Key? I Thought You Had the Key

I don't usually use an e-mail I've sent as a blog posting, but this one is slightly different. We've all had different experiences lately with the new method of distributing keys to students. For some of us it's worked out OK, for others not quite so satisfactory. While I'm on the positive side of the equation I do see problems in the structural situation this represents and implications for future re-arrangements of methods and procedures. This change over seems to be having more problems that it should and that itself is the real problem. Here's my response back to an e-mail Glen Armitage had written last night.

Thanks Glenn.

I’m reluctant to speak out, but it’s turning into more of a philosophical and operational issue than just keys. We will, no doubt, be experiencing more of this kind of fall-out due to re-organizations in the future and all for a similar reason: that of cost cutting. It has turned, oddly, into a staff only issue with all of us uncertain who is in charge and who to even talk with at a college level.

The ad hoc solutions that some of us have come up with are varied and uncertain. One-card is only a solution if it’s installed. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it and a real solution is still needed now and right now. I’m lucky that I’m part of the library and fit into the “academic” list of users that are allowed. We’ve re-thought our keys, coalesced into using just one key for all of our doors and it is, so far, working, though the real burden has shifted from me onto the library people to enter our information into their data-base – and often. That turns out to be not as easy as in the past. More time of more people are involved now. How’s that for cost cutting.

It is also, I think, a reflection of the separation between the “class oriented day” and the “outside of class day” that both students and staff experience. People who are not involved seem to think it’s a small issue, but those of us who look students in the eye each day and have to say we don’t know what the answer is have a harder time understanding why no one seems to be helping. It’s sort of like the problem of getting water to the people trapped in the sports stadium in New Orleans – please help us.  

John Bruner has solved his problem at the Yurt Radio with a biometric device (well it’s been working for a couple of days so far), but all of us have variants of who and how students need to get keys and the information trail that gets generated in its wake. What seems to be the real unifying theme here is variations.

In the past the switchboard operators were sophisticated enough and thoughtful enough to handle the oddities, subtleties and emergencies that surround the keys and through a narrative exchange tell us when there were problems. (there’s that word narrative again) Now, there is no one answer, no one experience.

So my real worry is that in the name of cost cutting we alter the usual landscape of student life and the flow of the day. We have, indeed, saved money with regard to Public Safety but we have incurred a real cost on the other end of the spectrum in daily student life. The social ecology of the day is often hidden or at least occluded to most administrators and faculty and it has fallen to staff, singularly, to solve, ad hoc, a complex and surprisingly far-reaching problem.

We all need to get better at doing this and I think we could use some help. It’s not just about the keys. If we can’t solve this what happens when we run into a real problem?

gunther

So, that's my e-mail to Glenn.

My key problems, thankfully, are small and we're still thinking of ways to re-work what we do to make more adjustments and allowances, but it's start and stop as we go along discovering both the good and bad of slightly changed and still changing  circumstances. 

My point really is that as we come upon more changes in the future, and we will for good and reasonable reasons, we need to more quickly grasp the subtleties and newly induced problems and then quickly and commonly agree on implementations. The ad hoc problem solving ends up fractionating the daily student experience. No two offices now have the same methods. It's all a grab bag of reasoning and implementations. That's never a good user experience and that's my point.

gunther

Why We Are Here

The semester starts so fast and with it classes and workshops entered into quickly. Later reflecting I think, wait a minute I should have had some kind of welcoming or motivational speech to give – first thing. It's always a failing of not having time to fully thinking things through. So belatedly here it is.

Some time from now you will be asked a question. It may be eight years or fourteen months or two decades, but it will come. It will be the most important question you will ever answer. You may not have studied it in school. You may never have thought about it at all. You'll think, why are they asking me, but they are and you'll need to answer, because there'll be no one else.

Your response will save the life of your friend, your lover, your next door neighbor, the person at work you hate. Your answer will save the company you work for, the neighborhood you live in, your daughters school, the little park just down the street, New England.

The person who asks you the question will be your younger sister, the guy in the elevator, your best friend, the woman in the car across the street. They'll be crying, depressed, fearful, in pain, desperate, stoic, angry, or simply have a blank look on their face. You won't have time to look it up, ask someone else, talk it over, think it through or read about it. Suddenly everything will stop. People will turn to hear your answer. Faces will lift. It will get a little quiet.

The question you will be asked is, "what should we do?" Your answer will change the course of your life and the lives of others for better or for worse. Will you be able to give an answer?

