Tuesday had more presentations, some good some rather lackluster. For me, the hardest part of Tuesday was that I had stayed up Monday at the conference. But that was fun nonetheless. The most intriguing presentation was one on this hosted FAQ/knowledge base from intelliresponse.com that York University is using called Supergeek. Intriguing to me, because it gives a clear way to solve many of the problems in IT, all without having to have someone call.

I also saw some amazing communications presentations at the poster presentaton. My favorite, largely because it was completely off the wall and fun, was from Texas A&M. Things like “The answers to all my bank security questions are on facebook” and other inventive things peppered flyers and table tents that they had on display. I was really impressed. The second place in my mind was the display from U of Chicago over their website. Talking to these folks, they consolodated over 100 separate IT websites for the one, which includes a Service Catalog. I know, not anything out of the ordinary for folks, but we’ve been struggling with it.

Now, I’ve said earlier that the highlight of the conference though wasn’t the presenatations though. It was definitely the people, and some of these same people that I went to presentations or looked at posters with were the ones I stood around with for hours talking about work sure, but also about life. For those of you that know me, I was big into Scouting when I was younger, and still am active as an adult now. Somehow it came out as we were standing around debating wether to do the poor man’s karaoke on Monday night, that many of the other folks I was often around were also big scouts (or guides for our Canadian friends). To me this was a weird connection for me, but one that made me realize there was a connection beyond colleague with these folks. (ok sappiness off).

The Gala event was quite fun. Private dinner at the Arch. Who does that? We saw the movie Lewis and Clark, had some amazing Route 66 inspired BBQ and cobbler, and went up in the Arch. There are probably going to be some pictures from the top of the Arch that will never see the light of day, or will be on a calendar. The whole thing didn’t feel like a conference, it felt like a party with friends. Which made the whole thing of actually having sessions on Wednesday rather odd.

But we did, and they were good sessions too. I saw a presentation on iTunesU implementation at Ithaca. Another thing we have been struggling for years to do it seems. And another on how the helpdesk, though essential, is usually left out of the planning and implementation of changes from the guys at U of Illinois.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it back to SIGUCCS (I’d really like to, especially if some of these other folk return), but I hope we can leverage some of what we saw and did here. Some of my colleagues, both at SLU and Webster are talking about perhaps some sort of regional collaboration group for higher Ed IT. Maybe we could learn from each other locally too. Its maybe a next step. And maybe something that I “cannot not do”.

This time it’s the SIGUCCS conference being held in Saint Louis. It’s a conference more like an academic conference than many IT conferences with papers and presentations on those papers. And while I fond some of the presentations great (the A.R.T if CMS training being the highlight Monday ), the highlight of the conference is by far the personal relationships here.

That’s not to belittle the terrific opening session. It summarized a lot if things I have heard over the years, but put it in terms that I can remember. For instance “Do what you cannot not do”. After years in IT, I am still nit certain what in IT I cannot not do, but I do know some things I am not happy or good at doing. Which leads nicely to another of the opening points. People who are naturally better and want to do something will generally outperform those who aren’t naturally gifted at it, even with great training. His example was speed reading, but mine would be the SLU project process I hate it and don’t really consider myself good at it. Unfortunately, it becoming a larger part if my job, not diminishing.

So with that and the fact I really ate working alone, this conference has made me reflect on what I am doing (or not doing with my career). I’ve got to get back to working with people, at least on a tight team. I’m not happy with what I’m doing. When lunch is a highlight because I get to see people, I cannot do this anymore.

And perhaps that’s the big difference with this conference. I’ve gone to big conferenwcea and learned a lot about products or solutions, but this conference, I’m learning about myself. Also helping that is the people I have met here. More than the other conferences like EDUCAUSE or Macworld that I have been on, I have met people, colleagues, and I know their names and faces. In these previous conferences I’ve never met a group and gone out for dinner, but here I did. And so I found myself at dinner with 12 other people at the Drunken fish on Laclede’s landing. People from Chicago, Calgary, West Virginia, College Station Texas, Wyoming and others. I found it to be a great experience, one I did not expect at the beginning of the week.

Maybe there are more surprises today. Good sessions? And more fun tonite at the Arch.

We put our Christmas tree up on Sunday.  As we’re putting it up Lisa and I both noticed it was smaller than we remembered it. My answer was to raise it up. We got some milk crates and a board to raid it on. When we were done, well  could tell Lisa still wasn’t happy. So after Church on Sunday, we headed to Target to check out the trees. And when you think about it, artificial trees are pretty expensive for some metal rods, with plastic limbs attached and shipped from China.

