April 2012 Archives

As our students prepare to graduate, I thought I'd share this excellent article from Forbes, about interviewing. From the article:

The only three true job interview questions are:

1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you love the job?
3. Can we tolerate working with you?

That's it. Those three. Think back, every question you've ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions. Each question may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.

Good interviewers will ask these questions in an open-ended way, asking a candidate to "describe" how they worked through a difficult project, or some similar scenario. An inexperienced interviewer may ask this in a more direct way, leaving it up to the candidate to provide the background and context.

To our students who are about to move on, I give this advice: take some "i-time" the day before the interview to reflect on your experiences. This can include things you've done in class, and in employment opportunities on & off campus. Assemble a "journey" that consists of stories you can relate to the interviewer, where each story provides both context and detail of what you are about.

In doing so, think about what stories will relate most directly to your Strengths, Motivation, and Fit. Arrive at the interview a little early, so you aren't rushing to find their offices. Take a few moments before entering the room - or letting them know you are there - to calm yourself and put yourself at ease.

Good luck, soon-to-be-graduates!

The challenge of CIOs everywhere is how to make technology a good "fit" with the business. When you think about it, technology is a relatively recent thing to businesses. If your business was particularly savvy, you might have been introduced to a "time-share" computer system in the 1970s. But these were quite large and very expensive, so most businesses didn't enter into office computing until the early 1980s with the invention of the "personal computer". In the last 30 years, computing has evolved rapidly, from individual desktop computers to desktops connected via a "LAN", to client-server intranet, then Internet ... and today, "Cloud" on desktops, laptops, and (increasingly) apps on tablets & smartphones.

To put that different terms: if you enter the workforce in your 20s, and leave in your 60s, that's 40 years. So technology is "younger" than a work "generation". Our students grew up with technology all around them; computing was always there. But most folks didn't even see a computer until well after their college years. It shouldn't be any wonder that so many people around us remark how technology is still "new". Compared to other business areas (accounting, finance, sales, ... which have been around forever) technology has only barely arrived.

Similarly, it shouldn't be a big surprise that CEOs (many of whom are in their 50s and 60s) often do not place a high value on the CIO role. CEOs just don't "get" why the CIO plays a key role in the business. According to recent Gartner survey of 220 CEOs across the world, business leaders expect spending on IT to rise, but without a corresponding rise in the importance of the role of the CIO within the organisation.

That's why the CIO has such a tough job. At the same time, you need to maintain the existing IT systems, look ahead to the "next new thing", and respond to new demands. The successful CIO also needs to balance the above with "politics" - building relationships, helping others understand how IT works with the organization to help advance the institutional goals. In other words, it's about staying relevant.

I'll leave you with this brief profile of a successful CIO: Trevor Didcock at easyJet, recently named #1 in the "CIO 100" list. Didcock stood out in amongst some leading CIOs for his ability to manage and direct change, his vision for improved business and technology processes and his close relationship with the CEO.

Everyone at Morris should be well aware of our campus network upgrade. We will provide faster network connectivity, and better wireless coverage, across all of campus. But at the same time, I wanted to highlight something about our current network: redundancy.

You may not want redundancy in an English paper (it means you're repeating yourself) but redundancy is a good thing in a network. Network redundancy allows you to seamlessly recover from most problems. For example: did you know that our network fiber to the State network, and thus our campus connection to the Internet, was accidentally cut last week? But that's why we have multiple connections, so if we lose one connection in such an accident, we can continue to provide network service on the redundant line.

And that's exactly what happened here. In this case, the redundant link handled the traffic while the State of Minnesota repaired the damaged network fiber. On campus, you shouldn't have noticed anything was wrong. And that's why we have network redundancy.

Unfortunately, we don't have this redundancy everywhere. In the IT world, we often decry the "last mile" as a single point of failure. And indeed, for about 20 minutes on April 4, our campus lost our Internet connection.

While we have two network "paths" to get us to the State network, the "last mile" goes through a single connection in Morris. Our local Internet provider lost power for a short time that morning, which also took our campus off the Internet until things came back up. (We're working with our network partners in the Twin Cities, the State, and the local provider to find ways of keeping this from happening again.)

Having worked in IT for almost 20 years, I've experienced my share of disasters. IT disasters can come in different "shapes" and "sizes": simple human error that dropped database, a storage device that failed in just the right way, road maintenance that cut off the network, an exploding power transformer, and a bridge collapse next to our primary data center. These are all situations where IT experienced a "disaster" of some definition. Remember, the "smoking hole" disaster scenario rarely happens; most often, it's starts small and just gets out of control.

We survived our disasters by having good disaster recovery practices. A key component of that is the Disaster Recovery Plan.

Note that a Disaster Recovery Plan is different from a Business Continuity Plan. DR is undertaken by the technology teams, and deals with bringing things back to normal. BC is about how to continue doing business in the face of an IT failure.

