November 2007 Archives
In our last all-staff meeting one activity I foreshadowed was an upcoming presentation to our University Research Council that Vijay Agarwala and many others developed. Vijay did 95% of the talking, I just did some set up and some closing. The presentation is laid out in three sections - who we are, what we've been doing, and the results and early analysis of a recently done survey of current customers of ITS research computing and research cyberinfrastructure (or cyberinfrastructure or cyberinfrastructure or cyberinfrastructure or cyberinfrastructure - you get the point) services. The early returns have been pretty good from the members of URC. As I said in the all-staff meeting, this is a general overview but also tailored specifically for that audience. If something doesn't make sense, feel free to post a question here or ask Vijay or me directly.
Technorati Tags: cyberinfrastructure, psuits, puppy
I made a mistake at our last all-staff meeting and I'd like to apologize and clear it up.
There were a couple of light hearted questions that came in and I was thankful for the give and take. When I saw the question about wiki's, I mistakenly thought that it was also a gag - but it wasn't. I was disappointed in myself for not thinking longer about the question.
Most of you reading this know what a wiki is, but just in case you don't - wikipedia has as good a definition as anyone. In short, a wiki is a web site that allows people to easily edit its contents directly. Some wiki's allow anyone (who has registered with that site) to edit the material, other wiki's restrict access. The best example of a wiki where anyone can edit the web pages is wikipedia - go here and try it if you are curious. It's free, legal and in a weird kind of way, it's also fun. In ITS, we have examples of wiki's that require that potential editors login with their Penn State Access Account, and there are still other internal wiki's that limit editorial rights to certain groups that are working on a given project. One of the best examples of a wiki at Penn State is the one used in ITS Consulting and Support Services to help sustain community knowledge in a transitory work force.
Wiki's are just one tool we are trying to learn how to embrace and master to help us create discoverable knowledge, as we try to break out of the old communication modalities. Blogs, podcasts, screencasts, etc. are other tools being utilized, explored, etc.
A meta-question that I am asking myself as I try to atone for my error at the all-staff meeting, is what dynamic is missing from our internal engagements where everyone in ITS wouldn't have already heard about or been encouraged to explore wiki's? If you have any thoughts, I'm all ears.
And just as it was after the last all-staff meeting, I'd also be interested in any feedback you'd have to help us plan the next one, when it should be, etc.
Technorati Tags: psuits
On October 24, 2007 I attended "Forum for the Future: An Energy and Environmental Discussion."
The keynote was delivered by Dr. Richard Alley. I had somehow managed to miss numerous other opportunities to hear him speak about climate change and was thankful to hear him at this forum. If his passion and knowledge don't grab you, the topic will. I highly recommend seeing Dr. Alley if you get a chance.
I learned lots during the forum. The big takeaway for me was the commitment I made to see what I can do personally, as a family, and as an organization to reduce our contributions to global warming. I know this is sometimes a touchy political topic but I am scientifically convinced - we've got a problem. We've put sustainability in our strategic planning conversations now as something to take into consideration in all we consider.
There's a lot going on in sustainability at Penn State and a new web site was developed to act as a landing place for the many web sites that portray the working going on regarding various aspects of the energy and climate discussion.
More recently, I've been spending some time thinking about the "other side" of thinking green. More often than not, when I'm pulled into this conversation people want to talk about duplex printing, using recycled paper in printers, deploying new techniques in remote system management to allow for desktop computers to be shut off at night, buying more efficient power supplies in servers, embracing virtualization, etc. These are all important aspects of thinking green in IT, but I think there is lots of impact to be had by applying IT solutions to make more green academic and business processes. If you create 10 pounds of IT CO2 by running a service that keeps people out of cars and airplanes, the net improvement could be multiple orders of magnitude improvement.
I asked for a back of the envelope calculation with whatever assumptions someone wanted to make about how it is the Adobe Connect might have positively impacted our CO2 production. Here's an excerpt from the exchange:
"I'm thinking that if we assume 1/4 of the meeting sessions save just one person traveling 300 miles (that would be 150 miles both ways), then in October, which shows over 4,000 meeting sessions, Connect would have helped save:
1000 meetings * 300 miles = 300,000 miles
and if you expect 30 miles to the gallon, that would save:
300,000 miles / 30 miles/gal = 10,000 gallons.
