darrelhuish.net

I talked yesterday with Peter Segall, the President for Higher Education with Blackboard. He took the time to schedule a phone call and then listen to a bit of ranting, and bit of pleading, and even a wacky analogy about corporate relations being akin to doing bad deeds to my 3rd cousin. I appreciate that he listened and heard me out. I feel better. Maricopa has a critical mass of Blackboard adoption, and I’d be the happiest man in Arizona if this relationship takes deeper root and blossoms. If listening is step one, then we are taking steps forward.

November 1st marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I tried it last year, and found myself ill prepared to do anything cohesive or intelligent, so I just typed away. I lost steam at about 12,000 words as I remember. On one hand, it was tremendously liberating to just write and not worry about word choice, sentence structure, or ultimate audience. On the other hand, the outcome was awful and I wouldn’t have shared it with my cat, or even a June bug.

So this year, I am preparing a bit of an outline, and may structure a plot and/or some characters in the two weeks before the start. Then I’ll try again, and be a bit more selective with what I do. If I succeed, some June bug somewhere may have some reading to do in December. Who knows?

I’m really proud of the team that built our new Blackboard 7 environment. Up until July of this year, the environment had been shaky as the San Andreas, but since then it has been silently solid. Yes, there are still bugs in the software (Gary, if you are reading, I want you to know that I know.) But the oddities that we were experiencing in ‘04 and ‘05 have been smoothed out — to the credit of several Maricopans; many in ITS and several from Colleges and such. And the response from most of Maricopa has been… quiet. And that’s as it should be. I have never called a phone company to thank them for the quality of the dial tone. I take it for granted, and so silence is the equivalent of applause for the telecomm providers. So with each day of Blackboard quietude, I am hoping the the Blackboard 7 environment team is taking a curtain call for a job well done. (and keep it up!)