LibertyRoad: Comments

Comment on "Some answers to questions from the Spring 2010 ITS All-staff meeting"

Thu, 27 May 2010 09:16:36 -0500

Having missed the All-staff (and having chased the kid around the house during most of the Connect broadcast) this is good information and I'll echo Jerry's comment of very helpful. Thanks Kevin!

- JEREMIAH HILL

Comment on "Some answers to questions from the Spring 2010 ITS All-staff meeting"

Fri, 21 May 2010 14:08:21 -0500

Kevin, Thanks for taking the time to respond to these questions. Your insight is very helpful.

- GERARD KRAWCZYK

Comment on "Nothing quite like being there"

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:30:37 -0500

Hear, hear! While I had to miss being a part of the "hall hauler" crew this year, the memories I still have as one of those freshmen years ago, and the later experience as a parent, and then a "hauler", combine to afford pride in the way we collectively are seen as welcoming, to those arriving here. From the signage to the traffic management to the procedures for check-in to the varied activities offered, we forget just how organized we do appear to those joining us. Carrying that beyond those first days is a great focus to keep in mind when encountering those students and parents seeming to be a bit overwhelmed or confused by it all....

- STEVE H UPDEGROVE

Comment on "Everything's the same, everything is different"

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:05:50 -0500

Hey Kevin,
I like your viewpoint here, which is especially relevant in today's business, academic and political climate. The "seek first to understand and then seek to be understood" principle is very present in your thoughts. I get the sense that you are in the thick of this every day here at PSU. Keep it up!

- MATTHEW N MEYER

Comment on "What do you say to someone you haven't seen in a long time?"

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:17:02 -0500

Couldn't agree more, Rick. Much of our (where "our" = all of us) portfolio has changed in nature this last decade. The good news is it is still a game and /should/ appeal to the personality profiles that seem to permeate IT orgs, the bad news is that it is different (which is good news to me!). Our jobs are challenging, changing and relevant. If someone is looking for something easy, static and not relevant this is a terrible business to be in :-) .

- KEVIN M MOROONEY

Comment on "What do you say to someone you haven't seen in a long time?"

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:01:38 -0500

Welcome back, Kevin! In many ways, a "grab" isn't all that bad. There are many opportunities for doing new, interesting, effective and efficient things in the IT realm these days. I believe we all need to do a little reaching to capitalize on those opportunities that allow us to be both efficient and effective at our routine tasks so that we can direct more effort toward the opportunities to innovate that will multiply the effects of IT in the years ahead. How we team up to approach this will dictate our success to a very large degree.

- RICHARD COONS

Comment on "The ISB at Penn State - or - Cloud Schmoud"

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:32:44 -0500

Here is some "DLT" contribution to help establish the guide post.

First, we've started to add more value to our digital content by understanding and documenting characteristics about the digital objects we are saving and physical media being used to store content.

Defining characteristics about different media types, we can classify our storage into virtual storage pools. An example of these characteristics are cost, I/O speeds, power, supported API's, and so on. These virtulized storage pools are offered as storage service options to users who have defined requirements for their data, such as retention, provenance, I/O, access control, etc.

Librarians have practiced content classification and stewardship for thousands of years, but the digital age presents new challenges and opportunities. Many classification standards exist today and some new or existing standards are evolving to support managing digital content. Now IT is able to expand on this practice to include even more characteristics, such as ACLs, encryption, compression, versioning, etc.

The results of all this information about the digital data is a relational view of data from many different perspectives. This information is what will allow us to federate repositories, searches, and the many mulitple pools of existing storage.

- BENJAMIN GRISSINGER

Comment on "The ISB at Penn State - or - Cloud Schmoud"

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:29:41 -0500

Intuitively, a single (or two for redundancy) farm of storage seems like you would be able to gain incredible economies of scale.

The first requirement that comes to mind is that of security. The data would need to be encrypted in such a way that an unauthorized person (even the sys admin of the system) would *never* be able to rederive the plain text. Furthermore, the users of the storage cloud would need to be convinced that this is true.

