Attendance and Associations

Times are tough in higher education.  Of course, times are always tough in higher education but many institutions are cutting expenses like never before.  And, when administrators look to cut expenses, they often discover maintenance and professional development.

Maintenance draws attention because failure to maintain only becomes evident when the failure becomes critical.  Most don’t care about bridge maintenance until the bridge collapses.  A manager’s ability to keep up with maintenance isn’t the subject of many awards or headlines.  “Things still work” doesn’t jump off the screen or gather many clicks.  For the manager who can find a way to make maintenance work sexy, write the book: there are many of us waiting to read it.

But, I would like to discuss the latter topic, professional development.

Most organizations maintain a portion of their budget to fund the professional development of their staff.  This pays dividends both in increased employee morale and the increased skill set of that same staff.  But again, professional development can be cut with little immediate effect.  Loss of professional development dollars only becomes evident when staff leave.  Skillset stagnation may never become evident.  Projects take a bit longer, some decisions are made poorly, and processes may never evolve.  None of these scream for immediate attention and are well hidden.

And in the arena of professional development, nothing gets cut faster than participation in professional associations.

Administrators, as a whole, prefer funding for training classes in IT.  Tying training dollars to a defined skill set definitely makes for an easier management argument.  Does the organization need a new skill? Pick an employee and fund training for the new skill.  Test the employee’s skill when they return.  Rinse and repeat.

An organization can measure the value of training in the contents of the training, and the applicability of those contents to the needs of the organization.  The employee occupies a relatively passive role in the evaluation process.  We can evaluate the effect of the training independent of the employee.

The value of participation in a professional association is harder to define.

I participate in two separate associations: ACUTA (www.acuta.org) and  BICSI (www.bicsi.org).  I’ve attended events held by a few others.  I’ve found them infinitely more professionally rewarding than training.  But this truism holds.

You get out of a trade association, what you put in.

Most associations hold training events, seminars, annual conferences and the like and a number of people (yours truly included) work very hard to populate those events with engaging speakers and training opportunities.  I’ve seen many great speeches and walked away inspired and educated. But, the true value of those associations lie in the membership and without becoming actively engaged, that value will never truly be realized.

Many attend association events, eat the appetizers on the showroom floor, attend the speakers and go home.  They have only scratched the surface of what is available for their membership dues.  Speakers and vendor interaction make up the most documented reasons for attendance of association events.  Compared to defined training events, association events often come up short from an administrative perspective.  The image of employees going off to vacation on the company dime haunts many a manager.

But for those who engage with other members, volunteer on committees, participate in association outreach (listserv, social media, and so on) the association becomes a pivotal professional and personal resource. 

• Considering a new product/consultant/technology, avoid sales literature and consult other association members.
• Stuck on a problem, avoid sales literature and consult other association members.
• After reading an article on what your peers are doing, reach out through the association to see how a solution performed in the field. 

I’ve done all of these multiple times and the University of Florida (UF) has benefited from it.  In addition, I have shared some of our pioneering efforts at UF with other schools.  We all move forward when we help each other.

Look for your trade associations.  Join them.  Participate.  You’ll be amazed at the benefits.    Someone out there is ready to help solve your problems, and someone out there is waiting for you..

Age and Progress

I just read the most recent edition of BICSI news. It had a wonderful article in it concerning Ray Gendron, a former president of BICSI and the progenitor of BICSI Cares. For those who don’t already know, the BICSI Cares committee collects money at each BICSI conference and donates it to a local children’s charity based in the location that is hosting the conference.

Let me start by saying, these guys are good. They are the definition of good: both in how they operate and in their goals. At my first conference, I was approached a number of times and asked, quite politely, if there was anything I could spare. I can be a pretty cynical guy so I kept my money to myself and my head down. They wouldn’t leave me be.

My boss showed up and laughed while he explained things to me. For just a little bit of money, the BICSI Cares committee would put a little sticker on my badge that would let everyone know that I had made a donation. Then, they would leave me be. I laughed out loud at the thought: a charity protection racket.

This is where Ray enters the story. The next morning, the morning of my RCDD exam, I wandered down the hall and approached the BICSI cares committee booth to get my sticker. I walked up and an older gentleman asked if I wanted to make a donation and I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and started to hand it over. At the last second, I pulled it back.

“You know,” I offered. “I’m testing for my RCDD today.”

“Good for you!” He reached out and shook my hand. There was warmth to his smile and genuine cheerfulness. It had a childlike quality that made me smile. “What do you think your chances are?”

