Imagine if you could write the contract - or rewrite existing contracts - for software that we use. What would you insist upon in terms of integration with existing systems? adherence to standards? terms of use? termination conditions?

I'm participating in such an exercise with some others in the CIC, and if you have a moment to chime in - it would be most helpful.

Thanks.

Technorati Tags: psuit

Looking forward to getting to know some of you a little bit better.

Technorati Tags: psuits

Since 2001, we have done rigorous analysis on a semester by semester basis and upgraded hardware, software, and processes accordingly to meet what we believe will be the coming academic year's demands. Heading into this semester there were over 75,000 students signed up for over 250,000 course section enrollments. This finals week, we saw a demand for use not seen before and it appears that there has been a fundamental shift in how it is faculty and staff are using the service as well. This combination of factors pushed demand over the headroom built into the systems.

ITS has been working non-stop since the problems occurred to make the system improvements necessary for a successful spring semester and beyond. What we need to improve falls into two categories: system performance and communications in emergency situations. We are in contact with all of the vendors that provide the various pieces of the system to aid in the analysis of finals week and put in place non-disruptive enhancements to dramatically improve the performance headroom heading into the semester and particularly for finals week. Additionally, we are having intense conversation about how it is we can better reach faculty and students should such a situation confront us all again. It is our goal to have an update on both aspects of the challenges before us on January 7, 2008.

Penn State's course management system is arguably our best supported application/service. There are a number of first-rate personnel that support the service from the technical plumbing to training and to support in the classroom - there isn't an aspect of the service that we don't put a lot of energy and passion into, and we've been doing it for years. And even with that commitment, we've been humbled by the intensity and volume of the anger and frustration voiced by those faculty and students that were most greatly impacted. We deeply regret the disruptions that were caused during finals week, and we are doing all that we can to make the spring a great success so that faculty, staff and students can teach, learn, discover and not have the technology get in the way.

It takes years to build trust and confidence and only days or even moments to lose it. We understand it will take time to regain trust and confidence, and we've tightened up our boot straps to take that journey, however long it may be. We hope that recognition of our historic commitment to ANGEL will reduce the time it takes to regain that trust, but if it doesn't we'll keep making it better until we get back to where we were and beyond.

UPDATE, January 6, 2008:

Staff in ITS have been hard at work to continue to address the issues of finals week.

We are increasing the computing capacity for web transactions by adding 100% more Web servers. Additionally, we are in receipt of a larger, faster database server and will begin acceptance testing as soon as we possibly can.

We are working with our vendors to develop methodologies for increasing computing capacity for finals week at the end of spring semester. There have been countless emails and two conference calls to get to the bottom of the issues. There are tentative plans to conduct a summit of sorts between all parties, in the coming weeks - when the effectiveness of telephone calls has been reached

We are refining technical mitigation strategies should system degradation reoccur. Stay tuned to the ANGEL log on page for a description of those strategies.

We are developing guidelines for faculty about importing their courses and course materials prior to the start of a semester, to spread out the system load due to import/export during the first few days of classes.

We are outlining a processes for rapid crisis communications, proactively using a variety of vehicles. We also plan to meet with a subset of ANGEL users so we can better anticipate their usage at critical periods during a semester. Our future crisis communications also will outline ways the community can minimize the load, including alternatives to accomplish some tasks outside of the ANGEL system.

Technorati Tags: ANGEL, psuits

- Norman Augustine

A review of the report titled, "Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth?" is compelling reading, as is a summary of the report's recommendations. Mr. Augustine also recently briefed congressional staff on the report. His testimony can be found on the National Academies Press web site.

Let's hope our government is listening. There are strong cases made for new (or renewed) investments in education, research and infrastructure - all of which would have an impact on research institutions and their IT organizations.

Technorati Tags: cyberinfrastructure, psuits

"A five-year recycling plan that describes those adjustments that would be necessary for the unit to recycle centrally up to 1.0 % of its permanent operating budget each year. Some continued central recycling will almost assuredly be necessary to balance the University’s overall budget, providing for regular and competitive salary increases, improved facilities, and limited new strategic investments."

You can find the Provost's original memo in its entirety on the ITS wiki for strategic planning on wikispaces.psu.edu .

In our ITS Senior Leadership retreats we've started the discussions about how we might do recycling, but I'm very interested in hearing what ideas others might have. How would you change something your group does to recycle (give back) some of its budget? Is there an activity or service that you think could be completely eliminated? I'd rather not constrain thinking with specific dollar values, but to get started think handfuls of thousands of dollars and beyond. And anything in ITS is fair game, you don't have to just think about your own area.