Is this likely to happen? Maybe. But here's the "really scary" version – perhaps more likely is that no one will ask at all; that people will stand there frozen, uncertain, bewildered and wait for something to happen. That's when, unasked, you have to step forward and say what you think we should do. That's when you need to lead. Answering the unasked question is the hardest thing in the world to do and the most important, but to be able to do it you have to practice – starting now.

So that's why we're really here, to get you to a point, much later in life, where you could answer that question or more importantly the unasked question. If you want to save the world you need to get ready. You may not think you're up to it, but everyone here is. However, if you're just here to only have a good time, later you're not going to be much help to anyone because you won't be able to answer the question – you didn't practice. You'll have no idea and the unasked question will just hang there, unanswered.

gunther

The Beginning, Again

Well the month of August disappeared into the past amazingly fast and we're already into the cool weather of September. This weekend is move-in day for new students and their parents.

In the past parents had been whisked away quickly and without much regard. Now we offer them seminars, counseling, dinner, and frequent tours of the campus. I had the obligation and, I discovered, the pleasure of giving tours of the new Liebling wing of the film/photo building, but I was astonished to find fifty parents in the first group and the same number in still yet another group. In retrospect I see how that many people changes what you can talk about and it's a compelling validation for small classes. However, I did have a good time and a few parents told me afterwards they were grateful for the information I gave them.

With that many people, most of whom were not really interested in media education, but more general information about Hampshire, I simply talked about what I think it takes to get through Hampshire. Engagement. Positive engagement. That, like most of life, means something different to different people, but without it you'll flounder and drop away. It means interacting with the day, with your classes, with your professors, with administrators, with other students – not just showing up. Just showing up only gets you in the door. The rest is up to you and it's not enough just to go to class. You can take all the classes we offer and not be able to graduate! Work here is project oriented and helped along by friends and associates. Friends are personal and might be content free. Associates are content oriented, but could also be friends. You need both and you need to know how to get them.

One of the most interesting byproducts of the lingering of parents is the feeling that they, too, bond with the school and become interested in not just their own sons and daughters, but the campus as a place and as an idea. I also found, surprisingly, that it worked the other way too. I felt an obligation to pay attention to their specific family member and take a responsibility to help them through Hampshire. The families did their job and I think they'll get more out of Hampshire for being here.

So I always feel the glow of optimism each September. So much is possible, so many good things will happen, it could all work out for everyone. We can hope so, but we all have to work at it and make it happen. There's no free ride here, but everyone wants the students to succeed.

gunther

Home Sweet Home

This morning while I was reading last Thursdays Home section in the New York Times and drinking my second cup of tea Danae poked her head around the corner and said, "there's a tour group standing in front of the house go look." Sure enough the Saturday morning Florence History Trail tour given by one of our local historians Steve Strimer has paused his group on our sidewalk and they're learning about the houses' history. We live, I've recently found out, in the Joshia White Cottage built in 1811 and moved to it's current location in 1879 (yes, they did that sort of thing all the time). The site where it had been before then became the very large brick mill building that sits on the edge of the Mill River just down the hill and around the corner from us. They saved our house and moved it probably a little more than half a mile (depending on the route they took). Thanks.

I've known it was an old house, but I was thinking Civil War era, not that much earlier. Joshia White ran a grist mill on the Mill River and built a large dam there to harness the water power for the mill. So it turns out our house was one of the earlier buildings in Florence. That's fun.

Florence has a proud and old tradition of abolitionists and workers industrial communes in the early nineteenth century. The communes were based on the concept of "free labor" or in other words, non-slave labor. They tried raising silk worms to compete with cotton cloth – a slave crop, but the New England weather didn't work out. Sojourner Truth lived around the corner from my house, just across the graveyard that's our quiet neighbor.

So it's fun to actually live in a part of local history and feel that connection of ideas and time, even while I mow the lawn. I've started to read Lydia Maria Child books to get a sense of what they though and how they lived. She was a active abolitionists who lived in our house for a few years around 1820 after Joshia White moved out and then rented it. Lydia was the Martha Stewart of her time, but switched to more impassioned anti-slaver topics. It's quite impressive. I'll have to learn more just to feel that I fit in to the responsibilities of the house.

gunther

All I Know About The System Is What People Tell Me

Accounting wise the end of the year is always fraught with peril, confusion, anger and surprises. This year was no different. We had been warned to "use it or lose it" or "if you don't spend it they will" and several sentiments similar to that. It's a little paranoid, a little bitter, and a little true which motivates all of us to rush to judgments on items we've been thinking about way too long and now need to frantically purchase on the spot.

