Author Archive
I was out playing golf at the Nehoiden golf club yesterday evening with my son and a fellow golfer yet again reminded us of how humbling a game golf is. In theory, many of us who have played the game for several years, know what to do – stretch, the grip, the setup, placement of the ball, keep your head down, keep your head down, keep your head down…, practice swing, club face, back swing, read the green, so on and so forth. However, execution is a whole different thing and concentration is a big factor. For the undisciplined person like me, that last email that I just read messes up my execution. And then, I read research papers like “Rotational biomechanics of the elite golf swing: benchmarks for amateurs” (bad idea) and start worrying about how I am doing relative to best practices mentioned there. I need to meditate and do yoga to learn mind control & have a flexible body to be a good golfer!
We, in LTS, are engaged in a lot of “projects” and they pose the same challenges as a golf swing. There are umpteen variables that all need to line up for a successful execution. Just the way that the ball does not land most of the time exactly where you want to, projects also don’t end up where one originally intended. Sometimes, the ball lands in a sand trap and getting it out is not clean and you need to rake the sand to make the trap appear undisturbed – in several projects such mishits and cleanups are necessary.
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Summer is winding down and we have already begun seeing increased activity in the College, preparations are underway for the orientation for students and new faculty. Several of us have been in conversations with some of the new faculty. They are some of the most technologically savvy and need computing power beyond the usual laptops. It is encouraging to see that there is no longer a discipline dependency to high end technology requirement. Faculty from all disciplines seem to need them.
In a shameless self promotion, please watch my participation in a discussion about MOOCs with the Chairman of edX Anant Agarwal on NECN CEO Corner.
I am sure you that many of read this in NY Times -“Universities Face a Rising Barrage of Cyberattacks“. If you haven’t, you must read this. In the early stages of internet, the technologies were also evolving and all of us faced attacks, our networks were penetrated and were used for activities such as storing and sharing large image and video files. Warez was one such common activity. I distinctly remember watching a perpetrator’s every keystroke when we were trying to track down what was going on. It was from Australia and I called the ISP who basically told me that they are helpless to do anything but temporarily suspend the account. Of course, in the heat of the moment, I was asking a lot more of them! As soon as I put the phone down, the keystrokes disappeared!
These problems have gotten much worse and far more serious than stealing file storage. Trying to guard information has become expensive. But most importantly, IT professionals alone cannot be responsible for information security.
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I am here in Jupiter, Florida where the temperatures are much better than in the Northeast. Every night since 7/18/2013, we have been going for a walk in the beach in search of baby sea turtles which hatch this time of the year. We saw several of them. We did see some birds waiting to feast on these turtles, but they failed because of our presence. Though these turtles can live up to 80 years, obviously they have to escape these birds and other predators first. As a bonus, we also got to see a lot of green turtles come ashore to lay eggs. We waited silently and patiently until they began digging a hole after which, we went closer to watch the 45 minute process of laying eggs and then masterfully navigating out of the hole and covering the hole up with sand. One of the mornings, we spoke to volunteers who mark the new spots (of course, they also report back using GPS) as well as dig up the holes from where the babies have already hatched. We saw them dig up the hole and pick up the remains. They do an approximate count of how many eggs hatched and how many did not. We even saw one where the baby was still alive, but struggling to get out. They take such babies to Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juno beach. I was very skeptical about the whole thing because of our recent disappointment with the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC. It is all about timing, but I was so thrilled about this experience. Since we are strongly advised against the use of flashlights, we have very limited videos and photos (quality is poor as you can imagine).
During my recent presentation at the NERCOMP workshop on data governance and business intelligence we talked less about the technologies than the need to use the data we have intelligently. The use of data in business has progressed at a much faster pace than in Higher Ed. As you know, the use of data in business goes beyond technologies. There are serious privacy and ethical issues. We won’t go there. But, in case you are not aware of this, I am fascinated by this story on the use of data by Target. By analyzing buying patterns of women, they can predict with high confidence women in their second trimester of pregnancy and target marketing materials appropriate for the new baby. They looked at the buying patterns of a young woman and started targeting similar marketing materials to her. The father was puzzled by all of these mailings & denied his daughter’s pregnancy, but, after a few months realized that his daughter was indeed pregnant!
