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Sometimes when a team is on a winning streak, the media may tell us that they won 22 out of 28 games in June. And so, instead of July 1st, the team just says it is June 31st, June 32nd, and so on. That’s a good idea for ITS because we have had a really good month. The SIS project promised training databases to be available on June 18th. It took heroics, but it happened on time. That meant that colleges that prepared to start their own training could get started. It had been a long wait, but significant numbers of Maricopans can see the real software and plan how to serve students. Nice.

The SIS project also had a milestone to begin integration testing in June. More heroics, and that happened too. 60 people came to integration testing kickoff. That shows that across Maricopa people are mobilizing to shake the problems out during the summer so that things go smoother in October. Inspiring. We discovered that our planning for the number of remote printers was off, almost by a factor of ten. At first glance, that’s a bummer — but on second thought it is wonderful… we know NOW that we have to do some scrambling, instead of finding out on a Monday morning in mid-October. Good job.

Besides that, District Office staff located a good site for a 2nd data center, and moved with record speed to acquire it. A longstanding need is on the threshold of being achieved. Also our Identify Management development accomplished their target to roll out product by end of June. We have a place on the ITS website that summarizes all our points of pride. You can get ongoing details there. But I wanted to mention here that July has been cancelled, and June has 61 days this year.

Congrats to ITS and to the SIS/NSS project teams. Keep the winning streak going!

Today I met my younger daughter and only granddaughter at the Arizona Mills Food Court to have a SUBWAY veggie sandwich and to (maybe) ride on the Merry Go Round. This was a first for the 3 of us together. We had our meal, and watched the large mechanical beasts from afar. Once 2 year old Ashlyn got the concept that people were getting to take rides, she led us all over and picked out her horse (yellow is her favorite color and thank goodness there was exactly one yellow horse). Lindy didn’t trust the “horsebelt” and wisely stood next to her little one, so I got astride a pretty nice looking zebra that was right next door. During the 20 laps we took I noticed several people gawking and laughing at the 50 year old man with black wingtip shoes, button-down shirt, and tie, riding the carousel on his lunch hour. Wooooo hoooooooo.

I have a separate little blog for commenting on books and music, but I’ll place this comment here in the ‘copa area. Just finished a thought-provoking book, What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith. He talks about characteristics of successful people: they know they have been successful, they “know” they are now successful, and believe they will be successful in the future. For the most part, a very good recipe for continued success. But frequently what makes you great at X and Y doesn’t make you equally great at X and Y and Z.

Goldsmith is an executive level coach that uses 360-degree feedback to create personal coaching for successful execs. Usually the CEO has called Goldsmith in because George Successful has a glaring flaw that makes him unpromotable. So the book highlights 20 habits that people may have formed that stand in their way to advance. It might be (not) listening; it might be taking the credit that subordinates deserve; it might be playing favorites; it might be 17 other things.
I read the book once and found lots of reason for introspection. I will definitely read it a second time. Gratefully, it isn’t just a book about how people can get off track; it’s also very explicit in describing what a stymied person can do to get unstuck. I am recommending this book to colleagues that feel stuck, stymied, or want to take their career to the next level. It will benefit those that are willing to take a look in the mirror.

I once received a little card at a restaurant in Denver, that was sort of like a fortune cookie but with more words. It said “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that finish what they start and so on..” Guess which kind I am? I start more things than I finish, and I have more ideas that I act upon. That isn’t always true, and it might not always be true, but in the past ten years that’s the way it has been most of the time.

The point of that tidbit is a reminder that is takes a diverse team to make things go at the ‘copa. We need starters and finishers. We need those that respect process and those that love to innovate. We have folks that work without the distraction of verbal conversation (you know who you are) and others that are extroverted and won’t let any of us get too isolated or lonely. All for the good. Thank goodness for the differences.
Today I wandered into a team gathering that was a celebration winding down. I was offered pizza or carrot cake. I asked the group what they were celebrating, and someone said “How good we are!” Woo hoo, I’ll drink a diet sprite to that.

As a part-time songwriter, I look for images or phrases that tell a lot in a few words. The metaphor that has been coming to me lately is a hiker on a glacier. The glacier represents the student project. It seems stationary sometimes, but if you reflect and think about where we were last year — even where we we 8 weeks ago — the darn thing is moving! Just recently we came up on the Oracle database for the first time. Integration testing, training, and load testing (aka “the benchmark”) are all begun or soon to begin. You can’t feel it just by standing still or when you are trudging along. And when you are in the middle of it, it seems to have no beginning and no end. But if you pick a reference point, and watch closely, you will notice that a lot of things are in motion. We can do this.
I can’t think of a song written about a glacier (Icy Blue Heart by John Hiatt is the closest in my mental jukebox). After go live I think strum some chords and I’ll give it a shot.

A long time ago I wrote a bit about steps forward with getting a Oracle/Steltor Corporate Time calendar sync’d up with my Blackberry. Last night I found another step forward, although still lacking a non-stop path between the two calendar platforms. Progress comes in the form of Pocketmac for the Blackberry. If I export a VCS file from Corporate Time, and then import that file into iCal on my mac laptop, the Pocketmac will do a nice two-way sync between iCal and Blackberry. So I still have that pesk export/import to do, but when done I have my calendar on my pda, my home laptop, and still a-ok at work. This is good! For readers from ‘the glass is half empty’ land, yes I do realize that if I had Exchange/Outlook that I’d have wireless two-way sync. Again I say, progress is good.