This week so far has been a difficult one – too many late nights. A couple of holiday parties, meeting a good friend in Boston and then the headache caused by the OS upgrade to my machine, which I discuss in detail later. I am looking forward to the trip to Jupiter, FL next week with my family. my sons and I plan to play golf and hopefully get some time to relax too.
I was all excited by the prospect of upgrading to Lion sometime in October when I got the DVD. Here we are in mid-December and finally it happened. My frustration with the upgrade is caused by unique circumstances surrounding my own computer, however, there have been more than the usual complaints about a Mac OS upgrade like the one discussed here.
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I am not sure if things have changed the way we celebrate the holiday season or that I am getting older. It just feels so different. I remember the excitement around looking forward to the month of December. I distinctly remember how happy I was walking along 5th avenue in NY City looking at all the displays and going to Barnes and Nobles downtown to pick up books on sale. I was in NY City last Friday and didn’t even occur to me to do these things or the Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree and watch the skaters in the skating rink. I am sure that all of these are still happening and that I am just geting old and my interests are elsewhere.
Our children have grown and the celebrations and buying gifts for them have changed so dramatically, partly due to technologies. I remember how I was running from store to store like a mad man trying to locate that one missing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Character that our elder son so badly wanted. I literally snatched it out of the hands of an old lady in one store after not finding it in seven stores. She was deliberating whether to take that one or another and the moment she put it down, I took it and rushed out. It was a rare commodity then! And boy, it was indeed a happy holiday when the little kid was thrilled to see it under the Christmas tree! Good old days!
A year has gone by since I began at Wellesley around the Holiday season. The creation of the Advisory Council for Library and Technology Policies coincided very closely with my official arrival date and I had a chance to review and comment on the legislation. The first meeting of the ACLTP Committee was held on Wed. 12/15/2010 at 4 PM. Happy Anniversary to ACLTP!
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I have been extremely busy (with meetings, some coding and a retreat) for the past several days that I have not had time to write a post. I was supposed to take this week off, but an important meeting today required my attendance, so I am working today and most of tomorrow. This will have an effect on what we serve for our Thanksgiving guests (just kidding). I love Thanksgiving and this year, in addition to the usual group of friends, another who has not been able to come will join us. For us, the celebrations extend into Friday and Saturday when groups of friends and extended family who each celebrate Thanksgiving with their own families gather in our house for more celebrations.
Many of us are deeply concerned and frustrated by the bickering taking place in Washington, the most recent one is the lack of compromise on deficit reduction. Rather than concentrating on trying to solve the economic issues which are crippling us, it appears that our esteemed lawmakers seemed to have found time to draft SOPA on the back of PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) passed earlier. The reason for urgency is partly related to fixing the stealing of intellectual property which is indirectly affecting the economy, however, it is so far reaching that we will all be affected severely if passed.
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We have reached a major milestone in our conversion to Google. With a few exceptions, all of our current students, faculty and staff have been moved to Google Apps for Education. Kudos to the hard work of the Google Team. They did a terrific job of planning, training, executing, responding to emergencies and most importantly providing the TLC where needed. We are working towards moving the Meeting Maker calendar over to Google Calendar. I hear that many departments are not waiting – they have already moved.
This transition, like all others, has brought changes in the way we use technology for communication. FirstClass, which was self-contained, was the single point of communication for the campus. We are trying to do the same with tools that Google Apps provides, but it is not the same and raising concerns.
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It is already the end of October and Happy Halloween to you all. Given the wide power outage in CT due to the storm this past weekend, I am not sure how much trick or treating is likely to happen. I remember the days of planning for Halloween with our children, initially my wife yielding to their customized costume choices and then over the years, preference for what is available in the stores that is the latest and greatest to ordering them on the web. We all have gone through the years when there were scares about candies laced with poison and other things to worrying about the amount of sugar in take that a day like today brings. I think this is all fun.
Sept-Oct also happens to be a festival heavy month for us in India. Since Hindu calendar is lunar, our festivals do not fall on fix dates or sometimes not even in the same month. Two major festivals – Navaratri and Deepavali (also known as Diwali in the North) – are celebrated during these months. Deepavali is like the Christmas equivalent for us in terms of the way it is celebrated.