A friend once shared with me a story with me that demonstrates this difference:

On his way to work, my friend stopped for coffee at a local coffee shop. Most coffee shops have a PC server in the back room that tracks sales - how many espressos or cappuccinos or mochas (etc.) were sold, which helps in predicting sales and in ordering new supplies. That day, my friend learned the PC server had died, so the cash register wouldn't ring up any sales.

An IT support tech was already in the back room, working to fix the server. Maybe restoring data, or replacing a failed hard drive, or any number of things. This was Disaster Recovery, bringing the technology back to normal.

But the coffee shop still sold coffee. The barista had a reference sheet that said how much to charge for different beverages and bakery items, and she used a calculator to work out tax and change. Transactions were recorded on paper, to be entered into the system later. This was their Business Continuity, how the coffee shop was able to remain open and stay in business, despite the PC server and cash register not working.

Our responsibility in Computing Services is Disaster Recovery. When I joined Morris almost 2 years ago, we immediately started work on several initiatives. One important project was establishing a disaster recovery plan for our core web sites, including "www". This was the first of our DR planning.

While we aren't done with DR planning for our all systems at Morris (this is a long-term effort) we have made significant progress. And it's an important part of our IT stewardship at the University.

Are you planning for your next disaster? Disaster Recovery isn't an option anymore, according to several sources, including eWeek: First of all, industry analysts from Gartner and IDC say that 30 to 40 percent of all IT shops either have no disaster recovery system in place or do not know how to use it correctly. Second, even if a shop does have a DR apparatus in place and tests it occasionally, there are plenty of examples of such systems not performing according to plan.

Disaster Recovery planning shouldn't be ignored. Despite the careful planning involved, DR should be simple, at least in concept. eWeek gives these basic steps to working on your DR plan:

1. Find a system that fits your business and implement it. Don't laugh; many companies don't have one.
2. Select a system that includes snapshots, mirroring and/or replication to a separate location, whether that location is within the confines of the physical enterprise or a cloud-service package.
3. Test the system on a regular basis, even if it involves just a portion of the system at a time.

Testing should ideally include restoring pieces of the system, to a separate "test" system, so you can exercise the physical activities required for recovery. But a tabletop exercise may be sufficient, depending on your process, to work through a recovery scenario and identify gaps. For example, we ran through a constructed scenario to test our recovery plan for web sites.

We've managed to reduce our risk portfolio by moving our critical transactional systems to the Twin Cities; their Disaster Recovery plans cover our systems. In case of a major disruption, OIT has procedures to restore service. While it may take several days for all systems to come back online, we are reasonably assured that our critical systems are safe under OIT's care. This includes our Housing system, core web sites, and other key services and applications.

I sometimes like to take leadership lessons from unexpected places - really, they are there if you look for them. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the leadership lessons of Star Trek's Captain Kirk. A colleague shared this followup: 5 leadership lessons from Captain Picard.

Step outside your normal "zone" for a moment, and look at how Picard views leadership. Here are Picard's 5 traits:

1. Speak to people in ways they understand. (Or, "go to them, don't make them come to you.")

Communication is more than just "language". Perhaps one of the key skills for any good leader is the ability to empathize and understand the people they work with, both on their team and outside their organizations. This is especially true in a globalized world. People bring to the table not only their skills, but also their experiences, personalities, and cultures. Understanding those cultures and experiences enables you to effectively communicate.

2. When you're overwhelmed, ask for help.

That's a hard thing to do. Especially in our individualist American culture, where there's a level of expectation that you solve your problems on your own. That sort of independence is far from a bad quality - indeed, the ability to be independent is an important skill for leaders. But equally important is having enough self-awareness to know when you're overwhelmed, when the odds are against you and when you know you can't win the battle by yourself. In those situations, a prudent leader will ask for help.

3. Always value ethical actions over expedient ones.

In leadership situations, there are a number of temptations to do the wrong thing to make yourself look better, whether that's cutting corners to beat a schedule or gaming numbers to make your results look good. It's in those times we should look to Picard as an example of maintaining our integrity, no matter the short-term costs. In the long-term, integrity is what matters.

4. Challenge your team to help them grow.

When you have someone on your team whose doing their job, and doing it well, it can be hard to assign them new or more difficult tasks in a way that shakes up your organization. But to be an effective leader, you need to shake them up, to push them out of their comfort zones by giving "stretch" assignments.

5. Don't play it safe - seize opportunities in front of you.

Life is short, and the time we lose is time we'll never get back again. When opportunities present themselves, we need to seize them. We need to go forth in our lives, careers and projects with goals and be ambitious about carrying those goals out.

* Thanks to Mike Langhus for sharing this!

In an article from CIO Insight, How to improve IT value measurement, Brian Barnier highlights the importance of "measurement" and "metrics" that are meaningful to the organization. It's not just about reporting the number of tickets closed over a period of time. In industry, the CEO doesn't care about that. In higher education, the faculty don't care about your support ticket "metrics". They want to see the value to the campus.

