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Jul102010

Where’s Kevin

Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 11:54PM

It has been a while since my last post so I wanted to bring everyone up to speed and share my thoughts with you.

Back in May I started an online MBA program at the University of Phoenix and that has kept me extremely busy. I was looking at different programs and also considered the online program at Northeastern University however the combination of cost, tuition reimbursement, timing and the ability to flexibly schedule classes led me to the University of Phoenix. Each class is six weeks long and they cram a lot of reading and writing into each week. I have been averaging at least two hours a day and maybe taking one day off a week. That said, I am really glad that I started this and feel great about it. I am already half way thru my second class and will be taking 6 weeks off in starting in August.

The second bit of news is the fact that we had a layoff and reorganization at work. My job title has changed from a Team Leader of Infrastructure Services to Team Leader of Enterprise Application Administrators. Along with the title change I lost responsibility for the three DBA’s that were in my group but two additional administrators where added to my group. That was a sad day as we had a great group. Luckly, no one in my group was laid off instead the dba’s were reassigned to a larger group of database administrators. The good news is that my focus is much broader than before as I was focused on delivery of applications to the Student Services group, however now my focus is much broader and includes all departments supported by the largest IT group at MIT called IS&T. My struggle up to this point has been with time and priorities as I was given responsibility for five new projects that I new nothing about, but we are coming up to speed quickly and overall it has been a positive experience consuming all of my time and energy during the day.

During this time I have had little input to Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Identi.ca and blogging but at the same time I have shifted my viewpoints on a couple of technology related topics. I have moved away from the term Enterprise 2.0 and question the value of the term but not the E2.0 tooling. With my recent exposure to management theories and strategies, I like to idea of Empowerment and taking the collaborative tools identified in the E2.0 movement and using these tools to empower employees with better data and flexible tools to improve communication, collaboration and decision making.

In the limited time that I have to stay current and read blogs, twitter, buzz and facebook I have found a new passion in two different areas. The first is the semantic web or moving data in machine readable form onto the web for use by others. This is the theory behind Tim Berners-Lee’s premise of Linked Data but it is a theory that I buy into. We are shifting from a web of browsing pictures, email and video to a web of data, and having the ability to pull in real time non-confidential data programmatically will power the next phase of the web.

My second shift in passion has been around the area know as devops or webops, where you take the automated processes associated with building and delivering applications and you introduce the same process methodologies into the operations function. Basically you introduce automation and configuration management into your monitoring infrastructure to streamline the build and deploy process. But this is not restricted to just applications instead it also includes the management and deployment of infrastructure to meet the needs of the organization. To learn more about the devops process, follow John M Willis and Damon Edwards blog and podcast at dev2ops.org.

Technorati Tags: UOP,devops,semantic web

Kevin |

Develop a Strategy for Improved Collaboration

Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:01PM

I recently participated in a planning process designed to gather information from all levels of the organization with the intent of identifying what is working and what is not working. There was a lot of positive feedback but also a lot of negative feedback. Improving communications and collaboration were common themes across all organizational units, and improving collaboration is a frequent request from our business units. But improving communications and collaboration were just two of many areas which need improvement, and with our strict budget requirements and the struggling economy we need to take a look at all issues, prioritize our most urgent needs and identify a strategy to deal with everything else. Unfortunately, improving collaboration falls into that second category, so I thought I would share my thoughts around how we all could improve collaboration.

I see collaboration as the overlooked component of everyone's job. It is often in everyone’s job description however because it is a component of our job and usually not the end result of our job it can be easily overlooked, especially if we manage to deliver on our requirements without sharing or collaborating along the way. Some people are good at this and go out of their way to avoid sharing and collaboration, however I disagree with this strategy, call it out when I see it, and try to set an example by being open and transparent to all. I believe that improved collaboration leads to increased productivity and innovation, and by sharing what you do with others, helps others in the long run.

As a manager you should be encouraging your team to share and discuss projects, tasks and assignments and you need to make sure that every business process has multiple support resources and ensure that no one person is an island. Also, managers are not the only ones responsible for collaboration, everyone is. If you are looking for a way to improve what you do, or if you are looking for a strategy to help you stand out from your peers, consider sharing and collaborating more than you do now.

There are many ways of improving collaboration like actively maintain a wiki presence and always looking for ways of sharing your efforts with others. There are many Enterprise Social Computing tools available today that claim to improve collaboration, however we need more than just tools. If the promise of improved collaboration is improved productivity, then we should look at the areas in our organization that could use improvement and develop a strategy to integrate these new tools into our business processes and require that everyone associated with that business process use these tools.

