July 2012 Archives

MailChimp recently posted a survey about how people use mail on their mobile phones. Since we know about two-thirds of our students use mobile devices, I thought the MailChimp study was interesting. Do you use your mobile device to check your email? Do you only check your work email, or only your home email - or do you use your phone to check both?

I found this statistic to be the most interesting: 87% read both their work and personal email on the same mobile device. No one said they read only their work email on their mobile.

We are now accustomed to getting everything at once, no matter where we are. And that's really what mobile devices are for.

Your mobile device isn't just for personal stuff. A perfect example of BYOD ("Bring Your Own Device"), this stat shows that people prefer using their own devices even if they need to access work resources. Email is such an important, embedded part of our lives that people are content to use their personal mobile devices to read work email.

I'll admit that this never would have occurred to me; I've always used my personal mobile phone to access my work email, for as long as I've had a smartphone. It just makes sense for me to be able to check what's happening at work, no matter where I am.

But the danger here is that we become too connected to work when we're on personal time. How often have you found yourself checking work email from your phone, when you were on vacation? I've written before about maintaining a work-life balance.

I wanted to share another update on the campus network upgrade. Last week we updated the network in the campus apartments, including the wireless. So far, we have not run into any problems.

This week, we look forward to updating the network in the Welcome Center, Briggs Library, and Science. Please remember that as buildings are cut over, your may lose your network connection for up to 30 minutes. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Everyone across campus has been very supportive, and we very much appreciate that.

Our updated network upgrade schedule is always available on our network page. For your convenience, here are the next two weeks:

Week of July 30

• Welcome Center
• Briggs Library
• Science

Week of August 6

• Education
• HFA
• Behmler Hall
• Big Cat Stadium
• Food Services

So much of information design is published on the web. Yet with the growth in mobile devices, information designers and webmasters need to address information presentation on these smaller screens.

That's where information design comes in. Information design uses "pictures, symbols, colors, and words to communicate ideas, illustrate information or express relationships visually (Emerson). It should not be a surprise that so much of information design products are published on the web. Likewise, information design also applies to any content delivered on websites. But with the shift to mobile, it is critical that designers consider new ways to convey their information across a variety of devices. "The Web" is no longer just about desktop browsers.

In November 2011, Nielsen reported that a wide majority of mobile phone subscribers owned a smartphone capable of displaying web pages. 64% of users aged 25-34 owned a smartphone, and about half of adults 18-25 and 35-44. This trend is increasing; at Morris, we estimate about 2/3 of our students have smartphones, a figure that is inline with Neilsen.

This increasing trend to mobile has practical effects on web sites. According to a Fall 2011 analysis of our incoming freshmen, 151 new students accessed their admissions application on a mobile device. Of those, 37 submitted. In a university advertising campaign on the StarTribune website, mobile traffic had the highest click-through rate as a percentage of all traffic.

Across all of higher ed, according to a 2012 Noel-Levitz report, over half of surveyed students have looked at a campus website on a mobile device - and half of those reported that a mobile website improved their opinion of the university. This trend is not just about students, of course, but about all web users. "The landscape is changing," according to Marcotte, "perhaps more quickly than we might like." In fact, mobile web usage is expected to outpace traditional desktop browsing in the next 1-3 years (per estimates by Walsh and Morgan Stanley).

In publishing information on the web, like in any information product, designers must keep three things in mind (this list taken from Ginny Redish, author of Let Go Of The Words):

1. It's about making products work for people
2. It's about people and their goals and tasks
3. The way we organize, write, and design documents (or websites) can help or hinder people

Adapting information design to mobile must maintain that same focus. But the challenge is in the viewing. According to website w3schools, over 85% of desktop users employ a screen resolution higher than 1024x768. Yet mobile rarely exceeds that. The iPad2 only reaches 1024x768 and the iPhone uses only 960x640. And information product intended for a high resolution screen will not look right on the smaller display. To make products (such as websites) work for everyone, we must support mobile devices at the same time as the high-resolution desktops.

The preferred way to do this is by applying a method called responsive web design. The concepts of responsive web design is highly technical, but web designers can use a few methods to make pages responsive to the size of the screen. It's not about detecting the browser and delivering a different web pages; the key is creating a webpage that lets the browser deal with the content in a way that suits the size of the display.

