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This past week my 86 year old uncle passed way. The funeral is going on right now in Orem, Utah. This morning I read his online obituary — a full and blessed life — and took advantage of the opportunity to see his a picture of his smiling face and sign the virtual guest book. How cool! Not only can I express my wishes for the family, but I can also read what others have posted.

It makes me wonder about a few things. How far will the web go to eventually take away our need to travel? I don’t think it will change the urge to go to the 25th year HS reunion, but what about quasi-obligatory trips like funerals or nursing homes or parent/teacher conferences? The other pondering is about the changing nature of posting almost anonymous comments to sites on the internet. Guestbooks and blogs. My obituary guestbook was purportedly reviewed before it was posted. I wonder who did that, and how it was done? Was it oursourced to India? Or did a computer scan it for spam and profanity? Or is someone working in Salt Lake City over the holiday? I’m not electronically mischevious by nature, mostly because I believe in something like karma, but what if a person wanted to invent scandalous memories about my Uncle Jack and post them? Is it only civility that saves us?
One last thought… has anyone else noticed that the East Valley Tribune no longer appends comments directly to their articles? I thought it was awful that a supposedly researched article could be twisted into pure propaganda by someone posting their “comment” to the article to be read on the same screen. Now there is a comment link on most articles. If you care what someone else has to say, click away. But if you doubt the true worth of some habitual crankypants people, then you can now avoid it. This makes me hopeful.

Uncle Jack was born in 1920. Phoenix was not the largest town in Arizona. Bisbee was a busy hub of commerce. Tempe was not much more than a flour mill and a ferry across the Salt River. Things worked themselves out. Happy Memorial Day.

Phoenix Rail Construction

Originally uploaded by AZAdam.

Today I made a quick trip to GateWay Community College, and I was thinking about the way that light rail construction is an analog to our New Student System Project. I mean down around GateWay it is pretty darn messy and congested. If you let yourself see only the TODAY picture, you would think that there are big problems. But if you look at the possibilities for TOMORROW you can imagine the trains, the quick commute for students, and easy access to the ballpark downtown, etc. These are similar to our Student System project. Right now there are lots of moving parts to it and lots of ground that’s torn up. Lost of things that are incomplete. Looking to the future, however, there is tremendous potential. Also, along Washington, there is a stretch where the power lines are up, and they have run about one mile’s worth of test with real trains. That reminds me that we have training (oops, accidental pun) going on with the new system and that folks are starting to see real evidence that there is a real system being built.

The bottom line: it is difficult to do, it is scary at times, and boy this long lasting mess makes us tired — but it will be well worth it when it’s all done. Hang in there teams. You are doing good things.

This week I went to Maricopa’s 20th Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference. One of the keynote speakers was Cole Camplese and he has posted his thoughts about his day at the Paradise Valley Community College campus. He seems to like us. His lunch time session featured this Web 2.0 Video that was a great reminder of how content scattered all over the web is important to teaching and learning. I enjoyed meeting Cole and learning about his use of YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, and MySpace. In general, he advocates going (metaphorically) to where the students are to do your teaching, and that means personal and social technologies.

My congratulations to the organizers of the conference. It was top quality and beneficial to those that attended.

I stumbled on a site that offers to transform a photo that is uploaded. Check it out here. It let’s you see an uploaded face transformed to be older or younger, of a different ethnic background, or in the styles of two or three distinctive artists. The site has a disclaimer that it is just for fun. The photo above used to be me and now it is a “Modigliani” version. Kinda cool and easy to use.

My friend Barry Walsh, from Indiana University, wrote up a great presentation about standards. He drew attention to the fact that no one in the USA tries to build a better company or a better college by having a unique electrical standard. We all use 120v AC with common plugs and outlets. It makes sense; we take it for granted; and we get on with our business.

Amongst the various Maricopa Community Colleges there is a history of technology innovation. If you give ten colleges time and motivation they can find a lot of ways to do a lot of things. So once in a while, someone will ask me why we don’t have a standard for student email, or voice over IP, or a course management system, or a single browser. The proposer usually imagines that we could save a good chunk of money if we would standardize. I usually agree. In all honesty, they are frequently imagining how nice it would be if all ten colleges would adopt their college’s preferred approach so that the District Office could take on support and allow them to innovate with freed up budget.