In any case, man these trees are a whole lot different than the fake trees of our childhood. I can remember Dad fighting with ours every year. In fact it was from his youth. And whats amazing, I bought a tree when I was working at Target a few years ago, and it was basically the same thing, a pair of wires, twisted with the fake needles wrapped between. Sure, they have changed to hinged limbs so that you no longer have to sort out the limbs by length and put them in, and we’ve all seen the pre light trees…but when I got my Target one, they were basically variations on the old trees.

This year though, almost all the trees were pre-lit, and they look different. Gone are the days of the green flat plastic needles, now most have these molded needles that look remarkably real. Curved little needles, lifelike colors, limbs that look REAL! That combined with the pre-lit trees, and well you get something I didn’t expect…some pretty expensive trees. But Lisa wanted a new tree, so shop on I must.

But Home Depot and Target weren’t the places to look. And after looking at these trees, Lisa had resigned herself to not getting one. Heck, we’ve got a roof to get soon, and possible foundation work. But I could tell Lisa wasn’t happy, so in search of of better deals I must go. So On Monday after work, I went home and picked up Lisa and took her out to Home Depot and Lowe’s. And guess what, Lowe’s had some amazing deals going on. At that point they were running at 25% off, but that was scheduled to end on Monday Night. Well, all that meant was I needed to go out on Tuesday morning and get a tree for 50% off. Well it was still good money, but it was at least somewhat affordable at this point.

So I bought it. A 7.5′ Franklin Fir tree. A fake tree that had been sold not 72 hours earlier for twice as much. At least I got a deal. And at the very least I took home a tree to Lisa.

But that is about where the great news ends. I get it home, and this beast needs two people to bring it in. Then we start setting it up, and guess what…the area between the couches we have is too small. And to fix it, we had to switch the two of our couches to do it. So I came home on Wednesday (yes, day 4 of this saga) and began moving everything. Lisa had class so I thought I would get it all done by the time she got home. Well, moving couches means you find all the stuff underneath them.  That included some mouse droppings from a recent mouse we had, and even the mouse that had died from D-Con. All this translates to the fact I wasn’t done with the tree by the time Lisa got home. Not even close.

So she got home, we finished it off, and then I put the up. Well, the problem with these beautiful trees with more than 3000 tips, is that you then have to arrange those 3000 tips. Ughh….Tons and tons of tips. Well by the end of Wednesday, I had moved the couches, and gotten the first of four layers of branches shaped. Yikes…

Man, at this rate I might have the tree up and decorated by Christmas. At least it will be a 7.5′ tree, instead of the small 6′ tree we had. Oh well

And there has been plenty of that. IT’S wants to tell me it wasn’t a demotion, but let’s be honest, when you go from running a business unit, supervising two employees, to not doing any of that, it’s a demotion.

After a rather rocky start, I think it’s getting better in this reorg. As we all settle in to our roles things are starting to click better,and I’m slowly getting better myself at really working with a supervisor again. In many ways that’s my problem to work through. I’m also learning again that a supervisor is something valuable, especially when there are things to be figured out. It’ll work out, that’s for sure.

And when we have all this figures out, this may work out ok. I’m still having problems figuring out the manager/coordinator split, but I think it’s starting to work out. There is a real need for planning and tech advice in the college, and as that becomes appearent, and people start to use my skillset more I may end up liking this arrangement.

Maybe power wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Maybe the power I need is doing a job well instead.

So that was weird. The universal problem with layoffs is always the people left behind. We never know what to think, and in general, leadership by instilling fear isn’t my MO. So that undercurrent is weird.

Even weirder for me is the implicit demotion that I’m receiving, unless I apply for another job. You see, my job is a bit of a jack of all trades: Manager, Customer Service Specialist, Project Manager, Policy Planner, Budget Guy. With the creation of a Manager that I will now be working for, and the people that work for me will be now be working for (not reporting to me), its weird to me. There is also some vagueness over which roles I would maintain as an IT Coordinator in the future. And frankly, part of the job that I really relished was being the team lead. Thats the part that challenged me, and the part I found fulfilling. That was the stuff that kept me coming into work, but its not neccessarily what I’m best at in this job. I’ve got to think this through, and quickly.

And I guess the biggest frustration to me with this whole reorg is the appearent dismissal of what the little guy has to say, and the glossing over of the details. Who knows…it will probably turn out ok, but right now, I haven’t been involved, and don’t know the details. For a guy who’s used to being a team lead…thats hard.