For example, many enterprises fall into two traps: They tie measurements to IT operational objectives (cost per unit, etc.) and not to what matters to the organization. Or they leap from tactical objectives (ticket-closing times) to business objectives (calling this "agility".)

Instead, Barnier recommends these practices to improve your IT value measurement:

1. Match IT value measurement to business measures.

That means you need to make it tangible. For example, you might map your progress in terms of growth, customer satisfaction, and objectives met.

2. Match IT value measures to your business-IT investment portfolio.

For example, IT organizations may fail to ask how stakeholders benefit from a new system. Ask them. Did your new investment help the campus move forward in teaching and learning, in research, or reduce administrative costs?

3. Learn how to manage hidden costs.

IT managers often undercount lifecycle costs: the Total Cost of Ownership. You need to understand the cost structure of your organization, including all support costs, and relate these costs to the benefits delivered to the campus.

4. Determine how to report value with consistency.

I often look at reporting this way: if you track it, you should report it. If you report it, someone should be able to make a decision from it. Are you reporting simple metrics (numbers) or are you reporting value (information that helps make decisions)?

I'm sharing this update from our partners in OIT:

Moodle 2.2 Upgrade

The Office of Information Technology (OIT), in collaboration with the Course Management System (CMS) Implementation Group, intends to upgrade Moodle 2.0 to Moodle 2.2 on Sunday, May 13 between the hours of 6am and noon. Moodle will be unavailable for 2-4 hours during this maintenance window. This date and time was selected based on the published academic calendars for all five campuses and in consultation with the CMS Implementation Group in an effort to minimize impact to students and faculty. That said, we recognize that many colleges and programs have different schedules and that this maintenance may inconvenience some users.

Please note: This will be an in-place upgrade which will not require any action from instructors or other course site owners.

In addition to adding new features, including a mobile-friendly interface and grading rubrics, the Moodle 2.2 upgrade will ensure that critical fixes and security patches will be available to us through the 2013 academic year.

For those who are interested in evaluating new features in Moodle 2.2, or would like to contribute to the testing process, a Moodle 2.2 Sandbox environment is available. The sandbox environment includes the latest version of Moodle 2.2, including all University of Minnesota customizations and integrations. Details about the Moodle 2.2 sandbox environment, including how to get access, are available on the MoodleTalk Moodle site.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this upgrade or the Moodle 2.2 sandbox, please contact the CMS Implementation project core team at CMS-TRANS@umn.edu.

Thought I'd share this update from the Office of Information Technology, at the Twin Cities campus. I'm unable to attend this, but it looks really interesting. And I do intend to follow up via the Twitter live feed. You may wish to do the same! ~jh

Please join us this Wednesday, April 4, for the Academic Technology Showcase: Innovation in Teaching, Learning and Research. This open house will feature over 70 poster presentations from across the University of Minnesota. For a full list of projects and descriptions please see the showcase site.

Exhibition topics include:

• Accessibility
• Assessment, evaluation, quality
• Data visualization
• Digital stories and case studies
• eBooks
• Information resources and repositories
• Learning spaces
• Mobile
• Online collaboration
• Online learning
• Simulations
• Technology-enhanced laboratories

Event details:

• April 4, 2012
• 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
• Coffman Memorial Union's Great Hall

Twitter: live-tweet the event by using #UMNats.

This showcase is a collaboration between the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Education and Human Development and the Office of Information Technology.

In January, the Wisconsin State Journal reported on a new e-textbook pilot program involving the University of Wisconsin, University of California at Berkeley, University of Virginia, Cornell University and University of Minnesota. Electronic textbooks may not be the one-size-fits-all solution that many universities are looking for. But it certainly plays a part in reducing costs across campus. For example: at UW-Madison, students will spend an average of about $1,140 on books and supplies this year, up from $680 in 2001-2002.

Reducing costs for students is an important issue. Amid skyrocketing college tuition and historic levels of student debt, President Obama is asking colleges and universities to make higher education more affordable and efficient and relieve graduates struggling to repay their college loans. During his State of the Union address in January, Obama called for a comprehensive approach to tackling rising college costs as part of a larger blue print for bolstering the economy. "It's not enough for us to increase student aid," he said. "States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets."

As quoted in the Fiscal Times: "We are putting colleges on notice ... You can't assume that you will just jack up tuition every single year. If you can't stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down. We should push colleges to do better. We should hold them accountable if they don't."

At Morris, we recently held several "listening sessions" where we received direct feedback from students, faculty, and staff about their needs from campus technology. At these sessions, students clearly wanted to have more textbooks available to them as e-textbooks. But while e-textbooks are one way to lower costs, they are not a universal solution. A Daytona State College study this year suggested that some students who purchased e-textbooks only saved $1 compared to those who bought printed material. So we need to choose carefully, and invest wisely, with input from our campuses.