It is easier said than done because we don’t value only efficiency at Maricopa. We also value autonomy, innovation, and superior student service. Colleges tend to adopt their own local approach with technology for a myriad of reasons… prior experience, unique needs of faculty and students, budget constraints, or an appetite for something daring. So in our current governance configuration, I think we have to be realistic about our ability to adopt standards. We’ll all keep talking, and looking for de facto standards that we can all move towards. When it happens, it will likely be with something that is a commodity, like electricity. Or something that begins with a few Colleges and builds support as the lower cost and higher return alternative. I’m willing. Let’s keep talking.

The President of the University of Alaska, Mark Hamilton, wrote a great article for EDUCAUSE in 2005. It has stuck with me all that time because it raises an important question. Given that people in authority seem to do inexplicable things, what are the odds that a person has achieved a high degree of success and responsibility with no skills or judgment to do the right thing? Hamilton would answer that the odds are so small as to be ignored. It doesn’t happen. So what should a person think or do when exposed to an executive decision that makes no sense (to the observer?) Well, Hamilton suggests three possibilities:

1. The leader knows something you don’t know.
2. You know something the leader doesn’t know.
3. The message got garbled somewhere along the way.

And then here was the big payoff for me: No matter which of the 3 it is, the observer isn’t off the hook. If I know something that the leader doesn’t know, I should find a way to tell him or her. If they know something I don’t know, I should try to find out and also be ready to accept that some things are confidential and can’t be public knowledge. And if the message is garbled, then I should figure out how it happened, and correct it if I can.

The reason this never fades from my mind is that I get a fair number of comments in a given week pointing out something stupid that myself or someone in ITS has done. When that happens, I try to take a breath and open my mind. Maybe this person knows something I haven’t discovered yet. Or maybe there is something that I know that I haven’t communicated very well. Or maybe there is a garbled message that is confusing everyone equally. As long as I pursue one of those three thoughts, I have a chance to understand and improve things. It is only when I label someone as “out of touch” or “having not a clue” that things get bleak.

So, I hope when people observe that I am doing something that seems to make no sense they will talk with me and we can figure out which of the 3 explanations fits best. In fact, I’m counting on it.

It took me a long time to realize that radio 860AM was just broadcasting the same loop over and over… some highlights, and then directions to tune to the new KTAR 620. One message, all the time. Some people are questioning if the total vision is “implement the new student system.” Sometimes it can seem that way because we are very tightly focused there. More details are at www.maricopa.edu/nss.

However, let’s look ahead to 2008. Here are some new things I believe we will be involved with:

District-wide authentication: through several different methods, and collaboratively with the colleges, we need for a student or an employee to have very few IDs and passwords to use (yes, ONE would be nice). Hand in hand with that, it would be great if any student at any Maricopa college could access appropriate services (like ubiquitous wireless?) anywhere and anytime with a single ID and password that works everywhere. This initiative is proposed and prioritized by ITAC, our Information Technology Advisory Council.

Another likely initiative will be with analytics. I am not sure exactly when or where, but I am confident Maricopa wants to increase its Data Driven Decision Making. We can leverage having a single student system by accessing data that can lead us to increasing student success. It would also be cool to be able to analyze a student’s usage of Blackboard to identify students at risk of not completing and taking prompt action to reduce those risks.

One more area to mention is Project Management. As we get into 2008, it will be important to have individuals that can take a project from conceptual development to implementation. Rather than relying on “spare resources” amongst people that are already supporting applications full time, perhaps we can have project management specialists that can organize existing resources to drive to completion. Ed Kelty, from Rio, did a great job of this recently with the Tuition Payment Plan. (Thanks again, EK)

There will be surprises, twists and turns, and challenges in 2008. But for those of you that want to look ahead farther than October 2007, this is some of what I’m seeing. Today I heard a colleague say “set your expectations for the unexpected.” Deep.