Reflection

Cubs Day

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to attend a Cubs home game against the Brewers. What made it extra special was that it was an outing with a bunch of people from the UChicago ITS team. A colleague of mine had purchased a block of nose bleed seats that were to be used as part of a CIC meeting. Too bad for him that the original game got rained out so we were “stuck” with a group of tickets. We decided we would raffle them off to people in ITS.

29093415795_f85ad22a60_k

What I was struck by, other than the beauty of Wrigley and the Cubs outstanding play, was just how much fun we all had. It was nice getting to sit together as a group and laugh and talk for a few hours. In a lot of ways it was like an extended Coffee with Cole. I got to know some of our staff better than I would have otherwise and made some really meaningful connections. I honestly think those who could make it were extremely appreciative. It has me thinking that we should do this as an entire group next year if we can pull it off.

2016 Excellence Awards

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_video admin_label=”Video” src=”https://youtu.be/n2wpJuSTD9s”] [/et_pb_video][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]

Last week we celebrated our annual UChicago ITS Excellence Award winners with a small reception in Harper Court. With Lake Michigan as our backdrop, we took time out from all the work we have to recognize the individuals who, nominated by peers, continually show a willingness to go above and beyond.

It was a great event, punctuated by impromptu selfies, some great tweets, and lots of smiles. I have written about the process we used to arrive at our winners and wanted to follow that up with some additional thoughts. After the committee had met and selected the winners from the nominations I asked our team if we could produce a small video that tried to capture the spirit of that selection meeting. We asked members of the committee to reflect on the process and to try and express how fantastic it was to hear our colleagues praise and talk so positively about their peers. The video above was put together by some talented members of the team in less than 12 hours and was showed at the award ceremony.

We do things like the Excellence Awards because we genuinely want to work together in support of our great University. My only regret from the day was that more of our team couldn’t be there. I think everyone enjoyed the time and truly appreciated recognizing each other. We had a great time!

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_code admin_label=”Code”]<center><blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>People in C-suite jobs aren’t all bad. <a href=”https://twitter.com/colecamplese”>@colecamplese</a> you’re ok in my book! U + <a href=”https://twitter.com/UChicagoITS”>@UChicagoITS</a> = ? <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/pals?src=hash”>#pals</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/bffgoals?src=hash”>#bffgoals</a> <a href=”https://t.co/LWLfBHoZXO”>pic.twitter.com/LWLfBHoZXO</a></p>— Eric Frazier (@ettufrazier) <a href=”https://twitter.com/ettufrazier/status/760224174564601857″>August 1, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script></center>[/et_pb_code][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Twitter Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]

Selfies, Tweets, and Retweets

One of the things I really liked about the event was that people stopped and took a picture with me after I handed them their award certificate. That was a fun surprise and ended up being a really nice way to pair each person with a tweet provided by the person who nominated them. We will be releasing the pictures along with the text of the tweet that accompany each winner over the next couple of weeks with the hashtag, “#ITSExcel” … thanks, Barry!

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_code admin_label=”Code”]<center><a class=”twitter-timeline” href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/ITSExcel” data-widget-id=”762317046382227456″>#ITSExcel Tweets</a> <script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+”://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);</script></center>[/et_pb_code][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Award Remarks Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]

2016 Excellence Awards Remarks

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you all so much for coming today.

The IT Services Excellence Awards are an annual recognition program where recipients are selected by nominations. Awardees are team members that have had a broad impact on IT Services, on the University of Chicago, or nationally regardless of their position in the organization.

The nominees are staff that have the most visible and positive impact in the areas of technology, service, and management to our collective work.

This year is no different, all of the nominees exhibited excellence in their work and were recognized by their peers for doing so.

In the past, I was never a huge proponent of organizational award programs, largely because I never won one, but as I have grown in my career I now see the absolute need to systematically find ways to recognize and reward people that consistently go above and beyond.

The winning of an award is often viewed as a destination that one arrives at, but being a part of our process is what has left a lasting impression on me.

We are working in an environment where so many of us are being asked to do so much on any given day that it can become easy to not stop and take the time to recognize the work our colleagues do. Taking the time to appreciate effort and to nominate someone for that effort is a wonderful show of understanding. An understanding of how hard it is to make an impact. An understanding of how much it means to the rest of us. An understanding that we are part of a larger community that deserves extra effort. To me, that is the real reason recognition like the Excellence Awards is truly important.

