Blue Skying Again

Everyone in IT Services at TRU is working hard to see Project SAGE a success. This project (the biggest IT project in TRU’s history) involves the standardization of TRU’s Student, Finance, Advancement and HR systems on Banner Version 8 as well as many other new modules that will improve services for students, faculty and staff. Human Resources, Payroll and Finance went live in April 2009 and the big push is on for Admissions go live in October. Once Student Admissions goes live it will be all-hands-on-deck completing data conversion and other functionality  for the Open Learning and Campus Student Registration go-live in June, 2010.

But what happens after go-live in 2010? Here are some of our plans and predictions over the next few years. Ok 18 months…

Cloud Computing, the next big thing, is upon us.

Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service” using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.

Cloud computing will have a major impact on how IT services are provided into the future. We are also looking at virtualization of our desktop environments to improve student access, flexibility and availability, all the while reducing our carbon footprint.

The continued evolution of our synchronous (Video Conferencing, Collaboration Tools like Wimba or Elluminate) and asynchronous (ie Blackboard, Moodle) learning technologies is a given. We can anticipate more time and place-shifting tools like audio and video podcasts being used by TRU faculty. Multimedia equipment will be available for most classrooms on campus.

A funny thing happened on the way to the future: some things got bigger and some things got much smaller. Desktop computing will move slowly to virtual solutions (ie no more black box under your desk) and TRU Students will use smarter (and smaller) wireless mobile devices on the campus. This will require mobile computing versions of the TRU website and other services such as registration and scheduling. These mobile devices will also be location-aware.

Monitors, however, will get bigger and bigger as new display technologies make larger displays more affordable.

The New Banner system will allow new ways of providing services to students, faculty and staff, improve internal business processes and open up new partnership opportunities with service providers. Once the dust settles from the go-live of our new Banner system, work will need to start on phase II of a number of modules to improve student services and processes further. This system will allow better reporting and decision making to happen. We will also undertake a review of our current Novell File, Print and Groupware software.

Pandemics and other potential threats to TRU will need technologies to ensure campus safety and allow teaching and learning to continue remotely. As mentioned, all the pieces will come together to let students study where they want and faculty teach where they want.

While this happens, we will continue to work on our Information Security, Service Management (ITIL) and Project Management capabilities within IT Services. All new technology decisions will be made with consideration to their environmental impact. No planning is done in isolation. IT Services will continue its partnership and liaison with the Senate sub-committee on Instructional Development and Support as well as the EATAC committee.

]]> http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/26/it-planning-beyond-2010/feed/ 0 http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/11/volts/ http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/2009/08/11/volts/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:28:48 +0000 bmackay http://brian.blog.mytru.ca/?p=768 New York soon will hum, the Electric Car has come

- “Stupid” by the Long Winters

Maybe it was too soon to write off GM as they recently announced that the new plugin hybrid Chevy Volt will get an EPA rating of a staggering 230 mpg. The Toyota Prius only gets 51 MPG in the city so this announcement is pretty incredible. As it is a plugin hybrid and if you have a short commute, you could potentially never be using the gas ”generator” if you plugged your Volt in each night. 

Imagine what a game changer that would be to the automobile and oil industries?

I’m also imagining how eerily quiet the streets will become in this world of electric cars. I’ll have to be more careful jaywalking…

Thanks to an advancing technology-native workforce, ubiquitous broadband, and abundant collaboration and Social Computing tools, information workers can now provision their own software tools, information sources, and social networks via the Web to support their jobs. Individual people, not IT organizations, are fueling the next wave of IT adoption we’re calling Technology Populism.

You don’t have to go very far to realize the users have taken over. Our web analytics tool on the tru.ca site shows growth in personal devices beyond desktops and laptops connecting to our services. Check out the top Operating Systems of devices connecting:

1. Windows
2. Mac
3. Linux
4. iPhone
5. iPod
6. Playstation 3
7. Symbian OS
8. Nintendo Wii

Gasp, what’s a poor IT department to do, especially with all the potential data loss, security breaches, islands of information, intellectual property challenges that these “rogue” users could possibly create for the organization?

