Category: Business

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Another Place: Living Water Leadership

I have been pondering what to do after my doctoral program for a while. I do have a number of outlets both at work and volunteering, but I have also been thinking through what to do with my research and continued study of leadership. I have finally come to some sort of idea … or at least an experiment.

Living Water Leadership is some part Substack publication, some part consulting business, and some part experiment around what can be done with slow, steady progress over time. At the moment I plan to write articles, post notes, offer consulting-like services, and see where it takes me. The introductory post, Introducing Living Water Leadership, provides a little bit of an intro to the entire endeavor, but there are not a lot of details to share at the moment.

The first series of articles will focus around some of the challenges facing higher education IT teams at this particular moment in time. Everyone in Higher Ed IT is not OK: Part 1 sets the stage for what I have been hearing over the past 12-18 months of speaking at various conferences and gatherings. Future articles will start to dive into how we might be able to meet these challenges in the future.

I do not plan on cross-posting items here unless there is a major announcement. I will also keep most of my leadership material over at that site. If you want to see those items, I’d recommend subscribing so that you do not miss anything.

This site will continue to be more of a hodgepodge of different topics over time of a personal nature.

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Business Review Technology

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal

I just finished this book while walking on the treadmill this morning and I am torn. There are definitely parts that I find insightful, especially as an overall look at the struggles open source communities, founders, contributors, maintainer, etc. run into as it pertains to the continual creation and curation of code and other resources, but I find the emphasis on platforms as the savior of these communities somewhat concerning.

That may entirely be my own bias showing, but looking to technology and platforms to fix what are inevitable human and interaction issues seems shortsighted but also quite understandable today. Who doesn’t like the idea that technology will solve our issues!? However, as we continue to place more and more emphasis on platforms and technology, I fear that we begin to lose the human aspect of what we do. If platforms are our savior, they then are almost inevitably our masters.

So. Torn.

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Business Technology

Quick Thoughts on the ThinkPad T495

Recently I was handed a new Lenovo ThinkPad T495 as my new “sysadmin” notebook to use for the work I do around campus. I asked for this device because I was curious about how openSUSE would work with the newer AMD Ryzen Pro mobile chips and the current notebook I was using was starting to buckle under its age.

This ThinkPad is now setup with openSUSE Tumbleweed and here are some generic thoughts about how things are working out so far.

ThinkPad T495 on desk
  • This is the nicest traditional, non-Apple laptop I have ever used. It feels sturdy and the hinge is quite nice.
  • The screen is matte and full HD, and is quite nice. It isn’t the best screen I’ve seen, and I didn’t want a touchscreen for this device, but it is quite capable.
  • The AMD Ryzen 5 3500U processor is quite capable and more than fast enough for what I need to do. I haven’t bothered checking for benchmarks, but openSUSE Tumbleweed is a dream on it.
  • The keyboard is … OK. I don’t hate the keyboard on my MacBook, and there are definitely some things to like about this keyboard over Apple’s current designs, but I have had problems typing accurately that I am chalking up to being more used to the shallow typing distance of my MacBook.
  • It is thin and light enough, but I am finding that the bags that I have been using most are now too small for this laptop even though I didn’t think the difference between Apple’s 13″ lineup and this 14″ Lenovo machine would be that big of a deal.
  • If you are going to run Linux on it, aim for as current of a kernel as possible. It runs with openSUSE Leap 15.1 decently, but the switch to openSUSE Tumbleweed was a revelation. The newer the kernel, the better, and I am hoping for continued improvements for AMD’s chips in the future.
  • I will need to get more RAM (8 GB is not enough).
  • There really is a difference between Apple’s Retina screens and something like this (what is being used in business-class notebooks across the rest of the industry). Part of this is going to be software and part of it is going to be hardware.
  • Everything should have USB-C.
  • I think I quite like it.

Apple doesn’t really offer a notebook like this at the moment and the ThinkPad is not trying to compete with Apple’s offerings. When I am using it, I do miss macOS, but part of that may just be familiarity.

At some point I am going to be forced to make a decision around replacing my MacBook, but I will keep seeing if I can wedge this ThinkPad into other parts of my work. One of the first things I did was get Zotero installed and hooked up to LibreOffice to see if I could continue working with my citations there and it works just fine.

If you are looking for a very good, competent, thin-enough and light-enough Linux laptop … I have no issues recommending the Lenovo ThinkPad T495.

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Business Technology

Have We Hit Peak Podcast?

Have We Hit Peak Podcast? by Jennifer Miller, NY Times

An interesting piece from the NY Times about the podcast “industry” right now and how many are thinking the “good times are coming to an end” (so to speak). Here is an interesting and salient quote to me:

Call him cynical, but Jordan Harbinger, host of “The Jordan Harbinger Show” podcast, thinks there is a “podcast industrial complex.” Hosts aren’t starting shows “because it’s a fun, niche hobby,” he said. “They do it to make money or because it will make them an influencer.”

When the point is to make money instead of having something interesting to share, or just wanting to have fun doing it, then you are going to burn out or even edit yourself to try and meet some sort of metric, or reach some specific audience because they are going to make you some money.

This is part of the issue with news today, right? It is searching out dollars first and informing the public second. The incentives are messed up and wrong and the interesting writing I remember reading years ago tends to be drowned out by people yelling at each other.

Maybe the end of the “podcast industry” isn’t a bad thing, overall, for the culture.

Categories
Business Life Technology

Goodbye Jony

Apple announced that Chief Design Officer Jony Ive is going to be stepping away from the company later this year to form an independent design company.

I have been a fan and user of Apple devices during the Jony Ive era and it will be interesting to see what happens from this point forward for Apple, and for Jony as well. Steve Jobs’ death was a major shift for the company and this will be seen as the same, but I feel this has been coming for a while.

If you want to read up on some good thoughts, head over to Daring Fireball to read Jony Ive is Leaving Apple and listen to the last episode of The Talk Show: ‘A Bit Too Thin’.

Thanks Jony for the work. I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy the devices you had a hand in.