Enterprise Architecture, JimPhelps, Work »

Just had a hallway (okay, exhibit floor conversation) with Tom Black of Stanford University.  They have ideas on embedded enrollment functions in several places: inside their LMS, available via iPhone applications and elsewhere.  They would expose those enrollment functions as services then write to those services.  Interesting.  We also talked about orchestrating a flow, click on the drop button and you are passed to a short survey to see why you dropped.

This brought me back to the question in our session “Is SOA DOA?”.  I was asked how you get business leaders to buy into the SOA change and how do you get campus consumers to agree to work on SOA solutions.    Add to this the discussion with Karen Hanson, our Associate Registrar, on funding issues and how do we deal with costs of deploying SOA solutions.

It seems that there is a lot of interest in SOA in the Registrar’s world.

We may try to organize a meet-up after AACRAO in Chicago in April.  We could have Registrars bring their Architects for discussion around uses of SOA and issues with implementing, supporting and governing SOA.  It would also be good to hear their interesting Case Studies of how they are using SOA .

Things to follow-up on when I get home.

Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE, IT Architecture, ITANA, Registrar, Service Oriented Architecture

JimPhelps, Work »

Introductions of people.  A lot of interesting constituent groups that I didn’t realize existed:  I.T. Metrics, Learning Space Design.  http://www.educause.edu/groups

Cynthia Golden – VP for EDUCAUSE is doing the EDUCAUSE update.

There was a new President last year.  They have been doing a lot of change management over the past year.  There is a new look-and-feel.

“Uncommon Thinking for the Common Good” is the new tag line.    “It’s not about information or technology. It is what we do with them that counts.”

EDUCAUSE this year is 10 years old.  They did a lot of information gathering this year – focus groups, surveys and webcasts.  Feedback: EDUCAUSE as an organization brings I.T. leaders and decision makers together.  It elevates the idea in the tag line.

Things they heard:  Be a voice for higher education, stay ahead of the trends, influencer or creator…

Diana Oblinger has an article in the most recent EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

Areas of focus: 

• Teaching and Learning,
• Managing the Enterprise,
• E-Research and E-Scholarship,
• Evolving Role of IT and Leadership

They are working towards more interactive sessions (Point-Counterpoint sessions), lighting rounds, innovation showcases.  They want to provide greater support for informal networking (informal spaces, powers stations).  And, they are focusing on sustainability – self-selection of tote materials, carbon offsets.

Peter DeBlois update on the program participations.

Grown by 5 CGs.  Increased subscriptions by 16%.

Project Management was a new CG two years ago and they are now in the top 10.

The 5 new CGs:

• Emergency Communications (130 members)  – focused more on the technology
• IT Communications (165) -
• IT Metrics (164) – want to find standard metrics and working on ways to implement the ways of gathering the metrics.
• Openness (106) – Covers Open Source Software, Open Content, Open Decision Making.  It is a broad scope from the very technical to very high level discussions.
• Virtual Worlds (128) -
• Women in Higher Education IT will start after this meeting

CG Leadership Ideas – Issues and Concerns

How do you stimulate discussions?  Put compelling topics on the table. 
How do you glean out the useful discussions and move them to another deliverable?

Ask each year if the group wants to continue to exist. 
Task multiple people to drive a topic area of conversation.  Tie this to deliverables.
Contacting people behind the scene to ask them to provide more information to the list.
Try to align a topic on the list with a conference submission.
Going to try to Skype out their CG meeting to reach a broader audience who cannot travel.
Trying some new media approaches.  They weren’t too keen on the idea.

Corporate and Media Participation:

Seems to be in control.  People are worried most about media taking quotes off the list and publishing them.

Adobe Connect et al:

They now have Adobe Connect licenses that the CG could use for on-line meetings.  You can have 1500 users.  Voice-over-IP with slideshows and raise-your-hand chat for questions.  We don’t have a toll-free number to call into the conference.  It is all VOIP.  It has capture and stream capabilities.

Interested in using this, send an email to Catherine Yang.

Surveys:

They have looked at an institutional Survey Monkey account.  It would be good to have an archive.

Other ideas:

Spotlight a CG every month or so to help promote the CGs.
Have library interns work on pulling together content from the email lists.
There is interest in regional CG meetings.  They are working out the details of how to facilitate that.

Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE, Constituent Groups