One method is to shift content on a web page when it is displayed on lower resolutions. For example, if the screen is smaller, elements on a page may shift from a 6-column layout to 3-column. Or secondary navigation might move from the side to the top or bottom of the page. In shifting content, however, the web designer needs to prioritize the content, so the most important information is displayed first, where it is easier to find.

Other content might simply be hidden on smaller displays, to be revealed when the user clicks on an icon or does some other action. For example, navigation might be collapsed to a single icon, or callouts might be hidden until a user clicks on a button.

A third option is to simply remove content when the screen cannot support it effectively. Large navigation icons might disappear, leaving only the captions for navigation. Photos and other large images may be removed for the sake of space. Information designers tend to avoid removing content, but done with care, eliminating the content may make sense.

Using icons to replace text, for example, mirror's Ginny Redish's recommendation to "let go of the words" when writing for the web. Break up large content by topic, make effective use of visuals, etc. That's where you can use icons to leverage your web site.

But icons must be chosen carefully. Comprehension of icons differs based on age, according to research by Koutsourelakis and Chorianopoulos. In the extreme case, icons with high levels of abstraction may be difficult to understand. But icons that relate to real-life activities, and those where users may have previous experience, are most likely to be well received.

That's all very well, but information design (and good web design) is not just about creating information products - but in "finding the right way to design and deliver that information." Successful information designers must be aware of how that information will be viewed. And since the web is now mobile, websites need to accommodate mobile devices by default.

This changes how we view our websites. By Fall this year, we will roll out a new website design for the University of Minnesota Morris. Matt and Matt are working with Bryan and Melissa to create a design that starts with mobile devices, and extends to desktop browsers. This is a great example of responsive web design, and I'm very proud of the work we are doing here. Morris was the first campus in the University of Minnesota system to have a mobile-enabled front page, and soon Morris will be the first campus in the U of M system to have a fully-mobile website. Thanks to Matt, Matt, Rebecca, Brian, and Melissa for all their hard work!

I wanted to share our progress on the campus network upgrade. As promised, last week we updated the network in Blakely Hall, Pine Hall, Spooner Hall, Indy Hall, Multi-Ethnic Resource Center, and Lafave House. At the same time, we also updated to the new wireless network. If you access the wireless in these areas, you will now see new wireless networks: UofM, UofM Secure, and UofM Guest. Where you previously used umm-wireless to connect to the wireless network, please use UofM or UofM Secure. The Helpdesk can help you with questions, or you can view the online setup guides.

The exciting news is that we are moving slightly ahead of schedule, and have arranged to update the network in the campus apartments this week. We expect this work to start on Tuesday, July 24. Please remember that as buildings are cut over, your may lose your network connection for up to 30 minutes. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Everyone has been very supportive.

Our updated network upgrade schedule is always available on http://www.morris.umn.edu/technology/network/.

I wanted to share this exciting update on the campus network upgrade:

You may have noticed network engineers visiting the campus buildings over the last few weeks, as they finish the prep work for the network upgrade. We've been doing a lot of work ahead of time to make the upgrade go as smoothly as possible. Last week, the engineers finished their prep work, and this week we finally begin the campus network upgrade!

We are planning the work across several weeks, up to the start of Fall classes. Our schedule for the upgrade is below. As your building is cut over, your network connection may be unavailable for up to 30 minutes. Please be patient, and remember that after the network upgrade, our campus network will be "better, stronger, faster".

As we update the network in each building, we will also update the campus wireless network. After your building has the new wireless, you will see new wireless networks: "UofM", "UofM Secure" and "UofM Guest". Where you previously used "umm-wireless" to connect to the wireless network, please use "UofM" or "UofM Secure". The Helpdesk can help you with questions, or you can view the online Setup Guides.

Visitors to campus (parents and special guests) will be able to connect directly to "UofM Guest" and use their email address to sign into our network. With "UofM Guest", you will no longer need to sponsor a free 3-day wireless account!

Finally, I would like to thank everyone for their great support during the campus network upgrade. Things have gone very well, in part due to your flexibility and help as we work to improve the campus network.

Some buildings appear twice in the list, because we need to update different floors at different times.

We will also publish this information via a web site, so you can easily access the schedule.

This post really isn't about leadership in IT or higher education, but I wanted to share this very interesting article from the SD Times, from last year. When open source projects go commercial addresses the cultural issues many organizations face when they try to move into the open source software space. It's about the leadership triangle: strategic, political, cultural. And you need to get the culture right - even if you have the best strategy and all the political backing, your effort is doomed if you aren't able to fit the needs of the culture.