I mentioned that the process has left a lasting impression on me, here’s why. It has shown me that while there are challenges within our organization, there are also groups of people who care deeply about what we are trying to do for our University. Regardless of engagement scores, watching the level of enthusiasm people brought to their nominations further reinforced to me what is at the foundation of IT Services – a commitment to serving this amazing Institution.

At the end of the day you all make me very proud to be a part of this team and I want to sincerely thank the recipients for their tremendous work and for being recognized by your colleagues. I also want to thank those who took the time to nominate and to passionately tell the selection committee why those nominees are worthy of these awards. You all lifted the spirits of the committee with your passion.

And finally, I want to thank and recognize the committee members as well for taking the time to help make today happen. Our 2016 Excellence Award winners are:

Alan Takaoka, Anna Van Dellen, Cameron Spencer, Cheryl Johnson, Daniel Yu, Debbie Bomba, Dylan Westring, Eric Frazier, Eric Harrell, Hector Martinez, Jason Edelstein, Jessica Sandy, Kathy Cosgrove, Katie Kranz, Laji Thomas, Linda Turner, Manuel Amparan, Marc Vincent, Mark Bieri , Matt Zurek, Mike Pry, Mike Strode, Moid Syed, Pat Hickey, Patty Kim-Celmer, Rafael Sanchez, Ramu Pedada, Roberto Vera, Rodney Henderson, Ryan Harden, Sandeep Guntaka, Sherif Hassabo, Shontay Grant-Pinder, Tina Flowers Morris, and Tony Juarez.


[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label=”Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_image admin_label=”Award Room Picture” src=”https://voices.uchicago.edu/camplese/files/2016/08/awards-2lu1b93.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”bottom” sticky=”off” align=”center” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] [/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Recognizing Ourselves

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

A few weeks ago I was part of a team that got to review the ITS Excellence Award nominations. There were about eight of us in a room reviewing dozens of submissions from our peers across the organization. Probably one of the most postiive meetings with my team I’ve been a part of since being here.


The notion of recognizing our own work is one that pays deep dividends in the long run. The fact that members of the team take the time to reflect on the work of one of their colleagues and fill out a nomination speaks volumes to the kind of team we have here in IT Services. It means people care about each other and have the capacity to recognize their work. I like that.

1*9OidYdyJjNlLzusA4vIAdA

On more than one occasion those of us in the room mentioned how great it could be if the people we were reviewing could hear the amazing things not only the nominating person wrote, but the overwhelmingly positive remarks that often flew around the room from the committee. When it was all said and done, we walked out of the room feeling really great about our team, our work, and what we were accomplishing. Together.

IT Services All Hands Reflection

/ Cole Camplese / 7 Comments

This time last week I was finalizing my slides for the IT Services All Hands meeting. I was trying to figure out how to cram six months of observations and forward facing action into 60 minutes and still leave some time for Q&A. I was also wrestling with the level of transparency to provide into the (typically) more opaque stuff within an organization — things like budgets, constraints, staffing levels, and the stuff that usually stays in the back office. I’ve believed that for a very long time that open is truly like an opacity slider that moves from transparent to opaque and that there is a time and a place to be very thoughtful about how aggressively you move that slider.

Screen Shot 2016-03-22 at 10.58.41 AM

I decided to move the slider as close to transparent as I could without creating any problems. In other words, I believe I shared the realities of the organization as I see them. And that is an important point to focus on, “as I see them.” What makes that important is that I am seeing ITS with very fresh eyes and from a different vantage point than the members of the team. I see my day to day struggles first hand, but most of the time, not theirs. I know the strain and stress many are under, but I feel it differently. I can show empathy, but there is the reality that I probably have a different view on things. Having these kinds of conversations pulls our perspectives closer together.

By being as honest and open as I could I was trying to create a shared sense of understanding of where we are as an organization. My feeling is if we all understand where we are we can better shape how we talk about our environment. Knowing that we are dealing with financial pressures helps us all better contextualize why it is not the right time to make that hire, make that investment, or take on that project. Knowing reality together allows us to see the organization through a similar set of lenses.