So why is it that Higher Ed is behind on Business Intelligence (BI)? (more…)
Hope you enjoyed July 4th! As many of you know, I was born in Sri Lanka and lived there for 16 years as an Indian at heart. I moved to India and spent 6 years going to College. I then moved here 35 years ago, studied and settled happily. (OK, now you know how old I am!) All three countries celebrate independence day in grand manner. By the way, I feel bad for the occupiers (in all the three countries I lived, the British were the occupiers) because they don’t have Independence day as a holiday. In Sri Lanka and India, when I was growing up, the Independence day celebrations were a big deal. In the ’60s and the ’70s you still had many who directly experienced the struggle for independence and remembered the sacrifices of their own and others, and the celebrations were grand. As the time passes, the reason for celebrations change, naturally.
Some of us will be making the long trek to Middlebury College next week for a gathering of staff from six colleges – Amherst, Brandeis, Middlebury, Wellesley, Wesleyan and Williams. About 10-11 years ago, the leaders of IT from Wesleyan, Brandeis and Williams (WBW) decided to bring staff from each organization together for an informal gathering and exchange of ideas. It was a lot of fun and productive. Some of us have moved on to other institutions and wanted to start this expanded group. I will write about this meeting next week.
Based on what I heard at the CLAC annual conference last week and the agenda for next week’s gathering I see that many of us are really worried about our dependence on a variety of things. We seek independence and flexibility that may or may not exist and may come at great costs that we don’t have the luxury to fund.
There used to be a time, not too long ago, when the hardware costs were what the technology leaders in higher ed worried about. Whether it is acquiring mainframes from IBM or DEC or subsequently the mini computers in the late ’80s, these were major investments, that helped exclusively the business processes in the institutions. The early ’90s saw major disruptions when the personal computer revolution came about, and institutions were caught off guard on many fronts. Many institutions were not prepared budgetarily to fund computers for faculty and staff but most importantly, there were not enough staff to support them. The sad truth is that these “personal computers” were developed for “personal use” and the internet changed the game and the transition was ugly. The dissatisfaction amongst the faculty and staff was at an all time high and many leadership in IT organizations changed.
After 10, 15 years, we have forgotten all of these because hardware is cheap and has been commoditized. These two factors has given us the independence and flexibility we want. If a vendor does not provide me what I want, I have many others to turn to. Besides, I can swap hardware A with B with such ease these days, there is very little incremental cost to be able to do it. Virtualization is another huge game changer, which makes it incredibly easy to divide a single physical server into multiple virtual server. So, in general, we are satisfied with the hardware landscape.
The other major area that is vexing for us is software. You have heard so much from me on this, I will keep it brief. Basically, it is a huge mess for certain software and there seems to be no relief in sight. In the CLAC meeting, when someone suggested a possible collaboration amongst colleges to run ERP (eg. Banner) jointly as a way to reduce costs, a seasoned CIO quipped “I don’t see that happening in my lifetime”. I am a bit more optimistic than that. Most of our frustration stems from the fact that despite the fact that these software cost us a boat load of money, they don’t do what we want them to do. I do understand the struggle that the software vendors face in trying to satisfy thousands of institutions each with different expectations, but when I pay annually 4-6 times the full-tuition for students, I expect a lot more and I don’t necessarily care how the vendors accomplish this.
This is precisely why the fiercely independent persona in me loves open source. Of course, it has its own “dependence” – the worldwide community that develops these software and the fear of the unknown. What if the community stops caring about them and stops developing them? Indeed, it is a real issue, but think about it – it is “open” for a reason. If the software stops being supported, you have access to everything you put into it and you can chart the course at that point. This is next to impossible in case of commercial software. Moving from one ERP system to another is so prohibitively costly that with very few bold exceptions, no one dares to even think about it. Did I say I will keep it brief? OK, I will stop.
