Educause, all wrapped up.

My final update from Boulder. It's a fun little town and I will be back, hopefully for more Educause events. But for now I'm exhausted.

Too much fun, too much altitude, too much learning. If I was a drinker I'd be in real trouble. :)

Today were our presentations, with each of the six groups covering their questions in different ways. As you can see, we were all quite silly.

I'd give more detail, but that'll have to wait for the wrap-up post...aka when my brain works again. The presentations were quite fun though and were an excellent way of showing some of what we learned. We'd have showcased more, but there is no way to fit more information in a 10 minute presentation.

Another thing these presentations demonstrated was the ease at which teamwork can be built and the quickness with which solutions can be achieved. All that's required is a bit of professionalism and a smidge of swallowing pride.

Two results of the brilliant faculty here at Educause.

Yeah, I know, I'm gushing. But it's this is an amazing conference. I'm going to push for all my current and future coworkers to go to this as it's benefits extend beyond just managing staff.

The connections I've made are incredible, and some of these folks are people I'll be asking for help and advice from for years to come.

So I come away with whole new ways of leading and training my staff, which isn't just valuable to me but immensely valuable to them too. If I can better lead my OCs then I'll be better positioning them to handle the real world.

Which, curiously enough, bears no resemblance to working on a college campus. Not even a little.

This, by the way, is our group...well, most of it. I'm off to the left as narrator while our two 'abducted' employees are off to the right. You'll note that we adopted the hotel's haunted reputation for our skit.

Shh, don't mention the bedsheet to housekeeping. I don't think they noticed it had vanished.

I'll wrap this up with a group shot of our faculty. This was taken just as we began our 'testimonial' part, where we talked about what we were bringing away from all of this.

The most touching part, for me, was when one of my colleagues stood up to seek out those that had impacted him most here and mentioned me as one of the three that had most influenced him this conference. It seems my insight into staff management had shown considerable wisdom and he was thankful for it.

Heh, seems there's hope for me afterall.

Tomorrow, my plane ride home...if TSA lets me.

Educause, wrapping up in Boulder.

Back again from another fun filled day of Educause. Today was the longest day out of the set. But it was also the best, I feel, over all. All general sessions today, but they expanded the main room so there was less crowding.

Man, we covered so much today it's difficult to remember it all. The first session was a general one on communication. Items like handling the 'Yes ands...' and 'Yes buts...' which plague management. Well, and plague people in general nowadays...just say yes or no for heaven's sake.

We next moved onto a discussion on the future of IT in higher education. Both promising and challenging at the same time, but that's to be expected. I found this one a bit disjoined though, and I think part of that has to do with some of the preachiness.

The general disdain that came across with respect to colleges being expected to produce economic impact was a bit surprising. You'd think in an era where one of the biggest problems facing universities is their self-created 'ivory tower' mentality, they'd strive to avoid it.

You shouldn't demand exemptions from budgetary considerations when making critiques of budgetary processes. Ultimately schools serve the citizenry, and if legislatures feel safe to cut their funding this means that legislators feel safe in doing so. And that only happens when the average Joe no longer values colleges...which comes out of the 'ivory tower' school of PR.

After lunch we came back to work on career building. To be honest, I've never much planned my career. Which might explain how much of it's currently unmet.

But I've gotten better lately and the tools presented here will help immensely.

After the career planning one we went into a session about effective teamwork. I can't give details without spoiling things, but this was an amazing seminar. The best of the Institute, imnho. I gained some valuable material that will be of immense value later this quarter.

At once my OCs should be very happy and quite scared.

After that session we spent well over an hour working on our team presentation. That's my team, Green Team, the best one of the Institute. From left to right that's Scott, Joan, Alan, Kathy, Melissa, Ginny, and Joe. I'm hiding behind the camera, naturally.

My contacts here, although not as developed as they could be if I was more energetic, will still be quite useful as I cultivate them through time. Plus, these are very good people whom I'm glad to have met. Our presentation should be cool tomorrow, and I may post video if it doesn't embarrass Scott too much. :)

I wrap up tonight with another picture of the Flatirons. I want to come back to Boulder and hike up there somepoint. Hopefully with some close and/or special friends, and maybe in about 100 pounds.