I also wanted to share just how transformative our work is to UChicago right now. Within the next five years we will have completely replaced our primary ERP environments, will have made massive improvements to our network infrastructure, and completely reinvented our service management and delivery approaches. And those aren’t pipe dream promises. We have already moved to WorkDay for HCM, are in the second phase of PeopleSoft Student, and working our way into a new Financial system. The network team is at the start of an incredible initiative to overhaul the campus network to make it faster, more reliable, and advance our stance in cyber research infrastructure. Tie that together with our complete reimplementation of ServiceNow and the ongoing work to redesign our customer service approaches and we are in the middle of something extraordinarily exciting.

A part of the conversation that went too quickly, but is of great importance is how we manage our teams and use our Values as part of the decision making process. I hope I was able to reinforce how our Values truly do matter and how we are living those at work every day. I shared a model for advancing staff empowerment that deserves a longer post in and of itself, but the slide that I used is below. My goals are to improve on boarding, reduce time to productivity, provide staff with a framework for success, greatly increase engagement, and radically reduce turnover. I believe all of those are tied together in a systematic process that starts even before a new staff member is hired. There will be much more coming in the next couple of months with regard to this work.

Empowerment Process

There was actually so much more that we covered. All in all, I really enjoyed the time we spent together. There were some really hard questions that I tried to answer. Some I was able to with depth, while there were others that we had to agree that there is more work to be done to get to an acceptable answer. I left feeling energized by the level of engagement and even more committed to delivering on the promises that I’m making to this team and that we are making to our University.

The after hours get together at the Pub wasn’t too shabby either.

Maybe it is the Apps

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I continue to be amazed at how the iPad Pro is pulling me into the “Post PC Era” that Steve Jobs promised many years ago. Now that I have a Smart Keyboard I can do nearly everything, as a matter of fact I think yesterday may have been the first time since getting the iPad that I took my MacBook Pro to the office … and that was because I knew I had to present at a board meeting. Looking back, I could have easily presented from the iPad with my HDMI adapter.

IMG_7642

Since I’ve gotten it, I have traveled with it, designed with it, written with it, read with it, built presentations with it, worked on far too many Excel spreadsheets with it, and everything in between. I know my use cases are my own and your milage may vary, but it is an exceptionally powerful computing device for the kinds of things I do. This morning I was catching on some reading at Medium (on my iPad) and came across a similar sentiment penned by M.G. Siegler …

In fact, my biggest takeaway (tech-wise) from the trip may have been just how little I used the MacBook. I brought it more or less “just in case”?—?because, how can you possibly travel for three weeks without an actual computer? Well, turns out you can. Turns out, your tablet and even your phone are computers. And turns out you can almost for sure do everything you need to on those devices.

via Post-Post PC — 500ish Words — Medium.

And that is what I am finding, I just don’t use my laptop all that much. I should say that at this moment I am sitting in front of a traditional computer at home, looking at an old fashioned Safari window on a nice big 27″ monitor. I still do a ton of work on that and my iMac at work, I am finding that I am losing a place in my mobile routine for the MacBook. All of this makes me wonder what our collective computing needs might be in the next two years? If my use is any indication then the ability to work in front of a large display when you are rooted at a desk may stick around, but I am betting as more of what we do while moving will transition to thin panes of glass that have purpose built apps to do the things we do on traditional machines in more efficient ways. As a quick example, think of the difference in speed and ease of using Concur on your computer in the browser versus using it on something like an iPhone or iPad (I don’t have an Android device, but I would imagine it is similar). It is usually a tap or two to approve expense reports on my iPad or iPhone, while it is a long process to log in, navigate, approve, verify, and log out on my Mac. Imagine when more of what we do multiple times daily that grinds 5, 10, 15 minute distractions into our routines become simple taps on purpose built apps — we will be more efficient and more effective. More and more of what I do can be done faster on my iPad Pro and even on my iPhone as more purposefully built apps emerge that support my business workflows. That exact set of scenarios makes me do the same thing each morning, again following what M.G. says …

So this leads me back to my bag of gadgets I carry around on a daily basis. It has always been sort of insane, but now I’m the one who can actually see it. So the past few mornings when I’ve gone to put the MacBook in my bag, I’ve stopped for a second: why do I need this thing again?