I usually try to resist the madness and haste, but it's hard not to get swept up in the fury. We're in such a moment of change. Change in the basement labs with the film/photo people pulling back into their own building, change in the formats and methods of recording video with SD cards, changes in the storage requirements of footage as we move more quickly into full HD. In other words there are a lot of places to spend a couple of hundred dollars, but as always some more wisely than others.

With the studio space returning to the possibility of actually becoming a studio again after several years being used only as a classroom the desirability of adding more lights was too captivating to resist. I really enjoy lighting. It's both a skill and an art and takes place in that quiet time, just before all of the shooting starts. Well, sometimes it's really frantic and pressured and then the shooting starts. In the old days we used the overhead light grids with most all of the lights turned on. Now I like to use much smaller, less expensive, more controllable stand lights – the little Pro-Lights from Lowell. Not only are they actually cute, but they're easy to use and give the quality of light we need now when we use much more sensitive cameras. OK, we've got a couple of soft boxes in the studio too. So a pair of Pro-Lights, a hand full of Avenger Maxi light stands. These are the best light stands I've ever used and they go up to 11 feet tall.(You know I've never liked C-stands. Maybe if I were in a more industrial production world I'd get used to them, but I'm lower on the food-chain, more local, more independent and yes, cheap. C-stands stack well in a truck or on a wall, but for throwing in a bag and traveling I like basic floor stands.) A couple of barndoors, a couple of snoots and bang I'm at $770 easily.

Just a little more money left, what to do, maybe that hybrid DSLR concept I've been dreaming about? We all are intrigued by the ability of new DSLR still cameras to also shoot quite reasonable HD video. It's a merging of photography and video that we never really thought would happen, but it has and it has a lot of ramifications that only direct experimentation can actually show us. (I'm a big believer in the value of direct experimentation to discover hidden meanings and appropriate methods.) So we need to get one at some point – why not now. So after spending a day going back and forth over the mangled handful of cameras available I selected the Canon EOS T1i for around $850. Well by this time there's less money in the budget than I thought (it's due to mingled accounts – OK that's another topic I know) so now I'm short of money by $400 and I trot off to talk with Andrew with my hat held out and yes, what a guy, he says sure he'll kick in the extra. Now we're short on time so thinking it will be the fastest paperwork turn-around I head off to the local Best Buy to get the camera.

Before I left I went on-line and printed out their price of $849 to have in hand in case the price had gone up in the store. Sure enough when I get there it's listed for close to $900. After waiting for about 10 minutes for someone to finally wait on me I have the camera in hand and go to the check out. They'll grant me the on-line price, no problem. I also have with me four sheets of paper describing in difference state forms that I'm a tax deductible institution. I'm all set. I show them the paper work, they hum a few times, show it back and forth to each other, ask for my drivers license, Xerox it all, then I hand them my corporate credit card and they ring me up. Declined. What? Declined. Your card has been declined. Great. Why? Oh it doesn't tell us that, but it doesn't go through that's all we know.

So the next day back at school I ask everyone why the card was declined. No one knows. I call the business office and find that now is a great time for most everyone to be on vacation and they are. Finally, I talk with a very nice and knowledgeable woman who tells me my credit limit has been reduced to $1,500 and that's why it bounced. Why? Don't know. Normally that's not a problem, but this summer I'm buying items for the new Liebling Center and I've been spending $1,500 a week for them alone. My limit had been raised to $10,000, but now it's back down. She suggests getting a PO for the amount and that way it's in the system and I've got 10 days before the paper work needs to clear. Good idea, I'll do that. I thank her for her kind help.

Now I'm off to get someone to help me write up a PO in Datatel our enterprise software. I hate Datatel and have found it one of the worst software applications I've ever used in my life. It makes no sense, there's no reason for anything, it looks horrible and it never tells me anything I really want to know – other than that it's fine. As I've found in on-line discussions people in my world think all enterprise software sucks. It's a bunch of aggregated feature sets that make up a disjointed collection of capabilities that only managers who buy enterprise software like ("Oh, look what it can do". The real question should be, "what does it feel like when you use it?" That too is another story and maybe the most important of all - hum.). I'm used to working with the best software in the world which is really quite easy to use and has the most important element of all - discoverability. You can teach yourself how to use it. It's easy and fun. Datatel on the other hand makes no sense and needs to be learned by rote. It works this way period and it's never any fun. So help I need. Hey, it's Friday afternoon now and every one is gone for the day. I'm help-less.