I reckon the trick will be to get the mix right between good policy and practices to support our client’s information needs. Help with integrations and flexible enterprise architecture and reporting. Maybe try out some new stuff…

We could also do a lot of work to make those Web 0.0 enterprise applications work as easily as most web apps today. IT folk need to take a deep breath and think back to all those new technologies like mini computers and PC’s to realize a rationalization process will occur. This diagram nicely illustrates these waves:

An interesting presentation that challenged my assumptions on innovation and commoditization. And I thought management was simple…

I’ve tended to think that the future was that everything we do in internal IT would become a utility service elsewhere and that would be the end of it. Perhaps things aren’t so simple and we take our role in cultivating innovation in the organization for granted..

Wardley mentions the Red Queen Hypothesis  from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and equates that with the role of management. The Red Queen says that ”It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” Getting the balance right between the innovative and the commodity is the key.

The following chart from Wardley’s blog illustrates how technologies move along the s-curve from the innovative to the mundane. Picking the right technologies at the right time was the challenge faced by management and the source of continuous competitive advantage.

…have no desire for solitude, have never heard of it, can’t imagine why it would be worth having. In fact, their use of technology — or to be fair, our use of technology — seems to involve a constant effort to stave off the possibility of solitude, a continuous attempt, as we sit alone at our computers, to maintain the imaginative presence of others. As long ago as 1952, Trilling wrote about “the modern fear of being cut off from the social group even for a moment.” Now we have equipped ourselves with the means to prevent that fear from ever being realized. Which does not mean that we have put it to rest. Quite the contrary.

Remember my student, who couldn’t even write a paper by herself. The more we keep aloneness at bay, the less are we able to deal with it and the more terrifying it gets.

There is an analogy, it seems to me, with the previous generation’s experience of boredom. The two emotions, loneliness and boredom, are closely allied. They are also both characteristically modern. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citations of either word, at least in the contemporary sense, date from the 19th century. Suburbanization, by eliminating the stimulation as well as the sociability of urban or traditional village life, exacerbated the tendency to both. But the great age of boredom, I believe, came in with television, precisely because television was designed to palliate that feeling. Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one’s lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television.

I speak from experience. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the age of television. I was trained to be bored; boredom was cultivated within me like a precious crop. (It has been said that consumer society wants to condition us to feel bored, since boredom creates a market for stimulation.) It took me years to discover — and my nervous system will never fully adjust to this idea; I still have to fight against boredom, am permanently damaged in this respect — that having nothing to do doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The alternative to boredom is what Whitman called idleness: a passive receptivity to the world.

So it is with the current generation’s experience of being alone. That is precisely the recognition implicit in the idea of solitude, which is to loneliness what idleness is to boredom. Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom. If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself. Some degree of boredom and loneliness is to be expected, especially among young people, given the way our human environment has been attenuated. But technology amplifies those tendencies. You could call your schoolmates when I was a teenager, but you couldn’t call them 100 times a day. You could get together with your friends when I was in college, but you couldn’t always get together with them when you wanted to, for the simple reason that you couldn’t always find them. If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation. We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude.

But not all hope is lost for today I learned that  drinking coffee,  being tall and left-handed has an upside!

Digital kids take time out for some analog sushi building

Dimension 3D Printers

I must admit It took me a while to understand why there was so much buzz about “Additive Fabrication” or 3-D Printing. Machines that create 3D Models from CAD Files have been around for a while. For example, many dentist offices now have machines that can “print” you a new tooth crown, customized to your mouth, while you wait.

The disruptive aspect of 3-D Printing comes about when these machines are available to everyone. While there may be limited appeal at the moment to printing a plastic toy or iPod cover at home, just think about the benefits of being able to “print” spare parts for all those machines and electronic devices we have. Instead of ordering the part and playing the waiting game,  you’d simply buy the CAD file from the vendor’s website, download it to your 3-D printer, press start and voila!

A CBC Article on 3-D printing mentions one company called “Desktop Factory” that is aiming its technology at the small business market.