And that's the challenge for many companies that try their hand at open source software. The culture of business is to wring a profit from everything. Companies maintain their competitive edge by keeping certain things private, especially the source code to a project.

But the culture of open source software is the opposite: you can think of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) culture as a meritocracy. The best idea usually wins out. You share your ideas through writing and sharing code. Other people may look at your source code, make an improvement (either to solve a problem they were having, or to add a missing feature) and re-share that improvement back to the community, usually by submitting the code change to the project's maintainer.

You may know that I've worked in open source software for a very long time. I first got my start around 1993, when I discovered a free version of the Unix operating system. This free Unix was called "Linux", and was built around free, open source tools known as "GNU". Everything was open, so you could look at the source code and make changes. It was a new way for me to look at software systems - especially having grown up with "closed" systems such as the original Apple ][ and the IBM-PC (although technically the original Apple computers were more open than the PC, in that you could find vast stores of technical documentation about the system - but no source code, so I still consider it "closed".)

I was so moved by using open source software, that I felt compelled to contribute back to the community. I made my first contribution around that time when I tried to implement the GNU editor (called "emacs") on a new Unix system that we used at my work, where I was a student intern. It didn't run correctly on the new Unix system, so I made a few changes that made it run better, and sent those edits back to the maintainer.

In 1994, Microsoft announced that they would stop supporting the old MS-DOS operating system, in favor of moving all their users to Windows. At the time, Windows 3.11 was a pretty awful operating system; very buggy, not very user friendly, and just plain ugly. I wasn't a fan of Microsoft's move, and preferred DOS to do all my schoolwork anyway. I realized that if "Linux" could implement a free, open source version of a complex operating system like Unix, surely I could do the same for a much simpler system like DOS. And so FreeDOS was born.

My involvement with FreeDOS has been an interesting journey. I've played all roles: from developer to maintainer to project coordinator. As the project coordinator, I have helped get people involved in FreeDOS - new contributors, and existing FreeDOS developers. Everyone has to work together if a project like FreeDOS was going to succeed. And that was my first foray into navigating open source culture.

Back to the SD Times article. It's an interesting read, and describes some things that work and do not work in open source software culture. Here's a great example from the article:

Jim Jagielski, chairman of the open-source Apache Software Foundation: "In corporate environments, the list of requirements and features isn't derived from the need of the masses. It's derived from 'What can we sell?' At some level, companies have to give up control. When [professional] open source understands the user community, it's incredibly successful," he continued. "But companies that try to wrest control, to fit the project into a pattern of traditional software development, are the ones who have problems."

Apache (a web server) has done well. But Oracle really stumbled when it took on stewardship of Java & MySQL during its merger with Sun Microsystems. "You would think they'd have a better understanding of what open source is and working with a community," Jagielski said. "With Java and Hudson, it seems obvious that the whole idea of open-source being a community-led effort is something they don't grasp very well."

Open source software and commercialization aren't necessarily polar opposites. It's possible for a business to embrace open source software in a very successful way. Red Hat Software is a great poster child for how to do open source business the right way; for Red Hat, it's all about the support. They contribute back to the community by hiring talented developers who provide fixes and make improvements to the very open source software they provide as a service to others. But at the same time, Red Hat works with the "upstream" project maintainers on the community level, integrating with the FOSS culture.

I wanted to share this update from our partners in the Office of Information Technology. This has been edited for clarity:

The classroom recording service (Camtasia Relay) will be unavailable on Thursday, July 19, from 10:00 a.m. to noon, while the Office of Information Technology (OIT) performs a test migration of Camtasia Relay from version 1.2.0 to version 4.03, the latest version. Camtasia Relay enables faculty to record audio and video of a class session, and to share that recording online or via mobile devices.

The migration plan has two phases:

1. On July 19, OIT will create a new environment to test the migration of the current database. Performing a test migration will help ensure a seamless transition for all University Camtasia Relay users, and that no Camtasia Relay files or data will be lost during the actual migration. You will not see any changes to Camtasia Relay as a result of testing.
2. OIT will migrate Camtasia Relay into a new production environment. This will be scheduled and communicated in the coming weeks.

