August 2012 Archives

Many of you know that I am actively engaged in free / open source software. I first discovered this area in 1992 while I was an undergrad. Of course, I'd used shareware (programs that you could try for free, but you were expected to pay if you continued to use them) on MS-DOS for years. While a student, I used As-Easy-As (a shareware spreadsheet program) and Galaxy Write (a shareware word processor) for working on papers and analyzing my lab data. Our computer labs used SunOS and VAX, and the administrator provided free software tools such as emacs (a programmer's editor) and gcc (a free compiler) for us to use. I found these to be the same high quality as the shareware programs I'd used.

In 1993, I heard about a new operating system that could replace MS-DOS on my computer. This new system was called "Linux", and was built from free software (the term open source software hadn't been coined yet). All the tools we used on the SunOS systems were present in Linux, so I gave it a go. Suddenly, I had the same power of a SunOS workstation on my home computer. No more late-night trips to the computer lab!

But it wasn't just about getting a free ride. For me, the real benefit of free software was that you had access to the source code. If you had the interest and the skill, you could modify the programs to do exactly what you wanted. If you found a bug in a program, you could fix it. If you needed a new feature that would improve the program, you could do that yourself. And over time, I did make a few improvements here and there, and shared my changes with the people who maintained those programs. Some of my changes even made it into future versions of the programs.

Such was my interest in this new way of using software that I created my own free operating system. In 1994, Microsoft announced that their next version of Windows would completely replace MS-DOS. I still used MS-DOS to do a few things (I needed As-Easy-As to do my lab analysis, for example) and didn't want to see DOS go away. So I started work to create a free version of DOS, which later became FreeDOS.

I've continued to use free / open source ever since. Much of the time, I prefer to use Linux as my desktop. But even when I'm using Windows or MacOSX, I like to use Chrome and Firefox - both are open source software (Chrome is built on the open source browser, Chromium). I'm not exclusive, however; I'll use tools and programs as they suit my needs.

So I was interested to see the latest digital issue of Campus Technology and their article about "7 questions to ask open source vendors." I can't find a link directly to the article, but you can find it in the digital issue on their website.

In short, the article discusses how tight budgets are pressuring IT directors to think outside the commercial software paradigm. Many are now considering open source software for the first time. The article makes these recommendations for what to look for when selecting an open source program, and an open source vendor, for your enterprise:

1. Is there a rich ecosystem around the software?
2. What type of governance structure does the open source project utilize?
3. How active is the vendor in the open source community?
4. What are the licensing options, and what are the exit costs?
5. How flexible is the vendor?
6. How engaged will the vendor be with IT staff?
7. Which charges are additional?

The article does a good job of discussing the issues, so I won't expand on them here. However, I may return to this topic to share my own thoughts, based on my personal experience in working with open source software. For more, you can find related posts on my FreeDOS blog.

I wanted to share this great article that a friend of mine wrote, Nibbled to death by ducks, as she worked through the constant interruptions to her time. She's the chair of the physics department at the University of Wisconsin Stout.

We all deal with these little interruptions to our day, the knocking on your door as you're trying to write a document or put together a budget, or any of the other innumerable things she does as department chair. While some of the interruptions could have been opportunities for coaching and leadership, most were simply administrivia that didn't require immediate attention. Laura needed additional structure to her day, and defensive calendaring just wasn't doing the job. So her spouse suggested a visual reminder — both for her and for others — about how all the "little things" can quickly add up.

Laura's catchphrase is "being nibbled to death by ducks" so she set up a bunch of little rubber ducks in a box. Whenever someone impinged on her time, she moved one duck to the other box. That served as a nifty reminder how these "little things" stack up.

Over time, as people became aware of the "ducks" experiment, Laura found fewer people stopped by to interrupt her. The faculty began to help preserve Laura's time. And by extension, to become more independent. In the post, Laura mentions a comment from someone in her department, that "the duck showed both positive and negative impacts for her: yes, it was a nibble on my time, but it was also a symbol of my fixing something for her, which is my job."

I thought it was an interesting way to visualize these little disruptions.