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Things got a little bit out of hand this past week. On Friday night we went back to CT. I came back to Boston on Sunday to go see the Patriots. An exciting game that Patriots managed to win. That night, I went back home very late. Since I was unable to find a reasonable flight from CT to Philly (where EDUCAUSE conference was held), I decided to take the Acela express. This required me to get up very early and go to New Haven, only to find that the train was 45 minutes late. However, it was a comfortable ride and the difference between flying and riding the Acela in terms of the time spent was roughly the same.
The free WiFi on Acela was unreliable. So I used my Verizon 4G MiFi which also was not reliable. I bet I had far better luck with my 3G when I used to ride Metro North. Could this be because of WiFi interference? Could it be because Acela was going fast? Who knows? We need more reliable connectivity. I was pleasantly surprised to see Acela full both ways!
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After many days of great weather, today is a dreary day. It was pretty bad last night that I had to watch Texas vs Detroit play in ALCS. I recognized very few players and besides I didn’t care about the outcome. While watching that and this morning, I heard about the dismantling of the administrative structure of Red Sox (as well as players feeling unhappy) after several successful seasons.
I also noticed that a Google Engineer “accidentally” shared a communication written primarily about the bad management practices at Amazon and then about Google. I have “accidentally” in quotes because I am always suspicious when smart people claim to do things like this or lose a “to be released” iPhone in a bar accidentally, so I think it was intentional. On the other hand, what do I know?
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I was saddened to hear about the death of Steve Jobs last night. I have been a user of many of the Apple products from day one like many of you are. Steve was one of those rare visionaries who revolutionized the usability of computing devices by anyone. How many iPhone or iPod users ever used a manual to start using the device? I was also one of those folks who were in love with the NeXT operating system and I remember installing it and using it for a long time in the early to mid 90’s. He will be missed very much.
Yesterday, I spoke at the Academic Council regarding the two major projects that we are currently engaged in – Sakai and Google Apps for Education. I showed the current state of affairs, such as how many courses are using Sakai, to what extent and which tools of Sakai are being used the most. It turns out that the resources and forums are the two mostly used with tools such as Assignments and Gradebook usage picking up.
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It is that time of the year – Baseball playoffs, football, short days etc. I was able to squeeze a round of golf a couple of days ago. The desperation showed – we were unwilling to stop though there was not enough light. The Red Sox are still alive but so are the Rays. Hope the Red Sox make it to the playoffs and turn their worst performance in September into a soaring October performance. Things in LTS are moving along well. We will soon be sending the Annual Report for 2010-2011 which will highlight many of our collective accomplishments. We will also be sending a communication today announcing a Google Support hotline, availability of additional Email aliases and a single point of contact for managing major projects for the academic departments.
Yesterday I met with Melissa Trevvett (Executive Director) and Amanda Schmidt (Asst. Director) from the Boston Library Consortium (BLC). We are one of the 17 members of the BLC and enjoy the benefits of the consortium at several levels. Melissa began her role as the Executive Director recently and is visiting the member institutions. During our brief meeting, we touched on the “C” word – “Collaboration” and I told Melissa about my views on Collaboration. It reminds me of the “A” word used by the media and politicians – “American People”. They are words that are used a lot but the answer to “Where is it?” or “Which American People told you this?” will likely to be a useless exercise.
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I can’t believe that it was a year ago that I interviewed for the CIO job at Wellesley. My first interview was on Sep 10 when I met with the search committee in two groups and then the second one was on Sep 17th, which was a day-long visit to the campus with some individual and some group interviews. This was followed by a student from South Africa giving me a tour of the College campus and then dinner with a few members of the search committee. During the interviews I heard about FirstClass a little bit, but the student talked a lot about it. Honestly, I had no clue about it until then. After I accepted the job in early October, FirstClass would occupy a significant portion of my life and it still continues, a year later.
I remember Sept 17th vividly – I was staying in a hotel in Needham and was trying to look up directions to the College and the website was down. I looked in Google Maps and left the hotel. I had totally underestimated the time it would take to get to the College. I parked in the garage and was desperately looking to see how to get to the President’s office for my first interview with President Bottomly and there were no clear signs. I asked a student who pointed me in the direction of Green Hall and I rushed, but no idea which entrance to use. Somehow, I made it with 5 minutes to spare. And praying that I will not get a crisis call from Pace University (where I was working) during the day. And my prayers were answered.
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