In similar vein, the journal publishers tie our hands big time. We don’t have much of a leverage to influence the rise in costs. Open access policies and open access journals are beginning to provide us with some much needed flexibility and independence.
The two items I discussed above are at the institutional level. Due to increased awareness and knowledge of technologies, every member of the community seeks technology independence in some sense. The whole BYOD (bring your own device) or the variance in terms of the operating systems and software that everyone wants to use poses new issues. Whereas we want to encourage these to a large extent, because this is essential for creativity and inquiry. However, we need to also think about certain boundaries.
Democracies are successful because independence is combined with certain constraints such as the laws, rules and regulations or else there could be total anarchy. Not everyone may necessarily agree with all the rules and regulations, but the expectations are that all citizens follow these for the collective good. The same way, we, as an organization, with consultation with the advisory committees such as the Advisory Committee on Library and Technology Policies and the president’s cabinet, create the boundaries and try our best to enforce them, all for the collective good of everyone. Of course, not everyone always agrees with what we do. We try our best to accommodate as many variations as possible and try to explain why we do what we do. I prefer to meet with those who feel that our decisions are adversely affecting their ability to conduct research or business.
As someone said “It is hard to hate someone in person”. And I would add “especially if the person makes sense”, even if we disagree.
I spent a couple of days at the annual conference of the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. Whenever I have gone to this campus I just go to their campus center, attend meetings and come back. I had no idea that they had such a beautiful, sprawling and hilly campus. The conference provided an excellent way to reconnect with many colleagues from other small liberal arts colleges. These meetings provide a forum to share what each of us is doing and the fact that we are so similar in many ways helps. Despite those similarities, there are considerable differences either because of geography, budget constraints and other things. I was pretty excited to hear that Occidental College has launched a very ambitious academic commons project and I requested Marsha Schnirring, the Associate Vice-President for Scholarship Technology there, to share any planning documents with us. By the end of the day yesterday, she had mailed me a few! We are also witnessing significant turnover in leadership in IT organizations and it was great to observe all the shuffles and connect with many of the new leaders, who are also from other CLAC schools and have risen through the ranks. And the hosts were fantastic!
I can’t believe that June is already over. Time to start planning for the new year. At the LTS senior leadership retreat a few days ago, we developed a plan which we will discuss in detail a bit later. I discuss briefly some of the plans in this post.
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I should be writing more often than I have been and I need to fix it. That means I need to get my priorities right! Had a good time visiting Montgomery Bell State Park near Nashville, TN where my wife had a conference. We hiked a lot and I played golf at the Frank G. Clement Golf Course. It is a very well maintained public golf course that is also cheap. There were two major issues at the park – food and wireless. Wireless worked well for a day and then it was out for a whole day. My Verizon MiFi signal was poor, so I had to rely purely on AT&T phone. Given the news about the NSA data mining on Verizon calls, may be Verizon servers were too busy serving up the data that they were not servicing the MiFis!
One thing that I have been thinking about lately is how little I interact with one of the largest constituent base – our students. I am sure that this is a serious issue for most CIOs. We have very strong relationships with all administrative offices and therefore several senior administrators and administrative staff. Similarly, we have strong interactions with a significant number of faculty to support their technology (and in merged organizations, library) needs ranging from hardware to shrinking collections to electronic journals to increasingly digital scholarship projects. Our relationships with students is literally non-existent in comparison.
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After several days of coordination and preparation, we successfully announced the first four Wellesley courses to be offered in WellesleyX, our grand MOOC experiment. They are:
- Introduction to Human Evolution, taught by Adam Van Arsdale, Fall 2013
- Was Alexander Great? The Life, Leadership, and Legacies of History’s Greatest Warrior, taught by Guy Rogers, Spring 2014
- Introduction to Global Sociology, taught by Smitha Radhakrishnan, Fall 2014
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance, taught by Yu Jin Ko, with Diego Arciniegas as a partner teacher, Fall 2014
After our announcement in Dec 2012, the Provost created an ad hoc WellesleyX committee and invited proposals from the faculty. When the process closed on March 1, we had several excellent proposals that the committee reviewed and presented their feedback based on which these four were selected as the first four courses. As you can see from the description of these courses, they are excellent choices with a diverse set of topics. These faculty are excited to be experimenting with this new medium and have great ideas for the students. We are excited to offer support and also learn through this process.