I've often said this about reporting information: "if you measure it, then you should report it. If you report it, then someone needs to make decisions with it." That is, the only data worth having is data that helps you make decisions. This is generally true, whether you are capturing performance statistics on a web server ("Are we overloading the server? Should we upgrade the server, or continue as we are?") or reviewing usage on a database system ("Are we running out of disk allocation? Do we need to add additional table space?") If you are logging data that never gets reviewed, by anyone, then I generally look on that "low value" data.

I consider this data-informed decision-making as "management by fact". An article in EDUCAUSE covered the same topic: Management by fact. From the article:

"We sit on a ton of data and just don't use it," said Chris Handley, CIO at Stanford University, in reference to the university's databases supporting operations. Similarly, in 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also saw a glaring need for meaningful operational data when a visiting committee reviewed its IT services. The committee lamented, "The absence of detailed cost data for IT activities and useful benchmark data from peer institutions ... became an obstacle to completing the full scope of the review."1 Broadly, both universities needed data about costs, customer satisfaction, process performance, project performance, and employee performance and satisfaction.

In effect, these organizations had to make decisions based on hearsay, or anecdotes. There wasn't any data to back up their decisions. Leading through guesswork is no way to advance an organization. So both organizations began similar improvement efforts. When beginning this effort, both institutions knew that several aspects of the project would be critical:

• Define data clearly. This would ensure meaningful "apples to apples" comparisons.
• Capture costs consistently for the services under study. Complex accounting structures in most university settings hampered previous benchmarking efforts, obscuring valid cost comparisons. We wanted to overcome this problem.
• Understand each other's processes in depth. To interpret comparative data, we needed to understand the factors behind the performance.
• Tackle issues of a manageable scope. Rather than develop broad metrics for IT overall, we sought metrics to inform decisions and compel action. The area of study needed to be broad reaching and visible, yet also well contained and data rich. These criteria led to the selection of IT help-desk services as the first area of study.

The efforts have been rewarded well. Each campus has seen

• process improvements, such as reduced hand-offs and broader range of topics supported;
• new abilities to handle spikes in workload due to crises (such as viruses) or plans (such as new system rollouts); and
• marked improvement in performance, such as an increased rate of cases resolved on first contact and number of cases handled per employee.

This week, network engineers completed the replacement of all network systems, including a much-needed upgrade of our wireless network. Our goal was to complete this work before the start of classes, and with your help and support, we got it done just in time. I appreciate everyone's flexibility in updating the campus network. I realize it's never a good time to lose your network connection, even for a short time, but this was necessary so we could replace the aging campus network with modern equipment.

I've heard from students, faculty, and staff across campus, thanking Computing Services for bringing a "faster, better, stronger" campus network to Morris! Several students shared network speed tests with me, showing fantastic speeds on our campus network. I'm always glad to hear this feedback! It has been our pleasure to update the network for you.

I also recognize that the network isn't great everywhere. For example, some of the residence halls have poor signal strength in some rooms, and some areas of Science are getting a week signal, if at all. (Some of these spaces did not have wireless network coverage before.) So while the hard part is over, we are not done yet.

We have always planned to go back to several areas on campus to expand our wireless coverage. We will also measure wireless network performance to see where else we need to extend our campus network, focusing first on student areas. You will see improvements to the network over the coming weeks and months.

I wanted to share our priorities in the next steps for the campus network:

First, we are working to bring wireless to the soccer field by the end of August.

Next, we plan to enhance the wireless network in the residence halls. We want to make sure all rooms can get onto the wireless network.

Then we will look at other areas on campus where we need to extend our wireless coverage. This will include enhancing our existing wireless, plus adding new wireless in spaces that do not currently have wireless networks.

You will see improvements to the network over the coming weeks and months. I'll keep you updated as we make progress.

Yesterday, as part of the "Welcome back to campus" week, more than 85 student groups participated in a student activities fair on the campus mall. This is a wonderful opportunity for new students to find other students with similar interests, and to get engaged with new hobbies and clubs. I enjoyed walking among all the tables to see what groups were out there. I think I was able to meet with almost half of the groups, so I cannot represent you all. But a few groups that stand out in my mind:

The Saddle Club is an organization for students interested in horses. UMM has a resident horse barn on our premises where students can house their horses. Saddle Club brought two horses to the student activities fair, and I got to pet both of them. My wife is a huge fan of horses - and, by extension, so am I.