1. Build an image for the machines with InstaDMG
2. Restore the image with NetRestore or work with Apple to get the image preloaded (yes, you can do that).
3. Install the software needed using either:
   1. Filewave or a similar product if we can get the funding.
   2. Puppet if we cannot.
4. Manage the machines with the same technology.

All in all, for SLU sending me out here to get better ideas on managing, I think they got their monies worth. Now we’ll see if we can find the resource to implement it. So yeah…I’m sad that this is my last night in San Fran. In some ways I’m ready to head back home…but this surreal experience is  great. I loved living in Europe  because I could take the train or walk everywhere, the weather was always good. In many ways, its similar to San Fran. But I’m ready to head home in some ways. So tommorrow I get up, pack, and head to the conference for the final sessions and time on the exhibit floor. If I can get to the session on Server Virtualization, that should be a good one, if not, the one on protecting machines in an educational environment will have to  suffice. One more day, and two more good sessions.

After eating our free breakfast (we got this because of internet problems the first night in the hotel), we headed over to the Moscone Center. Lisa’s conference started at the same time so she headed over to the West building and I over to the South building. The South building is actually the one that everyone sees online with all the pictures of the banners and such.

I headed to the opening MacIT session ‘Why Companies are Switching’, which was basically the stories of 4 companies and how they are switching to macs at their companies. Two of the peopler were Mac Evangelists telling us how to convert our companies, including techniques such as “install them in small areas where you won’t get arguments.” Personally, that seemed odd for this session. The other two were much more interesting to listen to. The first was a guy who was in process of switching his Macs to avoid paying Microsoft CALs. Its a rather large company, one that M$ has written up in its trade magazines. This was a switch to Mac built on real business reasons. It was good to hear that. The most interesting was that he believes many corporations are allowing their users to choose their computer platform. It was interesting to hear him say that when thats what we have been doing at SLU A&S for a while. All in all, the session got better as it went on. Oh…btw it was so full we were in an overflow room next door listening to the sound and watching the powerpoint. Oh…the other btw, the last presenter was from Carnival Cruise lines speaking about how they will be using macs all over their next gen cruise ship for entertainment and information kiosks.

After the session I headed down to the Expo floor. The first booth is of course Apple’s. Check out these pictures for the Air:

Yes, thats Macbook Airs hanging from a cord, hanging from the ceiling. It was a good way to show how light they are. Theres also a gigantic table where people can get their hands on the machines and actually run it through their first looks.

One of the biggest things announced at the Expo are in the world of virtualizations. Both VMWare and Paralells announced support for virtualized MacOS X server. I’m not sure how we would use this, but with 8 cores on the shipping XServes, theres got to be something we could do. Hopefully I can get a demo in for this.

The sessions after lunch were good to. I started attending a session on scripting, but about 15 minutes in I realized that I wasn’t going to get much of this session, so I headed over to one about Filewave and how two different guys are using itl I left wanting to buy Filewave or Casper Suite, or some other system that will keep the machines up to date. I think I may try and pursue these larger items over the radmind stuff that we have been working on for a while. One problem with coming to the session late, all the seats were full.

My final session though was once again overflowing with people. this is a problem on their logistics staff.. Its got to be worked on. There are just some major logistics problems going on here. In any case the session was basically about Mac Management. You’re probably sensing a theme here. And you are right, I’m prepping for SLU to get going on the Mac Management project that has been on the table for a while. This one was again good. It started with the two guys from afp548 talking about InstaDMG. This is basically something to streamline the creation of your base image for macs. This is definitely something we need to adopt. There are a lot of reasons to do this, and its something that should help us speed up evaluation and support of new machines. 0It also went into the other parts of lifecycle management. For instance I didn’t know Apple added asset tags and would image your machines with your own image. Its pretty cool that they can come ready to go. Something to look up when I get back. The other stuff was about mcx and the beauty of this stuff. We really need to do this.

Well, thats it for today. We went over and got our last dinner in San Fran. Lisa heads out tomorrow afternoon for St. Louis and needed to start packing. Its been a fun trip for the two of us, but its starting to wind down.   Macworld is an experience. If you are a mac person, figure out how to come someday. Its pretty cool to watch. That, and its in San Fran.