Desktop Factory aims to get the price down to under $1,000 US over the next three to five years and add different printable inks, such as those that produce flexible or transparent models. That would open up the market to everyday consumers, who could use 3D printers to fabricate household items, such as bendable toys or iPod covers, Lewis says.

“People will be able to disrupt the manufacturing chain and print replacement parts rather than having to drive to Home Depot for something that was manufactured in China,” she says. “We haven’t begun to tap into the users who really need the technology.”

Yeah I know, this is all hype. But just think about the potential. Suppose your hardware store printed out that tiny washer for your antique facet while you waited? Suppose it didn’t have to stock every washer under the sun? What about the aircraft that’s grounded at the airport waiting for a small engine part to be shipped from afar? The mechanics could just print a new one as required. Along the way, wouldn’t removing all the shipping, storage and handling be good for the environment?

Think about all the things creative designers and TRU technology students could do with an in house, desktop model builder.

What’s even cooler are these sugar sculptures. I gotta get a 3D Sugar Printer!

Pour some sugar on my 3D Bread

Stonehenge - Ran out of Programmers?

This just in: Our students are spending lots of time online. From Educause Review January - The NetGens 2.0: Clouds on the Horizon:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project uses the quaint term “Omnivore” to label that group of users who “do an enormous range of things online.” This report noted: “Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.” Likewise, the Pew study of cloud computing usage affirmed that use of the cloud is growing and that those in the youngest cohort (18- to 29-year-olds) are leading they way, with 77 percent having used web-mail services.³

Additionally, the authors of the recent book Born Digital state that a NetGens 2.0 student, when turning twenty years old, will have spent 10,000 hours online. To accumulate that much time at 3 hours per day would require just over 9 years; 2 hours a day would require nearly 14 years. The authors put it this way: 10,000 hours is equivalent to the amount of practice time someone would need to become a professional cellist.⁴

Okay so they can play the cello but can anyone program anymore? Where have all the talented programmers gone?

BEGIN rant

The problem is that the NetGen omnivores don’t see IT as a “thing” or a viable career choice anymore. I think IT became irrelevant and boring in 2001 after the dot com bust. Declining computer science program enrollments starting back then support this. 

Around the office there are two schools of thought on the talent shortage as it relates to the 18-29 cohort.

Camp 1 – Don’t Worry Be Happy

• The NetGens don’t have an interest in programming because it’s not a necessary skill anymore. 
• If I want to program the latest Web 2.0 thingie I just use a super-high-level scripting language that just lets me glue objects together. I don’t need to concern myself with stuff thats happening at lower levels of abstraction. What could be easier? 
• CPU’s these days are so ridiculously fast that who cares about code efficiency?
• Isn’t all the world’s programming now done in developing countries with the lowest labour costs?If I need new code, I just dial the call centre offshore…

Camp 2 – IT’s the End of the World as We Know it

• The dearth of programming talent (and computer scientists in general) is a major problem and will impact Canada’s competitiveness in years to come.
• Understanding how to communicate with the machine at it’s most BASIC level is a foundation skill that all students should have.  
• As more and more appliances and devices become IP aware, code efficiency will be critical. This requires skills.
• Newsflash: We are getting older: Who is going to run all this technology when us old curmudgeons have shuffled off this mortal coil?

Guess what, I’m firmly in camp two. I’ve predicted IT worker shortages in earlier postings and continue to have trouble recruiting and retaining IT talent. With the predictions that the IT Industry may not be as adversely impacted by the current economic troubles as other industries, times will continue to  be tough for hiring managers. You see, we still need programmers. It’s the end of the world as I know it.

END rant

It’s a beautiful, snowy day and the PVR is loaded with dozens of MythBuster Episodes and the fire is blazing. What else could you need?

A quiet New Years Day and a headache causes me  to reflect on the past and make some predictions for the next 12 months. Part of my job as an IT leader is to determine what’s coming and figure out when new technologies should be adopted. A tool I use is the Gartner Hype Cycle. The goal with this information is to always try to adopt technologies on the Slope of Enlightenment or Plateau of Productivity as opposed to when the trend is at the Peak of Inflated Expectations. This is more easily seen in the diagram below.