E-Quality is a support organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and intersex students and allies. As a member of the Queer Issues Committee on campus, I am a strong supporter of E-Quality.

Bad Movie Club is dedicated to lesser examples of movies. I sometimes like to lose myself in a really bad movie, so I promised myself to visit a showing from Bad Movie Club later this year.

University Register is the campus student newspaper. I had a great conversation with the editor-in-chief about how Computing Services can lend a hand with hosting their website.

Ground Quidditch organizes the intense sport event from the Harry Potter books and films. Teams "fly" around the field on broomsticks, scoring points using a quaffle, while dodging bludgers (think dodgeball on broomsticks).

Morris Campus Student Association is the student group that represents students at Morris.

"Finer Things" Club helps students prepare for life after university. I volunteered to help with resume, cover letter, and interview coaching later this year.

My Little Pony Club is for fans of the cartoon of the same name.

I've used this last one as a leadership lesson when looking at lessons from unusual sources, and I mentioned this to the members at the table. And it occurred to me while visiting with this group that My Little Pony also provides a great example of a liberal arts education.

So let me have some fun in this post, and further explore that.

One benefit to a liberal arts education is that your education can cross boundaries, allowing you to leverage different disciplines to see the world differently. In that respect, My Little Pony is a great example. There are several areas that you can explore through the lens of this show:

Language

Learn the elements of a good cheer in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian:

Physics

Use this clip to exercise the basic equations of motion: acceleration, velocity, and position.



With the information provided in the video, and assuming Rarity was rescued at "inches" from the ground, you can now calculate: Rarity's initial altitude and the altitude of the stadium. If Rainbow Dash's tiny wings give her a constant acceleration a, making her net downward acceleration a + g, you can also work out Rainbow Dash's initial altitude and minimum acceleration a as she flew downward to create her sonic boom.

Leadership

As I mentioned in my other post, you can learn a lot about leadership from the episode Winter Wrap Up. The ponies of Ponyville participate in an annual event to bring Spring to Equestria. It's an important tradition, and an involved musical number by composer Daniel Ingram concisely summarizes the Wrap Up events:



The mayor provides the vision, and lets everypony choose the tasks that are best suited to their individual strengths and interest. But without coordination, activities begin and end at different times, leading to confusion about following dependent tasks, and things quickly fall apart. Twilight Sparkle learns to leverage her organization as a strength, and the Wrap Up is saved. Thus, we learn a few lessons:

1. Explaining your "end state" vision is an important start, but you must coordinate if your vision will be executed by several groups.
2. Use delegation wisely. Know when to get involved if things don't go well.
3. Take advantage of coaching opportunities to help others find their strengths.
4. Be mindful of lead-manage-do. A leader cannot be effective at the high level vision if she is too "hands on" (or "hoofs on", in this case.)
5. Identify "stretch" opportunities to develop new leaders.

Cooking

Yes, we even can learn something about how to make cupcakes, although I suspect that isn't the correct recipe:

I'm fortunate to be on the EDUCAUSE Midwest Regional Conference 2013 & 2014 program committee. EDUCAUSE hosts an annual conference each Fall, featuring speakers and presentations about various facets of technology in higher education. There's also a smaller conference each Spring, just for schools in the Midwest.

The program committee is now looking for presenters for the Spring 2013 Midwest Regional Conference. Next year's gathering will be March 18–20, 2013 in Chicago.

Current economic, technical, and political events are changing the world of higher education. IT is viewed as the potential solution to many of the issues at the heart of this change. Contribute your lessons learned, ideas, and experiences to our community of forward thinkers at next year's Midwest Regional Conference.

We need your perspective to create a diverse and content-rich program. Share what's happening on your campus in areas like teaching and learning, data analytics, and the changing nature of higher education IT.

Take advantage of this professional development opportunity to sharpen your presentation skills, grow your peer network, and highlight your institution's achievements.

The Midwest Regional Conference is built on the strengths of each institution in EDUCAUSE. I encourage faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota (or nearby schools) to to consider sharing a presentation about work you've done in the last year.