So we headed up the escalator and were led into another waiting area. Hey, it was warm, inside, and as the one security guard said, they have indoor plumbing inside. After waiting for 45 minutes, we were led up the escalators to the third floor and into the large room. I had been standing in line with a bunch of guys from Intel, so they had the inside scoop. You could either sit in the middle back seating areas or in the front, stage left. I of course went for the closer ones, even though that meant I didn’t get to see the screen.

Walking in, I was struck with the whole thing. Its an amazing setup: hundreds of those lights that pan tilt zoom lights, 5 sound/light engineers in the back of the room, a sound board larger than many traveling musical shows, and 3 or 4 of those huge camera mounts. All of this was highlighted by the great lighting and the singular Apple logo projected on the screen at stage center. Walking in you felt like something big was going to happen. By now you all know what happened, and have probably watched the keynote online.

I’ve watched a bunch of these keynotes online and there is something I must admit. I have never noticed Steve make as many mistakes as he did today. Slips between Tiger and Leopard happened a couple times. There were some other ones too. In any case, it was almost like Steve wasn’t at the top of his game. I was surprised by one other thing. He told us how many things there were up front, and actually stuck to it, no ‘One more thing’.

In any case, I thought the items of the keynote were good. None of them was spectecular. Maybe it was because everyone knew they were coming, maybe because they, despite Apple saying so, weren’t true innovations but more evolutions. There have been small laptops before, others have announced movie rental boxes for TVs, and the iPhone/iPod updates were just that, small changes needed to respond to customer, even time capsule was the announcement of a feature that was supposed to have been in Leopard and was then cut. It was a good show, and the products each have the potential to change the game but one of the coolest things that could have been announced was the Mac Pros released last week. These machines doubled their speed. Doubled. The iPod and iPhone get a minor update and Apple restores a removed feature to Leopard, but thats the big news. Ok the laptop is cool, thats for sure, but there’s some small issues too. Lots more expensive, and no ethernet port? But talking to other people, consumers who the show is truly aimed after, maybe I’m making more out of the ethernet port and non-removable battery. Time will tell. So after the keynote was over I headed downstairs. It wasn’t until later I found out I was supposed to walk by this one table and get a commemorative poster. Once again…Macworld you missed the boat on communicating and managing which way people should walk to get the information.

The session was good again. Continued on how to manage computers. This focused on mcx, management of plists, directory services, and portable home directories. Man, I wish we had all this running at SLU. Even more so, I wish I could convey this to someone just how much we need this. There is soooo much we can do. Power settings for instance. With the directory services stuff configured, we could do so much along these lines. Dan and I are doing everything we can, but we really need a Mac Architect and team to get this implemented. In any case, there is so much we need to be doing, or should be prepping to do.

Talking to other higher ed institutions has really led me to believe that. I had one question that people really couldn’t answer. How do you setup macs to authenticate on the network, but store the home directory on the local computer? That’s basically what we want to do with students, and maybe even with faculty logins for now. I’ll continue to seek out that answer this week at the other sessions. As the time went on in this session, its also become really clear that we as SLU need to be sending people to these conferences. The networking I’ve done here, talking about different scenarios, bouncing ideas of others really is quite phenomenal. These are things we need to be going to. Macworld, Educause, WWDC, SIGUCCS all are conferences we need to be going to. We need to be having these conversations outside DesPeres Hall with other peer institutions if we are going to grow. Sure you can read about it online, watch webcasts, and those all help. But being able to ask questions and get some good talking going about it, thats really quite good.

Its ironic that I’ve come to a technical portion of the conference…and I’m thinking about governance/guidance/management questions.

The Macworld Blast was tonite too. It wasn’t what I was expecting. The party was held at venue similar to a run down Pageant in St. Louis. Microsoft bought us each 2 drinks, but that was it for refreshments. The big part of the night was a concert by DEVO. It was loud, not really setup for mingling, and to be honest for the most part seemed to have made many of the people who got tickets as part of their packages uncomfortable. I guess I’m just getting old.

As we got over to the Moscone Center where the Conference is, it got even busier. Eventually we saw the line. Crossing the street, we saw that it wrapped around the corner, basically going around 2 sides outside Moscone West.  The most interesting part of this was the Apple Security people we ran into. As the day went on we saw more of them, wearing black windbreakers with Apple logos and the words ‘Apple Security’ embroidered on them. Personally, I never really thought Apple had a police force, but there were about 35 I saw today. Anyway….

