Category: Business

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Business Life Technology

Indecision to Carry

Each workday I go through the same routine:

  1. wake up to alarm
  2. get out of bed
  3. shower and change for work
  4. head downstairs and help with breakfast/lunch prep/etc.
  5. drink cup of coffee with wife
  6. brush teeth
  7. pray with family
  8. gather together my stuff for work into bag
  9. say goodbye and head off to Martin Luther College

There are sometimes a few small variations to that routine, but for the most part that is it. However, out of every small decision I make in the morning it is #8 on that list that gives me the most pause each and every morning:

  • gather together my stuff for work into bag

Looking at the picture I used at the top of this post, it is probably pretty easy to see why. While my iPhone is always in my pocket and I have various amounts of reading material in my bag, I am constantly shuffling what technology I should be carrying between home and work.

Here are the three devices I currently work through my mind each morning:

The iPad Air is the easiest to carry, fits nicely into my bag and fulfills probably 85% of my needs on any given day. The Surface 3 is a test device for the Windows 10 deployment we are looking at for work along with an interesting look at the differences between form factors (and fits nicely into my bag). It fulfills maybe 75% of my needs on a given day, but a slightly different portion than the iPad Air.

The 13″ MacBook Pro is, surprisingly, just a little too big to bring along every day. It just fits into my bag, means I can’t bring too much else along, but fulfills 95% of my needs on any given day. It is just less portable. It takes up more space and so it sits on my desk.

In my own mind it looks like an iPad Pro or MacBook would be great compromises, but they are coming from different ends of the spectrum. Do I want a laptop more like a tablet or a tablet more like a laptop? (thanks to the professionals at Computers R Us )

The Surface 3 is interesting only because it tries to toe the line between laptop and tablet by having different modes. It sorta works, sometimes (not a rousing endorsement, I know). The other problem with going all-in on Microsoft’s platform is that the software is just not at the quality I’ve grown accustomed to over in Apple’s camp.

Sadly, my trusty Lenovo X220 with openSUSE Tumbleweed has been relegated to primarily system admin work as I fix things around campus requiring a serial interface and a CLI. I eagerly watch for what the response is going to be from the open source operating systems to where Microsoft has taken Windows 10, but maybe Windows 10 is not the proper course.

All of these words are here to whine about the fact that I often don’t know what to carry with me between home and work. We have a Surface Pro 4 coming in as a test machine for our next faculty deployment at Martin Luther College. Maybe the increased size and speed will force me to start moving to a more device-agnostic way of working.

There are four amazing platforms to work from right now: Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Linux/Open Source. They all have their strong points and their weak points, but the entire ecosystem has been polluted by the fact that each platform is ever so slightly different in major ways (yes, I did read that phrase three times … it is what I want to say). Where do you turn?

Maybe it just doesn’t matter.

Categories
Business Leadership Technology

IT as Partner

I recently completed my first grad school course and started my second. While the first focused on leadership, the second is dialed into information technology (IT) management (so I’m quite excited about it).

Our first unit focused on strategy, planning, and alignment (which are all good buzz words). However, the word alignment received some extra billing within the readings because of how that specific word can still leave IT as a separate entity and not fully integrated into the business.

The word promoted in place of alignment was partnership. The picture that partnership is supposed to conjure up is one of two equals working together toward the same goal. While still providing maybe a little too much separation between IT and the rest of the business, it does move things in the right direction.

With that in mind, a friend of mine and I had a little discussion on this very topic over Twitter. Here is just a small sample of what we covered:

IT isn’t an afterthought and it can’t be run separately from everything else. IT is the business, or a major part of it. If you are doing anything of worth, you are most likely working with information technology in some form or fashion and instead of looking at it traditionally as a cost-center to be managed, it is better to think of it as a valuable business partner were there are opportunities to innovate.

This also means that IT needs to think more globally, but the good news is that the people within that department are usually uniquely positioned to be able to easily do that. What department doesn’t IT work with? None. IT works with them all!

There is no alignment to be had or worked on because the goals should be the same across the board. If they are not, then there is work to be done.

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Announcements Business Education Life Technology

What am I doing now?

Inspired by Derek Sivers and his /now page, I’ve added a /now page to this site as well. You’ll find a list of the things that I am spending my time on and I’ll attempt to periodically update that list a things shift in the future.