» Submit your proposal

I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and cooperation throughout the campus network upgrade!

This morning, network engineers updated the network in Humanities, and this afternoon we upgraded the Student Center. We ran into some unexpected network hardware problems in the Student Center, which caused the upgrade to go much longer than planned. Thanks for your support during this delay, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Engineers are wrapping up the Student Center right now, and we'll update the rest of the wireless network in the Student Center early tomorrow morning.

As I chatted with students during tonight's Student Activities Fair on the mall, many students told me how much they appreciated the hard work to upgrade the campus network. While there are a few areas on campus where we need to expand our wireless coverage, I think the network upgrade has been very successful in our goal to provide a "faster, better, stronger" campus network!

The hard part is over, but we're not done yet. We do plan to go back to several areas on campus to expand our wireless coverage. For example, some of the residence halls have poor signal strength in some rooms, and these will be our first priorities. We will also measure wireless network performance to see if we need to expand the wireless in other campus areas, focusing first on student areas. You will see improvements to the network over the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for a successful network upgrade!

As we wrap up the network upgrade before the start of classes on Wednesday, I'd like to share a brief update on the network upgrade: We're almost done!

Today, the network engineers updated HFA and Imholte. We hit some unexpected problems this afternoon in HFA which caused delays and some outages. Engineers are wrapping up the work in HFA right now (6:00 p.m.) although most of the building should have been back on the network since late afternoon.

Tomorrow, we'll upgrade Humanities and Student Center. We may have a few things to finish in the Student Center on Wednesday morning, but all the classroom buildings (including Humanities) will be ready for Wednesday classes.

When planning the campus network upgrade, we tried to schedule our activities to be completed before the start of classes. We appreciate everyone's patience as we finish up this important upgrade!

We do plan to go back to several areas on campus to expand our wireless coverage. For example, some of the residence halls have poor signal strength in some rooms. We will also measure network performance to see if we need to expand the wireless in other areas, focusing first on student areas.

Again, I'd like to thank everyone for their help and support in our effort to provide a "faster, better, stronger" campus network!

I wanted to share this brief article from the BBC about the changing nature of work. In the article, Tom Austin of research firm Gartner starts with the question "If you were to sit down today and create a company completely from scratch, would you copy the processes, practices and structures of today's organisations, or would you try to do something different?" In his article, Austin discusses the different ways that our "work" is changing:

1. Work is no longer as "routine". For example, through technology we can automate some tasks, freeing us to work on other, more complex problems. Or we can help people find ways to evaluate the impact of a change without going through a process in "real time".
2. "Swarms" are replacing traditional teams, and solo work. Swarming is a new and different form of teamwork, characterised by a flurry of collective activity from everyone available and able to add value.
3. Working in a collective can work beyond the traditional, direct control of "old style" organizations, allowing the collective members to think "outside the box" to invent new ways to address problems.
4. Sketch-ups, simulation, and simulation are new ways to represent data, to make an informed decision. In technology, projects used to work according to a strict "analyze/design/build/test/deploy" methodology, but that's changing into a more flexible model.
5. Hyper-connectedness is the new norm, and with it changes the approach to where we work.

This is only an overview of the article, what I found relevant to higher education. There's some interesting analysis in there. How do you see the nature of our work changing over time? Things aren't the same as they were even a short 5 years ago. What will the future look like? The students who graduated this year carry with them completely new expectations of how to work collaboratively on projects, which changes the dynamic of what we consider "work".

Wednesday will be the first day of Fall semester at the University of Minnesota Morris. We've already had several groups of students visit Computing Services, as the orientation group leaders introduce the freshmen to each of the offices on campus. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all our students.

I was fortunate to attend the move-in day on Sunday, this weekend. I saw lots of heartfelt farewells as parents helped new students move into the residence halls.

As students move back to campus, I'd like to remind everyone about our campus network upgrade. We've worked hard to complete the campus network upgrade before the start of classes this week. Over the summer, we managed to finish the upgrade in several buildings ahead of schedule. This week, we will wrap up the campus network upgrade with these buildings:

• Imholte Hall
• HFA
• Humanities
• Student Center

Our schedule shows us finishing on Wednesday, but we believe we may be able to complete everything by Tuesday afternoon.

