kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

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IT is difficult

FYI:  I struggled with the title of this post for days.  No matter what I did, I felt like I was writing something a 14-year-old would do and laugh about.  Very sad.

I often start my work-related posts with a qualification that I fully realize the difficulties that face university Central IT.  I make my comments about technology in higher ed and my opinions about the best ways to implement such technology and policies purely as my own opinion, but also with respect to the hard work of my university colleagues.  My opinions might be contrary to not only the university’s actions but even to their policy (or maybe even to their way of thinking), but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect their efforts or the challenges that they face.

I’m taking this one step further – the university has been under tremendous fire for communication, governance, and policy issues with its “IS” department.  IS is made up of Central IT, Media Services (classrooms, media support, etc), and the library.  In reality, the problems and complaints have been mostly about Central IT, with a bit of bleed-over to Media Services.  Most importantly, this has come from all sides – the faculty, the staff, departments as a whole, an external committee, and even the national accreditation group used by the university.  This is a big deal, and my perception is that IT is under a lot of pressure right now.

Interestingly, a university faculty member wrote the entire staff mailing list (why just anyone is allowed to write to the list is a whole different discussion, though perhaps related to the fundamental message of this post) praising a presentation by three managers in IT at a symposium.  These three – one of them the director of IT – spoke of the difficulty of providing an enterprise level service at a university, the challenges that any large IT infrastructure presents, and the type of staff power (both quantity and quality) needed to provide services that many people take for granted.

The real issue, however, isn’t whether IT at a university (or anywhere, really) is hard.  It is.  Nor is it just that our IT department has provided sub-optimal services at times.  It has.  These are very black and white perspectives that ignore some fundamental, cultural issues.  And difficulty in provision is never, ever, an excuse for low quality of product.

For instance – the difficulty of setting up and maintaining a university infrastructure is unimpeachable.  But the methods through which one builds such a system, and the policies that govern the development and growth of such an environment, must be examined closely.  To simply say that “it’s hard – acknowledge that and we can all move on”  is a gross oversimplification, and an insult to those that try to provide high quality service in such a “difficult” environment.  The complaints expressed by many during the external committee’s “Open Forum” session were often far too vitriolic and ignored the effort needed to provide the services we had.  The e-mail sent to the staff, in turn, ignores that just because something is difficult doesn’t excuse those responsible from mistakes along the way or for not remedying those issues since their emergence.

For instance – from my outside perspective, I have no idea whether the topic of outsourcing of services – cloud, third party, whatever you want to call it – has been discussed properly.  I do not have any clue as to whether the General Counsel has put forth our official stance on having sensitive data on someone else’s servers.  I am fairly certain that a stringent review of our business processes, our personnel, and an evaluation of what we actually need so that we can find the best solution has not been conducted.  I am pretty sure that we’ll go to Google Apps for Education just because that’s what everyone else is doing.  But that’s still probably 20% guessing and another 20% educated conjecture.

Not even all the right people are included in the conversation.  Why am I not better informed of what is happening?  No, I’m not a vice president or provost at the university – I’m not even part of the central university.  But I am the head of technology (CIO, whatever) for the law school.  We are the only other 100% full tech shop on campus (everything but e-mail, ERP, and networking).  Why am I not at the table?  Why have my requests (yes, I have been proactive) to be included on whatever committees come up been met with silence?  I am at the point of leaving vague messages about “however I can help” and “just say the word” in an effort to be informed.  Whatever process they do have in place does not include looking for outside opinions, as far as I can tell, empirically.

This is just one example, but the fundamental issue is that there is a procedural gap, flaw, fault, undersea trench that no one seems to see whilst they are viewing only the extremes.  Doing IT at a university is hard.  But that means that it’s all the more important to be as smart, as considerate and thoughtful as possible.  That all options must be weighed and that things are done the right way.

digital immigrants and natives – 2 way street

Over the past…7 years, there has been much talk of “digital natives.”  Also known as Gen Y or the NetGen and broadly defined as those born after 1980 (though I like to think there are a few from, say, 1978 that, based on how that person was raised and interacted with technology, is more native than not), this generation has some pretty defined and different characteristics from previous ones.  Specifically, digital natives interact with technology not as tools, but as organic components of their daily lives.  24/7 access to data and media, constant connectivity, multitasking (a loaded term, I know), etc.  Completely different.

Gen Y would have entered college around 1998.  That’s a pretty big lag from around 2004 when I first heard the term coined at an Apple Executive Briefing on higher education, but there is always a gap between the arrival of a new “type” of student and shifts in pedagogy, curriculum, strategy, and perhaps even personnel in response.

I am purposely using quotes here and there because there is so much attention paid to how different digital natives are from their predecessors- Gen X or digital immigrants.  There is even sometimes fear about how to deal with such students, with terminology seemingly better suited to a safari trip than a web team meeting.

While at a dinner with friends of a friend the other night, all of whom were about 45 years of age, it occurred to me that the reverse is equally true – digital natives need to be considerate of their interactions and communications with digital immigrants.  If they are not, they will remain ignorant of some significant issues and may miscommunicate due to basic presumptions that can be easily dispelled.

(more…)

half-assed Google products

[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…)

the disappearance of the life of IT folks..or not

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

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.

stuck in an analog world

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.

everyone’s got it all figured out. so why do we still have problems?

[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




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…

ubiquitous computing: holy grail in reach

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.