Boulder has breathtaking scenery and is worth the visit, although I think they've let their 'free spirit' situation dilute their potential.

C'est la vie. Tomorrow's the final formal day of the Institute, we'll have fun.

Educause, 2nd full day - Dry Boulder, CO

First things first, in maintaining a good, strong seminar you need to keep your seminees fed. And every morning we get a nice breakfast to be consumed in the half-hour before we begin. Fruit, breads, juice, coffe, and an egg dish have been available both mornings so far, and it's quite good. Just enough to enable us to have a energy crash before the first session is done.

Well, in theory at least.

Our first activity today was a session on 'Emotional Intelligence', basically how you read and understand the emotional state of both yourself and others. There are plenty of managers who can't do this, but still the material was ill prepared. The handout in folder didn't gel with what was being discussed, we finished way to early so we just filled time, and we got way off topic. So this was more than a bit of a wash.

After this we broke then went into our individual units. First up was a session on 'Project Managing', and this one was extremely informative. There was a lot of material I hadn't thought of before or even been aware enough to think of. My redoing consultant training will be much more interesting when I apply some of these things. And, for that matter, my projects outside of work will benefit immensely too, once I get the hang of this.

I also learned of Project Management Professional certification, "pimp" as it was dubbed. It's offered by the Project Management Institute and is rapidly becoming a standard in education, more so than even a PhD. Only caveat, you need a minimum of 4500 hours of project management before you can enroll to take the test. No, 4500 is not a typo.

Anyways, we broke for lunch as usual and were joined by the Educause President. I didn't get a chance to talk with him as he was at another table, but I sat with the Project Management people and soaked up more information on projects. UCSB seems quite behind on a number of fields, this one included.

But I'm finding out we're way ahead on things like net security. I also picked up a couple of nifty software packages I'll have to mention to Steve, he might find them useful.

After lunch we went through a session on hiring, training, motivating, and retaining staff. As I have such high through-put on staff most of it was old hat, but I helped a few new managers with tips on interviews and rewards. I've learned that managing student staff is vastly easier and more rewarding than career staff.

Yes, I don't have as much 'respect' or 'cache', but I have less stress and more flexibility.
We took the class photo at 3 then broke for the day. I went back to walking about Boulder, and have been most places within about half-a-mile of the hotel. The city's gorgeous from a scenery perspective, but has some seedier parts. The biggest turn off is how overrun the town plaza is with drifters and panhandlers. It's a lot like SB and might just be a symptom of rich, vacation-destination towns. Probably a symptom of the political leanings of the town, as this place is very similar to SB politically.

Here's a picture of the Boulderado taken from a bit north on 13th street. It's a really pretty building, one that I'm quite familiar with now. Should I come back to Boulder, I will stay here again. I recommend it highly.

It lacks a pool though...I could really use a pool. (Or the one here is just well hidden...I'll ask later).

Next update tomorrow, which is our busiest day. Then a short day on Thursday and I fly home on Friday.

Let me know if you have any requests on things to photograph or do while here, I'll try to work them in.

First full day of Educause.

Boy it's been a busy day, exhaustion is quite an option after four separate seminars. One quick perk was apparent though, being a West Coaster I wasn't too far removed from my normal schedule. A number of folks are from the East Coast, and they were all up bright and early around four. :)

There are a bit over fifty of use in the conference with seven faculty. Our general sessions are held in this larger room but we split into smaller rooms for most of our activities.

This morning started with 'the Changing Faces of IT' in which we talked about some of the future trends to be expected in University IT. From straight forward items like the growing power of open source to more exotic items like the influence in gaming on the teaching in University.

Fortunately the sessions are broken up by frequent breaks. Breaks that see a considerable rush for coffee. The sun was back today as this storm moved on, and the temperature was up a good 15 degrees from yesterday. So outdoor breaks were encouraged.