Remember, you should now see UofM, UofM Secure, and UofM Guest as available wireless networks. Where you previously used umm-wireless to get online, please use UofM or UofM Secure. You can setup your laptop to use UofM Secure, so you no longer need to go through the extra step to login just to get on the wireless network. The Helpdesk can help you with questions, or you can view the online setup guides. Visitors to campus (parents and special guests) can connect directly to UofM Guest and use their email address to sign in. You will no longer need to sponsor a guest for free wireless access.

We do plan to go back to several areas on campus to expand our wireless coverage. For example, some of the residence halls have poor signal strength in some rooms. We will also measure network performance to see if we need to expand the wireless in other areas, focusing first on student areas.

Again, I'd like to thank everyone for their help and support in our effort to provide a "faster, better, stronger" campus network!

A recent post in Ragan's HR Communication highlighted how to keep your teams happy at work. From the article, "People who are 'happy' at work tend to be more productive, take less sick leave, and stay with their employers longer than unhappy employees." In other words, the key to having engaged team members is keeping them happy. But it's not about ping pong tables in the break room and unlimited sodas in the kitchen—it actually comes down to engagement and trust. At least, that's how I see it.

The article lists four key elements to happiness on the job. I agree with much of what they say, but I prefer to re-word the elements and add my own commentary:

Be collaborative

You need to engage the people on your team, find ways to bring folks together in the things that you do. Find a balance that lets people work together on projects. Especially with the newer generation of workers, the days of working in "splendid isolation" are behind us. To make a lasting impact, and to get the most out of everyone, we need to come together as a team.

Be resilient

I've often spoken about effective leaders who share a vision. If you can get buy-in on the vision, if everyone understands your point of view and why it's important to get there, they'll find ways around minor roadblocks. That's what it means to be resilient: happy employees don't let minor setbacks get in the way.

Be cultural

In leadership, you need to understand the three lenses: Strategic, Political, Cultural. And of those, you need to be most careful about Cultural. In making any change, you can have the best reasons (Strategic), and you can have the right people behind it (Political), but if you don't pay attention to the cultural roadblocks, you'll have a hard time finding success. It's the same in building teams, although I disagree with the linked article on this point—I don't believe that you need to have everyone on a team matching the same cultural background just to have the best "fit." But I'll agree to be careful of culture clash as you grow your teams.

Be confident

The HR Communication article gets it completely right here, so I'll simply quote them: "Keeping a positive outlook is difficult if you're unsure of what to do, or worried about your ability to succeed on the job. Reinforce employees' confidence with praise when they do a good job or show improvement, as well as training to help them keep their skills sharp."

I'd like to share this note from Rita:

The 10th annual Office Supplies & Small Equipment Exchange will be held this Friday, August 17 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Student Center Alumni Room, Oyate Hall.

Here is a reminder of how the exchange works:

Do you have items in your office that you really don't use anymore and you just can't bring yourself to throw them away because you think someone else might be able to use them? Here's an opportunity to recycle those items or supplies and help other UMM departments at the same time

Campus staff and faculty are welcome to browse and freely take items that they can use in their campus offices.

Bring your unwanted items to the Student Center Alumni Room between 8:30-9:00 a.m., this Friday, before the exchange. Items are limited to office supplies and small equipment, for example: binders, file folders, printer cartridges, calculators, etc. No large items please.

Of course, if you have old computers, dead laptops, external hard drives, or other electronics that contain any kind of storage (usually a hard drive) please drop that off instead with Computing Services. We need to be sure that these drives are securely wiped before they leave the University's care. We can do that for you - and we'll take care of disposing that equipment, too. Just call us, and arrange a time to bring it down.

I wanted to share an update on our campus network upgrade status. Our work continues to be on schedule. Last week, network engineers updated the network in Education, HFA, Behmler Hall, Big Cat Stadium, and Dining Hall.

This week, we will upgrade the networks in these buildings:

• Gay Hall
• North & South Annexes
• Transportation Garage
• RFC
• Heating Plant
• Camden Hall

Also, on Wednesday afternoon after 4:30, we will update the network in our campus server room. If you try to connect to the network on Wednesday afternoon after 4:30, you may experience delays while we switch over the network management. Please be patient and try again in a few minutes. You can find the updated network upgrade schedule on our network upgrade page.

