Philosophy
I've had the good fortune in most of my career to work with very
talented and creative groups of people of who nurture and encourage new
and innovative ideas. And if that's not enough, I've had permission
from many of my supervisors and mentors to run with an idea, sometimes
to failure, but more often to success.
I spend much of my "creativity budget" developing solutions to
user-centered problems of access and retrieval of the information they
need and then providing tools to do something meaningful with data
they've collected. I start with a holistic systems approach and focus
on simplifying and streamlining retrieval from a user's standpoint.
I value and nurture the skills and creativity of our staff and try to
provide frequent opportunities for growth and development. Developing
effective digital media products often requires expertise, skills, and
innovation of staff across the Information Resources organization,
including areas such as networking, systems, web development, digital
media production, and information services. Just as seniors in many
academic departments complete capstone projects with a faculty mentor,
nearly all of the projects developed by the DMC include creative
collaboration of staff and student workers.
Membership in the New Media Center Consortium
In 2003 we applied for and received membership in the New Media
Center Consortium, a group of universities and museums with the motto
of "sparking innovative learning & creativity". During the
application process we identified and inventoried the creative projects
we have accomplished. It is amazing what a diversity of significant and
creative projects we have accomplished with relatively few resources. I
can only attribute this to our staff wanting to make a difference by
making improvements and solving problems using their incredible
creativity. See the application link below for a short list of creative
and innovative projects.
Related Links
Developing RSS News Channels for PLU Web Pages
During
the 2003 academic year we worked with News and Information Services on
a complete redesign of the PLU web site. Functional specifications
included dynamic "news holes" on the main home page as well as the
student and faculty-staff doorways. Rather than develop a specific
application for fitting this need, I took a more deliberate and broader
systems view of what kind of a tool was needed to deploy this
functionality to any departmental website.
We decided to develop RSS feeds as a mechanism for populating the news
holes. Using the RSS standard insures compatibility with other
syndication methods and provides an alternative for personalizing the
feeds for individual use in web pages, blogs, and readers.
I developed an authenticated staff interface for creating and
maintaining news feeds using open source software PHP and MySQL. Any
authorized user can use their web browser to create RSS channels and
add and schedule items in the channel. The system provides mechanisms
for queuing items to appear on the hour and to automatically remove
items after their scheduled end time. To include the news feed channel
in a web page, a script reads the feed, wraps it in the appropriate
.css style, and includes the text in the page. If there are no items in
the feed the entire channel disappears, making this very useful for
channels used for system notices or other transitory notices.
Related Links
Online Voting for Faculty and Student Government
Collaborating
with the Faculty Governance Committee and Student Government (ASPLU) we
developed database-driven web ballots for faculty and student
government elections. These ballots are enabled by the following
technologies: LDAP authentication, secure socket layer security,
database-driven MySQL tables, and php scripts to mediate access, ballot
distribution, and feedback. Ballot tallies are not linked to voter ID
to maintain voter confidentiality. Selected governance officials can
review progress of the elections (total number of participants) in situ
and then examine final results after conclusion of elections.
Related Links
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Attributes
- Collecting and analyzing data from a variety of sources
- Seeking creative and innovative solutions to challenges and needs
- Adapting technologies and data standards to local needs
- Simplifying and streamlining user interfaces for accessing resources
- Taking initiative to address challenges and needs
- Managing and mentoring creative people
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