The upgraded Camtasia Relay will provide the following benefits:

• Mobile device support.
• MacOSX "Lion" support.
• Trimming.
• Webcam support.
• Better performance. (With the new video codec, you can capture smaller audio and video files for higher-quality videos. Smaller videos mean less CPU work on your computer, resulting in better performance while recording.)

Once OIT migrates the production server to Camtasia Relay 4.03, OIT will share additional information about the update, including a new URL you will need to connect to Camtasia Relay 4.03.

Contact Jamil Jabr, OIT service owner, with any questions or concerns regarding this migration or Classroom Recording services.

In May, I wrote a week-long series about "Getting the most out of Google Apps": chat, phone calls, hangouts, headsets & webcams. When writing about using Google to make phone calls, I wrote:

If you experimented with voice & video chat, you probably noticed the "Call phone" icon in your chat list. This lets you call any number in the US and Canada for free using Google. In my department, we use this feature to make our long-distance calls to the Twin Cities campus (for example: committees, etc.) and now our monthly phone bills are essentially the cost of having a phone on the desk - as close to zero as you can get.

I'd like to compare some actual numbers with you. At Morris, we are charged per handset, and I pay a total of $120 each month just for the phones on our desks.

But in June, my department's cost for making phone calls was just $9.50. Compare that to May 2011, when my cost for phone calls was $75.

Why the difference? In the meantime, I have encouraged everyone in Computing Services to use Google to make long distance phone calls, where possible. If we're not calling a number inside the campus, we opt for Google. And as you can see, that's made a huge difference in our monthly phone bill.

We all watch our budgets closely. Why not save a little money from your budget by switching to Google Apps for long distance calls?

To make a call, just click on the "Call phone" item in "Chat". You'll get a little dialer that looks like the keypad on a phone. Simply tap in the phone number (or type it in the box) and click "Call" to make the call. If you have phone numbers in your contacts, you can also search for that person in the box. For example, I have the phone number for the Twin Cities Conference Operator saved in my contacts, so I just type "conf" in the box, and it automatically finds (and enters) the number for the conference operator.

Like voice chat, you'll need a microphone and speakers connected to your computer. And you will need to install a small driver from Google. It's easy to set up on your own! If you don't have the driver, you'll be prompted to download and automatically install it, the first time you try to make a call. Call the Helpdesk if you need help.

One thing to know when you make phone calls from Google: the person you are calling will not see your number when you call. Since you're making the call through Google's network, the call will go out from a Google server. So "your" number won't show up as your work number, but a phone number assigned to one of Google's data centers.

Wow, time really goes by quickly! I have been with the University of Minnesota Morris for 2 years, as of today. And we've done a lot in that time. Last year, I mentioned a few of our accomplishments from my first year. Here is a sampling of what we've achieved in the last 12 months:

Launched Morris Zimride, a ride-sharing service for our students, faculty, and staff. In the first year, Morris was ranked #1 of all Zimride sites, as a percentage of our users.

Closed our findings from the 2007 audit. This was a long time in coming, as the audit sat effectively untouched for several years, until we started addressing the issues in earnest 2 years ago. Almost immediately, we closed out all but one of the findings - the last one (network configuration) is now technically resolved, with the replacement of our core network switches. This will be completely closed out after the network upgrade is complete in August.

Completed the campus IT Recommendations report. This was a joint effort with many partners on campus, and provided an update to our campus IT strategy. These proposed changes should help set Morris apart as a connected campus for our students.

Starting rolling out Active Directory. This is a multi-phase project; this first phase brought network drives and a central login to all AD-connected desktops. In future phases, we will offer automatic patching, and support for Macs.

Moved more servers to virtual hosting. This will help us reduce our costs and support effort.

Mobile-enabled front page on our website. We were the first campus in the University of Minnesota system to do this! By August, our entire website will easily support mobile web browsers.

And that's not all we've done. A quick look at a few other accomplishments this year includes:

• Personal web hosting.
• Technology @ Morris website.
• Dedicated server room for departmental servers.

I look forward to the coming year! We continue to serve the campus in its technology needs.

IT leaders like to look at managing technology by "controlling" it. A large part of this probably comes from a generational background: IT leaders are likely from the "Star Wars" generation, and we grew up in exciting times in a technology sense but a frightening and uncertain time in a social sense. So IT leaders who are about my age tend to really dig technology, but at the same time wish to have some level of control over it. But as Gregory Jackson at EDUCAUSE Review points out, "The era of control is ending for campus IT organizations. This means that IT leaders need to rethink some known management approaches and methods. Specifically, they need to learn to use these methods in radically different ways."