The second requirement that comes to mind is for performance. Would the cost of the networking infrastructure and additional computational power (for the encrypt/decrypt rounds) still be

Assuming you got past the first two hurdles (which are not trivial) -- do we think we'd be able to do this better than a outside party that has not just one university but 50? or 50 of the Fortune 500? Or maybe we *do* run it for 50 universities?

I always envisioned some sort of utility coming down the road...much like we pay for Internet and telephone and electricity. We'd pay a too-good-to-be-true fee for storage that would make our data centers (and home hard drives) obsolete. We'd diskless boot off the ultra-reliable network. We'd retain ownership and access to the data but it would actually be striped across different disks on different continents. (*Most* of us don't dig our own water wells or run only off of generators anymore.)

Taking that one step further --- it's logical that the ISPs would get into this initially. It's also logical that they would evolve into a monopoly (or local monopolies) that would get dissolved under Sherman/Clayton anti-trust acts.

- Richard Rauscher

Comment on "sciencecommons presentation at CNI 2008 - how we can do better than Google"

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:13:11 -0500

i think that this is the current holy grail of IT. how do we meaningfully leverage our information assets to learn new knowledge about ourselves, our (in)efficiencies, our processes, our science, etc.

how do we enable our faculty to access this knowledge with sufficient but not unnecessary barriers? is it possible to have a non-human-vetted process where the barrier is appropriately set?

I used to joke that a demanding scientist that I worked with at another university wanted to "push a button and have the computer generate a Nature paper." can we get closer to this?

- Richard Rauscher

Comment on "More coffee, more coffee, more coffee"

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:03:52 -0500

As conceived, these were for ITS people. In an internal blog posting I just announced the end of them because it seemed as though they had run their course. I hope to spin something different up in early spring, similarly informal but hopefully just as insightful as the breakfasts had been.

- KEVIN M MOROONEY

Comment on "More coffee, more coffee, more coffee"

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:25:47 -0500

Where would be the best place to find out more about these breakfasts? Are they just for ITS personnel? I noticed that one just came past, but did not see anything discussed about them on the typical IT lists (NWoP).

Thanks,
Ed

- EDWARD JAMES SMILEY JR

Comment on "sciencecommons presentation at CNI 2008 - how we can do better than Google"

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:24:53 -0500

I'd like to say it was shrewd judgement, but it was really shrewd luck. :-)

- KEVIN M MOROONEY

Comment on "sciencecommons presentation at CNI 2008 - how we can do better than Google"

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:45:14 -0500

Great post!. Interesting tidbit that Mr. Wilbanks is a sitting member of the Fedora Commons board. Since we are so involved in DLT with technologies to store and maintain digital assets, it is exciting to see this kind of energy behind data curation and building context. BTW Mairead wants to know why you got all the good sessions :)

- BENJAMIN GRISSINGER

Comment on "Data audit framework - CNI 2008"

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:10:47 -0500

I couldn't agree with your soapbox box, more. I do think that whatever is done at the institutional level, however, is likely to always be outstripped by the pace of capability expansion by individuals. Given that, the bigger institutional risk is not having an awareness about this issues. Indeed, anything done institutionally has to be scalable, affordable, extensible and most importantly interoperable - which of course means *open* standards compliant.

- KEVIN M MOROONEY

Comment on "Data audit framework - CNI 2008"

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:53:16 -0500

Wow, this looks like it was a great presentation.

I think collaborating with work units or departments that are keenly interested in "really" finding out what they have could be a win for everyone. I'd welcome the chance to talk with these folks.

Over here we're preparing for a deluge of data from all parts of the University but have no way to know how much or at what given moment we'll be asked to preserve it and make it discoverable. I want to add that we can propose the tools to make data discoverable but the ultimate decision as to the value and how it becomes discoverable (the metadata) is up to owners and curators (librarians).

Ok, now my soapbox (short)
Please think about how over time we are going to plan and manage this data (maybe forever?). The last thing IMHO we want to create is yet another "repository", that becomes a silo that is difficult or impossible to federate. We need a system that's standards based where the repositories and storage hardware are decoupled and the only time we are required to move data around is to transform it to a readable version based on current technology, not vendor or platform end of life issues. And, it's easily done because the proper metadata is associated with the data objects. XAM Initiative (OK, I have to stop)

Thanks!

