Reflections on Week 13

The countdown has started. The end of the semester is approaching and assignment due dates are coming fast and furious.

I've found that the readings have become more and more interesting to me, in that they touch on a lot of the situations that I have been in. Offshore outsourcing being one. I see the practical application of this practice, yet my personal experience left a little to be desired. Perhaps that was because I was in a development role rather than customer service.

I have to go now and punch in the numbers which will allow me a little more time to work on my projects. Let's see... where did I put those numbers? Ah, yes...
4...8...15...16....23....42

Reflections on Week 12

Software development.. A subject that is near and dear to my heart. Pictured is my first computer. A TI99-4A. I taught myself to program on it. I had a giant 16k worth of memory. My how times have changed. The subject discussed this week was object oriented vs. procedural. Both methods are great ways to develop. It all boils down to "the right tool for the right job." Thats very similar to the question regarding SDLCs and web developers. All things in moderation...

Now leave me alone so I can work on my research paper - my prof is cracking the whip!

Reflections on Session 11

In this session we discussed the topic of successful and not so successful e-businesses. We also discussed how we could use IT to make our own businesses more competitive. Thinking about this from the perspective of a public institution was interesting. I often made fun of some of the "hip" banner ads that I've seen for UMBC. I would joke and say that I've found one that had a picture of a skateboarder that said "UMBC: Come Get Your Learn On!" But the more I think about it, the more I see that this type of advertising might just attract the technically savvy young people that UMBC would like to have apply.

The article that I posted was about the speed of wireless / mobile networks. I found the idea that a Japanese company is testing out a 300Mbps network to be a little depressing. Depressing in the fact that my iPhone maxes out in the 1.5Mbps range.

Reflections on Week 10

Week 10 was quite eclectic. We discussed data warehousing as well as GPS technologies. While I very much enjoy using a GPS for both turn-by-turn directions as well as Geocaching, I really dislike data warehousing. Coming from a DBA, that might sound odd. My experience has been that the data warehouse community is a whole separate subculture from the rest of the IT world. They feel that IT is a necessary evil that really stands in their way of obtaining their rolled up facts and figures. I happen to disagree. I feel the bread and butter of an organization is the day to day transactions and transactional data. This IS the business, and not just a means to obtain summary information. I suppose thats why I won't be invited back to another Data Warehousing Institute conference. Whew!

Reflections on Session 9

Week 9 discussed teamwork and collaboration. One collaborative tool that I really make use of is the wiki. While I'm not sure it's for everyone, I can't help believe that an organization wouldn't benefit from one or more. Gone "should" be the day of the magic operations or policy binder. Gone "should" be the day of documents stored locally that contain important information / scripts / how-to, etc. I've found the easiest way to manage these types of information is through a wiki. Our text book mentioned "Organizational Memory." The wiki is the perfect tool to be part of the overall organizational memory strategy.

Wikis: They're not just for geeks anymore!

Reflections on Session 8

Session 8 discussed e-business. The mini project I thought would be a simple task. Well, it didn't turn out that way. My first idea, a moving service for college students, turned out to be not so unique. Leave it to Les to find www.collegeboxes.com. So much for my original idea. Thankfully my second choice, Mom's Taxi, was more original.

Getting in the e-business state of mind and going through the project made me think. The internet has to be the single biggest influence in business in at least 50 years - probably more. Wow, Al Gore really knew what he was doing when he invented the internet. ;-)

Reflections on Session 7

The reading for this chapter was right up my alley. Enterprise Resource Planning. I work in an ERP environment - PeopleSoft. We went through a 2 year implementation of Finance and Human Resources. Now we are just starting the implementation of the Student Administration system. All of the items discussed in the reading applied to our implementation. Staffing issues, consultants, fit-gap, hardware... you name it. I still wonder what our return on investment is with the ERP implementation. Are we truly better of than if we would have taken the millions of dollars spent and modified our in-house systems?

Reflections on Session 6

The reading for the session was Transactions and Operations. This was the first chapter that I didn't breeze through. There were a few concepts introduced that were new or helped to solidify a minimal understanding of a topic. For example, EDI. While I knew it existed, I have not had hands-on experience with EDI. The use of it is far more outreaching than I thought. It was interesting to see that XML is making its way along side of EDI.
I was also amazed to see how many online transaction processing businesses that are available. I could only think of the major ones - PayPal, Google, etc.. It seems there really is a market for everyone.

On a side note, I bought my iPhone this past Friday. While they were getting the store ready, the employees were removing the "coming soon" letters from the store window. They accidently removed one too many letters. I was able to snap a picture before they fixed it. I thought it was funny looking. :)