So MikeR and I had a good conversation today.
Status quo is something that I lack interest in. I always like pushing forward, discovering, finding new technologies, playing with fun toys and making things work. Lately, I think as a department, we (UCS) have developed some good technology. But I think we all suffer from:
– Feeling too busy
– Doing two peoples’ work
– Fighting distraction from clockin to clockout
– Having breathing room to stop and think, daydream, innovate, be creative or think real big
– Pressure to complete current projects quickly without giving them 100% so we can get to the next project(s)
Mike and I talked about having more developer meetings. Are you cringing inside? I’m sure some of you are. We’ve had them before and I know some people saw no benefit from them. So I’m challenging those of you who didn’t find any value in what we DID – What can we do NOW to improve our communication.
How can we stop re-inventing the ‘wheel’ to save ourselves and each other time?
What technologies or improvements have been made that others can/should use?
Are there some directions we’d like to take things to better serve our students?
Can we agree on those directions and communicate these successes to campus?
Perhaps I’m becoming somewhat of a Technology Evangelist, but it seems like every organization needs a few. I’m not some crazed techno-freak who believes in technology for technology’s sake. But by stopping here and there and working together, I think we can make better progress in the long run. I don’t always wanna be working so hard, nose to the grindstone, that I forget where I’m going … or why. What’s wrong with stopping and evaluating and refocusing?
I totally believe that it’s better to take 4 hours now and learn/develop/build something that will save me 3 minutes each day from now on. Eventually it’ll be worth it. Take DOM for example. Nice technology, but with near-infinite application. I can now write code to do things in one procedure that used to take me 3. I can improve the end-user experience. Sure it took some time to learn, but it’s saving me time now (not overusing new procedures, testing cross-browser JS, etc…). And I think we serve the students and WOU campus community better as a whole.
I’d like to begin again and have the programmers meet on some kind of regular schedule. Let’s talk about what we’ve done, how it works, do demos and make some decisions. As a team, we can move forward faster. Let’s face it, without more money and staff all we can do it work more efficiently – not harder. I wanna stop working hard and start working smart.
Nerds of the world untie. You have nothing to lose but your…