“Fair to middling,” I said. “I’ve got a deal for you. You can have this twenty now, or forty tomorrow if I pass.” To this day I don’t know what possessed me but it seemed funny at the time.

The old guy drew himself up and looked me up and down. He smiled even more and stuck out his hand.

“I’ll take that bet.” He stuck his hand out.

The next day I went back and paid my forty dollars, happily.

For the next two years I happily went back to the booth to make my donation the first day of each conference. Each year he remembered me and would call out to me before I got to the booth. He would stop my donation and ask a simple question.

“You testing this year?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then. Don’t forget us.”

I didn’t. That man was Ray Gendron. I can’t say that I really even knew him and a number of people have already sung his praises in more public venues than my little blog. But I wanted to share my story of a man who genuinely appeared to enjoy life.

I’ve known another man who had a similar impact on my life.

My father has an older friend who he hunts with from time to time. They were much closer years ago and I’ve known him since I was a child. He’s in his eighties now.

Warren isn’t a powerhouse of a man. I’ve never really thought of him as a great leader, or visionary, or anything that marks a man as important. But he has always been a good friend to my father and a good friend to me.

I work in information technology and the only real constant I have to work with is change. One of the most frustrating aspects of my job is dealing with entrench bureaucracy and people who are frightened by change. Because of this, older persons get a bit of a bum rap in my industry. As we get older, things seem to get more static. Old ways are more comfortable and new ways of doing things just seem trivial.

But, as a child, Warren took me to his study to show me his new Nintendo gaming system. He had a childlike glee to his eyes as he sat me down to play. He explained the ins and outs of the game we were playing (Metroid for those who care) and talked about life.

“You’ve got it good Sheard T”, he would tell me. “We never had toys like this when I was a kid and they’re only gonna get better.”

His wife rolled her eyes from the kitchen. She didn’t approve, but then again neither did my Mom. We all wasted too much time on video games. But in Warren I saw a man who wasn’t afraid of new things – change.

A few years later I was a teenager and I sat down with Warren at his kitchen table. We were talking about how things used to be in the great nation of America and Warren started laughing.

“Sheard T,” he smiled. “Don’t talk to me about how things used to be. I was there and it wasn’t as great as people keep sayin’ it was.” He told me about separate but equal. He told me about friends passed over for promotion. He told me about all manner of injustices and he did it without ever losing his smile.

“That was yesterday Sheard T. It wasn’t all bad but don’t let anybody tell you it was all good. We fought in World War II but we did some bad things too.” Then he told me about all the good things we had today. The KKK was a shadow of what it used to be. Women could be anything they wanted to be.

I started to protest. Things weren’t that rosy. Warren waved me off. “It’ll never be perfect. Just keep workin’ at it. If you do it right, it gets better all the time.”

Last year, I stopped by Warren’s house on a cross-country drive to visit family. We talked about family, he played with my kids, and we generally got reacquainted. Somewhere in the conversation I let my vision roam over the living room and smiled.

Underneath the TV there was a Nintendo Wii.

I pointed it out to Warren and he just smiled. His eyes twinkled and he leaned in to me.

“Do you want to see the PS3? It’s in the other room.”

These men have both taught me valuable lessons. They didn’t mean to but just by watching these little pieces of their lives I’ve learned to appreciate where I am and the opportunities available to me. I don’t lose myself in nostalgia.

And each night I tell my little girl, the best is yet to come.

Why TIA/EIA 606-A is a Wonder

In May of 2002 the TIA published TIA/EIA-606-A, the administrative standard for telecommunications infrastructure. To say that I am a fan of this standard is a bit of an understatement. 606-A lays out a consistent method of identifying and labeling physical infrastructure components that can be applied to almost any communications plant, from a single home to a multinational campus. Without going into the details, the 606-A standard defines names by a constructing a string composed of individual chunks of data that build from the specific and gradually expound as far as necessary. The standard details a number of specific examples but the premise is simple. The entire standard builds from this elegant idea.

Again, I’m a fanboy. Committees of volunteers create standards. Multiple opinions combined with multiple points of views combined with multiple points of self-interest. Yet, 606-A comes together with a unified message and a clear set of criteria that is indicative of sole authorship. The standard accomplishes this by never defining the absolute requirements of the naming convention. 606-A communicates naming formats by using variables for each chunk of data that a name should hold. The use of variables sometimes leaves the reader thinking he’s back in high school algebra but the use of variables is what sets the standard apart: ease of adaptability.

