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.

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.

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 

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. 

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.

For many non technical folks there is a subtle confusion between the Web and the Internet, so an easy way to think about the difference is to think about our roads and highways and think of them as the Internet. This is the Infrastructure that we use everyday and do not even think about, just like the Internet. The web on the other hand is like the cars and trucks that use our roads. Compare a car to a Browser or a Web Site that rides on top of the road and on top of the Internet. The power of the Web comes from the tools and protocols, programs, apis, and data that make it work however, the Web needs the Internet and without the Internet we do not have a Web.

The Mozilla Drumbeat project is a project that advocates for the Open Web and they are looking for help from you and me. The concept of Drumbeat is to let everyone know about the freedoms of the internet, and how our freedoms may be slipping away from us, and what we can do to help keep the Internet and the Web Open and moving forward.

For many folks our digital roads (Internet) and digital cars (browsers and web sites) are already open and do not appear to be at risk, so what is all the fuss about ? Concerns start when you think about where we have come from and how we have evolved, and by looking at the experiences of other markets over a long period of time.

When Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP and HTML he did not license or charge royalties for his technologies, instead he move it into the public domain for other to use. This is how the Web grew and was literally the start of the Open Web. However since that time, we have witnessed many organizations attempting to carve out their piece of the Web by charging for access to content and data. After a while, charging for and restricting access to content and networks became the norm, but that is starting to change now and we want to make sure that it continues to change.

The Web is evolving along with Technology all around us. Television and Video are moving to the Web and the Internet is moving toward the Television. Fairly soon the Web will be just another channel to access content from your couch, but we want to make sure that all web content will reach that couch and is not restricted by the large media conglomerates responsible for Television today.

Think about the Television and Radio business  in the early 60’s. Their focus was on local news and local programming, and this was very beneficial to everyone. However, over time the heavyweights in industry started buying all the stations and before you knew it most of the stations were owned by a small number of large media conglomerates. Less competition, less outside interference led to selective programming and reporting that is slanted toward the media conglomerate and not toward the people. We can’t let this happen to the Web.

There are forces in work looking to build a tiered Internet where the large players will have access to a larger faster internet tier that the rest of us will be restricted from. There is a large debate going on now for this Internet change. This if often referred to as Net Neutrality where the premise is that the Internet is a free and open resource and Internet Service providers should not carve up the Internet as it will lead to discrimination of content and traffic on the Internet. I am for Net Neutrality and the Open Web, and I encourage you to explore the Mozilla Drumbeat project and get involved.

For more information about Project Drumbeat, here is a slideshow from the Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Mark Surman on how you can get involved and help the Open Web.

1)    The Social Web

There is a lot of hype and a lot of work around introducing social tools and communities into our daily life. The majority of these tools are delivered via the web in communities like Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Plaxo, and Friendfeed. Google also has a stake in this game with OpenSocial, Google Apps, and Google Groups, and Microsoft is getting in late with the Microsoft Azure Platform. Also, there is a lot going on behind the scenes in the social tools and apps space with Open efforts around Identity, Activity Streams and Discovery. These low level efforts will help to shape our products and enable innovation. Social has bloomed on the web, and will be intergraded in many products in 2010,  so now it is time for the enterprise.

One area that has helped the Social Web adoption is the integration of social applications on smart phones which enable users stay connected to their Social communities. Another area is the use of inexpensive networked video cameras which has enabled content creators to quickly capture the moment and share it with their communities.

As Joseph Smarr once said …

The Web is going social … and the Social Web is going Open

I think this statement is very true ….

 2)    The Open Web

The web started as an Open project when Tim Berners-Lee released HTTP & HTML into the public domain in the early 90’s. Since then, organizations have been carving up their little piece of the web and restricting access to many. There are apps and solutions that are completely open, some that are partly open and others that are completely closed. There will be a big push to advocate for and adopt open strategies as more people start to participate in the Social Web and look to integrate all of their social tools.

The move toward an Open Web strategy has started to become organized with multiple groups participating in the effort. The Open Web Foundation was established in 2009 as a legal and standards based group for developing Open Technologies, and the Open Web Advocacy Group which is an open Google Group was create as a forum Open Web Developers, and the Mozilla Drumbeat Project was established as an advocacy group for the Open Web.