You may sometimes hear me refer to the upgrade as providing a "faster, better, stronger" campus network. Here's what that means:

Faster

The new network is faster than our old campus network, over wireless and on traditional wired connections. I've spoken with the areas that have already been upgraded, and everyone agrees the new network is faster. Several of you also found me on campus to say how much you appreciate the faster network in the residence areas and other campus locations.

Better

With the new wireless, you will see UofM, UofM Secure, and UofM Guest as available wireless networks. Where you previously used umm-wireless to get online, please use UofM or UofM Secure. You can setup your laptop to use UofM Secure, so you no longer need to go through the extra step to login just to get on the wireless network. The Helpdesk can help you with questions, or you can view the online setup guides. Visitors to campus (parents and special guests) can connect directly to UofM Guest and use their email address to sign in. You will no longer need to sponsor a guest for free wireless access.

Stronger

We estimate wireless is about 20% stronger with the new network. That means you should be able to get online from more places across campus. After we've completed the network upgrade, we plan to run an analysis on the new wireless to identify places where we need to build in more wireless coverage.

We appreciate your help and continued support as we look forward to the rest of the network upgrade project. Thank you!

In IT, I've adhered to two conflicting maxims: hard drive storage tends to grow faster than you can fill it, but users will always expand their usage to fill the available hard drive space. The first is what drives the concept of "disk is cheap; don't throw stuff away, just search for it." And while that's a great idea in theory, what happens in practice is people do follow the advice, and are always asking for more storage because they keep filling up disk space with stuff they might have otherwise deleted.

This is what brings us to the "digital hoard" of today. No one bothers to delete old data anymore. And why should they? With features like desktop search, cloud, (de-)duplication, etc. you don't have to carefully organize your data into named folders and sub-folders. Instead, you just save the file wherever it makes sense at the time, and you can always find it later by doing a search.

But a recent article in Baseline Magazine, Hoarding data wastes money, highlights the costs to saving every bit of data. They look at the digital hoard from a legal perspective: While specific operational costs are appreciable, the most visible costs can be legal expenses. Even if a company had not been obligated to keep unused data, if it still has that data when a legal matter arises and a legal hold is issued, there is an obligation to preserve and produce relevant or potentially relevant information during discovery in that litigation. In essence, the legal hold trumps the company's right to dispose of information not needed for specific operational or regulatory requirements.

I'll skip over their arguments in this case, but it's worth reading. I feel safe in summarizing their points as "if you don't need to keep it, don't." The article gives a few recommendations on how to sort through stuff (hire an outside consultant who can advise what to keep, and what to delete), through the author's personal lens as a lawyer.

The article closes with the benefits of reducing your digital hoard: Such e-housecleaning efforts have a tremendous ROI. Some clients have been able to take thousands of backup tapes off hold, and others have freed up significant percentages of their available file share space--all of this in addition to avoiding discovery and data breach costs.

We do live in a time with almost unlimited storage, thanks to cloud storage offerings such as Box, Dropbox, Google, and other services. But at the same time, we need to be wise stewards of data. Are you keeping your own digital hoard?

You may have noticed that you now have access to YouTube through your U of M Google Apps accounts. What you may not realize is that YouTube also gives you access to the Google Hangouts On Air broadcast feature. You don't have to use the On Air feature of Hangouts, but it's there if you want it. On Air lets you broadcast a Hangout, in public.

When publishing content to YouTube or broadcasting a Hangout On Air, please be mindful that these are public environments where private or protected content (such as Protected Health Information, or PHI) should never be shared.

Here's more information:

YouTube

YouTube provides a platform to share and showcase your videos. YouTube's features enable easy and intuitive uploading and viewing. Now that YouTube is integrated with Google Apps, sharing content with individuals and/or distribution lists is made easy with contact list integration. Access to videos can be shared globally, with a limited audience, or kept private. To access YouTube from your Google Apps start page, select "even more" from the menu bar.

