Who You Calling A Jesse?

The Ontario Premier made his speech the other day that gave a big nod to the need for a stronger education system (no mention of the money to do it btw) but along with nod came some silly goals that demonstrate a clear misunderstanding with the state of higher education in Ontario. The globecampus.ca blog outlines some issues but I think it misses the point, we need revolution in education not just more bums in seats.

Here’s my view of the world (simplified/generalize for effect):

• Universities are tooled to create more academics, other outcomes besides professional accreditation are unintentional.
• The government has given money to build buildings over the last 10 years – not lecture halls but buildings – and no money to maintain the buildings.
• Budget cuts have peeled away operating budget of departments over 10 years but the pressure to deliver more has seen staff being hired without the flexibility or ability to look at how things fit within the larger organization.
• Staff are better educated than in the past and in many cases more skilled than the academics yet are seen as second class citizens within the organization.
• Most academics want to teach, do research, and focus on their vocation – they do not want to recruit, do marketing or communications, manage staff outside of their research group, or be a department chair, associate dean, or dean.
• Research funds rarely contribute to the well being of the institution or teaching. Heck they likely don’t pay for the power consumption of the toys they buy.
• Academic time and process rewards mediocracy and we all know mediocre products are crap (I say this while looking at my UW degree).
• Students are paying way too much in tuition and have earned the right to view higher education as a service not an earned place that expects, requires, and rewards hard work (not with a job but with that little warm feeling you get, currently most students think only about jobs).
• Like all of the publicly funded jobs, the leaders are gone or in the process of being chased out. As we head out of the recession a new exodus of the employable from public service will most certainly occur.

To tackle these things takes breaking out of the mediocre and into some pretty crazy thinking. We need to take risks, experiment, and challenge the establishment that is almost dysfunctional outside a few pockets of brilliance. What the Ontario government is offering is more of the same—rhetoric, promises, and likely funds earmarked and the established system not a revolution.

Of course that isn’t for the government to dictate. We need to figure this out and we need the leaders within higher education that are willing to do so. I see glimpses of it but I fear we won’t really go for it as there is little appetite or motivation to break out of the crisis management culture and throw away status quo. However, if I was king of higher education this is what I would try:

• Remove administrative or managerial positions that are just appointments of academics—make them apply against other professionals
• Create a product management office, force them on the world with a mandate to train people to think about their products and projects.
• Put post-docs in the classroom, formalize a new class of research focused academics which they are associated with and require them to ship a new product or service every 2-3 years
• Create a hybrid of distance education and intense campus education along with co-op
• Move staff from the silos of departments to special team pools that can charge out for services and rotate throughout campus (modern take on secretarial pools)—that way you can rally on time sensitive pushes and build expertise along with campus wide perspective
• Service Level Agreements
• More programs and services to students that are not related directly to academics but tied more to the local community (build more VeloCities).

Could be all crazy ideas but I would like to try at least one or two of them ;) We need to think differently about higher education and how we function institutionally. If we continue down the cut backs, hand outs, and status quo we will surely self destruct within a generation.

Disclaimer: I would say this openly on campus and I am pretty sure it may offend some but these are thoughts being thrown out there. We need to start thinking and trying things.

One thing that really been highlighted to me by the University of Waterloo logo fun (#uwlogogate) is that committees are overused in higher education and the quality of the work could be suffering. Even if the quality might not improve I can’t see how committee work isn’t contributing to an increase in work load and stress. This happens because (using this current issue as an example) a committee (or a series of committees) appears to be responsible for:

1. requirements, strategy, and execution of the branding work
2. logo research, design, and approval
3. communications planning

How the day to day works is that you have a number of staff from different departments with different reports and interests doing their normal job and working on the branding stuff essentially on the side. Focus is not 100% on the task, it can’t be. The result, a decent logo but one that meets the needs of very specific, unfocused, and likely insular interests.

A project needs to be a real project

What I think is wrong is that a committee of staff with other jobs should be responsible for:

1. high level requirements, strategy, and oversight of project

Then a project team is to do the work, report back on how what they are doing is inline with the vision/values, and get the job done. A project team that is doing it full time reporting to one Project Manager and sharing a common interest.

The project team will have the added advantage of spending enough time on something to develop expertise that it might be missing. It is really hard to be really good at something that you don’t have the time for. It is likely the quality of the work suffers because the expertise just isn’t allowed to develop with the project.

