kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

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

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.

online scholarship

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…

it’s all in the words

I think that one’s choice of words can really say a lot about one’s perspective on many matters.  One can certainly read too much into words – trying to get tone and meaning out of an e-mail is an invitation to disaster and misinterpretation (today, I decided against sending an e-mail and opted for a phone call because I couldn’t find a way to write a response without sound cold…).

But choice of words can mean a lot.  A while ago, I was having a conversation about our respective departments and, therefore, staff.  It’s perhaps too subtle, but what I noticed was:

“they work for me.  they are supposed to do what I ask or tell them to do.”

“we work together to make our decisions happen.  if our actions deviate too far from the plan, I ‘correct’ things, but then we try and keep moving along.”

That’s a bit of an exaggeration on both examples.  But in both situations the staff do work for us, and they are responsible for making our plans happen.  And we are in charge of making those plans.  But the two descriptions couldn’t be more different in perspective.  And it’s probably safe to presume that there is an underlying, corresponding difference in approach to management.

Just some random thoughts.

an olive branch turned into stifled innovation

Disclaimer:  The Tech Steering Committee Innovation Grants offered by Santa Clara University are a terrific idea in support of those that have viable proposals to move teaching and learning forward.  Without these grants, many projects could not even get off the ground.  That these grants even exist at a smaller university is a testament to the commitment from the very highest levels of the university to innovative uses of technology in meaningful and hopefully important ways on education, learning, and university experience.

Having said that…a recent experience with the TSC grants has left a very bad taste in my mouth.  It seems contrary to the goals of the program, in fact.  It takes what was an olive branch offered in line with the very criteria for a proposal and turns things all around, potentially stifling innovation.

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Jerry Brown’s budget cuts deep, looks to extend tax hikes, reshapes government| PolitiCal | Los Angeles Times

Jerry Brown’s budget cuts deep, looks to extend tax hikes, reshapes government| PolitiCal | Los Angeles Times.

My first reaction to this is “what!  cuts again!  this is wrong, this cannot be tolerated this…etc.”

And fundamentally that is my reaction.  These budget cuts tend to hit education particularly hard (lobbyists just aren’t as strong, let’s face it), and it’s easy to say “well, if we increase ratio to 25 students to each teacher, that ripples through savings of X.”

But the state’s budget is a mess.  I honestly don’t know how any governor can do anything to improve the situation without screwing over just about everyone.  So many expensive budget items are not only in the budget, but are so entrenched that it’s impossible to get things changed.

And when it boils down to it, lobbyists come into play.

What was interesting was watching the nursing community put up such a huge fight when Whitman was running for governor against Brown.  My wife is a nurse and to see such a strong response makes me realize how weak of a position education really has.

false advertising and hiding the tracks

Usual disclaimer:  IT groups at any university are faced with a tough challenge.  Limited resources, usually not quite enough staff to manage too many enterprise-level type services, and a strong, legitimate desire to do things the right way that gets misread as slow response, lack of concern, and or a number of other negative opinions from constituents.  I don’t like saying this is a “thankless job” because it’s an overused term, but it really can be like that.  I’m sure that the various folks indicated and implicated in this post are doing their best – I know that they are.  And I know that they could probably write posts about me that are similar, too.

Having said that…there have now been 2 instances of what I consider to be false advertising followed by an attempt to hide the tracks leading to those inaccuracies that truly, deeply frustrate me. At the very least, there is a lot of spin going on.  Yes, I know these are strong words. (more…)

management and innovation

A while ago, I posted about how hard it is to be a manager.  It was a kind of introspective, philosophical post rather than an in-depth analysis of management.  I was doing an off-the-cuff look at the conflict between being a manager and a leader.  The two are different, but unless you happen to have an administrative manager and a…leader manager, you often have to be both.  Someone took it rather personally, though.  The specific comment was:

“Since when did managers “lead”? Their job appears to be to punish creativity.”

This was an incredibly harsh reaction to my post, though I think more indicative of the contributor’s experiences than the content of my post, to be honest.  But it does get at a very key thing – if the key responsibility of a manager is to control resources, doesn’t that stifle creativity to some extent?  How much freedom can a manager provide when that person is looking at whether we can afford this, or whether this falls within a certain policy, etc?  Managers tend to look at boundaries – it’s an inherent part of the job.

However, it need not be the ruling philosophy, and I am actually quite opposed to an approach that looks at limits rather than opportunities.  I think that if one looks only at the boundaries and thinks first about policy then there is less rather than more organization, and certainly less creativity.  So I do not at all agree with the comment quoted above – I do think it’s possible to be a manager, and encourage creativity.