Andrew suggests just calling B&H and ordering it with his corporate credit card. OK, I'm worn down, let's try it. He calls, the price is only $800 with them, wow, let's do it. He does. Declined. Same thing. Your credit limit gets dropped and no one tells you! OK, let it go, just walk away. It's not worth thrashing around trying to use up the $400. (Did I mention that I'm on vacation. Yes, these last two weeks of my vacation I've worked every day. OK it's my choice. To me work is fun, but it's still a nuisance and certainly is to my wife.) I'm sure the school can use it somewhere else in the budget. It's my donation. The real problem is if you spend the money, but don't get it to register in this years budget you lose the money and then still have to pay for the item out of next years money, so it's like losing the money twice. It's not worth it.

Time passes.

Now it's the next week and I get an e-mail from Andrew saying the camera just came in. What? Yep, B&H shipped it. At some point Andrew's card reset his monthly limit and the order went through. Now we've got that great hybrid DSLR camera to work with. What a life.

Now all I need are some sandbags for the light stands.

gunther

Waiting for the Snow Lepoard

I've been telling people about the importance of the new version of the OS coming at the end of the summer OS 10.6. It will only run on Intel computers. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is.

Recently I've been plotting about how to shift machines around after we do some upgrading in the library media labs. I've got two 24" iMacs on order with the hope for two more so thinking about how to deploy the four G-5's that they will replace is reasonable. It's like all things, planing makes good sense, but the realities hit hard and fast when you trip over some unthought of problem or your view point shifts and a new idea is discovered.

I was going to suggest that we give the Music Program one of our old G-4 machines so that they could run Siebelius on it for music notation. Well the Siebelius concept that I know is way out of date. It's a whole new animal now and has much higher technical specs, an Intel machine for one. That keeps happening more and more and bodes ill for the usual trickle down effect we normally get from updating. Nothing trickles down anymore and we're about to hit a big technology wall.

The newest thing I've just tripped over is QuickTime X that comes as a part of the new 10.6. It does streaming all by it's self. You no longer need a QuickTime Streaming Server. Yea, so what? Well it sounds to me as if a lot of people will be "doing the stream" all on their own maybe at a much lower level but much more often. Hum. No, I don't really know what that means, but I'll start thinking about it. Watch out YouTube you're in trouble now.

But what it really means is that there are a lot of hidden doors with problems and opportunities lurking behind some or all of the current and future changes. There's a flow to the direction of all of this. It's not a given that everything is going to work out well, but it also doesn't pay to go against the flow. We need to see the pattern, establish directions and ride the wave. SD cards, hybrid cameras, Intel processors, cheap RAM, AVCHD, H.264, full HD, working across the network - all of which require higher skill sets, deeper insights, more experimentation and most of all good humor.

gunther

Happy Vacation Days

My energies have moved over to the new Liebling Center building this last week and it's both fun and physical. It's always exciting designing new installs  – stations and labs – for working and learning, but it's also a lot of moving boxes of books, computers, monitors, and just stuff all over from one building to another in the heat, in the rain, and mostly right in the back - ouch.

I'm at a point now when I need the internet working in the building, but it's not there yet. So, I thought, now's a good time to take some of those vacation days that are still sitting there ticking away. Use them or lose them is the phrase. Bob Crowley says no internet until Tuesday so Friday and Monday are vacation days for me.

You might think that days off are happy and carefree, but not always. Yesterday a neighbor woman stopped at the door with a flyer of her white cat Twinkie who's missing. Oh my goodness what agony in her face. We talked a long time about cats and the neighborhood with tears just barely remaining behind her eyes. An hour later I went out in our yard to look around in likely hiding places and "meowed" out loud hoping for a response. I'm actually pretty good at it, but just silence. How sad. I watched her all day going up and down the street stopping at front doors and walking up driveways.

Today while working in the backyard garden my wife came over and said there was a tragedy. What? One of our resident chipmunks had drowned in a watering can left in the yard. Oh the poor little guy is all I could think, what a sad way to die. Our cats love watching him run across the deck with their eyes wide and their noses pressed again the sliding glass door. They'll miss him too.

Happy relaxing days off and it's only Saturday afternoon with two more days to go. At this rate I'll be a wreck by the time I get back to work.

gunther