Subject: RE: Reminder - MSCTC Advisory Meeting Wednesday Night |
From: Joseph Colvin <it@tubsoffun.com> |
Date: 9/24/2012 6:30 PM |
To: Tim Preuss <tim.preuss@minnesota.edu> |
Hi Tim,
Don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it or not… though I would love to, big project happening that I am going to get overtime in on here at work...
After reading this lengthy letter and stopping I think I may just sum up what I wanted to say instead, leaving just a few things from the original email.
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Document why you change something, not only what… more and more systems are being built to track ‘what’ changes but not the ‘why’ and sometimes the
‘why’ is more important than the what or how.
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Keep encouraging them to not be afraid to team up, include peoples input/feedback from the people. This skill can save hours of wasted time… if you
go ahead and setup a shared folder, the backup setup for it, and permissions but no one use it...
J
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If you have a student that wants to make impressions on the ‘bottom line’ tell them to look for ways to save money and effort, not just one or the
other. Tell them to focus on simple things, not the big things – pick it apart until you have something small to work with if you must. By helping people do the simple stuff faster or better will allow more effort and time (thus money) for the bigger stuff.
As always, remember to apply the ‘KISS’ and ‘It’s not broken, don’t fix’ conspectus.
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Keep learning, don’t stop… in this industry things said last hour may become historic in the next. Learn how to keep a ‘pulse’ on the industry, this
helps you in project planning, job marketing, and even your personal life – what event you should go to that’s down in Florida or Nevada during the winter up here
J
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Mobility with “access [your work] anywhere” is the current trend for companies with good reason. Soon, out sourcing things that used to be reserved
for Internal Positions will be talked about… things are changing… and fast.
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If there was a way to teach the students to think both short-term and long-term when dealing would be a leg up for those like me, whom only see things
long term… it gets under peoples skin sometimes that I will properly setup a service, when all I needed was feature X from it. But, I think long term, not short term… then again I perceive it being lazy if function B reports on feature X and it doesn’t work
because feature B wasn’t fully enabled/setup.
This is odd bits left over, it might have something of value…
What I have been seeing more and more is virtual environments with staffed IT people, but the management (control, project design and scheduling, IT Management
and CTO level) being outsourced to local companies as they can normally also get a ‘if needed, they will come’ type of support from these outsourced companies. In fact, Tubs of Fun (where I currently work) uses one to supplement what I can do and to assist
me when I need them. To give you a complete idea they help me deploy and mass train the staff when new version of software/hardware come along. They also help monitor and ease the load when major issues strike and compound together. They also help out for
change management, they control archiving of key components and track the small changes… thus I have a simple report that I can get when things of that nature are suspected. We are making a killing of the savings as the service costs less than what I make.
J
This setup works best for both parties, as the outsourced company doesn’t need to staff many people and neither does the partnered company… overall costs are
reduced, suggestions are no longer based on a pure internal review process as the powers that be can validate within the company and outside of it – which tend to have far more weight sometimes.
Also something to note, which you might personally like to know… we switched our company from Google Apps to Office 365, we are getting far more value out of
it and we have only used about half of what it brings to the table. Over the next year I see that increasing and allowing more of our staff to be mobile, which in turn means that we only need to keep space for a shop in our other locations… we don’t need to
have a shop AND store – which currently prevents us from expanding in some areas.
Office 365 is a life saver for data, coupled with Amazon Web Services for S3/Glacier (seven 9s of durability for cloud storage is standard) for backup/restore
and even deserter recovery become less of a worry and more of a ‘how to’ then anything. We keep the private data local, but everything else we make someone else’s problem… which sure overall has cost us more than normal, but the return is far more. I am free
to do projects as the company needs and not have to worry about how things are going when I’m not here.
Merging outsourced resources with the positive benefits that the cloud provides along with an internal IT department has been a challenge, one that not all
companies are up for, or their ISPs for that matter. But if done correctly, with long term thinking and planning, it can be a digital life saver.