A gallon of gasoline is assumed to produce 8.8 kilograms (or 19.4 pounds) of CO2 (I found this at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05004.htm).
If we save 10,000 gallons of gasoline in October alone, we save:
10,000 gallons * 19.4 pounds/gallon of CO2 = 194,000 pounds or 97 tons of CO2"
I know more people are doing similar analyses of how these kinds of tools can help out.
On another front, I know The Computer Store has been aggressively pursuing incentive based recycling programs. What other activities are going on to help us better manage scarce energy resources that are getting more expensive? What are we doing to reduce our creation of harmful emissions? Recycling? We're doing a lot, we could do more. Some people like to cloud the conversation with trying to establish priorities. In my opinion, our number one priority is shifting to a culture of thinking about energy consumption and emission production in all that we do - that's #1. A pretty good way to get going on that is to start doing something.
Technorati Tags: climatechange, energy, sustainability
For the purpose of this thought:
Our = information technology.
Threat = a condition, environment or stimulus that jeopardizes information technology organizations from being successful, agile, flexible.
And a big caveat here - there's lots to quibble with in here and to write it up right would take a very, very long time. I'm tired of sitting on a draft entry and want to get the idea out there.
Some months ago, I had lunch with a Penn State colleague (not in IT). We had a free ranging discussion about many matters regarding Penn State, his line of business, IT, parenting, etc. It was a really nice lunch. I had asked for the meeting because I had long been impressed by his ability to embrace, succeed and apparently enjoy a career and a position despite its significant challenges and unending supply of controversy and stress.
This colleague has a degree in law and while he isn't in a practice at the moment, he does call on his degree and experience on a daily basis. We got to talking about significant professional, personal, and educational influences in our lives. That's where I really pressed for insight and he was wonderfully open.
A professor received a bulk of the credit of his work ethic and perspective. It was then that we drifted in a discussion about an "ethic" that seems to be pervasive in the legal profession (I need some vocabulary freedom here as I'm not quite sure it's an ethic, an ethical framework or maybe even culture. I hope you'll allow me to interchange "ethic" and other words with the understanding that I realize there might be a better word or phrase).
I've watched "For a Few Good Men", "Law and Order", "Perry Mason", and "12 Angry Men" so I know a thing or two about law and lawyering. In these dramatic portrayals of life in the legal profession, we learn over and over again (and you can probably recall having seen this in your own life) that lawyers can and will change jobs over the course of their career - spending years on the prosecution side and then spending years on the defense side of the system. That's pretty interesting to me so I've lingered on this for awhile.
A lawyer isn't judged by whether or not they are on one side of the courtroom or the other, but rather on the skill, manner, and success with which they execute their parts of the legal processes. Prosecution isn't better than defense, defense isn't better than prosecution. The framework depends on both sides doing all they can the best they can and the culture/ethic among the players is such that doing one or the other isn't really a big deal seemingly. The framework helps as does the shared common goal of justice.
So what is our "justice" in information technology? I've concluded that it's service. Delivering the service is the woman with the blindfold over her eyes. Whatever you do in IT, you should be driven to deliver the service. By zeroing in on service, the service area and constituency is neutralized - and priority setting is in another layer of the discussion. If you think that this is wrong, close this tab and move on to the next wave in your surfing because you won't agree with the rest either.
In IT we don't appear to have an analogy for prosecution and defense in our framework for service delivery. And we do have multiple players in the game: engineers, developers, trainers, writers/communicators, managers, administrators, security specialists, etc. Lots of animals are necessary in our zoo so that we can facilitate service delivery.
In legal training and practice (it seems to me), there is only respect for both sides of the framework. It makes no sense to have it any other way. When programmers are learning to program, are they taught about the other sides of service provisioning - all sides of it - and that a respect and understanding of those aspects is critical for programming success AND service delivery success? How about system administrators, engineers, etc.? We're taught to do what we do and it is implied and in fact sometimes even spelled out that "my" component is more important than another. A case could be made that we're trained and encouraged to have a narrow pride and there's little room for discussion of a blind devotion to the larger common goal of service.
How do we introduce behavior that leads to cultural adoption of our own blind justice? How do we get to a place where we expect each other to do the very best we can in what we do and do so with only deep respect for what has to be done "on the other side." It probably won't happen in the classroom to the degree it would happen in law school - so perhaps this is something left up to the organization.
More, sometime soon.
