I just attended my first Coffee with Cole jam session this morning. I, of course somehow managed to be fashionably late, but still had plenty of opportunity to sit in and listen to a great discussion.
Hearing first hand, the viewpoints and challenges, not from Cole (I’ve been fortunate enough to already listen in on and have some great conversations with him), but from the other attendee’s really drives home the need for all of us within IT at Stony Brook to make time to better communicate both within our teams and externally with our users.
It’s easy at times to feel both indispensable but invisible at Stony Brook — the work each of us does keeping the lights on in our respective organizations prevents us from spending the right amount of time reflecting on and broadcasting our achievements to the wider community.
The best conversations I’ve had about Stony Brook, that is those conversations that have inspired me or changed my perceptions occur in these types of informal gatherings; whether its over a cup of coffee, a pint of beer or a greasy cheeseburger while on a road trip to a conference; the relaxed setting removes the position of power that comes with a person’s title (CIO, Director, Manager), helps cover the lines in the sand that we draw against each other and instead welcomes everyone as a peer.
Expanding the reach of these conversations is imperative to “bending time”; enabling us to react faster and move our culture. Cole mentioned that he would love to record and share these conversations, which was the exact thought I had five minutes into the discussion, but also shared his fear that doing so would alter the types of conversations that he can have with the attendees.
The observer effect is quite substantial in those situations — recording and streaming these conversations would undermine the goal of getting “hard truth” out of these discussions.
But knowledge and opinion sharing is critical to overcoming the roadblocks that processes and people tend to throw in the way to delay and avoid change. One option could be for DoIT to host a different type of session perhaps called “On the Record” where a moderator could help facilitate a discussion of the issues facing IT on campus among different university stakeholders (students, faculty, staff, and administrators).
Platforms like Yammer and the various social media outlets can also play a critical role in engaging with the masses, disseminating information and collecting feedback in what is by its very nature a open and public channel.
The boxes that we put ourselves and (perhaps more importantly) that we put others in limit our ability to grow together, to accomplish more, to do it within our constraints and to do it faster. The more we take the time to invest in ourselves and in building relationships with each other the more we can accomplish.
In summary, if you haven’t signed up for Coffee With Cole, get on it. If you’re not a morning person or a coffee person, come join me and your IT friends for Beers with Rich, Thursday August 21st at 5pm — contact me for more details — better yet do both, I got science on my side.