The article looks to several ways in which IT organizations are changing:

Technology Change

It's about economy of scale. You can only grow so big before things start to become unmanageable. After that tipping point, you cannot grow very quickly, meaning you cannot move rapidly to support new initiatives.

IT organizations manage this in different ways. Virtualization and outsourcing (such as to cloud-based services) are usually first on the list. Data centers represent the first level of cloud-based services: IaaS, or "Infrastructure as a Service". Virtualized servers form a second level: Platform as a Service, or PaaS. Loss-of-control effects also emerge from a third level: Software as a Service, or SaaS. This is especially true for what we might call the "shared-instance" form of SaaS, in which campuses contract with outside entities to provide specified services without dedicating a specific instance of applications to the campus.

Organizational Change

Campuses are changing how they organize themselves. It used to be that institutions would look to centralize services into a single delivery, a monolithic organization. Not just in IT, but across the campus. But these lent themselves to a "silo" view, with many C-levels: Chief Information Officer, Chief Security Officer, Chief Academic Officer, ... and other CxO's.

Within IT, many campuses consolidated administrative computing units, which had previously reported separately, into the central IT organization. Or academic IT units under the central umbrella. In theory, such centralization yields efficiencies, and sometimes it did so. But there's no way to separate campus IT from the academic and administrative work it supports.

IT leadership in today's campus environment requires collaboration across functional lines - collaboration and teamwork.

Contextual Change

IT has shifted its mission over the years, from an entrepreneurial unit that stroke to break new ground, to a core part of the institution. This is generally a good thing, because we do leverage technology in every part of the business. But in adopting this new role, IT also changed how it approached campus technology. In many ways, we went from "innovator" to "policy enforcer". When central IT leaders are cast as enforcers, their ability to work with others on campus suffers. Not because others on campus are violators - but because the "enforcer" role redefines the relationship. IT needs to find a balance between innovation and policy, to effectively engage with the campus.

I've previously discussed several ways to help move your career forward, if that's your interest. The 4 qualities of an IT professional survey provided an interesting view of what is important to each level on the IT ladder. In general, the takeaway from that was the old maxim "What got you here won't get you there." You do need to grow new habits and exercise new strengths to take the next step. For example: at a high level, moving from "Director" to "CIO" involves becoming more strategic, and focusing less on the "hands-on" technical details.

Along those lines, Jack Bergstrand recently wrote in CIO Magazine about how to get strategic. (This is one of those interesting cases where the print article is titled differently from the online version - "How to get strategic" is from the print version.) Bergstrand is the founder & CEO of Brand Velocity, author of Reinvent Your Enterprise, and former CIO and CEO of Coca-Cola. Bergstrand recommends 3 strategies for taking that next step up:

1. A winning strategic vision. Start with what you know; focus on your business, your opportunities.
   
   
2. Effective communication. As Bergstrand says, "Many IT professionals don't put sufficient time and effort into their communication." But to be recognized, you need to communicate effectively. Know your audience; avoid acronyms or deep technical discussion when communicating with higher-ups. Edit for brevity and clarity, don't make your readers sift through a stream-of-consciousness of various ideas and endless possibilities; make your point, and make it stick.
   
   
3. Effective change management. The old adage "The only constant is change" is still true in IT. Learn from those who do this well. Bergstrand cautions against involving too many people in the decision-making process; less is more. Be careful here, avoid implementing change in isolation. Especially in higher education, IT leaders need to be collaborative leaders.

Diana Oblinger, president and CEO of EDUCAUSE, wrote in EDUCAUSE Review about leadership for constant change. Leadership is adaptive: as the environment changes, so must leaders. Particularly in times of constant change, we look for leaders--and try to understand what makes a leader.

Oblinger identifies 5 traits of successful leaders:

1. Leaders catalyze change, not for the sake of change itself but for the sake of preserving fundamental values
2. Leadership also requires a variety of experience.
3. Leaders need strong analytical capability.
4. Values, experience, and analysis morph into leadership when combined through discipline.
5. Leadership means helping other people do their job well.

We must take the best from our experience so that we can adapt to constantly changing circumstances. Leadership is about more than power or authority. It is about values, experience, analysis, and the discipline to change what we need to change. Good leaders recognize that we cannot often predict the future, but we can help shape it.