When the US Ryder Cup won at Valhalla in 2008, many attributed the win to the energy of the new team members. The fact that some of the members never felt the experience of losing to the Europeans in previous Ryder Cup events, to some, also was a major factor in the US win. I have also heard from time to time how as we grow older, we seem to lose our sense of wonder, amazement at how the world works and we make things more complicated than things should be, maybe even more cynical. In some ways, I see this happening in the workplace. There is no question that a sense of perspective based on years of experience, institutional knowledge, provides a great compass in how we should move forward. It is through institutional knowledge that pitfalls can be avoided based on lessons learned from the past. However, solely relying on the past to guide any actions moving forward, when taken to extreme, stifles innovation.
Technology
Social Media in Student Affairs and the Need for Institutional Support
Institutional support is necessary for social media to thrive in higher education. Individuals and grassroots efforts have opened the door for social media to be accepted at universities and have proven the values of it. To further the use of social media, institutional support is required for it to be embraced, to be sustained and to explore further uses. While the mention of policies and guidelines and even having committees that represent the different factions of the university including marketing, IT, legal, business unit reps could be seen as overly bureaucratic, it is my opinion, based on experience, that it is necessary for social media to be embraced as part of official university business. If a group, representing the different functions of your organization, does not clearly define the use and boundaries of social media, some individual(s) will improperly define it for the organization based on limited and biased perspectives.
Technical Managers – All We Do is Forward Emails
A developer tells me “the only thing managers do is forward emails”. I knew I couldn’t convince him otherwise so I didn’t bother correcting him. He’s wrong by the way! Managers like me also schedule unproductive meetings and sit at our desks the whole day, thinking of how to make developers’ lives miserable 🙂
The developer is right partially in that part of my job is to forward emails. Below are some emails I have forwarded throughout the years:
* Customer’s appreciation of the wonderful job my staff have done for them. I forward them to my team and/or to the staff as well as to my director and those above them. This is my way of recognizing their efforts and building their reputation with the upper management.
* Customer’s questions/requests. There have been many times when my customers asked for my help to move a request forward in purchasing equipments or starting projects.
* Email about why a system suddenly stops working. Sometimes I would get emails from customers and other developers about a system not working. Unfortunately, changes to the system, either through changes to code by developers or network/server settings by IT administrators are made without informing those affected of the changes made disrupting the system
* Emails from upper management about policy changes.
There have also been times when I have had to what provide what I call “value-added email service.” In addition to forwarding emails, I have had to add my perspective/interpretation on the issue in the email. For example:
* Translating technical jargon into words understandable by lay people.
* Apologizing to our customers about an email sent by a tech person which they perceive as disrespectful and accusatory.
* Apologizing to our customers about the disruption of their service caused by an unauthorized change to the their system.
I think every developer (including me) at some point have probably thought that managers are unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. From experience, only when a developer assumes a leadership/management role in an organization will that person truly appreciate the values of middle management.
Culture Behind the Codes
I was reviewing a code for a web site I created in 1997 which led me to think about what it was like at the time. The website, the campus-wide calendar of events (http://events.sa.ucsb.edu/), was one of the very first campus-wide web application at UCSB. In reviewing the code, it came to me that codes are artifacts in themselves, revealing not only how the application was developed as well as developers’ environment and abilities. With further investigation, codes do lead to some revelations about the politics, the technologies, the state of the organization at that time as well. In a way, the code in itself has a culture behind it.
New Job Title: “Social Media Lifeguard”?
A colleague of mine tells me “You’re like a lifeguard, you tell us how far to go in the ocean and where to go, and you call us back if we go too far but you don’t stop us from going into the water.”
To put what he said into context, a group of us, some folks from our student life office and some technical staff from my office which is the central technology department for the Division of Student Affairs, had just seen a demo of a product to manage student organizations. The authentication used by the vendor product uses facebook connect. While the vendor product was really beyond what we could ever build and everyone watching the demo, including me were very impressed with the product, I unfortunately had to dampen the enthusiasm of those present. I had to mention that using facebook connect may not be an idea that will be readily accepted as an option by security administrators on campus. Using a third party like facebook for authentication for an official campus system is a new concept on my campus. In my role as the Associate Director of Information Systems and Software Development, I unfortunately have to play the role of “bad guy” sometimes. Many times, some of these concerns I share are not even necessarily mine, but I do have to share them anyways. I think in general, I am more flexible in how far to push boundaries when using new technologies, relative to some of my technical colleagues. However, I still do need to represent their perspectives. Fortunately, I’ve built up my reputation with the departments I have served throughout the years that I’m not a “nay-sayer” and I’m a strong advocate for their programs and innovative technologies. My reputation allows me to be frank with my concerns as someone charged with protecting student academic and health information and enforcing security and electronic policies.