This actually gets really bizarre when you look at things like hiring committees and search committees. The membership is made up of ‘representation’ but not by people that are qualified (or likely) to understand the requirements of a job for which they are hiring someone. Their positions don’t offer them the context or the expertise yet they are drawn together to represent what are arguably irrelevant interests.

That is why I am not arguing for broader consultation on projects (like logo making). That doesn’t work. I think broader consultation on higher level principles is ideal but when it comes to doing the work let the people you are paying to do the work produce the best work they are capable of. If it is truly sub-par work then something is wrong and something needs to be done.

A committee that is tasked with doing real work removes all responsibility and accountability for the quality and delivery of the work.

You can’t apply good project management to a committee

Can you actually apply project management techniques to committee work? I don’t think so. Sure in MS Project you can claim an asset (person) has 20% of their work week for a project but it doesn’t take into account that with one day a week of time you are probably getting 1/3 productivity on that. The inevitable 1/3 of your day getting your mind focused and working, 1/3 doing work, 1/3 for interruptions.

Too much time is spent on updating progress, lingering issues that aren’t solved, politics in the office back in the home department, etc.

Highered needs to create more temporary project teams and less committees

I believe we need to stop using a faculty influenced process and go to a more business focused way of running projects with a twist. The twist being the project has committee oversight that agrees on the goals and the measure of the project is its adherence to the goals (committees can not say things like “moar lazerz”).

This is a rough thought of course… more discussion is welcome and required but in general we need to change how we do projects in higher ed or continue to put out sub-par work and over stress staff in the process.

Today I find myself at a car dealership in town that is willing to sacrifice a long standing relationship for $50. No more $150 oil changes, no more other service, certainly won’t buy new tires from them, etc all because they insist to charge me to figure out what is wrong with my less than three year old Saab. Talk about a short-sited customer service decision.

After leaving my car to sit for a few weeks while I was on vacation I returned to a car that was just a mess. The lights kept going out, there was a violent vibration from the back wheels (feel it in the seat not the steering wheel), and it just ran rough. Given it is generally a sleep in the garage car I assumed it just didn’t like being outside and/or it is showing its 65K of KM. Although for a Saab 9-5 that shouldn’t be a lot.

I finally managed to get into the dealership a month and a half later. The lights have been an ongoing concern (they have been replaced every time I bring it in) so no worries there, they will take care of it. The vibration might be warranty work or it might not. Just to find out I get the privilege of paying for the time to figure it out.

I realize it is common practice for mechanics to do this. After all, it takes them some time to figure it out (or simply plug in the computer and it tells you) and sure mechanics could spend all day diagnosing things and not get paid. But:

• is diagnosis not built into their $80/hr+ billing rate?
• I bought the car from that dealership and I might buy another (not now)
• The mechanic won’t feel the vibration anyway as he isn’t allowed to go fast enough to feel it (yes it is above the speed limit but not by much)

What I don’t understand is why do people accept this? If more people complained then there is no way it would continue. I am certain the irritation on customers over oil changes is why GM now covers that for the first few years… obviously the service cost is worth absorbing to make customers happy. BMW, Mercedes, and others offer free ‘scheduled’ maintenance as does Cadillac. They probably don’t charge to tell you if something is warranty work or not. Why? Over the ownership time they may have to absorb $200 per customer on average which is pretty cheap for happy people that spend 40k+ on a vehicle.

Our lease is up in a year and I am pretty sure I will not be going back to that dealership for much beyond handing them the keys.

With the Facebook data drama getting mainstream media attention and people dropping their Facebook accounts out of protest it got me thinking… people don’t understand the web do they? If you have ever had a conversation with a person insisting you change the results in a Google search as it points to an old page or out of date content in the summary you know how hard it seems to be for people to get what happens to things once they are posted on the web.

The data is crawled, it is stored, it is copied and pasted, etc. It might get locked away in archive.org or on someone’s screen shot. Whatever happens to it you only have control over the source but once you drop those keystrokes onto something accessible by a web browser or by someone else on the network you don’t have control over what happens to it. Facebook might have tried to simply write it is as it is but people don’t seem ready to understand it.

Worry about accessing your data not where it may be copied.