But, that is a tall order as most business processes could be improved however making a change to the business process requires time, effort and acceptance from the business community. Also, changing a business process could impact your bottom line, therefore many organizations prefer to stick with the current business process in spite of it’s deficiencies as opposed to taking a risk on a new business process.

That is why it is beneficial for large organizations to develop a strategy surrounding collaborative tools and Enterprise Social Computing strategies. Developing an Enterprise Social Computing strategy will help you to identify the tools that will work best in your organization and will help you to better outline productivity gains and cost savings.

Improving collaboration and productivity has been in our job descriptions for many years, however now we have some tools to help us along the way. Our challenge is identifying the tools that best fit our organization and justifying the use of these tools to fit our business cases.

Kevin |

1 Comment |

Social,

Tech,

Web

Sunday

Mar212010

Google Buzz

Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 12:00PM

Have you tried Google Buzz yet? I have and I like it a lot. It has many of the discussion and “follow” like features of Twitter, however unlike Twitter, you can see both sides of the conversation. Also, after using it for about two weeks there appears to be more technical content, links and discussions and fewer posts about going to lunch or what you had for dinner.

Granted, I follow a lot of tech folks so it’s not surprising that I would see a lot of tech content, however this appears to be an easier solution than Twitter, Identi.ca or RSS for searching and for following what others say about a post or topic. It takes the discovery and follow aspects of Micro blogging and the full commenting aspects or regular blogging and combines this into one solution.

Another nice feature of Buzz is the ability to mute a buzz or post which I have found this useful especially when I am not interesting in a topic but others are and there is a lot of comments. It’s a nice way to cleanup the stream.

Buzz is built on Google Gmail and although it is still in the early adopter days I think that it is a great discussion platform and well worth looking at. If you do not have a gmail account then I would recommend that you signup for a Gmail account today.

The world of Social Networking and Social Computing is growing with many tools that enable you to reach out and connect to others. In three to five years time everyone will have multiple social computing accounts similar to the way that many of us have multiple email address. So my question to you is why wait?

Jump in and participate, if you are not sure what to do, try one of these sites …

Linkedin.com, Facebook.com, Twitter.com, www.google.com/buzz , Identi.ca

Kevin |

NERCOMP 2010 - #nc-2010

Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 1:36PM

I attended the Northeast Regional Computer Program (NERCOMP) conference this past week in Providence Rhode Island and wanted to share my thoughts and observations on the conference. NERCOMP is an affiliate of EDUCAUSE and it’s mission is to communicate and share Information Technology strategies with Higher Education organizations in the Northeast United States. Overall it was a good conference however I thought the first day really dragged but the second day was much better and I really enjoyed the second day.

I enjoyed the keynote on the first day by James L. Hilton, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at the University of Virginia who spoke about the disruptive forces that challenge most Higher Education organization. Here is a link to James L. Hilton’s keynote discussion.

A common theme that I heard over and over again was the impact of the economic crisis on Higher Education and the need to do more for less. The session that I enjoyed the most went into detail about this topic and was called “Technology During an Economic Crisis: The Benefits of Open Source” by Brian Hutzley, Vice President for Business & Finance, SUNY College of Technology at Delhi and Patrick Masson, Chief Information Officer, SUNY College of Technology at Delhi. Both Brian and Patrick provided a transparent view into what they do and how they go about open sourcing the requirements gathering, the vendor selection process and overall support by putting everything in a wiki and using the wiki as a discussion forum and not just a document repository.

For those folks in the Enterprise 2.0 space, the SUNY Delhi wiki implementation and the process built around the use of wiki is a great example of how you can transform your process to be more efficient and realize cost savings in the process. Here is a link to the SUNY Delhi wiki and also a link to Patrick’s presentation. To get a real sense of how Patrick opens his process and shares everything with his team, his customers and his vendors, here is a link to an outline in the wiki of his presentation that he shared with the SUNY community.