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of the administrative standard. I’m not even sure if I ever completely read the approved standard. I’ve worn out my advance copy many times over. My supervisor handed me an advance copy of the 606-A standard and the rest is history. I’m not sure if he ever read the advance copy.

At first the standard, like most, makes for a boring read. No one writes these documents in an attempt to get on the best seller list. Still, the more I read, the simpler my own professional problems seemed to appear.
• Identify the components you wish to administer
• Name those components
• Label those items with labels that communicate their names
• Write down any documentation you need and associate it with those names

Simple. These few simple principles apply to any form of administration. The rest of the standard deals with appropriate means of naming telecommunications infrastructure. There are some tips on what kind of information a user may want to document concerning their infrastructure but it observes that requested information may vary from customer to customer. This treatise on useful telecommunications information may be useful to the novice but can be skipped by the more experienced.

In short, if you haven’t read this standard, do it. TIA/EIA is working on the next iteration of this standard and by my advance reading, it has none of the advantages of its predecessor. The new 606 standard reads as if it were created by a committee. It allows a number of different options for data center management and in doing so ensure that there is no standard after all. In their defense, attempting to standardize the administration of a data center is as difficult as standardizing the physical layout of a data center.

For now, leave the 606-B until the committee can lock down an appropriate administrative standard. I don’t envy them the task. Reread your copy of the 606-A and make modifications as appropriate.

Why I passed on Cat 6

In January of 2006 I was attending the winter Bicsi conference. Each time I go I always walk away having learned something new that I can bring back to my job. Just as important as the educational sessions are the opportunities to compare notes with my peers and see what’s new in the industry. That year it was each vendor’s new Category 6A cable. The IEEE had just passed the new 10GBaseT standards and the conference was buzzing.

I try not to be too cynical, but I couldn’t help but think of five years earlier when the TIA had finally approved the standards defining Category 6 cable. The conference had been buzzing then and I was a new RCDD fresh off my exam. I was riding high and ready to take my place among my more established colleagues.

No one was talking about the technical specifications of Category 6 UTP cabling: those had been relatively set for years. The bandwidth specifications were well known and the TIA standards were considered a bit overdue. The technical advantages were so obvious that they weren’t even discussed.

A few months later I was asked to be one of the principal authors of the new Univeristy of Florda Telecommunication Standards. And, surely enough, one of the questions that we needed to address was what minimum cable we would accept for new construction on campus. The older version of our standards required Category 5e cable. It almost seemed a forgone conclusion that we would require all new cable installed at the University of Florida be Category 6 UTP.

But, before making the change, I searched high and low for technical reasons to support the added expense. Now, I’m not an engineer, but I can read. I read every article, sales sheet, and white paper I could get my hands on. I was new to writing standards documents and I was earnest (and a little concerned) about doing a good job. Aside from technical differences between Category 5e and 6, I was looking for applications that required Category 6.

In the end, I could only find two advantages to installing category 6.

First, the additional bandwidth of Category 6 made it a much better medium for analog video traffic than Category 5e. This wasn’t an application we were very interested in. Our video needs were served very well by dedicated coax.

And second, 1000BaseTX, the new standard that was being trumpeted by the cabling manufacturers required Category 6 cable. 1000BaseTX was a hot topic at the conferences and seemed to be the principal argument for the installation of Category 6. But, 1000BaseTX only transported data at 1 Gigabit speeds, no faster than the already ratified 1000BaseT protocol. Pundits crowed that 1000BaseTX products would be cheaper and quickly dominate the electronics market. Unfortunately, 1000BaseTX products were incompatible with current 1000BaseT electronics. Watching the electronics market for a few months showed no great adoption of 1000BaseTX.

So, our first draft of the new UF Telecommunications Standard required only a minimum of Category 5e. This created quite a stir and I was called upon a number of times to defend the decision. This defense led to a number of spirited discussions at conferences and training events over the course of the next few years. I have enjoyed all of them and learned a great deal. None of them however, has changed my mind on the subject.

So, now I see the new standards for Category 6A in the process of being ratified. I hear words like futureproofing and emerging applications. I see a new IEEE specification that takes advantage of this amazing new cabling. I see everything I saw five years ago. So, while I applaud the creation of new technologies I have to wonder where I can best advise my employer to spend his money.

I’ll watch the electronics standards and see where the market moves: 802.11n looks interesting. Amazingly enough, 802.11n works fine with Category 5e cables.