The real battle over your data in my mind is whether you can access it if Facebook decides you can’t. If you can’t export it or access your content (like say with Twitter past whatever number of tweets they let you get at) then we have a problem.

Quick question. If you have multiple devs working on a few different screens, each monkeying with CSS, it takes very little time to end up with a huge mess of CSS. How do you deal with that? Do you:

1. Delete the CSS and start again defining a common sheet?
2. Try to optimize the CSS.
3. Live with it.
4. Don’t ever let dev’s touch CSS… they are dirty.

I ran into a 6000+ line CSS file for a dozen pages. They each have some heavy js UI going on but 6000 lines? An auto-optimizer cut it to 2200 or so pretty quickly but you can’t work with that file. I decided to start again, clean.

The upside is that I know the site mostly works without CSS and it exposed some odd decisions with some of the HTML (yay for nekkid web sites). The downside is that we may have to deal with browser bugs all over again—but then again we do not support IE 6. Only IE 7+, FF (latest), Safari (latest).

Feature request for Dreamweaver CS5 – something to optimize my CSS!

Not that long ago Rogers/Fido announced their iPhone data packages. They started at 400MB and went up to 2GB for $60-$115. The really stupid part is the SMS packages with 75-300 in the range of packages… but the data is where the consumers focused their rage. In response a $30 for 6GB promotional rate was offered to tack on your current plan so I got one.

What I did this past week was try and use 3G as much as I could but not over the top. Really I just avoided the campus wifi and only used wifi at home, 3G everywhere else. I used Google maps a lot, email, downloaded apps (not many though), and used the web browser to constantly check stuff. In one week I used:

• 1.8MB sent
• 34.7MB recieved

That means if my first week is close to an average week I will probably just top 150MB in the month. Certainly I will try and use more ;) However, I think the original pricing Rogers offered was based on research and purely designed to discourage tethering. But I don’t get why they just didn’t offer unlimited plans. What a missed opportunity to be loved. It’s not like anyone but a few people will try and tether their iPhone to their laptop for a connection.

For the next few weeks I will try and use video more… but the other side of this is that heavy data usage kills your battery (as it does with your laptop). If I leave the iPhone as a ‘phone with benefits’ the battery could probably last days. If I use it as an online entertainment device the battery lasts 8-10 hours.

On Thursday (July 10th) I was writing a nice email as to why I wasn’t getting an iPhone. Then I started looking into my plan and the $30 data plan Fido started offering as a result of the public backlash (likely). I decided to wait it out a bit… but then an act of stupidity happened and I found myself making sure I was at the Fido store on time to pick up a 8GB iPhone 3G. Here is the original post and then what the heck I am thinking…

The original post

I have been waiting until today (July 10th) to make my decision on whether or not to get the CDN iPhone from Rogers or Fido. If you haven’t noticed, there has been a lot of discussion about the cost of the plans in Canada vs those in the US as well as the 3-year contract. Rogers/Fido have tried to meet the storm halfway by offering a 6GB for $30 a month added to your existing plan. However, that doesn’t remove the need for a 3-year contract which is my main concern.

I have been with Fido for 8 years now, I have two accounts with them, and I went there initially because they were the only provider in Canada that didn’t require a contract. I have managed a new phone for a low cost ($200 or less) every 12-18 months and haven’t had much to complain about. Not having a contract gives me a little negotiating power with them, I don’t want to loose that. Having any influence over the telecommunications service providers in this country is rare and I just can’t give up my position.

What I am doing out of protest is reducing both my non-contract accounts to the lowest plan Fido offers and making an effort to use my phone even less. Oh, and not getting an iPhone for the moment. Maybe I will go buy an iTouch for now.

Besides, I am guessing that after Christmas (at the latest) they will drop to a two year or even one year contract. Maybe even a no contract option. My nokia 6300 makes me happy as it is and I know a new iPhone is likely already designed and in prototype phase. I can wait ;)

Why did I end up getting one?

