of users that grew up with technology everywhere, devices getting smaller and more powerful by the day, and more and more connectivity as wireless networks popped up here and there.  But we weren’t there yet.  Phones were not yet smart, computers were still too slow, and the best we had was the few local wireless networks around.  Broadband cards weren’t even an option then (and the speed on those networks would have been unusable anyway).

We are almost there.  First, the iPhone got us 99% of the way.  Most people that know me would find it surprising that I’d give so much credit to an Apple product (I’m not against them, but I dislike the fanboy atmosphere that surrounds their products and the company).  But even if you look at Android phones, Symbian phones, WebOS devices…they all started from the iPhone.  An incredibly powerful device that also had an everyday purpose – cell phone – that made it simple, logical, and easy to always have around.  With faster network speeds, wifi options and increased competition, the features of smart phones in general have made it to the point where I do a lot of just plain web surfing on my phone.  Yes, I use the Google Reader to keep up with RSS feeds, and another app to find restaurants, etc, but sometimes I just do a google (voice) search and see what happens.  I use the phone like a computer.

Many would say that with these smart phones we’re already at the point of everywhere computing.  However, the last 1% that I leave out is a critical one.  How do we connect all of these devices and the content that they provide and, more important, that which we create, together into one big mesh that is our “work?”

Right now, I use dropbox.com and box.net to bring a lot of my stuff together.  I have the apps on my phone, the files on my computers and online.  I work on a file on my computer at my desk at home, email it to colleagues while on the train going to work from my phone, then open it up on my other computer at work to get more done.  My address book is all Google now.  I am thwarted in my efforts to keep my book up to date with work contacts (to keep it truly my “one” address book), but overall all of my contacts are there, in Google.  With the right software on the server side, I can now look at my work calendar and e-mail on my phone and any computer.  I can tie the calendar in with Google Calendars (kind of) and then view multiple calendars at once to know all of the things going on in my oh-so-busy-life.

As I look at students today, here at the law school, working with tablets and doing some really innovative stuff with organizing large amounts of data, part of me says “it’s really here!  now we have these ultra-portable, highly usable mobile devices!  ubiquity!”

But then I see someone e-mail a file to themselves so they can work on it later.  Or they have to refer to notes on the iPad while doing a full brief on the computer.  That is a massive disconnect, and one which we, as Technology staff in higher ed, must remedy.

Energy Drinks, Even Without Alcohol, May Pose Risks For Youngsters : Shots – Health Blog : NPR.

I was just wondering about this today.  I used some energy drinks when I was dealing with serious fatigue with my night MBA classes, but only then.  And I have constantly wondered about the long-term effects of that much B vitamin consumption.

The impact on children can only be more significant.  Good or bad, whichever side is right – that’s a lot of caffeine, B vitamins and, in many cases, just plain sugar being consumed.

The “Update” at the end is refreshing, by the way.  That the author has always intended this to be a “call for…communication” is more meaningful than the many diatribes out there.  The sides on this issue will argue emotionally, many times, but if this is a way of starting a dialogue, then I’m all for it.

The idea of online scholarship has come up quite a bit recently at work.  By this, I mean that part of a scholar’s work must, in today’s world, be done online, or at least exposed online.  So when you write an article, you tweet about it.  You have and maintain a blog in which you talk about your academic research and comment on events related to your field.  A scholar really cannot afford to keep his or her work entirely in the hardcopy domain, passively waiting to be discovered and recognized.

It is my job, similarly, to take time to put my thoughts and ideas online.  For me, topics would be educational technology, management in higher ed, and…lots of other things.  If there is a resolution I’m willing to make for this year, it is not just that I will blog more often, but that I will make it a point to blog as part of my job.  To be an active member of the online community on topics related to my job and my field.  Yes, it’s still passive in that people have to find my blog or see my tweets, but I am here, online, and just a quick search away on Google…