Thank you very much for joining us here, and much thanks to the President for his
words of inspiration, without which, this Address would not have been possible. Tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own -- as the first Consulting Manager to begin the State of the Tech Desk message with these words:
Google Blogger is out of beta.
One member of the Team Leaders is not with us tonight, and we pray for the speedy return of
CAMS Manager Kimberly Hayworth from the
ELI 2007 Annual Meeting.
Team Leaders, members of the
Consulting Team, distinguished faculty, honorable student body, fellow
University staff and Meyer patrons:
The rite of custom brings us together at a defining hour -- when problem sets are hard and caffeine is needed. We enter the year 2007 with large poster print jobs underway, and others in Qimage that are ours to begin. In all of this, much is asked of us. We must have the will to face difficult challenges and malfunctioning computers -- and the wisdom to check the MMS Wiki and Forum before posting a question to the mailing list.
Some reading this blog are new to the Meyer Tech Desk -- and I congratulate the Windows-using majority. (Sorry, Mac lovers. Some day... some day...) The Team Leader structure has changed, but not our responsibilities. Each of us is guided by our own convictions, well, except when it is in contradiction to the Tech Desk policies. We're all held to the same standards, and called to serve the same good purposes: To extend this department's technological influence; to spend your time at the Desk wisely; to solve complex computing problems, not leave them to the consultant on the next shift; to guard Meyer against all evil; and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to take emergency Sub RED shifts.
We're not the first to come here with a staff shorthanded and the smell of laser printer toner (or is it burnt popcorn?) in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for Stanford University. Our patrons don't much care which side of the Tech Desk we sit on -- as long as we're willing to cross the cluster floor when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Stanford affiliates, and to help them to build a future of digital video editing and poster printing -- and this is the business before us tonight.
A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy -- and that is what we have, so to speak. We're now in the 26th month of uninterrupted growth in poster print requests, in a service that has created maybe 7.2 thousand new print jobs -- so far (give or take a thousand, or a few). Unemployment is low (hmm, not a good thing for us), the magenta ink toner is low, and wages are rising. Qualified consultant candidates are on the move, and our job is to keep them applying here, not with more House Rules, but with more cool technology and tasty snacks at the Desk. (Applause.)
Tonight, I want to discuss three operational reforms that deserve to be priorities for this Consulting Team.
First, we must ensure that the Tech Desk is staffed during all hours of operation. We can do so without causing consultants to burn out, fail their classes, and go postal. At the same time, we want to balance out responsibilities so that the Tech Desk does not just get abandoned when midterms and finals arrive. What we need is to impose discipline in scheduling. We set a goal of filling all of the Tech Desk shifts with qualified consultants by 2006, and... I think we need to work on that one a little more. In the coming weeks, I will be working with the Team Leaders to create a quarterly work schedule that eliminates unfilled shifts within the next five quarters. To the full extent that we are able, we will work to accommodate the scheduling needs of each consultant, whether the individual needs a fixed and consistent schedule or a more dynamic as-the-wind-blows schedule.
I ask you to make the same commitment, by voluntarily picking up a sub request for every sub request hour that you put up. The new Swap-For-Swap (SFS) policy ensures that all consultants retain a sense of responsibility to the common good of the Tech Desk. If you are asking a fellow consultant to take up your load for the week, initiate the goodwill by also claiming shifts that remain on the swapboard. Together, we can restrain the growing void of unfilled shifts, and we can ensure the best service possible to our patrons.
Next, there is the matter of unfilled sub requests. In 2006 alone, the number of sub requests rose well over 500, which means that somewhere down the line, we didn't do a good job of scheduling as a team. Even worse, some of these sub requests never got claimed and filled. You didn't want them in your schedule anymore. We didn't find somebody to fill in. Yet, that didn't change the fact that people in need of help were left standing at the Tech Desk. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the sub request process, expose every unfilled shift to the light of day and to an email to the list, and cut the number of unfilled sub requests at least in half by the end of this school year.
And, finally, to keep the Tech Desk going strong we must take on the challenge of filling the gaps in training. Operational printers and classroom projection systems are commitments of conscience, and so it is our duty to keep them functioning. Yet, we're failing in that duty. And this failure will one day leave our patrons with three bad options: don't turn in the assignment and fail your class, buy your own printer and projector, or go to Kinko's and Event Services. Everyone reading this blog knows this to be true -- yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to learn everything we need to for troubleshooting print jobs and smart panels. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and goodwill, you and I can fix printing and classroom technology issues. Well, okay, maybe not, but we're going to die trying.
Spreading opportunity and hope at Stanford also requires clusters that give patrons the knowledge and file format compatibility they need in life. Just a year ago, we rose above operating system preferences to initiate the No Codec Left Behind Act, preserving legacy codecs, raising standards, and holding ourselves accountable for ensuring proper file format conversion. And because we acted, certain multimedia projects are performing better than ever on both Mac and Windows, and minority codecs are not stopping a video project in its tracks (as often). The No Codec Left Behind Act has worked for Meyer's patrons -- and I ask the Consulting Team to continue to inform us about needed codecs that are not yet on the cluster image.
My next proposal is to help the consultants come up with innovative ways to educate the uninitiated about technologies offered at Meyer. Consultants that make new training videos and approved wiki tutorials available to our patrons should be paid extra to encourage them to provide this valuable support. I have asked the CAMS Manager to work with the Associate Director of Academic Computing at Stanford University and Head of Student Computing to use departmental funds to create "One Time Payments" for enterprising consultants. These One Time Payments would give our consultants more recognition and more satisfaction in getting new training media to those most in need.