Forget that I destroyed by Nokia 6300 the night before (just after I wrote that original post), the primary reason why I got the iPhone is that Fido changed the package and gave people a $30 data option on top of their current plans. I constantly run up $10-$30 data charges monthly (with their stupid pricing) so $30 wasn’t a real big increase. But this is my package:

• $45 gets me 350 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited North American long distance
• $8 FidoPro – an old package that gives me voice mail, call display, etc plus unlimited text messages
• $30 for 6GB of data (heavy use of iphone today saw a crushing 4MB of data transfer, 6GB might as well be unlimited I think)

That puts me at $83 a month for what is essentially an unlimited plan for everything but daytime minutes. I can live with that. Its not cheap, $53 a month was better but I could really use the phone for other stuff… I was going to buy an ipod anyway (own one pre-ipod photo). For now, at least, I think the device is pretty amazing.

Now why did I commit to a three contract if I was so against it? I haven’t even been married three years, how can I commit to a phone that long? Bell and Telus aren’t really impressive for starters. Talk about blowing an opportunity by coming off as the greater evil. I have been with Fido a long time, am I going to leave them? Not likely. So what the heck. It’s not an iphone plan, its a ‘3G phone’ plan. I can live with that.

Oh and it would have been stupid to reduce my plan… I would have had to pay two times as much for something similar in the future if I did. Lesson learned.

In what is probably the silliest post I have seen on 37Signals blog, they ask Is formal education important? The response?

“We’re more interested in someone’s experience, real work, and point of view than we are with their diploma, degree, or GPA. Formal education is probably last on our list of qualities we feel make someone qualified to work at 37signals.”

They aren’t saying a formal education doesn’t count but they do under state the value of higher education. I think it’s a common misunderstanding that higher education is about specific skills training. But I suppose higher education means different things to different people.

To me it’s about thinking outside of your comfort zone, meeting different people with radically different beliefs/values/etc, and gaining strategies/techniques that enable effective life long learning. Is it for everyone? No. You can certainly gain a similar value through work experience. But that takes some luck.

Update: What I do want to point out is that if you are up for a job against some one with the similar personality, same experience, skill, and passion and they have a degree and you don’t… guess who will likely get the job?

Last night (but dated today) an article on how the iPhone comes with a cost for Rogers appeared on the Globe and Mail web site. The article points out how Apple was able to simplify the silly billing practices of mobile carriers in the US and the EU (the iPhone launching in the EU November 9th). They compare the equivalent bill in Canada for the unlimited data/voice at $70 a month (leaving out the AT&T monthly charge with the exchange rate is actually lower in the US). Sadly in Canada if you try to use the data people have been seeing on their iPhone you could go well over $1000 a month. In theory, that is why Apple has not released the iPhone in Canada yet.

I know of a few people with an iPhone in Canada. Some not using their data, others lucky (or silly for paying that premium for so long) enough to have kept the old Fido (a GSM carrier that didn’t have long term contracts then either) unlimited data plan that was around in 2000 before the phones that would use said data were really in use.

Personally I think the iPhone is cool but the lack of iPhone in Canada doesn’t mean the carriers suck. It is the fact they refuse to have phones that are less than a year on the market in the US (never mind Europe), have wifi, with a two year plan still costs hundreds of dollars, and don’t in reality cost close to $150 a month if you actually use them for talking, texting, etc. Their inability to change this practice when the profits of AT&T, likely in part thanks to the iPhone, are stated is what makes them suck. Then of course there is the possibility that Canadians think both Bell and Rogers (CDMA and GSM carriers and our only real choice) are terrible companies in terms of customer service and technology adoption/reliability and that alone means they suck. They could be happy with the money they are making and fear change but that should mean the CRTC needs to stop protecting them and open up the market, now!

I have seen it stated before but I will say it here too… Apple’s big coup with the iPhone is not the technology, it is taking the position to tell the carriers to stuff it and change or loose out on the coolest technology out there (according to Apple’s marketing machine). One lesser mentioned observation I have had is that Nokia (and Motorola) is also sending a message to carriers but in a more subtle way, they are selling their phones unlocked for a decent price in North America (at least). With the US/CDN exchange rate just drop into a Nokia store in any trendy US mall ;) You will still be screwed on the data plans but you can always just use wifi where you can, maybe a little VoIP.

I can’t believe this but apparently if you are working some PHP or ASP files that have some HTML in them Dreamweaver CS3 is not going to like you. Adobe has a Tech Note on the issue and it only effects Windows users with CS3. I simply can’t imagine why that would do anything… but if you are swearing at Dreamweaver CS3 crashing after the time change, this is why.