Also, you can visit nownownow.com to see a list of other /now pages.

Categories
Business Education Technology

An Internal Tech Summit Retrospective

MLC Old Main

The 2015 MLC Internal Technology Summit took place on May 26, 2015 and, I think I can safely say, was a success. However, just because something was a success does not mean there isn’t room for improvement.

However, I’ll start by just giving an overview of how the day was run.

  • We had half-hour long time slots for topic areas.
  • Every faculty and staff member was invited to attend any of the topic sessions.
  • Individual invitation emails were sent out to individuals noted as being key stakeholders within a certain topic area.
  • All members of our Technology Advisory Committee were recommended to attend all of the sessions and take any notes they wanted.
  • Groups were recommended to come with projects or ideas they would like to see take place over the next 6 months (or more), no matter how crazy it might sound.
  • The information taken from those sessions was to be used for strategic planning purposes.

One additional item was added the day before.

  • Lunch would be provided by the college for the members of the Technology Advisory Committee to eat together as a group.

Overall the entire day ran smoothly. We had nine sessions during the day (the ninth, Classroom Tech, was added late at the recommendation of two of our professors).

I am currently working through the notes from five individuals to see if I can distill them down to general themes from the day that we can “hang our hats on” for improvement in the future. That is a secondary outcome of the day along with the strategic planning implications.

However, looking at the day, here are some improvements I am currently planning on bringing to the tech summit itself in the future:

  1. Longer sessions. I sent out a form requesting feedback from individuals (anonymous), and a request for more time to talk was #1 overall. The shortness of the sessions was, in part, due to the want to have a single track for everyone to attend. This is one thing I do want to address in the future.
  2. Dig into specific projects. The explicit purpose of this tech summit was to get high-level project ideas. For the future people are asking to dig into more specific projects and topics to really brainstorm how to work on those areas.
  3. More faculty-centered topics. This was totally a blind-spot on my part, but the sessions were very staff-heavy to start, with the additional session providing the only faculty-centric outlet. I’ll be aware of the fact that I need to get some faculty members involved in the planning process.
  4. Larger venue. We used a single classroom this time around and a few of the sessions were filled beyond capacity. A larger venue will be required for the next summit, especially on those campus-spanning sessions.
  5. Get the date out there sooner. Due to the planning starting so late in the school year, there was not a lot of time for people to move their schedules around. Just getting the dates chosen and out there as soon as possible will be very important.

That is the what the future might look like for the tech summit at Martin Luther College.

Here are some general things I’m going to look into but might not make it in the near future.

  • Expand to two days. This would make some things easier, but also many things harder. It might burn out those individuals wanting to make it to all of the sessions but it would allow for a lot of in-depth discussion.
  • Incorporate into larger event. There is a year-end faculty week to close out the traditional year on the campus, and maybe there is room for the staff to be included in this and the tech summit to be a part of this as well.
  • Release a feedback tool. This is a longer-term goal for our department. We’d love to have a site where people can toss project ideas online, have discussion happen around it, and then we can “promote” those projects to planned, working on, or released statuses as things are done. This would help us to move some of the brainstorming to an asynchronous system while the actual in-depth discussion can happen during the summit.

Those are a few more ideas for the future.

Overall the entire day went really well, but there is room for improvement. That is sometimes the fun part.

Categories
Business Education Technology

Planning An Internal Conference

Yesterday it was decided to plan and run a small, one-day internal conference focused on technology at Martin Luther College. I’ve been to a number of technology conferences and get-togethers over the years, but this is the first time I am being relied on to plan and manage such an event.

So I’m going to blog about the process … obviously.

To start, I’d love to be able to “sit down” and talk with people who have already run an internal conference. I know there are challenges when you are talking about bringing in many “non-technical” people to talk about the use of technology, so I’d love to be able to get a wider perspective on things.

This is new ground both for me and for the campus and I want to make it worthwhile so that we can continue to hold events like this internally to better improve the organization without the need for catastrophes to be staring us down.

So, I’ll post more in the future but I’d love to hear from people who have experience with this or would just like to sit down and talk through the concept.

Photo by Citrix Systems from Flickr