What I am wondering is if we focus on apps that can make our business run more efficiently, will our purchasing habits change? Will Universities start putting devices like iPad Pros onto desks of various members of the staff community instead of the traditional Mac or PC? What would the support costs look like on devices that are inherently more secure and are potentially easier to manage through MDM? I believe when we have more use cases like the Concur one I shared, the efficiencies gained will be well worth the transition. But, hey, that’s just like my opinion, man. What’s yours?

IT Services Town Hall

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

Yesterday was the first IT Services Town Hall meeting that I have attended here at UChicago. It was a very satisfying experience and it was outstanding to meet everyone. I particularly enjoyed the chance to talk with you both formally and informally. It was so great to be able to get everyone together like that and I hope we continue to do just that. I have felt a little on the outside looking in, but finally meeting many of you has me feeling much more comfortable. Thank you all for your attention, questions, and acceptance. It was greatly appreciated. The view and location didn’t disappoint either!

Views from the all staff meeting.
I wanted to take a few minutes and share a bit from what I had to say yesterday so there is a record of it and in hopes that I will get some initial reactions from you. You should keep in mind that my comments yesterday were based mainly on my observations and conversations that have occurred both through the many meetings I had during the recruiting process and in the past six days of conversations that I have had with my new colleagues at all levels of the University. I don’t have it all right, I don’t have the whole story, and I certainly don’t yet have all the answers. What I do have is a sense of excitement about where we can go together.

My comments about the great expectations and opportunities presented at UChicago come from discussions with people at all levels of the University, from the President and Provost, to our IT partners, members of the administration, the ITS SLG and staff, as well as various other constituents we serve. It is clear to me, even after a very short time on campus, that we are in the service of a great institution that deserves our full attention.

I am not going to do a deep dive into the things discussed yesterday, but I do want to share the six primary areas of organizational focus I am pursuing in my early days. These represent a framework that will guide me as I work to align to the goals that are being articulated to me.

  1. Create a world-class teaching and learning with technology organization that can inspire faculty to enhance their use of technology to engage and enrich our students’ experiences.
  2. Work to enhance our overall information security stance to ensure a safe computing environment.
  3. Become leaders in the delivery of services and work across UChicago to transform the customer experience and work to delight the campus community.
  4. Impact a diversity of research activities that supports UChicago’s commitment to free and open inquiry.
  5. Enhance and grow a culture of operational excellence through our leadership in the deployment of enterprise solutions.
  6. Expand our use of the web as an organizational communication tool, both inside and outside of IT Services to more fully engage our staff and our partners.

Underpinning all of this is a commitment to encourage an agile, flexible, and forward facing staff who are leaders in their fields.

I will be returning to this list in an ongoing way to expand on them and to provide more opportunities to engage in discussion. I am very open to comments and feedback, so don’t be afraid to leave them here on this post or to send them to me in email. I am truly humbled by the opportunity to be a member of this community and want to make sure I am doing all I can to support, promote, and protect the work we do here at UChicago.

15 Years & Moving On

/ Cole Camplese / 5 Comments

I haven’t written one of these since I left the IST Solutions Institute to become the director of Education Technology Services back in 2005. I think since I am wrapping up my last day at Penn State after 15 years I thought I should at least reflect on that to a degree and thank the people who have changed my life for the better. I’ve had quite a few jobs here at Penn State over the years, growing from an instructional designer with the World Campus in 1998 to my current role of senior director for Teaching and Learning with Technology. Each stop along the way has been a blessing … not without challenges, but this has been truly a magical experience. Before I head off to Stony Brook University, it might be good to share a couple of thoughts on this whole journey.

We arrived childless in 1998 from Philadelphia after the sale and closure of a small training software company. I came for a job as an ID with the just launched World Campus and Kristin came to do her PhD. We were committed to staying just long enough for her to finish and then we were out of here. Obviously it didn’t go that way and we are thrilled with the time that we have spent here.