Extending hope and opportunity from the Tech Desk requires a Stanford-affiliation validation system worthy of Meyer Library -- with policies that are fair and boundaries that are secure. When policies and boundaries are routinely violated, this harms the interests of our department. To secure our boundaries, we're looking into new infrastructure and technology to aid us in determining the level of support we can offer to a visitor to our Tech Desk, based on their affiliation with the University. Everyone from faculty to visiting scholars, from students to their parents who are trying to get a hold of them, should be able to approach the Tech Desk with a very clear understanding of what we can and cannot do for them.
Yet even with all these steps, we cannot fully secure our boundaries unless we take pressure off ourselves in trying to meet the needs of every single person who comes through our doors -- and that requires a very strong understanding of information and services available through other organizations on and off this campus. We should establish an efficient and orderly path for visitors to get the help they need, even if it is not directly through the consultants. As a result, they won't have to leave without an idea of where to get more help, or to try to force us to perform a task that is outside the scope of our jobs (like granting access into a classroom that they didn't reserve or installing software onto a cluster machine). And that will leave our consultants free to answer questions about multimedia, checkout equipment, and reunite patrons with their lost items. We'll search for tools to verify the University affiliation of our visitors and to find the best resources for helping them, so there's no excuse left for sending patrons on a wild goose chase or violating our own policies.
We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot at Meyer that welcomes and assimilates people new to our services and technologies. We need to resolve the status of the irate patrons without animosity and without getting bullied. Convictions run deep in this department when it comes to determining what level of services the Tech Desk should provide. Let us have a serious, civil, and conclusive debate, so that you and I can come to an agreement about the level of support that we will uphold as a team.
It's in our vital interest to diversify our multimedia skill set -- the way forward is through technology. We must continue improving the way Tech Desk consultants do training, by even greater use of training videos and Wiki tutorials, hands-on learning, and clean, safe web-based training and testing powered by CourseWork version 5. (Applause.)
To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of training materials and by setting a mandatory multimedia training standard for all consultants, to be completed during their first quarter of employment, with continuing assignments as updates to our technological knowledge become necessary. At the same time, we need to continue to provide the excellent coverage of the Tech Desk, so all consultants are encouraged to complete multimedia training during their work hours at the Desk, using the Multimedia Studio to do the training only when the Desk is already adequately staffed.
Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce shrugging our shoulders in frustration or confusion when we don't know how to answer a user's question, but it's not going to eliminate it. And so as we continue to diversify our knowledge of multimedia technologies, we must also persist in providing first-class customer service to all of our patrons, even when we cannot provide a direct solution for an individual.
Academic Computing is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on a vulnerable Windows server for our mission-critical web presence at http://mmstudio.stanford.edu, thanks to the efforts of our new Software Programmer and System Administrator. These technologies will help us be better stewards of our web services, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global spam and Denial-of-Service attacks.
A future of hope and opportunity requires an adequate number of consultants to cover the Tech Desk. The lives of our citizens across our campus are affected by the outcome of your availability to work. We have a shared obligation to ensure that the Tech Desk has enough consultants to hear patron questions and deliver timely assistance. As Consulting Manager, I have a duty to recruit qualified men and women to vacancies at the Meyer Tech Desk. And the Consulting Team has a duty, as well, to give these Tech Desk Trainees the help they need to hit the ground running.
For all of us on this team, there is no higher responsibility than to protect the people of this University from an unstaffed Tech Desk. Five and a half months have come and gone since we saw the scenes and felt the sorrow that an emergency shutdown of Meyer due to lack of consultants can cause. We've had time to take stock of our availability. And we would do nearly anything to stop such incidents from happening again.
With the distance of time, we find ourselves debating the causes of consultant shortages and the course we have followed. Such debates are essential when a great service faces great questions. Yet one question has surely been settled: that to win the war against consultant burnout and emergency shutdowns, we must either dramatically increase the pool of consultant availability or else determine what services or coverage we must regretfully reduce. Or get some part-time non-students in here.
Our success at the Tech Desk is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the computer and customer service problems that we and our staff have prevented, but here is some of what we do know: We managed to print 17 color-calibrated posters with 2-day deadlines on extremely short notice (and we plan to never do that ever again if we can help it). We skillfully restored audio playback in a Final Cut Pro project that "worked fine yesterday." We managed to properly rewire the video output on a classroom instructor station after somebody goofed it all up. And just a few weeks ago, you managed to keep Meyer running while the Consulting Manager was on his honeymoon. For each file recovered and class presentation saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave consultants who devote their lives to finding the problems and troubleshooting them.
Every success in troubleshooting a technical difficulty is a reminder of the shoreless variations of the problems that can arise in our systems. Users are still busy working and tinkering with technology in the cluster. And so long as that's the case, we are still at their service. In the many stories of courage and compassion at the Meyer Tech Desk, ladies and gentlemen, we see the spirit and character of the Consulting Team -- and these qualities are not in short supply. This is a decent and honorable team -- and resilient, too. We've been through a lot together. We've met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead. Yet we can go forward with confidence -- because the State of our Tech Desk is strong, our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on.
Thanks for reading. We're back on schedule, so see you next time!