How about a real example of the Open Web. Twitter, not a totally open company or application, however they do have an open api which has benefited them greatly. By opening their api and access to twitter data, Twitter has allowed the creation of a sub market around twitter data. Hundreds of companies have been established which enhance twitter data and provide a service to twitter users. Without the Twitter open api, that would never happen.

3)    Cloud Computing

Last year I had Cloud Computing at the top of my list and really expected adoption to be great than the adoption in 2009. That was partially due to security and legal concerns of Cloud Computing but also due to the fact that many enterprise organizations will need to change their infrastructure to take advantage of cloud computing, and most do not realize that. I think Cloud computing will continue to grow in 2010 with some of the larger more established vendors acquiring many of the smaller vendors.

I also see the adoption of private cloud increasing as many organizations get their first taste of cloud solutions in a controlled environment. There is a need for improved security and vendor accountability in the cloud space and I anticipate that there will be one or two new vendors on the scene in 2010 offering increased security and accountability at a premium.

4)    Mobile Computing

Computing functionality is moving to the phone as evidence by the many SmartPhones available today. In 2010 we will see a whole new line of smart phones and Smart Phone adoption will increase in Enterprises as many organizations as many Business Managers realize that Smart phones allow for constant connectivity and Smart Phones adoption grows beyond the techie IT crowd.

I anticipate a line of semi-smart phones which allow some but not all of the features of a smart phone on a cheaper priced phone. Many folks are looking for basic phone services with limited to no data plans, however application store features will be available on all phones in 2010 as the providers look for more way to generate revenues.

The integration of social applications on smart phones has increased and will help to fuel the Social Web as smart phone users stay connected to their Social communities all the time.

5)    Enterprise Social Computing

Adoption of Web 2.0 and Social tools in the Enterprise will increase however it will continue at a slow pace. Enterprises are adopting Enterprise Social Computing much like they adopted Intranets, in a slow and structured manner and need to get their feet wet before adopting any large scale organizational efforts. The good news is that more Business folks understand Enterprise Social Computing and can see the value of improved collaboration for their process.

Many organizations do not have a Enterprise Social Computing strategy however I see that changing in 2010 as many organization will come out with Enterprise Social Computing Policies for their users. This will be a clear indication for the user community of what is appropriate and what is not and will fuel Social Computing within the Enterprise.

6)    Enterprise Infrastructures

Enterprise Infrastructures are changing. Most organizations have already adopted virtualization, while others are experimenting with cloud computing, and everyone is looking for strategies to decrease power and cooling requirements. Most larger organizations have data centers that were designed many years ago for large transactional type processing requirements and that has not changed as the processing continues on newer hardware but with the same old infrastructures.  One reason why both Google and Amazon have become successful is because they are not tied to older transactional type architectures but instead created their own Architectural Stack which enable them to deliver massive computing power to end users. As more organizations start to work with private clouds the architecture required to support private clouds will become apparent and will start to fuel a change in applications and architectures.

The other Enterprise Infrastructure shift that I see is in the area of Identity Management and governance. Most organizations have at least three different methods of authentication in their organization including Active Directory and multiple LDAP’s all architected to be used behind the firewall. This is the year that organizations will start to look outside the Enterprise to join federated IDM’s for a subset of their users, customers and partners. Another Identity related solution will be Information Cards, which have gained adoption on the Web and eventually will make it’s way to the Enterprise.

7)    Big Players in Technology Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle

I see the large established players like Amazon, Apple, Google and Oracle growing and doing well in 2010 however I see Microsoft slowing down in 2010. I think that Amazon, Apple, Google and Oracle are poised to take advantage of the web as all are nimble enough to shift direction if needed and all appear to have new products and services in the pipeline. Windows 7 and Microsoft Sharepoint will the the two high points for Microsoft while overall sales will decline.

I see Google as the big winner here. They are embracing the Open Web, and moving out of their comfort zone of search with new voice and social applications and of course the rumored Google Phone.

Jonathan outlines Open at Google as …..

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren't there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.

and he goes on to make points like these ….

