UMM has recently opened a position for a new Director of Information Technology. The full job description is attached, and the description and application page are on-line.

Some highlights from the “Purpose of the Position” section:

General priorities for the position include:

• promoting a 21st century learning and teaching environment for an undergraduate focused residential campus;
• supporting through technology and information resources the research endeavors of a highly qualified and active faculty; and
• advancing the use of technology to engage a growing base of prospective students, donors, and alumni.

Specifically, the Director of Information Technology will:

• Provide IT leadership to the Morris campus and in the broader University community.
• Serve as a key member of the Morris campus and University of Minnesota technology leadership team, which formulates and implements local and institutional goals and initiatives.
• Partner with the academic and administrative leadership across the Morris campus and university-wide to participate in the creation and implementation of strategic goals and IT initiatives.

I’m a member of the search committee, and I want to share this information here for two reasons.

First, if anyone reading this is interested, please consider applying!

Second, the search committee is gathering feedback from various stakeholders about what we want this person to be and do. Before we begin to look at applications, the committee would like to try to clarify as best we can what the campus wants and needs from someone in this position.

So, what do you think are the priorities for UMM’s Director of Information Technology? What do they need to do to support the teaching, research, and service missions of campus? Looking ahead 5 years, what issues do you feel that this person will need to address/get ahead of? On of my concerns in recent years has been that the campus has been far too reactive to technological change, and instead of being ahead of the ball we’re constantly scrambling to respond to events and put out fires. What skills and background does this person need to help us turn that around?

I’d be happy to discuss this at UMM CSci tea tomorrow afternoon (4-6ish in the lab), or hear from anyone by whatever other means work for you. If you have ideas or thoughts, however, please share promptly; we want to wrap up this fact finding process in the next two weeks (by the morning of Tuesday, 20 Apr).

Feather, braids, and beads

Anyone know why there’s been a sudden spike in searches for “feather braids”? I’ve seen a big spike in views on a photograph I took at the UMM Powwow back in 2007 (see the plot below).

Views on Feathers, braids, and beads

When I drill down into the search terms, it’s clear that lots of people are searching for “feather braids”, “how to do feather braids” and the like. When I search for “feather braids” on Google, my photo on Flickr is the fourth link, which is presumably why there have been so many hits all of a sudden. I can’t find anything that would explain this flurry of searches, however. Anyone out there in the Hive Mind know what’s driving this?

The robots.txt file the Bush administration set up for Whitehouse.gov ran to almost 2377 lines and thereby stopped search engines logging a lot of the data found on the site.

On the first day of the Barack administration the robots.txt file shrunk to two lines allowing, for the moment, search sites to index everything it contains.

The new media team also created a Whitehouse.gov blog that will act as an informal record of events, speeches and decisions.

Combine this with the cool use of Creative Commons licensing on WhiteHouse.gov, plans to close Guantanamo, and smart, competent non-creepy people in is cabinet, and things are already a ton better.

I realize this hasn’t gotten us out of Iraq or created a million new jobs yet, but these are great steps at the beginning of a long journey.

Huzzah!

I was debating whether to install this software (which in theory supports Mac OS X), so I did some Googling first. There wasn’t anything very concrete, but there were some suggestions that Apple had included this kind of software in OS X at some point, and that Apple’s was much better than APC’s.

So I plugged in the provided cable that ran from the battery backup to a USB port, and Lo! and Behold! it immediately recognized the battery backup and nifty new options appeared in the Energy Saver panel of System Preferences! I set it to shutdown when the battery was down to 95% of capacity, and unplugged the battery backup from the wall, and it shut down beautifully. Without APC’s software.

Problem solved!

Thanks to all those that contributed to the many technologies great and small that allowed me to figure this out quickly and without having to call people, or post questions, or any of those annoying things.

Please help restore my shattered confidence by telling me who the hell I was listening to, and where I might peruse more of their music!

Thanks.