Gartner Hype Cycle

While tools like the Hype Cycle are great, I still want to make my own wild guesses of what’s coming next. I’m not too proud to admit that I’m often spectacularly wrong. In that I’m in good company – oil at $200/Barrel and wrong calls on technology futures spring to mind.  I’ll indulge some of my predictions in future posts.

Anyway, I digress. Saw an interesting post about futurist Richard Watson’s predictions for 2009. The trend I found most relevant to this blog was the concept of unplugging from our digital lives.

“This means that people will start to edit and unwire their lives, removing unwanted “friends” and dropping out of social networks as they reclaim personal or family time. There is an aspirational element here, too – just as owning a mobile phone was once seen as a mark of sophistication, not owning one (or using one sparingly) is becoming a signal that a person has sorted out their priorities or has staff to take mundane calls. Hence the new phrase “digital diets”, and an interest in analogue products: fountain pens, wet-film photography and vinyl records.”

Who knows, maybe a digital diet is just what the doctor ordered. That said, it may be best to pull the plug first before you have to suffer the indignities of being “de-friended” from other people’s social networks. That’s never fun.

Time to unplug and go play in the snow.

According to the Web 2.0 iconoclast Andrew Keen in his book the Cult of the Amateur the flood of user-driven content on wikis, blogs and social networking sites is “destroying our economy, culture and our values.” Oh oh, that can’t be good.

Keen has lots of illuminating examples in his book, which is a polemic against the “upload society” we have created that is eroding the livelihood of professional writers, musicians and producers, etc. While some of the book seemed a tad alarmist for me, I really liked the passion of the work.

I found the concept of how no one makes any money in the Web 2.0 world (except Google) very interesting. Take blogging, pour example. According to the book, Guy Kawasaki, whose blog is on the top 50 for the whole Internet, earned a paltry $3,350 for 2006, not exactly a wage matching his fame.

Keen also discusses the misfortunes of the rock-acoustic band “The Scene Aesthetic”, who, despite massive MySpace and Youtube popularity, couldn’t translate that success to real world things like cash. Page 111 talks about their national tour where they could barely cover costs:

“On good days, if the band manages  to sell enough T-Shirts and tickets, they can even buy dinner. On bad nights, Bowley and de Torres ended up sleeping on basement floors of fans homes.”

Not quite the image of rock-stardom for a band that had nine million plays on MySpace…

Call me old fashioned and a crazy, cock-eyed optimist but I’ll continue to buy music, books and magazines – thanks very much. I’ve found that in this Web 2.0 world I’m starved for good information from experts and works from talented artists. In fact, I’m spending more money in the iTunes store than I ever would have spent at the local music shoppe. While there are some blogs that I really, really enjoy I also need actual news from actual journalists from the CBC, The New York Times or the Economist, etc.

I found the most frightening bits in the book dealt with  how your information is mined by search engine companies. According to Larry Page, Google co-founder, the future is the “ultimate search engine that understands everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly.” To do that Google becomes pretty well omnipotent and the concept of personal privacy a thing of the past.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook:

“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.”

Yikes. And Google will remember it all.

Have a nice day.

“Reminder: Recycling/Garbage Day Tomorrow“

then, suddenly the next morning:

“Garbage Truck will be here in 17.38 minutes. Get out of bed lazy!”

I also want to be able to book appointments using my mobile device, TV, laptop, refrigerator, or car dashboard directly with the doctor, salon, golf course, dentist, hairdresser, or doggie-day care people without an endless back and forth of calls, hold musak and busy signals. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to get a message that says “wisdom teeth extraction tomorrow: 8am.” (Well not really.) If the dentist’s office could also book it in my e-calendar I’d be most appreciative.

I want to get an email from the washing machine telling me it’s done.

While the smart-phone wars rage on and on, I think we will be moving to a time when we won’t really care what shiny device we get our info from, just so long as we get our info. Any old point of interface will do. As long the thingie I’m using connects to the cloud that connects to the garbage truck that is rumbling down the boulevard, I’ll be satisfied.