June 2008 Archives

Here's my notes to the ITANA Face-to-Face Tools of the Trade Session convened by Tom Barton (U Chicago). I really liked what each of the panelists had to say. This was an extremely useful conference and I'm glad I got to go.

University of California, Davis

Curtis Bray -- UC, Davis

Administrative IT Systems Architecture 5-year plan

A. plan the "big rocks"
B. plan connective tissue
C. Look at campus wide needs
D. Allow independent development to fill gaps but take every measure to harvest most community value for it.

IT Investment Principals

1. leverage IT investment for max return
2. transparent, clear, communicate widely
3. add to campus community common arch components and favoring shared systems.

Set up administrative IT systems coordinating council

consists for domain "conveners" for each of 8 domains
focus on domains vs. applications. [I loved this idea! -- Jim]

Curtis provided a link to UC, Davis's IT roadmap.

St. Louis University

St. Louis U -- Jim Hooper, Enterprise Architect

PIM - Product Item Master (PIM)

List of internal (to IT) standards
Enterprise perspective
not limit of allowed
... but limit of what is supported
precursor to stacks, architectures.

Use PIM to try to manage product lifecycle.

The codes are:

blue -- being researched
green -- current, deploy at will
yellow -- supported but not to be deployed
red -- phased out, not to be deployed anywhere

Governance of the PIM

* The Council
* Arch Review Board
* EA team
* The ARBAF ("ARBARF") -- arch review board action form
* Purchasing implements

Q. How are conflicts resolved?

A. Every project has an "Architecture Buddy" to try to facilitate smooth sailing, although we've had to facilitate.

SLU has a broadband architecture 19/105 of IT people are architects.

University of Chicago

Tom Barton, UChicago, IT Ecosystem

Fewer people know how it works.

People are expert on things very local to them.

what it does:

* record and viz depend
* capture slice of what experts have in head
* stich together patches
* spawn interesting conversations

what it's good for:

* help managers determine who to talk with
* connects work to big pircute
* help tackle specifc problems
* pictures that show "it's really complicated"

Graphs relations between elements (hardware, databases, people/groups, networks)

Tools captures things better than white board. Easier to share.

A colleague of Tom pointed out that this is populated by Tom sitting down and talking to people. Some people care more about detail than others.

Q: one instances of this database?

We can do some filtering analysis to look at dependencies. Look at critical dependencies. We can look for highest count (SAN here, but LDAP, load balancer, and AD stuff is pretty high)

An example which the tool pointed out was: a Printer (actually print shop that does some admin printing) can hold up a job(s). It can take down alumni systems, hr systems. If they can't finish a print job, they stop and report unsuccessful. The tool pointed out this dependency and many systems got rid of it.

Tom's whole presentation is very good.

I attended two conferences in the Minneapolis last week. The first was the national ITANA Face-to-Face meeting on Wednesday. The second was the Internet 2 Advanced CAMP (Campus Architecture and Middleware Planning). The CAMP focus was "Registering, Discovering, and Using Distributed Services in Academia." Both were in the same hotel and there was quite a bit of overlap between the attendees. I was on the organizing committee of the Advanced CAMP and that in itself was a very rewarding experience. Each meeting was very interactive both during the formal part of the meeting and also the breaks, lunches, and dinners. It's great to see that many of us have the same problems whether we're a big university like Penn State or some of the smaller private institutions which participated.

I took a bunch of notes... more to follow.

I reviewed the book, Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel this week for WPSU's Bookmark show. Here's the text:

The title of this book is Naked Conversations. But in their first sentence, the authors--Robert Scoble and Shel Israel -- are quick to assure us, this book is NOT about two middle-aged guys talking in the nude. Naked Conversations is about how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with their customers.

Some people think of a blog as a personal diary. The authors see blogs as conversations . . . and blog entries as conversation starters. They call blogs "Naked" conversations because they are the result of instant publishing, spelling mistakes and all.

Let me back up a little...

A blog is a simple concept. It's a personal web site, with the new stuff displayed first -- new posts are at the top of the page rather than at the bottom. That doesn't sound very revolutionary, but blogs are having a profound effect on everything from publishing to public relations, and from politics to broadcast news.

The first part of the book is rich in examples . . . like the English tailor who uses a blog to sell more of his hand-made suits. Then there's the one-man kitchen accessories company run by its blogging founder. Both men demonstrate their passion and increase their visibility through blogging.

If blogs make small companies look bigger, they can also make large companies seem more accessible. Scoble should know. He was a pioneering blogger at Microsoft. In a chapter called, "The Souls of the Borg," Scoble contends that stereotype of the "Microserf" (or oppressed IT worker) went by the wayside as Microsoft employees began to blog. It's hard to view a large company as a monolith when individual workers are talking about what excites them about their jobs. The authors say, if your company encourages you to blog, find out the ground rules first. Don't wait till right before you get fired.

This book is pitched to business bloggers, but it's full of tips that can any blogger can use. The authors contrast bad or "lame" blogs with some of the best and give us "eleven rules for better blogging." My favorite rules are "Demonstrate passion," and "Show your authority." The best blogs are by people who write about what they love and what they know. Another good tip? "Read a bunch of blogs before you start."

I enjoy books that make me re-examine what I believe to be true. As a long-time blogger (if you can say such a thing), I now see blogs as naked conversations rather than personal digests. My approach to both my blogging and the blogosphere has changed. Why not pick up a copy of Naked Conversations and start your own?

The workshop portion of the Common Solutions Group is usually divided into a day long ("Long") workshop and another half-day ("Short") workshop. At the Spring meeting in Ann Arbor, the Long Workshop was devoted to CyberInfrastructure.

The morning began with a presentation an a relatively nascent effort, called Project Bamboo. Bamboo focusses on providing a cyberinfrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. It was most recently funded by the Mellon Foundation. The project proposal is really an interesting read and this project shows lots of promise.

Chad Kainz from University of Chicago, one of the project PIs, explained some of the scenarios for Arts and Humanities CI. Bamboo Planning will begin with a series of workshops. Penn State and the Penn State Press will be represented in the July workshop on "The Planning Process & Understanding Arts and Humanities Scholarship."

This is one to keep an eye on.