I don’t quite formalize things like Google does, where employees are asked to spend a certain amount of time each week thinking of “new ideas,” but I do put the responsibility of thinking of new concepts or new ways of doing things on the staff in my department.  I want to be able to trust them not only to do their jobs, but to approach those jobs with an eye towards thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and creativeness.  So I want everyone to think about what is being done, whether all the bases have been covered (documentation, informing people, etc – yes, this can create more structure than allow creativity), but then to ask “is this the best way?”

Even if it seems to be the only clear method, I encourage staff to then posit “there is another way.  What is it, and is it better?”  I hope that they will come to me with those ideas.  Yes, I will have to think about costs, because we don’t have an unlimited budget.  But I also budget each year for “random things we’ll try because they are cool,” and I hope that staff will take advantage of that.

Management need not stifle creativity.  Management should, in fact, encourage it.  Maybe crossing the line to leadership is another whole ball of beans (messier than just a can of beans, no?), but at the very least a good manager should leave room for creativity.

My biggest fear, by the way, as I write this is that someone that knows me and my management style will read this and immediately think “Allan doesn’t manage like that at all.  He’s a dictator and control-freak, not one that encourages creative thinking.”  I try not to think about that.

really, I do want to know more about you

Last weekend was my 10 year college reunion.  I have to admit – I was really nervous leading up to the weekend.  A little, utterly irrational part of me kept thinking something along the lines of:

  • I’ve never left the bay area
  • I don’t work at a start up or one of the “flashy” name companies (Apple, Google, etc)
  • I still work in higher ed (nothing wrong with that unto itself, but it’s what I’ve always done)

Along with these admittedly illogical concerns, reunions are always stressful events.  You always feel like you’re being judged and compare yourself with what others have done.  Who has advanced degrees, what kinds, who is doing what kind of work, and how I stack up under a variety of rubrics.  It’s almost like college football rankings – one poll has me ranked “85th,” another says I’m “193rd” and somehow I’m not even on the board on a third.

Now that I’ve gotten that self-esteem stuff out of the way, what was perhaps the most surprising aspect of reconnecting with classmates was that almost everyone was surprised that I honestly, truly wanted to know how and what they were doing.  If someone was a lawyer, I was curious about what kind of law he or she was practicing.  If working at a financial firm (Fidelity, etc), I was curious if he or she was managing a fund to some extent, doing analysis, or something in between.  I don’t know much about financial companies such as that and I want to know more.

People were truly surprised that I wanted to know things to that level of detail.  That I truly, honestly wanted to know, and enjoyed discovering that I went to school with someone that is now with the US District Attorney’s Office in New York, or that one of my freshman dorm mates is now working as a writer on his second television show.  I feel enriched having had a conversation with someone that graduated from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and has gone onto work in the health care industry and had a different take on the whole debate (sidebar:  quick shout out to another friend that went to Booth, who should already know that I value that friendship).

What was interesting was that, after I poked a hole through that superficial layer of small talk and made it clear that I was truly interested, the person on the other end became interested in what I did, too.  And it felt good when I was asked about what kind of technology I was trying to implement at the law school (especially since it seemed about half of my entire class are now lawyers).  Or about how I really felt that business processes were important to academia – these were fellow former students, after all, reunited at the campus where we shared classrooms and listened to professors.

Maybe I’m not so boring after all.  I know for sure that I have some truly fascinating former classmates and dorm mates from college.

EDUCAUSE_HULK SMASHES twitter

A superhero touched down at the Educause Annual Conference last week in Anaheim.  Experiences were changed, Twitter was twisted, and everyone was asking…

“Who is Educause_Hulk????’

At this year’s Educause Annual Conference, held last week in Anaheim, I got to witness something that, realistically, doesn’t happen all that often anymore.  I got to see an existing social networking tool get twisted and used in a new way.  I got to witness the impact of Twitter, twisted.

It is true that a great many tools – social networking and media ones in particular – are used in new, creative ways every day.  Discovering new ways to use a tool such as Twitter is so common that calling it “reinvention” is almost inappropriate.  It’s almost commonplace.  So this isn’t new in the big sense, but within the particular context of the conference and how Twitter has been used therein, something quite remarkable happened.

Twitter has been used at conferences for quite some time, as both a great way to set up social activities (“hey!  I’m here, who wants to get some food?” or “Let’s have a tweet-up!”) and to share information (“in a great session about topic X where such and such is said”).  Of course, the use of a hash tag is required to organize all of this data, and an easy-to-read interface like that of Tweetdeck makes for a very powerful tool for communication.  If you take a look at the Educause 2010 stream, you see it is littered with all kinds of posts.  I think the first time Twitter was used so heavily at an Educause event was about 3 years ago at ELI, and it has just blossomed (exploded?) since then.

This past conference, however, saw a new twist.  An attendee created an “alter ego” – EDUCAUSE_HULK – and posted on a semi-regular basis as that persona throughout the conference.  This had a huge impact, at least for me, on the overall experience, and it raised a number of questions for the person behind the Hulk, too.

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