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I have been attending the NERCOMP Board retreat at Water’s Edge in Westbrook, CT. Since it is close to home, I have chosen to come home and attend all the meetings and hanging outs. The weather was not that great early on, but has been gorgeous since thursday afternoon. One of the major themes at the retreat is, yes, you guessed it right – how to improve communications. This is exactly what we have been talking about at Wellesley. In fact, we are going to discuss this amongst ourselves in LTS and chart a plan for the upcoming year. Though we have done an excellent job by centralizing all communications, bringing a simple and common vocabulary, there are many in the community who complain that they don’t hear about many of the things we communicate.
To me, this is a major unsolved problem. Whereas many unsolved problems in the sciences have been documented, such as the famous protein folding or “Do any odd weird numbers exist?” (hmmm.. i thought all weird numbers are kind of odd), communications is not listed as an unsolved problem. In my mind, it is a huge unsolved problem. There are plenty of free advice on fixing communication problems involving relationships. And this interesting advice from the office of HR in University of Minnesota on “Communicating to Solve Problems“. Obviously these are generalizations and don’t necessarily work across the board. What I am interested in the narrow slice – how do effective organizations communicate with their audience. In other words, what should we do to communicate effectively with our faculty, staff, students and alumnae. Or, what should NERCOMP do about effective communications with its members?
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Another academic year is coming to an end and these are mostly happy times. Our commencement is still a few days away, but, when I noticed that a friend was off to his son’s graduation at Penn State last weekend, it dawned on me that we are in that season already! I am sure that all those first years who made their college choices are the happiest bunch, dreaming about the college while preparing for high school graduation. I remember those days vividly though it has been a while with our two boys. It is pretty hard for me to believe that this is the third summer for me at Wellesley. Sometimes I feel like I am still settling in – people still have to explain to me certain terms and traditions 🙂
I was invited to go to a gathering of Higher Ed CIOs organized by a company called Consero. I was pretty skeptical about the whole thing. In the end, it was fun and useful. We met for a couple of days in San Diego to discuss various topics that the Higher Ed CIOs are interested in. In many cases, this turned out to be what many Higher Ed CIOs are worried about. Of course there are some who worry more than the others and the worry spectrum is highly influenced by local issues and the type of person the CIO is.
Frankly, though there are some common thread to discussions, the term “Higher Ed” is increasingly appearing to be as challenging as the term “American People”. Private College issues are different from public, large universities are different from small ones, liberal arts colleges seem to worry about completely different things than the rest, so on and so forth. In fact, someone even began making a distinction amongst the liberal arts colleges based on the endowment! The challenge therefore is to pick and choose ways in which you can benefit from these discussions as well as contribute to them in ways that they don’t appear to come from the CIO from a “wealthy”, highly selective, women’s liberal arts college from the state of Massachusetts (and therefore not applicable to the others). Despite all these challenges, we all had one thing in common – we had a lot of fun!
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Many of us are saddened by the Boston Marathon bombings and are relieved that the ordeal has come to an end. Or, has it? I think each of us will take our own time to reflect on the events, digest both the reliable as well as the mis-information that is being directed us from all directions, and derive our own conclusions. As I wrote in my last post, various technologies played important roles in identifying the suspects and eventually capturing one of them. They brought to light several important things – explosion of technologies, how the law enforcement relied on distributed technologies (video tapings from sources other than Law enforcement), social media and crowd-searching (crowd sourced searching), and thermal imaging.
Frankly what got lost in all of these discussions is how every one of these items is far more complicated than the positive aspects which helped us in the end. And most importantly, what led to the surviving suspect was an actual curious human being and not the technology. Quite obviously, every step of the way, there were pitfalls – privacy, security, misuse of captured information, dangers of subjectivity arising from crowdsourcing the search whi has a high probability of the wrong people being implicated etc. etc. And the massive data that was helpful in cases like this and others is the “Big Data“.
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