After 18 months in the World Campus I needed something different and got a lucky break to join another start up, but this time in higher education, with the launch of the School of Information Sciences and Technology. I spent six years working with amazing people building teams, technologies, processes, and friendships. It was an amazing time in our lives — we had our first child, we were enjoying success professionally, our friends were all around us, and my eyes were being opened to a whole new world of potential with the Internet. I discovered blogging, the social web, and relationships with companies like Apple. We were building and exploring as a team … and learning so much along the way. Then some people left, including my dear friends and colleagues Eric Zeisloft and Keith Bailey … and then my wife, Kristin, decided to leave PSU as well. There was still a killer team, but it left me wanting to explore more.

I again got lucky … as I was ready, the director of Education Technology Services was open and I went after that position. I wanted to really test the things I was successful with at the College level in the context of a central organization. I wanted to see if we could replicate that level of innovation in a central IT services organization. I will be honest, it was a real struggle for me at first — I had to build new relationships and help those around me see that we could transform the University and ourselves. It took time, but the work done at ETS has proven to be some of the best I have ever done. We built an absolutely amazing team … one that I am proud of beyond belief to this day. We went from barely attending national conferences to dominating the agendas. From impacting a few students to supporting thousands. From offering services that were stable to ones that inspired. Truly a great ride.

In 2010 I was asked to step into the senior director role that I currently occupy. That jump was something that challenged me in new ways and pushed me into new leadership territory. At the same time I was asked to be faculty in the Educause learning technologies leadership institute … another thing that pushed me in crazy ways. I amped up my teaching as well, taking the Disruptive Technologies grad class to new places with my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald. I have worked so hard with the people around me to get TLT into great shape and I am so proud of the collective work we’ve done. While my role has changed, I still believe so deeply in education and the power we have in our hands to make positive impacts on our institutions. That is something I will take with me as I head east to Stony Brook University.

It has been an amazing ride and I wouldn’t change much of it. From the time I got here I wanted to be part of the bigger picture — I wanted to build a community of people who were interested in doing great work. I know I have bothered some people along the way, but I’ve come to accept that as the reality we all face when we push. I will never forget my time here and I will lean on all that I have learned the last 15 years. It is an interesting thing feeling so much passion for a place that you aren’t really from, but State College has been so good to us. We’ve been met amazing friends, have had the pleasure of seeing our two children born here and enjoy the surroundings, and we are so blessed to be leaving here with a sense of accomplishment and deep gratitude. I will miss State College, the people who have touched our world, and Penn State for the rest of my life. I depart with nothing but a deep caring for all that is Penn State and what it has given to me. I would need all the space on the Internet to thank everyone who has impacted my life here … suffice to say I have nothing but gratitude for all of you.

WC Instructional Designer –> Manager of Instructional Design and Emerging Technologies –> Director of Education Technology Solutions –> Co-Director of IST Solutions Institute –> Director of IST Solutions Institute –> Director of Education Technology Services –> Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology

Organizational Frameworks

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I have been in my role as senior director of Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State since November 15, 2010 and in those nine months I have been working to better understand the organization both in terms of its external requirements and the overall internal dynamics. I feel very lucky across several dimensions in that I have a great leadership team in place that has rolled up its sleeves with me to help explain the various functions inside their own units and who have also embraced this idea that we have a real opportunity to rethink how we work together.  Another critical factor at play here is that I still have access to the person who built this organization and was a huge driving factor in the creation of such a robust teaching and learning with technology ecosystem here at the University.  What that affords me is an opportunity to grow into my role and have people to lean on in all directions — it has been critical as I work each day to better understand the overall depth and breadth of TLT and its overall role here at the University.

As part of this process I challenged my leadership team to come together and help me rethink the way we work together and present ourselves to both the on and above campus audiences we serve. I’ve pressed them into the idea that we can no longer do what we need to while being a handful of individual organizations — we need to think, talk, and act as one TLT. This idea, that we are better together than as separate and vertical organizations is something I believe very strongly in. My push is that we need to see ourselves as a horizontally integrated organization — an organization where our teams leverage the talents across the lines of the individual groups. I say this because I truly believe TLT has been constructed in a very intelligent and thoughtful way .. we are an organization that has each piece of the puzzle as it relates to envisioning, implementing, and supporting large and small scale technologies that influence teaching and learning.  What I mean is that we have a value chain of sorts in place that allows us to actively investigate new and emerging technologies and practices with an incredible amount of agility in Education Technology Services, we have the ability to install, manage, shape, and support all that activity in both physical and virtual ways through the Classroom and Lab Computing team, have the ability to drive adoption and appropriate use of technology through Training Services, and can work to communicate much of it on the web through standards-based accessible web presences powered by WebLion.  These organizations need to compliment one another as we work to deliver the kinds of services our audiences need and want.  They need to act as One TLT.

