Saturday Musings

Work is going well. A huge step forward has been made with regard to our next enterprise portal. We've chosen an Open platform, uPortal. We're not alone either. Hundreds of higher education installs are in production right now. Cal Poly Sal Luis Obispo is probably the largest install. They've been on uPortal since the 1.0 days and have done wonderful things with it, like library and admissions integration.

It will take us a long time to get to where they are now. But in the spirit of openness they want to help us get up and running. They are so jazzed about uPortal that they will take time out of their over-worked/under-paid schedules to help us get up and running. It's awesome and the enthusiasm is contagious. Even though this is a huge project that is bound to have nasty snags and all sorts of problems, I literally can't wait to get started on development and deployment.

It was hard for people to let go of the traditional vendor approach though. I think most people knew how I felt about using Open Source. The first two boxes I got I wiped off Windows and installed Fedora, so I could get some work done. But I tried to be as objective as I could and not push my own personal agenda. The decision had to be made such that the university benefitted, and not just my own sense of what was good. We had to evaluate all the available products with a standard set of criteria and honestly say what was good at what and what was the best overall. No product had everything we needed. But uPortal is more of a framework than a product. It allows you to develop what you need.

From what I've seen of the CSU system so far, most campuses have had a long time to evolve in their own isolated world. The walls of those little worlds are getting broken down as we all have to come together in these hard times. For me it's a welcome change as I despise writing code that has already been written, and written better than I would have done myself (which isn't that hard really). Process is being standardized across the system, mainly to save money. But I think the other benefits will become evident after the budget crisis fades from people's minds. CSU is a huge system, and you can't bring everyone and everything together overnight. But we are going to find a lot of great ways to do things that we haven't thought of and we are going to show people how we do things that may be better than what they have.

I don't want to call it Open Source Education, because it isn't really that and it's not like there was no sharing of information in the CSU system previous to this. There was and there was a lot of it. We're just seeing more now and like I said, it's a very exciting time. Although I could do without the stress of the budget cuts that are looming over all of us.

Politics, work, mortgage ... pretending to be able to write pithy little comments and in-depth observations here just takes a back-seat. Reading sites like Whiskey Bar that are penned by real writers, with training and experience, make me question what I have to contribute. Maybe I'm just one of those sites that feed the larger sites with things to talk about. I get my fair share of boingboing via's. Actually I get more than my fair share since Cory will sometimes grab stuff from here even though I don't use the suggest a site form they have. For which I am very grateful of course! Traffic here has risen month over month since last June. Well, except for March, which fell off just a little. I'm fine with that place in the ecosystem. My subheading isn't "Welcome to the Z-list" for nothing you know.

On that note I have been working on becoming a better writer. I don't think I'm a bad writer necessarily, but I have some bad habits that need to be tamed. I ramble, as you can clearly see. I suffer from self-deprecating geek syndrome. I don't do rough drafts. I have poor grammar skills. I don't articulate my arguments well. There are more of course, but I feel those are the main problems I have and are the ones I want to work on fixing the most. I'm confident that most, if not all, of these can be fixed with practice, working with a good editor, and some more book learnin'.

An editor? For a stupid weblog? Sure. Why not. Most people act as their own editors of course or post stuff so fast that editing is done after the fact. Learning to edit your own work is not easy. Luckily I have a good friend who is always willing to help me and enourage me.

It's funny, because I write every day. I write a lot. I write e-mail. I write notes about uPortal in a MT-powered site at work. I write posts for a number of other sites. But I'm just writing without practicing the skills that I need to become a better writer. I'm just writing with the same bad habits and "techniques" that I use here. That has to change if I expect any improvement to occur.

I keep looking at tools, MT 3.0, Word Press, Text Pattern, etc. as if they will help me be a better writer. Which is just sily. They are but mere presentation tools. Sure they help take the pressure of site maintenance off your back, but they don't do anything to improve your writing skills. "Movable Type 3.0, now with 20% better grammar!" Yeah...no.

I'm sure it's a bit of a pipe dream to think I can be a better writing simply by buying a few books. I'm not looking for a magic solution that I can drink and then write like Stephenson, Ellis, or Cory. Maybe I don't know what I'm looking for, which is a problem in and of itself obviously. I don't to become a professional writer any more than I want to become a professional comedian. But I still want to be funny and make people laugh. Perhaps that should be my goal, to write material that doesn't make people cringe. It's a bit vaporous, but it's a start.