The CTO Project

The University of Arizona has announced a really clever way to cut money, generate new ideas, and promote transparency in decision making: they’re soliciting white paper proposals as part of their “Transformation Information and Communication” plan. So far, 75 teams of faculty and staff have submitted proposals. You can read them all online. In particular, their CIO submitted one on “Transforming Technology Support” and the comments alone show the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding 1) central and/or/vs decentral IT and 2) public comments generally.

This presentation by Adrian Sannier (UTO at ASU) will cost you about 72 minutes of your life. But it’s worth it if you’re interested in what the future holds for us IT’ers in higher ed. I’m considering showing it to all the IT staff at our next staff meeting and to the dreaded advisory group too. I think Sannier’s right on the money with where we should be going and what we should be doing. The question is: how much do we let our culture and internal politics affect these ideas, our plans, and doing … Continue Reading

Often, I’m a late adopter regarding technology. I really don’t IM because it seems too instrusive and I only Skype occasionally. The only reason I’m not using Pine for my mail client at the moment is due to my job’s exchange environment. I did look at Alpine (the new Pine) and it looks nice. Too bad U of Wash laid off so much of their IT staff. I wonder what this bodes for Alpine’s future?

But sometimes I’m an early adopter, and I’ve led organizations which, though we didn’t realize it at the time, were actually pretty innovative and risk tolerant. … Continue Reading