Tlt view

This perspective, when implemented, allows for our project teams to organize around successful implementations in ways we may not have considered in the past.  As a recent example, when we set out to replace our student response system, we didn’t just turn to one of the organizations to make a technology decision, we assembled a team that included not only purely technical people who focused on the integration issues, but also an instructional designer to investigate and document teaching practice, a trainer to construct training opportunities from the start, and communication people to share progress openly as we drove towards selection and implementation. Sounds simple — and it is conceptually, but the act of actually making that the new framework in how we do work is the complicated thing.  We can’t live in a world where any one of the organizations within TLT does its own thing from end to end — end to end requires the skills only available when you look across TLT from a horizontal perspective.

This is also true in the way we need to begin to represent ourselves as well. One of the things we have done every year I have been a part of this organization is write an annual report. Typically the responsibility to construct the report would fall directly on the shoulders of the director in each of the primary groups. What this meant was that the report read more like four or five different reports under one cover page. This lead to some strange reporting — CLC and ETS would both report on projects they were involved in (like the Media Commons) and often times the data shared might be slightly contradictory and tell two different stories. What we set out to do this year was much different — we wanted the report to represent our thinking as it related to TLT. It honestly took quite a bit longer than I expected to work through the thinking, but in the end I am left very proud of what we developed and I believe it will be the blueprint that much of our work will follow over the next couple of years. Last year’s report was nearly 140 pages, this year’s report is 23 in total. (What follows is mostly for me, so I can capture the process of creating it while it is still relatively fresh in my head.)

Several months ago I started the conversation about the annual report with the TLT leadership team and we all agreed we wanted something that could more effectively speak to who we were as a collective.  Our first step was to take the 140 page report and break each headline into a blog post. Each post included the title of the section and a short description of the initiative.  The blog gave us a multipage digital representation of a static document.  We fully intended to use that as a platform to allow all of TLT to vote on the most important initiatives to form the basis of the report.

Annual report blog sm

Bu once the blog was in place and we looked at it, something different ended up happening. I walked into my colleague, Derek Gittler’s office and he had taken every headline and placed them on sticky notes. He even color coded them based on what I’ll call the organizational owner.  We looked at it and were at once shocked at the overlap and the emergence of themes. I was able to easily construct a handful of themes that highlighted what our largest and most impactful initiatives are. Within the hour we had taken the blog built around what should be a hidden org structure from our report and turned it into a thematic representation of TLT.

White board sm

Once the themes emerged, I was able to assemble a Keynote presentation for the leadership team so we could drive towards consensus as a team. The presentation outlined the themes and how our projects and initiatives come together to tell an amazing story of the organization. A story that allowed us to share short details about how TLT focuses intense energy around:

  • Teaching, Learning, and Collaborative Spaces
  • Collaborative Platforms for Teaching and Learning
  • ANGEL and the Future of the Course Management System
  • Enriching the Community
  • Engaging the Community
  • TLT Events
  • TLT Research and Assessment
  • The Future of the Web
  • Conservation in TLT

The themes turned into a series of wiki pages that the leadership team constructed from the outline from the whiteboard. From there the leadership team took a couple of days to gather the appropriate data from each item and write it up in the wiki. I was able to leverage the wiki and write the final report, with narrative in less than 24 hours. Once the communication team did the editing the report came together remarkably fast — after the months of preparation and discourse.

I know it seems almost silly, but for the first time I can look at TLT and see how we work together to provide services and opportunities that truly supports our mission to guide the University in the appropriate use of technology to enrich teaching and learning. When you read through the TLT Annual Report for 2010 I hope you can see that what we are attempting to do is provide not only a new way to communicate our accomplishments, but a new willingness to address our own organizational framework to better serve those who depend on us the most. Maybe taking a few months to craft an annual report seems extreme, but in this case I honestly feel the work that we did here will provide the foundation for how we work together going forward. It is something I am very proud of.

This post also appears at my PSU Blog. Sorry for any multiple linking.