So much of what we do is based on data that sometimes there isn’t enough time to process that data and we have to go with the gut feeling. Sometimes there isn’t
a correct answer, knowing which answer that has the least amount of ‘negative impact’ is a life lesson. Maybe it is time to throw in a few of those into the labs, just to get them exposed to it and not just how to tap and swipe to the answer. I remember a
few labs of yours that were like that, for a full year I couldn’t figure out how to reset my group policy after that one lab where it was to ‘connect computer to domain’ and somehow I joined it to the one you had given us… like our own private cloud. But I
want to say, really… that your labs were the only ones that I noticed that in.
Question…
You wouldn’t happen to know of any classes about SharePoint setup for an on premise with integrated cloud that I can maybe crash or get the books from or something?
I’m thinking about convincing the company to pay two more dollars to get a license for on-site Lync/SharePoint (which will auto upgrade to the most current version when released). I feel that may even help out a few areas for record keeping and boost file
change management as SharePoint has far better change management, and it doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t mission critical – it is all the same to SharePoint.
I know for a fact that would have saved us a headache when we had to replace both our construction manager and service manager… all the documents and such where
almost written in a personal language – if we would have been able to make them more publicly visible and tracked the changes we could have let the new people learn from the previous managers for months after they are gone. Heck, even spending the time to
using MS Word’s ‘add a comment’ feature is more effective than me sitting down with someone for one on one guidance.
From: Tim Preuss [mailto:tim.preuss@minnesota.edu]
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 8:16 AM
To: Joseph Colvin
Subject: Reminder - MSCTC Advisory Meeting Wednesday Night
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Information Technology Advisory Meeting Reminder
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Fall 2012 Invitation
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Dear Joseph,
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The Information Technology faculty at M State (Minnesota State Community and Technical College) invites you to our advisory meeting. The meeting will be held on
September 26 @ 6:00 pm in room B150 (outside door N3). Please contact us if you wish to have a campus map with the room numbers.
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The Advisory Meeting consists of Information Technology professionals guiding the curriculum and instructional direction of our Information Technology programs. Our
current program offering is Computer Programming – AAS, Information Technology – AS, Information Technology – AAS, and Information Technology – Diploma. Please contact us if you wish to have a copy of any or all of our curriculum offerings.
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We very much need your input to our programs. We very much appreciate those of you who already replied to this invitation. Your reply helps us accurately plan enough
food for the meeting. You may extend this to other professionals you think would help us improve our curriculum and instruction. The meeting agenda is provided below.
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We look forward to seeing you.
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Yours,
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Minnesota State Community and Technical College Information Technology Faculty
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Chris Goltz, Computer Programming Instructor,
Chris.Goltz@minnesota.edu
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Deb Flaskerud, Computer Programming Instructor,
Deb.Flaskerud@minnesota.edu
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Dave Hjalmquist, Computer Programming Instructor,
Dave.Hjalmquist@minnesota.edu
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Randy Johnson, Information Technology Instructor,
Randall.Johnson@minnesota.edu
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Tim Preuss, Information Technology Instructor,
Tim.Preuss@minnesota.edu
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Agenda for Spring 2012
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MSCTC welcome
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Informatics class overview - Is our definition worthy of creating a program?
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Discussion: Identify current and future processes and technologies
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Review of Computer Programming course of study topics
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Review of Information Technology courses of study topics
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Discussion: Educational relationships with vendors
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Discussion: Change management
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Announcement:
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Questions and Answers
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Advisory Member Functions (MSCTC Advisory Committee Guide)
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Identify specific subject areas of program inclusion
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Prioritizing the recommend subject areas
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Specifying appropriate program content level
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Reviewing program outcomes on an ongoing basis
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Assessment of program quality
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Specifying appropriate foundational skill standards for local needs
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Identifying general education and related technical skills needed by graduates
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Recommending equipment to support the program content