Comment here or send me an email with your ideas. We could really use the wisdom of our crowd on these kinds of challenges.

Technorati Tags: psuits

James Duderstadt, highly respected former president of the University of Michigan, recently published a report outlining some provocative thoughts about the future of engineering education. It isn't long at all - but in short he suggests that we might want to look at engineering as we do a degree in law or medicine. Perhaps engineers, and I'll add IT professions, should be trained more broadly as an undergraduate and pursue their professional degree as graduate work. That might make more room for ethical frameworks, etc. in the overall education. It's an interesting idea.

Technorati Tags: cyberinfrastructure, psuits, puppy

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

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

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.

Technorati Tags: ethics, psuits

I am better connected to what's happening in the library world, for example. I currently subscribe to Mairéad's, Mark's, Lisa German's, John Meier's, Peter Brantley's (UCB), and Lorcan Dempsey's, blogs . Not all are at Penn State and part of the local pilot, but all are related because the "outside" blogs were found by reading others' blogs.

I've been getting a lot out of Mark Linton's blog from TNS.

One of the newer one's I've subscribed to that I've enjoyed is Chris Stubbs' in TLT.

I know there are many more out there and that I can use the directory to try and find them. I was just calling out how much I'm getting out of it personally without even having gone on much on a hunt. Please feel free to comment with a pointer to your own blog or if you have any advice that goes beyond how to search our blogging directory.

After I make some sense out of how I'll organize the ITS blogs I read, I can see that I've got a larger process to undertake to organize the many faculty blogs that are quite active.

Continued thanks to all involved in making this effort go.

Someone shared with me a youtube video this week made by some students at another university. While all story tellers exercise editorial control over their material, this video is sobering even if one takes the most cynical of views - in my opinion. I highly recommend watching it as we think about how students' perspectives and needs should be reflected in our strategic planning discussions.

* October 25th, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
* November 13th, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

The facility is really impressive. There's lots of technology at play but it isn't in the way. When the facility is not being used for testing, it will act as a general purpose computer lab at the flip of a switch. The layout is inviting and functional.

About 40-50 people came to the first open house yesterday and from what I was told, enthusiasm was almost as high as interest. I highly recommend checking out this facility as it will be one that many faculty and students associate with their IT experience at Penn State.

Hats off to all involved in this project. And please, to anyone I spoke with yesterday (Chris, Jonathan, Brian, et al), jump in here and highlight anything I missed in this very brief overview of the facility.

A little over a year ago, I subscribed to MAKE magazine. I learned of it from a now defunct podcast published by O'Reilly. The driver behind the magazine is that with information technology as pervasive as it is now, there is much more surface area between IT and the analog world. MAKE set out to capture this phenomena and I think it does a great job of it. A week doesn't go by when my son and I aren't talking about some cool project we've see on on MAKE. We even set some time aside this past summer to make one of the projects we saw and it was really fun.

MAKE has also been a force behind the establishment of events called Maker Faire's. You can think of Maker Faire as the Grange Fair but with technology. Instead of showing off the pig, you show off the kite with the digital camera attached to it for taking pictures several hundred feet off the ground, for example. Or the Altoid can mod that becomes the case for your latest iPod. You get the idea.

Aside from the fact that this kind of innovation is fun and fascinating to track, it gets me wondering about what role IT thinks it has in this space. There are times I think we're (IT as much as ITS, but probably more of an issue for ITS IMO) hyper-concerned from the browser to the backbone, and for good reasons. But what about the plethora of cameras and digital signage on campus, or instrumentation in research labs, or the cornucopia of technology that now resides in residence halls rooms. Keeping in touch with how faculty, students, and peer staff are changing their IT environments to accommodate all of these new devices/agents/etc. is only going to become more important as the number of devices equals or greatly exceeds the number of computers running clunky browsers. We don't have too many first hand examples of this in ITS but we do have some. I'm wondering about how we get closer to what's going on at this IT vs. T interface.

Maybe we should co-sponsor a residence hall Maker Faire for residence hall students along with IST and Student Affairs? Maybe we could sponsor a faculty oriented Maker Faire so they could show off cool IT/T solutions they've come up with in their offices, homes, labs.
Even better, it would be great to have a place (and excitement) large enough to have both going on at the same time. 4H for technology at it's most basic level - getting things done.

Doing anything cool that you'd be willing to share here? Have any ideas about how we can raise awareness about our own Penn State MAKE attitude, so we can better prepare for the future (because it's here now)?