Somehow, it's already Week 4 of classes...

...and time stops for no one. The last few weeks I've been absent due to workings on my HUST comp, but I thought perhaps a quick update on things IT and Communications-related wouldn't go amiss.

The IT Strategic Plan is taking shape, bit by bit. A meeting between section leaders, Janice and myself took place in the first week of classes and it was decided that we would be using Google Docs to put the major pieces of the Plan together. By using Google Docs, rather than a shared space on th network, emailing a Word document back and forth, or any of the wealth of possible solutions to working collaboratively, we're able to add, remove, move around, undo, redo, cut, copy and paste to our hearts' content. Revisions are saved on Google's massive array of servers, enabling us to go back and use data previously removed. Additionally, we're able to tell who made what revisions. It makes for a very nice cohesive (and free!) web-based program for the huge amounts of collaborative work that we're doing for the Plan.

However, my favorite part of all this is purely from selfish reasons: I'm the master editor for the final draft! With everyone working like this, my job will be made much, much easier in the end. All I have to do it take the documents, download them onto my computer as Word documents, put them together and load it back up into the Google Docs for everyone to review. Love it!

Other news from the IT front is that once again, a student body election platform ran, promising crazy technological advancements. HDCs and RCCs (and a couple of ClusCons) laughed at the ideas proposed. One of their claims was wireless in LeMans and Holy Cross Halls, which is planned for the future, but they said that they would move budgets around so that it would be finished by the end of the summer. Right. Of course they'll be able to do that. The student body presidnt/vp positions are nothing to sneeze at, in terms of influence for the college, but one thing these two seemed to have missed is that they have no control over IT's budget and certainly not the greater college's.


Other than that, I worked with Hayley and Kathy at the beginning of the semester to get the transfer students up and running with IDs and email accounts, which went swimmingly and was nothing compared to the Fall Invasion (almost 500 freshman plus everyone else registering computers, asking for assistance and getting accounts/IDs sorted out. Always a barrel of monkeys!).