Archive for January, 2004

Hiring qualified people

Published January 26, 2004 Other 2 Comments

I’ve been trying to hire a Senior Manager for User Support for almost a year now. Why am I having such a hard time? Maybe I’m looking for the impossible – a seasoned professional in managing user support in a complex higher ed technology environment.

But in the course of looking, I’ve seen a *lot* of resumes. And I have to say, I am shocked by the extent to which it appears that people don’t even read the job description or requirements before submitting their stuff. Hey – if I wanted a unix sysadmin, or a .net programmer, or a graphics person, I would advertise such a job.

That’s why I really liked Joel on Software’s article on Getting Your Resume Read. Check it out if you’re looking for a job, or even thinking of sending your resume in.

A résumé is a way to get to the next stage: the interview. Companies often get dozens of résumés for every opening … we get between 100 and 200 per opening. There is no possible way we can interview that many people. The only hope is if we can screen people out using résumés. Don’t think of a résumé as a way to get a job: think of it as a way to give some hiring manager an excuse to hit DELETE. At least technically, your résumé has to be perfect to survive.

Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists

Published January 26, 2004 Music 1 Comment

John Parres points out this BBC report that Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a new musician’s union to help artists in the digital age.

“Some think that we want to cut out parts of the music business, but that’s not the case,” Gabriel said.

He said musicians needed the record industry, because they were “good at making music and not necessarily good at marketing”.

But musicians should not be the slaves of record companies either, he said.

“We need a model partnership where every artist should have a controlling influence in the whole production process – if they want it.”

NY Times Magazing article on the current copyright debate

Published January 26, 2004 Politics Closed

Tracy Mitrano points out this article from yesterday’s NY Times Magazine titled the Tyrrany of Copyright, by Robert Boynton.

Like Rachel Carson in the years before Earth Day, the Copy Left today is trying to raise awareness of the intellectual ”land” to which they believe we ought to feel entitled and to propose policies and laws that will preserve it. Just as the idea of environmentalism became viable in the wake of the last century’s advances in industrial production, the growth of this century’s information technologies, Boyle argues, will force the country to address the erosion of the cultural commons. ”The environmentalists helped us to see the world differently,” he writes, ”to see that there was such a thing as ‘the environment’ rather than just my pond, your forest, his canal. We need to do the same thing in the information environment. We have to ‘invent’ the public domain before we can save it.”

Top 5 music listens of 2003

Published January 21, 2004 Music Closed

And while I’m on the subject of lists…

The Pho email list had a discussion at the end of the year of everyone’s top 5 music choices of the year – here were mine, in no significant order:

  • Rodney Crowell, Fate’s Right Hand (Introspective country songwriting at its
    best).
  • Al Green, I Can’t Stop (He gets back together with Willie Mitchell and the
    rest of the old Memphis gang and gives the gospel a break for a secular outing
    - just as soulful as ever).
  • Dave Douglas, Freak In (a nice updating of the electric Miles Davis sound by
    a young lion).
  • Keith Jarrett Trio, Up For It (Live in Juan-les Pins) (the art of the jazz
    piano trio at its current apex – three masters engaged in unbelievable
    telpathic communication.)
  • Joan Osborne, How Sweet It Is (released in 2002, but I didn’t get to it till
    this year. A genuine homage to 60s-70s soul by one who can pull it off with
    respect and panache).

Now that I look at it, a pretty retro sort of list, but it’s been that kind of
year, at least for me.

Top trends in higher-ed IT for 2004?

Published January 16, 2004 Technology Closed

Trying to catch up after a hectic week or two….

I got asked by a reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Education for my opinion on what the top trends in IT in higher education will be for 2004, and what they should be paying attention to for possible stories. After confering with various colleagues around here, my list looked like this (in no significant order):

1. The penetration of open source software into higher ed (general software like Linux, Apache, Mozilla, Chandler, etc, as well as higher-ed specific stuff like OKI and Sakai).

2. how security issues are changing the face of IT in higher ed.

3. the success (or not) of legal music/video download services among
students and what that means for the copyright wars.

4. the evolution of ill-named “course management software”.

5. student use of IT for self-expression (blogs, photo albums, web pages,
etc) – It’s not about grades, courses, courseware, etc.

6. blurring of the boundaries between higher ed and k-12 and community colleges, enabled by IT and new edu-models (suggested by Louis Fox)

7. electronic portfolios — their development and uses (suggested by Louis)

8. Year Of Desktop Collaboration, i.e. if/when desktop video, IM, chat
will morph and/or become usable and used on a daily basis by the masses. (suggested by Terry Gray)

9. continued practical research on IT cutting edge development at
universities that gets commercialize (Larry Dalton, Center on Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research (http://stc-mditr.org/centout/index.php))

10. The adoption and continued development of Internet2 middleware like Shibboleth.

Kevin Laws – a good essay on the state of the music industry

Published January 13, 2004 Music 1 Comment

Kevin Laws, guest-blogging in Tim Oren’s Due Diligence weblog, has written a good essay on the current state of the music industry.

Just to save you the suspense – the bottom line:

“The industry tips…over”

Now go read it!

The revisionist version of the 1984 Apple ad

Published January 12, 2004 Technology Closed

Terry Gray pointed me towards the 20th anniversary version of Apple’s famous 1984 super-bowl ad. Hmmm, does the runner appear to be wearing something distinctly not available in 1984?

runner.jpg

[CSG] Chandler-Westwood Advisory group meeting

Published January 8, 2004 Technology 2 Comments

We had the first meeting of the group advising OSAF on the development of Westwood, the version of the Chandler personal information software that is being designed specifially to support higher education enterprises. We got an update on the progress toward the Canoga version of the product (the first version, designed for individuals to share information on a peer-to-peer basis). We dicussed the security model issues at some length, and I think we raised some good issues and had a productive morning. My notes from the meeting are here.

Just as an aside, I am really impressed with the incredibly open manner in which OSAF is doing its activities. How many companies or organizations do you know who post all of their weekly status reports on the Web for all to read? I think it’s a model that many of us could use.

And, as long as we’re talking about Chandler and OSAF, there’s an article about OSAF and Mitch Kapor in the current issue of United Airlines’ Hemispheres magazine.

[CSG] Distributed IT Support Models

Published January 8, 2004 Technology Closed

Supporting IT in higher education is an interesting challenge. In many ways large research universities resemble small countries more than tightly organized businesses – they are very decentralized places where individuals schools, departments, research units, etc, have enormous autonomy and can choose whether or not to support their own infrastructure. Some departments at our institution have extremely large and highly competent computing support staffs, while others have little or no support.

There is a constant discussion about how best to organize IT support at this kind of institution – what best serves the users, what is most cost-effective for the institution, how different actually are the different units in their support requirements, and so on.

This morning at CSG there was an interesting session on how some of the member institutions are dealing with distributed support. I had to leave the discussion early to attend the Chandler Westwood advisory group meeting, but the notes I did take at the session are available here.

Steve Jobs on why not to bother with handheld video players

Published January 8, 2004 Technology Closed

David Pogue, in his NY Times column reports here on an interview with Steve Jobs this week.

First, he said, on a video player, “there’s just no equivalent of headphones.” That is, when you put on headphones and press Play on a music player, the results are spectacular-you get a very close equivalent to the concert-hall experience.

But watching video on a tiny three-inch hand-held screen is almost nothing like the experience of watching a movie in a theater or even on TV. It can’t approach the same realism or emotional impact.

Worth a read.

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