Rocket Science

I read an article on WebWorkerDaily that summarized two other articles (“Getting to No” and “4 Signs That Your Potential Clients Aren’t Interested (and What to Do About It)“) about selecting and working with clients that are applicable to our work at OEIT. Well, with a little translation.

OEIT

OEIT takes on projects dealing with educational innovation and technology. We’re supposed to work to either scale up interesting projects that have been prototyped by faculty/researchers or explore innovative technologies with the potential for broad adoption at MIT and beyond. And what I believe really makes us different is a view to connecting the dots and scaling up. We may choose to work on some fairly narrowly defined projects for individual faculty, but we do so with an eye to what we can leverage more broadly.

So, OEIT is a bit different from the target audience of WebWorkerDaily, which focuses on freelancers and consultants. But we’re also similar. We have the choice as to which projects to take on, how to integrate those projects with a greater whole, and how to accomplish the goals of the project.

Nevertheless, I think we can learn a lot from the two posts, and some of these items I’ve already tried to nudge us toward.

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That phrase means a lot to Berkeley alums. As most of you that read my site know, I received my degrees in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley.

Recently, Erik Tarloff posted an article to the Atlantic website decrying “UCB RIP.”

I’m torn, Erik might be right is his opinion that the days of Cal might be waning. He fears that the dramatic cuts in the current state of California budget have started the long, slow slide into obscurity for Cal.

Cal has long been regarded as one of the greatest universities in the country, and in the world. A remarkable, and unique, achievement for a public institution.

But it now looks as if those days are over. It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen completely. But absent an unlikely, massive injection of private funding, the university is on an inexorable glide path downward.

Tarloff, E. (2009, July 22). UCB RIP. Retrieved July 24, 2009 from Atlantic Web site:
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/erik_tarloff/2009/07/_when_my.php

And I’m torn with Chancellor Birgeneau’s response that:

As Chancellor of Berkeley, I see the real challenge as not whether Berkeley can remain one of the greatest universities —there is no doubt that it will — but whether it can do so and still retain its unique public character.

Birgeneau, R. (2009, July 24). Berkeley will remain great, but will it retain its public character? Retrieved July 24, 2009 from University California at Berkeley Web site: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/07/24_ucbrip.shtml

I do think that there are challenges ahead–but as a Cal alum that bleeds blue and gold–I have to believe that Cal will solve them. I believed in what Berkeley had to offer so much that I worked there for 9 years after I graduated with my Master’s (bypassing the entire dot com thing). I worked to improve the teaching and learning environment for students. I worked along side faculty and staff to continue the excellence that is Berkeley. My contribution back to Berkeley for my world class education, was my time, expertise and experience.

When I tell people where I work now, MIT, they go “wow, that’s a great university.” I mostly respond with “meh, I used to work at UC Berkeley.” (Not to belittle MIT in the least, I’m used to excellence and working with really smart, innovative people because of my experiences at UC Berkeley.)

In the last twenty years, Cal has gone through budget crises in the past, and has emerged stronger. Though I have wondered what would happen if Berkeley went “private.” During my time there state funding rapidly eroded. I know this change is one that Chancellor Birgeneau (one of the few recent Chancellor’s I haven’t met) is warning against in his reply. He says that he hopes that private giving will make up for state shortfalls–I wonder if Cal can be “public” without any state support at all?

’nuff said for now.

I recently read this TechCrunch article about how AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure.

Update: I’ve been experiencing lots of dropped calls, voice mails that arrive even though the phone never rang, and so on. (I actually wrote this post almost a week ago, but scheduled it to be published today. Maybe AT&T knew about it and is just getting back at me.)

I have mixed emotions about this. I totally agree with the commenter that said:

So, it’s pretty obvious, each carrier has its faults and each one has its positives. I could write the same article you did about Verizon where I am (and was very tempted to do so, but though, what’s the use, it’s not going to change).

Rants and raves will go on as long as there are different carriers, of that I’m sure.

–Hudson, E. (2009, July 18). Comment posted July 18, 2009 at 5:30 pm PDT.

But, I do think that AT&T could have handled it’s iPhone deployment much better. Here are some of my thoughts:

• Better activation. Every time Apple launches a new phone, AT&T’s activation isn’t up to the task. Thankfully I haven’t ever tried to buy or upgrade an iPhone right after they were released, I always waited. Though to be fair, you design your systems for the upper limit of normal, not the 1-5 days of the launch. But still, after failing the first time, and seeing all the bad press, you’d think you’d get things worked out.
• Network Capacity. I too have experienced the delay in Visual Voicemails, mysteriously dropped calls, voicemails arriving with current timestamps even though my phone never rang. This one is the most likely one that everyone can complain about. I’m just thankful I don’t live in NYC with an iPhone, all the stories are that it hardly works there.
• Network not feature ready. Uh, you knew Apple was going to release the 3GS this summer. How is it that AT&T’s network is not prepared for MMS and tethering?
• Upgrade Policy. Really, can you try and squeeze some more out of your customers? If I was offered the $199/$299 upgrade price, I’d likely would have upgraded to the 3GS this summer. But I have to wait till January for the lower price because apparently I spend enough money on my plan, and can upgrade after 18 months for the “low” price. But if I have to wait till January for that lower price, why wouldn’t I wait to see if Apple picks a new carrier in 2010 or adds additional U.S. carriers?

Earlier this week, a friend asked if I was planning on upgrading my iPhone 3G. My answer, probably not. For both pricing reasons, and longer term service reason, I won’t be upgrading until January 2010 at the earliest. And given the speculation that Apple might add another carrier or even switch carriers I might just wait till Summer 2010 to see what the next version brings. I hope this business strategy was worth it for AT&T.

Perhaps this is all just an example of “the grass is always greener“.

I found this presentation while reading Erik Duval’s blog. The presentation title seems to play up music more than is evident in the slides alone.

I think the really interesting point comes from Slide 81 on. Andy Powell talks about “concentration, diffusion, and identity” as being the enablers of the “new” Web. These are things that we can learn from online music sites, that we haven’t really been paying attention to in our development of repositories, and frankly most university-based learning technologies.

I encourage you to take a look at the whole presentation–it should take you less than 5 minutes.

For many of you that know me, I have done a lot of traveling over the last decade for work. I’ve been fortunate to do most of my traveling with one airline, United.

In 2008, I only flew like 60,000 miles. Yes, *only*. So my status level changed from Premier Executive 1K (or just “1K”) to Premier Executive. Also in 2008, I was invited to join an online United Community that they setup to get feedback on various programs and services. I could’ve participated in webcasts with United VPs and senior staff. I *did* participate in some of their surveys.

Sort of unceremoniously in May, I received the email below. Thanks, but since you’re no longer “special” we’re revoking your access to the community. Gee, thanks United.

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