Another session that I really enjoyed was Cloud Computing in Higher Education: Changing the Way We Provide Systems by Rosalyn Metz, Systems Administrator for Curricular Support at Wheaton College. There was a lot of interest for this session as the room was filled that there were many people standing in the back of the room. Rosalyn did a great job, first by offering to extend the cloud conversation after her presentation by following her on twitter @rosy1280 and then by stepping thru her presentation and by sharing screen casts of how use Amazons EC2, S3 and how to build and Amazon AMI. I had a nice discussion with Rosy after her talk and found her full of energy and passionate about computing and technology in general. Here is a link to her presentation and here is a link to Rosy’s personal blog which I also found interesting and full of technology discussions.

One of the benefits of attending conferences is meeting and networking with new people and catching up with old friends and coworkers. I ran into an old colleague, Mark Damian from MIT who had moved to TUFTS and we had a couple of great conversations surrounding Technology, Managing people and resources and Higher Ed in general. I recorded one of our conversations and may share it in the future, however I wanted to share part of our conversation with you.

Mark Damian was a Senior Manager at MIT and he moved into a Director, Enterprise Applications role at Tufts University. Mark has a great style and is a real leader, he has a great mix of empathy and can be quiet and laidback but at the same time can be very direct and is not afraid to bring up difficult topics.

I asked Mark “what it takes to be a successful manager” and here is his response ..

You have to figure out what works for you, and you need to understand peoples perspectives on things. You need to be a good listener and communicator and you need to be patience and flexible.

It is always about the people, you have to be able to relate to people, follow through, build credibility, and when there is a conflict, let others know that you understand their position and that you are there to work with them and to provide service for the good of the organization.

I asked Mark “what are the commonalities between MIT and Tufts”

The work is almost identical, there is always too much demand for supply and its about prioritization and organization and about working with people and making sure that they can be transparent and comfortable enough when talking with you, so that when there are issues, you know about them and help resolve them.

I asked Mark about “his transition from Senior Manager to Director” …

Going through a transition is always hard so you need to lead by example, exercise patience, and give yourself some time for reflection.

It was great running into Mark and again I thank him for his time and friendship.

From a planning and delivery perspective, the Providence Convention Center was a great facility. The WIFI was great and I really like the public laptop and printer setup that allowed folks without a networked device to stay connected. However, I do have a few recommendations for future NERCOMP events.

I found having the NERCOMP Conference page hosted on the EDUCAUSE site somewhat difficult. Nercomp.org is a great site with a lot of rich content however I found finding the link to the NERCOMP conference difficult and buried on a sub link. This was my first NERCOMP and it took me 10 clicks to find the address to the conference. Another suggestion for next year would be to include more Cloud Computing, Enterprise Social Computing and more discussions surrounding delivering services for less money.

Overall I enjoyed myself and would recommend NERCOMP for those folks supporting Technology in Higher Education.

Kevin |

Please Support Net Neutrality

Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 10:43AM

I support Net Neutrality and you should too.

Net neutrality is about digital equality. It’s not about free access to the Internet just fair and balanced access to the Internet with no exclusive tiers and no restricted access.

The Internet has changed a lot in the last 40 years and especially the way that we use the Internet. Voice, data, video and text travel across our internet on a daily basis. We have improved our infrastructure to the point where most large cities have broadband access to the Internet. An Internet that was built to connect computers together and our use has move way beyond that to connecting people together. The Telecommunications companies and network providers helped to expand the Internet and they have become very profitable and powerful along the way.

As the Internet has changed so has the business model for the Telecommunications companies. The Telecommunication companies grew fat on a business model that included a Land Line in every home and higher fees for long distance calls. Just think about their monopoly, $30.00 to $100.00 a month from every household in America and it is going away. This was their cash cow so what are they going to do now? Many folks are doing away with their land lines or going for the Triple Play from their cable provider which uses VOIP over the Internet to establish phone calls. And what are the Telecommunication companies doing? They are looking for their next cash cow on the Internet by controlling access to our data on the Internet.

With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data -- not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Do you really want the Network and Telecommunication companies to be the gatekeepers of the Internet? I for one do not, however that is what they want and that is why they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to put a stop to Net Neutrality.

How can you help? You can urge Congress and the FCC to support Net Neutrality. There is an easy form on the Save the Internet website that allows you to put your contact information in and it will send a note about your support of Net Neutrality to your member of Congress. Here is the link called “Two Million Strong for Net Neutrality” and I urge you to follow it and send a note to your Member of Congress.

Please do not let the Telco’s and Network Providers win. If you do not send a note to Congress you can still help by showing your support for Net Neutrality and joining the savetheinternet.com coalition and letting others know that you support Net Neutrality.

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality,Open Internet

Kevin |

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