- MARK CHARLES SAUSSURE

Comment on "Geek speak"

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:49:17 -0500

Lisa's VOIP example is a perfect example of how needs assessment goes beyond delivery in speaking to delivery of any service.

If we look at where wasted time or redundant services exist, we should ask ourselves what needs have not been met that have forced internal customers to demand other services.

Whether we're looking at our own departments or across departments, these service gaps exist everywhere. The key is getting the people who create and the people who use these redundant services around the table to assess what needs have not been met.

- Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Comment on "Geek speak"

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:31:22 -0500

Yes, welcome back, Kevin--we all didn't *really* think you still had room for a few more people to have coffee with you in October :-)

I, for one, would like to see you post on your successes as well--big ones, little ones.

I don't know what the specifics were as far as your presentation, but I think it also drives home the point of trying to get the questions Nikki mentioned answered--by the *right* people--meaning the ones your are tailoring your presentation to--as early as possible.

The example that comes to mind is not a presentation tailored to a group, but rather a service tailored to a group. I remember hearing of several units at University Park who were getting VoIP installations where the person who was leading up the effort on the customer's end didn't always know what was really needed (but didn't bother to check with or involve their people who would be using the phones on a daily basis in the design decision, even though encouraged to do so). The result was wasted investment in time by both TNS and the customer organizer, inefficient workflow, and very frustrated end users (they were still pretty mad when they attended training...)

- LISA LACOMBE

Comment on "Geek speak"

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:52:09 -0500

I love those questions as a filter to pass a presentation through, Nikki. Thanks for sharing.

Ken - what's "lexicon"? Seriously, the acronym complaint is something we hear coming out of all-staff meetings as well - your point is well taken. And to make matters worse in these in-house settings, sometimes there is one-upsmenship for who can appear more knowledgeable by being more obtuse. The competitive sense is great, it makes us all get and stay current. But when it bleeds over into other behaviors, it can be destructive.

As for storytelling, well I couldn't be in more agreement. The Chief Imagineer of Disney gave the keynote at IEEE/ACM Supercomputing one year and his entire presentation was about the importance and love of storytelling and listening (if done well) we have as humans. It stuck with me. In that presentation I was talking about, what worked best was getting the audience to tell their stories - which was inviting to the others. I hadn't thought of the dynamic in those terms - thanks for the brain twist.

And if I wrote every time I was confused, I'd have had carpal tunnel syndrome by the time I was 8. But I do hope to get out here more often. It isn't as scary as it looks once you've been away awhile.

- KEVIN M MOROONEY

Comment on "Geek speak"

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:10:24 -0500

Your post is such an important reminder to us all not to assume we all speak the same GeekSpeak. I read that Polly LaBarre (Mavericks at Work) used the term "jargon monoxide" and I've adopted ever since. We are twice as likely to fall into this trap, being technically-minded and two being in higher education.

With really nontechnical audiences, I like to use a metaphor to relate something I'm explaining to something they already understand.

Otherwise, I try asking myself four questions to eliminate content that might be confusing or boring:

What do they need to know?
What do they want to know?
What do they already know?
What don't they want to know?

- Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Comment on "Geek speak"

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:29:48 -0500

This also happens in more tech savvy audiences. At the CSS All Staff last week a comment was made, to the effect, "people are using too many acronyms -- I don't understand." Too often, I think we also fail to understand that IT has become so specialized that each space has developed its own independent lexicon. I'm grateful this was pointed out.

In a previous life of mine, a group of us were tasked with facilitating actual communications between (real-life) technologists and (real-life) politicians (if every there was a case of same world different universes, this was/is it). The notion that bubbled up was that it took a very special skill set to interpret one group's statements to the other.

The term we co-opted (can't remember the source now) was "bridge scientist." Sometimes effective communications takes more than just eliminating jargon and specialized language but also bridging sector-specific mindsets, perspectives or received "knowledge".

- Ken Forstmeier