This was yet another great summer for me and I am sure it is true for many of you. Now, the phase of getting ready for the start of the Fall semester begins. Gone are the days when this used to be the most stressful part of the support services, especially the technology side. The network bandwidth was never enough, students brought computers that would not easily connect to the network, registration systems were too slow because of the lack of compute power, so on and so forth. Most of these are non-issues, unless we want to make them into issues by introducing some unnecessary and overcautious administrivia in the middle.
All of our summer projects have gone really well, many of which I have already mentioned. Especially worth mentioning are Google Apps transition and Drupal. Given the relative enormity of these projects, we have made amazing progress in such a short time thanks to diligent and creative work by the respective teams. This in no way minimizes several other important projects we have completed, of course.
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I am glad to see that after some hiccups, our Google migration has begun again and we are all keeping our fingers crossed that it should proceed well. I am thankful to have such a dedicated and hardworking team of LTS staff who are managing this project well under difficult conditions. No change is ever easy!
A recent news is that Borders, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier, is unable to find any buyers, so it is likely to liquidate. Apparently, this is not good news for Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Why? Because the book buyers are likely to flock to Borders to pick up the books at cheaper prices. This is true, but, it is for the short term.
The other major item that has been hogging the news recently is the phone hacking scandal. It runs like a mystery novel – celebrities, a rising star within a powerful media empire who is implicated in the scandal and is arrested, a whistleblower was found dead etc. This is a serious issue related to privacy that goes beyond just phone hacking.
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With the prevalence of information on the web and all the communication overload, it is very rare that you have to wait for an annual meeting to find out about new things. I remember attending meetings in the late ’80s and early ’90s (mostly related to my interest in Chemistry) after which you came back energized with all sorts of great ideas. Now, I am disappointed about the presentations in most meetings because it is very rarely that you hear of something new.
However, the networking is invaluable. Almost always, it allows you to gauge how your organization is doing in comparison to the others – and we are doing great, than you, and also you pick up little things here and there regarding directions others are thinking about moving in, feedback regarding products that we may be thinking of purchasing (that they are unlikely to put it in writing) etc.
I attended the Executive Summit organized by SunGard, the Banner vendor, in New Orleans from Friday to Sunday. It precedes the Summit, which is essentially a massive Banner User Group meeting. This year, there are over 6100 attendees!
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