A while back I posted a video for Fun Friday showing a mom-son combo dancing to Gangam Style. Well… time for another one! One thing I think is great about this video is that is caused Pakistani authorities lift their ban on YouTube temporarily so that fans could watch the video. NPR has a nice article on Shahaid Nazir’s rise to fame on their site here: ‘One Pound Fish’: A Pakistani Man’s Passport To Fame.
Author Archives: Christopher Stanley
Off to GusDay 2013
Tomorrow a group of my coworkers and myself are headed to the GusDay 2013 conference at the University of St. Thomas. Each time I’ve attended this conference I have a ton of fun and we have great creative conversations. Overall the sessions this year aren’t as compelling to me as in past years, but the largest value is in the networking opportunities and conversations with other universities. And even though the 8 of us headed down work on the same campus we don’t always have an opportunity to talk about new ideas together. So the hour long van ride is a great opportunity to toss around ideas and get some internal brainstorming done. I plan to take notes throughout the day in a shared Evernote notebook. Check it out if you’re interested!
Welcome our New CIO – Henry May
It feels like IT at SCSU has been planning and reorganizing for years. We’ve spent time on a SCSU Technology Plan, then we implemented the interim ITS realignment as a part of the lengthy ASAOPSA process, which was followed by an expanded process led by Kaludis Consulting on beginning the search for a new CIO. And finally we’ll have our new CIO tomorrow! What this will mean for Information Technology Services in the short run is unclear. But, in the long-term I think that SCSU can better communication and collaboration between ITS and the broader SCSU/MNSCU community. As a department we’ve tried hard to reach out, but it’s been difficult with our resources stretched thin. I hope that SCSU’s addition of an experienced CIO in with a fresh perspective and new ideas is as exciting for the campus as is it is for us in the technology trenches.
During the interview process I notes several items that I thought made Henry May a great fit for SCSU. Here are a few of my takeaways.
- There was a commitment to training and the value of having a technical staff that keeps abreast of the latest advances in information technology.
- A strong commitment to assuring that new initiatives and projects brought true business value to the university.
- Henry has worked for Gartner and continues to find value in Gartner’s industry analysis offerings.
- In order to help leaders understand the value and constraints of new devices, Henry purchased iPads and gave them to his senior leadership to explore.
- A commitment to establishing governance processes to facilitate knowledge transfer, decision making, and communication.
- A belief in empowering employees.
- A record of mentorship to his staff.
- An understanding that a CIO needs to go out and build relationships.
2013 should be an exciting year for ITS, and hopefully for SCSU and MNSCU as well. I am excited to welcome Henry as our new CIO and I look forward to building an even better service for our students.
(Shout Out!) Desire2Lean Widget Winner
Recently the Desire2Learn Community launched a contest for the creation of a custom widget. I’m very excited that our own Greg Jorgensen won the competition! You can see Greg’s winning widget as well as the other finalists here. Congratulations Greg, and thank you for your outstanding contributions to online learning at SCSU. Below is a picture of Greg’s entry taken from the finalist page mentioned above.
Creative Response to a Nexus of Forces?
Recently Gartner held their annual Gartner Symposium where they discussed what they see as the onset of a “nexus of forces” descending onto businesses and forcing IT departments to change their perspective. PC Magazine has a great article here. These forces: cloud, mobile, social, and information are not new forces, but the impact of their peak and convergence in a focused way is new, and presents a real challenge for IT and businesses as a whole. While Gartner’s focus is often centered around the business world, it is easy to argue that education may be impact sooner given that their customer base is often comprised of a population that embraces new technology and trends.
St. Cloud State University like all other organizations will need to decide how to respond to this nexus of forces. Responding to the challenge will take more than just finding ways to modify our existing services. Instead, we’ll need to think outside of the box and develop new services. Below is a TED talk where Catherine Courage suggests using creativity, experiments, and storytelling.
Adobe Reader – To the Cloud!
Adobe has a new version of the Reader product out, they are now on version XI. There are a host of cool new features that you can look at here: http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/features.html
On the technical side there are new deployment options, better integration with SharePoint and Cloud Storage providers, group policy controls, and much more. For now though, I’m going to focus in on the ability to easily sync your PDFs to the Acrobat.com (aka “The Cloud”). These screenshots are taken from the Windows installation.
Adobe Reader XI for Windows
Here you can see the basic interface with the Sing in option for Acrobat.com on the right.
Next you see the Sign In interface where you can use an excising Adobe account or create a new one.
Last you can see the Getting Started PDF that I’ve uploaded to my Acrobat.com cloud storage.
Adobe Reader XI for Android
Now that you have your PDF’s uploaded to the cloud, you can access them on your mobile device too. Below are screenshots of the user interface on my Android phone.
(#FunFriday) Draw a Stickman
Here is a fun website for you to check out, http://www.drawastickman.com. The idea is pretty simple. You draw a stickman (or woman, or sponge bob, etc.) and help your new stickman solve a few problems. The site has been around for a while now, but if you haven’t tried it out before I think it’s worth a visit. On October 26 they’ll be releasing a full blown game. Looks like fun, check out the trailer below.
Fun Food Weekend
With a newborn at home there isn’t too much time for dining out. But this weekend we made a trip to Bella Cucina. Heather has been there a few times and I’ve been wanting to go for a long time now. We had the Balsamic Chicken and Crispy Chicken Milanese. Great food, great atmosphere, great service. We both highly recommend you visit.
I’ve heard a lot of good reviews for Muggsy’s Coffee Beans. So after lunch we headed down the street to The Local Blend, and picked up some of the “Bennie Blend.”
Then on Sunday we decided to give the Loaded Mashed Potato Pizza from Flying Cloud Pizza a try. Another hit! We’ll definitely being trying more pizza from them in the future.
To round out our fun food weekend my daughter Ella and I made some Halloween themed Jello Jigglers. Not exactly culinary masterpieces, but we had fun.
Library 2.012 Conference
The Library 2.012 Virtual Conference is Oct 3 – 5. The conference is an online global event with presentations from all over the world. It’s not really just for librarians either, there is great content for faculty too! Check out the keynotes and the agenda to see if anything looks interesting to you. I think my favorite keynote title is “Creativity and libraries: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Keynotes: http://bit.ly/SYuMrj
Agenda: http://bit.ly/UEhH2E
Innovative Tweeting
Twitter is a great tool for so many reasons, no matter what you are interested there is bound to be content out there for you – politics (@MPRpolitics), news (@WJON_News, @sctimes), sports (@StCloudRox, @Twins), etc. But one of the most innovative used I’ve come across is the “live” tweeting of events from World War II. @RealTimeWWII describes there work like this “Livetweeting the 2nd World War, as it happens on this date & time in 1940, & for 5 years to come.” It allows followers to step back in time and peer at the events of history in a really interesting way. If you have any interest in history I recommend you check them out.