If we can embody a consistent commitment to open — which I believe we can — then we have a big opportunity to lead by example and encourage other companies and industries to adopt the same commitment ….

whenever possible, use existing open standards. If you are venturing into an area where open standards don't exist, create them. If existing standards aren't as good as they should be, work to improve them and make those improvements as simple and well documented as you can …..

We believe in the power of technology to deliver information. We believe in the power of information to do good. We believe that open is the only way for this to have the broadest impact for the most people. We are technology optimists who trust that the chaos of open benefits everyone. We will fight to promote it every chance we get ….

The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet ….

I give Jonathan credit for jumping in and offering an opinion and a direction for the Googler’s while at the same time welcoming comments and differences of opinion. I applaud the effort and feel that Google should lead by example. I also like the fact that Jonathan identified Open Information as well as Open Technologies because I feel that Open Information/Data is often missed in discussions about the Open Web.

There were three main sections to this cloudcamp

• 5 Minute Lightening Rounds – Mostly by Vendors
• 10 Questions identified from the attendees and answered by attendees with experience in the cloud
• 2 45 minute breakout sessions informally voted on by the attendees

The Lightening Rounds were good, the 10 questions were better however the best part of the evening was the two breakout sessions that I attended.

I attended Chris Hoff’s @beaker Cloudanatomy talk on Cloud security and was very impressed with Chris’s talk. Chris stated that he does not want to scare people away from the cloud, but instead he wants us all to be able to ask better questions of the Cloud vendors and make sure that we really understand what we are responsible and liable for and know what the cloud vendors are responsible and liable for.  However, Chris really lays out cloud as a house of cards built on older legacy protocols like DNS, BGP and SSL that can come thumbing down at any time. Chris’s point is that you should understand where your possible points of failure are and know your terms of service and plan accordingly.

I also attended John M Willis’s @botchagalupe Private Cloud discussion and identified the private side of this equation as “You own the hardware” and “You have control over the customers”. We compared the Amazon Public cloud to Eucalyptus which can be built as either a public or a private cloud. There was a lot of discussion about when and why should we use each model (Public & Private) which was reminiscent of the discussions we had 4 years ago when we started looking at virtualization. Questions like is this a solution for dev and test, and when do we go to production were common. John’s point was that every organization and data center should have 3 types of platforms for their applications to consider:

Bare Metal Servers  -  Virtualized Resources  -  Cloud Resources

With three platforms you can determine the best environment for you applications and if you are unfamiliar with building and maintaining applications in the cloud then a private cloud is a great starting point to cut your teeth on before moving to the Public cloud, and when you have both virtual and cloud resources internally, you can identify the best fit for you applications.

Overall I really enjoyed myself and see a lot of value in the CloudCamp model, and would encourage anyone investigating cloud technologies to attend a cloud camp.

I am looking for a WCM that is part CMS, part Wiki, part Document Management System, and part Portal. I do not have a budget or an authorized project however we have a need to upgrade our older html and cgi web environments and the thought of a WCM framework behind our complex site would be a real benefit. With no budget I am looking at Open Source Vendors, and I sat in on a discussion about the “Rise of Open Source Content Management” with Kathleen Reidy from the 451 Group and Seth Gottleib for Content Here. Kathleen did a nice job of grouping the Large, Medium and Small Open Source Content Management players along with the proprietary and non-proprietary products, and I found a similar slide deck from Kathleen on Slideshare. Seth outlined the Open Source players into three different open source groups:

Community Open Source - Commercial Open Source  - Institutional Open Source

Seth’s advice was to understand the support and ecosystems of each vendors and that will help to make a good decision surrounding the Open Source vendors. This goes hand in hand with your needs and requirements however often folks looking for Open Source solutions are often looking for an inexpensive solution and you also need to consider support and the viability of the solution you choose.

Another consideration for Web Content Management which I have that I have not worked out is how well will WCM integrate with Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Social Computing. Integration with blogs and wiki’s look like a good starting point however another point to consider would be improvements to search within your organization. Content Management systems deployed correctly can provide structured data to your organization which in turn will provide the meta tags to enhance search in your organization.