Hangouts On Air

Accessed through Google+, Google Hangouts enable you to videoconference with up to nine other individuals. Hangouts On Air enable you to take that same conference and broadcast it to the world via your YouTube Channel, Google+ page, and/or any website where you've embedded it.

To broadcast a Hangout, just invite your circles or individual people to join you in a Hangout, then click "Start broadcast" to go on air. After a five-second countdown, your Hangout will start broadcasting to the public on your Google+ profile, your YouTube channel, and/or on any website where you've embedded it. Recording starts when broadcasting starts. A live player of your hangout will be posted to your Google+ homepage and YouTube channel.

You can edit and share the recorded Hangout. Your Hangout will be recorded as a public video and will be available on your YouTube channel once it has ended. You will be able to edit the recording when the Hangout is over. If you edit your video, your post (including the video URL) will be automatically updated to show the edited version.

Last year, I led an effort to generate a new Morris campus technology plan. Through this partnership, our working group held listening sessions with students, faculty, and staff for how technology currently serves the campus, and what areas need improvement. Your input was valuable, and we listened to you.

We delivered our Morris Campus Technology Strategy document in May, earlier this year. This new IT planning document makes recommendations across five major areas:

Essential needs

Projects and activities that must be addressed immediately. While these are not necessarily prerequisites for other sections, the essential needs represent high priority issues, including networks, security, and web.

Structural needs

Issues that provide clarity in technology support, including "Where do I go for help?"

Resource needs

Concerning budgets and technology replacement strategies for the Morris campus.

Educational support

Recommendations that support electronic learning, technology awareness, and research needs of the campus.

Technology services

Items that address specific needs and campus projects, such as the learning commons and student printing.

The order of these recommendation sections is approximate. For example, placing educational support fourth on the list does not suggest a particular priority for supporting the educational mission of the university. Rather, the sections before it (regarding essential needs, structural needs, and resource needs) will provide a foundation that will improve our technology support and services for teaching, learning, and research.

Since May, these recommendations have helped guide our work over the summer, and they will continue to act as signposts in the next year. So, what have we been working on?

A few projects currently in progress:

Network upgrade

This is on schedule for August completion. We are working with the Office of Technology to provide a "faster, better, stronger" campus network, including improved wireless support and coverage.

Active Directory ("AD") rollout to campus

Most staff units are now using Active Directory. Once you're on AD, you can use your Internet ID and password to login to your computer. You'll also have access to network drives to save your important data. More features will follow.

Web reskinning

By Fall this year, we will roll out a new website that will work equally well with mobile devices and desktop browsers. 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.

Learning commons

We worked with the Library and other units over the last year or so to define a future learning commons space. This will provide a common location for checkout of materials and technology. We're currently awaiting funding and construction approval.

Campus technology "tips & tricks"

Pam has led the "Wake up to technology" seminar series over the last several years to introduce new technology topics to the campus, and provide reminders on existing technology. You may have attended some of my sessions about how to use Gmail for class instruction and office work. We'll continue the "tips & tricks" series this year.

But that's not all we're doing. Over the next year, we will continue addressing your IT needs. We're planning on several projects to do just that. In no particular order:

• Campus IT needs
• Funding for technology
• Encouraging more e-learning and m-learning
• More direct support for campus research
• University IT policies
• BYOD or "consumerization" technology strategies
• Web content management
• Mobile campus web app
• Building technology

You may have seen some improvement in these areas already, as the campus takes advantage of opportunities. For example, this summer Plant Services installed mobile charge points in several locations across campus. If you need to charge your phone or iPad, just stop by the Student Center, Library, or Welcome Center.

I wanted to share our progress on the campus network upgrade. This week, network engineers updated the network in the Welcome Center, Briggs Library, and Science. The work has gone very smoothly, and we appreciate your help and continued support as we look forward to the rest of the network upgrade project.

I've spoken with the areas that have already been upgraded, and everyone reports the network is faster. Several of you also found me on campus to say how much you appreciate the new network in the residence areas and other campus locations. I love to hear your feedback! We needed to upgrade the network this year, and it's great that we've been able to do this work for the campus.

Next week, we will focus on these areas:

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

As usual, you can also find the updated network upgrade schedule on our network upgrade page.