Well at about 8:40 (20 minutes before our sessions were supposed to start) we were getting close to getting in, when someone walked by and told us if we had the Platinum pass we didn’t have to wait. Well, thats what I had so I went in. Let me skip around to tie up a related problem. Lunch was another issue. One place with two lines, two registers, and all the sessions emptying at the same time. I’m not sure who planned logistics on registration and lunch, but they really shouldn’t be getting their holiday bonus…they did a rotten job. Conference will be good, but these guys really did not do well communicating with folks working there. One last complaint…tommorrow is the keynote. I’m supposed to have priority seating. No one could tell me how that would work today…odd I thought. Glad they have it so well planned…ok off soapbox.

Ok so after registration you get a gift bag. One of the most  interesting items was the Mac Office 2008 M&Ms. Thought they were interesting. In any case, we got registered and got to sessions. Each of us just after our respective ones started.

So the session I was attending was Mac Imaging and Deployment, part of the Power Tools Conference at MacWorld. Apparently,  this is a beefed up section of Macworld aimed at IT professionals, and by all accounts its a hit. There were about 100 or more people in my session and 12 others running concurrently. It was being taught by Greg Nagle over at Disney. Greg is big into ramind and has been one of the guys to really take the lead on imaging and management of macs in Enterprise. He’s part of macenterprise, a great website helping to get macs used in the enterprise. Its a website I’ve looked at myself and Greg has answered many of my questions on the radmind list over the years. We started the session talking about imaging. Its good to know that we in SLU A&S ITS are on the right track. It validated many of the practices we are using right now. While that feeling is nice, I didn’t learn much along those lines, except maybe some other best practices. We went into packages and such for the mac. This is some new interesting information. Mac packaging seems to be moving forward very quickly to to an analogy to windows MSIs. The coolest thing I saw to today was the new Leopard Packagemaker, which includes the mac version of snapshotting. Its all very, very cool.

They also showed us a new project coming out of AFP548 called insta-DMG which is basically a mac analogy to Slipstreaming for windows. I don’t think its something we will do at SLU, but maybe. Its possible, but I think some of the projects that Dan is working on will be better than this. Maybe not though. Something to talk to Dan about. After that we talked some about scripting and what you can do with it. Scripting is of course a double edged sword. With all these really customizable and powerful tools its only as useful as what you know.  One of the common items to do is to use a defaults write call. There are tons of things you can do to change the performance of the computer, but all of the plists that these files are using are undocumented. I pointedly asked those running the session about this, and really there is no good answer on where to find what you can do with what. And thats the frustrating point of all of this. While the answers are out there, its a lot of figuring it out on your own. Thats fun to a certain level, but it also leads to more beer truck scenarios.

They continued the discussion with how to run scripts including periodic, loginhooks, login scripts, and ARD. Dan’s using quite a few of these, although they had some interesting points with regards to Leopard. For instance, Dan’s been trying to use launchd, but Greg suggests that real support for Tiger launchd is not really there. In Leopard though its the greatest thing since sliced bread. Another one of those barely documented things in the Mac. We ended the session with Radmind. It was good to get an overview, but its so different from how we use Radmind, or could use it.

To really do Radmind, we would need someone doing it full time, or maybe a staff. As I sat at the session and talked to others, that came clear. To really manage macs, we really need a mac management group. In the environment at SLU, I guess that won’t be happening, but maybe we could do a Mac Managers group. I’m going to think more about that and talk to Queanna about it. But its definitely something we should look at.    All the time I was here, Lisa headed over to Alcatraz. If she wants to blog about it, you’ll see that soon. We might get the pictures uploaded soon, but with the network so bad both here in the hotel and over at the conference, don’t hold your breath.

Some of you may know Mike Bombich. He’s the Apple Sales Engineer for higher-ed in the area around Saint Louis. He’s also one of the most prolific authors on the web when it comes to managing macs in the higher ed environment. It was about 3 minutes into the first session that they first mentioned his name and for kicks I started a ‘Bombich’ count. Well the first 3 hours had him mentioned 9 times. Throughout the day 12 times. In St. Louis I think we take Mike for granted sometimes, but he is definitely one of the guys we really need to appreciate more when it comes to this stuff.  In any case Mike if you read this, thanks for your help.

Well after the session  we headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf for dinner. Fresh seafood is really good, and quite different from what we get. Then it was over to Ghirhadelli’s Square and to the ice cream store there. We got a Chocolate Sunday over there then caught a trolley over to the area by our hotel. We went shopping a bit, and Lisa liked this store.  And here we are.  Well the keynote is in 10 short hours so we best get to sleep. I’ll keep you posted.