I was at the beautiful state of Vermont twice in a span of a couple of weeks between late May and early June. I wrote already about my trip to Middlebury, VT in my last post. I had to go to Stowe, VT to the Trapp Family Lodge for a NERCOMP Board retreat. It is a sheer coincidence that last year, the NERCOMP retreat preceded the Wellesley senior staff retreat was in Ogunquit in Maine, actually in the same place! The NERCOMP retreat was fun and very productive this year where we engaged in “World Cafe” type of conversations. I feel that this whole idea could have been condensed in the book to 25 pages with the rest of the “stories” made optional. The idea is great and something we are trying to follow at LTS already – have conversations that go beyond the managerial hierarchy so that everyone has a chance to speak up and provide ideas for the organization to grow. The specifics outlined in the book – small round tables covered by white paper and crayons for participants to write on, a flower vase in the center etc. – seem a little silly, but can be important. I encourage you all to watch this seven principles of world cafe. It is a condensed version that captures the essentials.
My wife and I left on our “vacation” to Singapore and Thailand in early June for a couple of weeks. I was really excited about the trip because we have heard a lot about both of these countries and have never been there. So, what exactly is a vacation? (more…)
The rain seems to be constant these days and from what I gather, we are going to see more rain for the rest of the week. I cancelled a golf outing yesterday evening with friends so I could watch the Memorial tournament played in Ohio last week. Something told me that we are in for an exciting finish with Tiger going for his 73rd win to tie Jack Nicklaus for the second place in all time PGA wins. And it was exciting indeed. Tiger’s enormously risky shot on the 16th set the stage for the rest of the tournament and a great finish.
I spent a couple of days last week in beautiful Middlebury, VT, attending a gathering of Oberlin 17, the Northeast schools who belong to the Oberlin group. The very first exercise was a chance to talk about what we have done in the past year, what questions we have for the others and what are the opportunities for collaboration. There were considerable overlap in that most of us are doing very similar things, have questions regarding very similar issues and would like to talk about collaborations in areas of considerable interest to many. Except, when we sat down to talk about the specifics of collaboration, I didn’t get the feeling that we are going to see much in the way of progress. Call me a skeptic! The reason is, as one of the participants pointed out, some of the calls for collaborations are weakened by the “these problems are local” issue. For eg. a call for shared instructional technology resources is a great concept on which we should be able to collaborate. But, the faculty who are used to a support model and service expectations from our own staff are anxious about this model where the support person is elsewhere. There are also a lot other logistical constraints such as who is managing this person, how are we dividing up the time that this person is expected to allocate to each campus, so on and so forth.
There was a question about digital storage management for which I answered based on what we are doing, but then I was reminded that the issue of digital preservation is a much bigger one. And it is indeed a huge issue!
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I was at the beautiful state of Vermont twice in a span of a couple of weeks between late May and early June. I wrote already about my trip to Middlebury, VT in my last post. I had to go to Stowe, VT to the Trapp Family Lodge for a NERCOMP Board retreat. It is a sheer coincidence that last year, the NERCOMP retreat preceded the Wellesley senior staff retreat was in Ogunquit in Maine, actually in the same place! The NERCOMP retreat was fun and very productive this year where we engaged in “World Cafe” type of conversations. I feel that this whole idea could have been condensed in the book to 25 pages with the rest of the “stories” made optional. The idea is great and something we are trying to follow at LTS already – have conversations that go beyond the managerial hierarchy so that everyone has a chance to speak up and provide ideas for the organization to grow. The specifics outlined in the book – small round tables covered by white paper and crayons for participants to write on, a flower vase in the center etc. – seem a little silly, but can be important. I encourage you all to watch this seven principles of world cafe. It is a condensed version that captures the essentials.