After the morning session we broke into two smaller 'tracks' for the remainder of the day. We had three more sessions during this, one on time management, one on leadership, and one on communication.

Naturally, any seminar on time management is doomed to run over time...which we did. Not a problem though as it was very informative. A lot of what struck attendees as novel or new were items I'd been doing for ages (thanks Ray for teaching me to use to-do lists!)

The leadership one was also quite informative, while I found I was doing a pretty good job, it showed me how much more I have to learn. My staff should see a lot better care from me once I fully digest what we went over.

The communication seminar was also very interesting. Seems my biggest problem is not listening closely, something that I'd been aware of at some level, but not enough to act on it. So that's marked for improvement. I also found that I had perfectly balanced the four aspects of communication, which either means I'm great at communicating or just can't shut up. I leave that one for history to decide. :)

I skipped doing a group dinner and hiked around old town Boulder. Silly me, I had a camera yet failed to take many pictures. Also, 5700' elevation is a bit much for a beach dog like me, especially one as out of shape as I.

The city is beautiful, and very much a college town. Lots of pubs and lots of pan handlers, kinda like IV but with class and merchants.

Anyways, we have a shorter day tomorrow so I may get more of the town on film. Depends on my mood.

More later.

Educase, the first two days.

Well, I'm in Boulder. I didn't bring my laptop along which I thought would preclude me from blogging, but hey this hotel is equipped with a couple of nice HPs! :) Oh, and pardon a few of the photos, it's a new camera so they're a bit blurry as I've been learning it's quirks as I go.

Anyways, got to the SB airport at 5:30 Saturday morning. This is where the first fun part of my trip appeared when I learned that my name is on the 'Do Not Fly' list. No real inconvenience for me beyond 15 minutes in a line. But as I'm hoping to go on a Japan trip next year I'll have to keep this in mind.

Have I mentioned that this list doesn't seem very useful? The whole screening process is actually borderline absurd really. I mean, come on, statistically speaking they would be better off just profiling the passengers and going after the backgrounds that are jihadi-oriented, not 5 year old blonde girls (one of the conferees here had her daughter pulled aside for the 'detailed search').

Your tax dollars misappropriated people.

But anyway, the plane was a very nice Canadaair SRJ (I think) 200. The flight lasted two hours and was rather pleasent, only two screaming kids and they were silent for most of the flight.

We arrived in Denver and two things came to mind. First, how flat the Plains really are. I've never been out here and 'wow'...what a weirdly flat horizon.

The second thing was how there was nothing near the airport. I'm used to LAX, Burbank, and all the LA airports...with buildings and offices right adjacent to the property. This looked more like it was set in a MadMax world.

But that's neither here nor there...I'm just showing my geology bias for actually liking mountains.

Inside the airport is another matter. The thing was huge! I got off the plane, up into a loading terminal...into a main terminal, down three moving sidewalks, through a virtual mall, and finally road a train before I got to the actual terminal. Any bigger and I would have needed a connection flight from the tarmac to the terminal.

The fountain was a nice touch too, greets you when you come up from the train. Again, compared to LAX, this place is rather cool and a bit intimidating. Too bad I don't fly more. Anyways, after about an hour I caught a van ride into Boulder. One of the Faculty for Educause was on the van, so we talked a bit.

The hotel itself is fantastic, an old Victorian hotel with newer additions that still look like the hotel at large. Lots of wood panelling, rich decorations and the like. I'm very happy to be here.

The rain's kept me pretty locked up though. It's been pretty steady during the day but is supposed to let up tomorrow so I'll see more of Boulder.

Also the food here is wonderful, if a bit 'yuppie'.

The conference started today and is filled with a myriad of wonderful people. I've learned quite a bit so far and today was merely introductions. I can't wait to see what we do over the rest of the conference.

More tomorrow.

Posting irregularity.

I'm between a vacation and a business trip (which leaves tomorrow). I should get back to posting on the 15th or so (sooner if I can find a good computer setup in Boulder).

So, my apologies to those few who do read, it'll pick up shortly.

(Which is good, because the news is insane lately)

-SB Viking.