WISP: Lessons Learned Thomas A. Warger Interim Executive Director CIS Vassar College.
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Transcript of WISP: Lessons Learned Thomas A. Warger Interim Executive Director CIS Vassar College.
WISP: Lessons Learned
Thomas A. Warger
Interim Executive Director
CIS
Vassar College
WISPY Stuff
• Develop network/ server environment
• Build database-to-web applications
• Get started on Digital Assets Management
Lessons
• People, practices, and skills
• Tools and tech environment
• Time and distance problems
• Consortium pros and cons
• Process and change
• Questions (philosophical and practical)
People
• “Our people”
• “So-and-so, who used to work here…”
• Consultants/contractors
• “Those idiots at [random office]…”
• Java Guru 3,000 miles away
Practices
• “The IT way or…”• “On your own…” • Outsource• Student source• Central construction• Central maintenance• Distributed
maintenance.
• Hit or miss maintenance
• Cyclical initiatives• Board decree
Skills
• Coding
• Design
• Project management
• Persuasion
• Consorting
Tools and Tech Environment
• The “enterprise” set
• The lite set (Filemaker, MySQL/PHP)
• Selection process, criteria, choice, learning
• Storage strategy
Time and Distance
• Talk for hours, face to face
• Keeping up, keeping track
• Travel and meetings take time
• Time for the “real” work
• Time to learn and re-tool
Struggling as a Consortium
• Priorities
• Resources
• Styles
• Hold-backs
• Complexity
Working as as consortium• Define an appropriate problem
• Organize
• Distinguish the beneficial actions
• Share the research
• Implement sequentially
• Re-assess; start the loop again
Change begins at home
• How we do things here
• Why change?
• Make them change
• Why we like medieval architecture
Questions
• Is there an ecology of information?
• And what are the economics of it?
• Is IT a special problem for sustainability?
• What is the IT mission in education?