Page Page Susan M. Johns
11th Annual DUG/HUG User Group
York University Library
Heslington, York, United Kingdom
September 2-4, 1998
I bring you greetings and warm wishes from the CODI Board and all CODI members in the United States.
I bring with me two visualisations which may help to illustrate some of CODI's deliberations this past year. Recently, a colleague showed me a colour laser print of an 11th century Chinese Sung dynasty scroll painting. When unrolled from right to left, the scroll portrayed an ancient scholar/poet who travelled his world as globally as he could, given the time of his existence.
The scholar/poet travels through fields and meadows, stopping to fish at a stream, or employs a few native fisherman to help him row across a river. Sometimes he is joined by fellow travellers along a river or creek for a campfire supper. The next day, he may scale a large mountain range, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion--over rocks, over brush, through forests, up to the top, down again into the valleys or canyons. For the most part, he walks alone, with perhaps a chance encounter with a farmer, or oxen, or perhaps a nest of birds.
Each bridge the poet/scholar crosses provides choices and opportunities. Each road he looks down presents a mystery in the mist, not unlike walking after dark around the York University campus. In the end, the poet/scholar returns home, resuming a sense of security, but altered by the experiences he has encountered.
The story of this poet/scholar's travels, and to an extent, his very life, unfolds in an archetypal series of Chinese painting, coined by James Cahill, as "The Lyric Journey". The metaphor of the poet/scholar's journey is not unlike what we in an information age traverse through on a daily basis as system administrators.
We may read documentation in solitude, or we may travel by phone alongside a customer support person. Often we go fishing--perhaps on Dynix_l, or among our regional user groups. Sometimes the path is steep; we travel alone, in darkness, and stumble. Sometimes at the end of the day we may find ourselves surrounded by the whirr of lights and the clicking of network routers in a sort of nightnoise symphony. Sometimes, we venture beyond the gate, beyond the bridge, to a conference, where we meet up with new faces and new ideas. We join others at the banks of the creek for food and refreshment.
Finally, we return home, back to more ups and downs, peaks and valleys, to the relative security of our own machine rooms and to the institutional policies and the problems of our every day lives. We struggle, we succeed. It varies from day to day and time to time.
While James Cahill's "The Lyric Journey" principally describes Chinese poetry and art from 500 to 1,000 years ago, I believe it also describe our own daily efforts. We must stop and ask ourselves, however, where is the beauty? what is the poetic? How do we return to simplicity and the nature that we long for amid our gizmos and mice and blinking cpu lights and the whirr of disk drives, the beeps of network routers, and the formidable blue screens of death? Is there beauty here somewhere with us today? Is there art? Is there a lyric quality?
I suspect that there is, or else all of us present today would not have journeyed through hill and vale to meet with one another to learn, to teach, to listen, to instruct, and to enjoy the camaraderie that only system administrators can share with one another. We have become a part of the "lyric" that reaches out beyond our own boundaries, which pursues the ideal and the best for our work, reaches to exceed our needs, reaches to dream and chase down our visions of the ideal for the future. This same drive causes us to reach out to a global world, to a global commitment from our software vendor, to a global experience among our peers and colleagues.
Right before I left Pittsburg State University, in that global location in the central US known as Kansas, I asked one of our reference librarians, a native Chinese speaker, whether my analysis on this lyric journey was ringing true--did it make sense, was it clear? Yes, she said, but remember the volcanoes. What volcanoes?, I asked. In China, she said, the mountains are volcanoes. Remember, don't step on any live volcanoes.
So, the question begs to be asked, what are your live volcanoes? What are our live volcanoes?
System software upgrades? Migrations? Tenders? Lack of resources, lack of funding? Excess governmental regulation? Slow response time? Too small a pipe to the internet?
National Geographic Explorer reports on a program describing Montserrat, "It is in the nature of volcanoes to create as they destroy." Is that not also true for the creation, the destruction, the life cycles of our systems?
CODI as an organisation also has its volcanoes. Our agenda this year continues to include many ways to strengthen our ties with our global peers. We continue to support and rely heavily on Dynix_L, and will be this fall developing the CODI Web page to provide more accurate links to past and current newsletters, various project reports, and conference proceedings. Our Australian colleagues continue to support Dynix_L with the CODI archives, located at the University of Adelaide.
Board members have begun regular email correspondence on various global issues with our counterparts on the Canadian CANDU Board, and have begun talks with the US-based Horizon officers on possibilities for concurrent conferences beyond the year 2000. Taking a cue from Brian Hackett's proposed Federation draft, the CODI Board is beginning to develop more formal liaison with both the DUG and CODA Boards, in the hopes of enriching more cultural awareness across the continents and, obviously, within the software.
CODI continues to examine its role and identity in a global environment, one in which we want to continue to play a leading and positive role. We continue to examine opportunities with our vendor in advocating for strong user input, training, and continuing education for our members. We continue to take seriously our commitments to provide the best possible liaison for our members and to continue to promote fiscal responsibility as a not-for-profit organization.
Close to 20% of CODI's total membership budget is earmarked for travel to our peer international conferences, which we believe to be a significant means for interaction, listening, and joint collaboration with our colleagues abroad.
While we may appear to be structurally more organized, CODI is not without its dilemmas. There is one "volcano" that stands out among several CODI issues, one that neither dormant, nor able to lie down and sleep. It is what many of you have hoped for and understood to be a path toward future product development. The "live volcano" this year is what we affectionately referred to last year as "system enhancements". It is here that I can give you that second visualization that I promised you earlier.
Assume for a moment that this deck of cards represents individual user requests from all around the globe, enhancements we have all submitted and anguished over. Perhaps these might be called to represent all those enhancement requests we have logged, or wish we had logged, on CODI-ED.
Please watch closely as I try to paint a vivid picture of what I personally feel is the current state of all enhancements -- in CODI, around the world. (The speaker takes a deck of cards and shuffles the cards upward so that they fly into the first few rows of attendees in a large arc and scatter all over the floor).
Out of this apparent chaos, there is a plan, and there is a program, but of course it involves letting go of the old process, picking up the pieces, and working hard to implement the new.
Many of you have heard of JAD, the Joint Application Development process, which CODI began this past year. Formal documentation and details concerning JAD are located on the CODI and ALS Web page, and have been distributed on Dynix_L. To highlight just a few of the details, the JAD process relies on the ALS Product Plan for direction and future product development. After the Product Plan is released, various JAD projects for the year are identified, and global participants are invited to assist in design, development, and testing of the new projects.
Since March, three JAD projects have begun; Telecirc II, Serials Binding, and the Staff Workstation Project. Telecirc II is complete at this time. Serials Binding and the Staff Workstation have recently launched into early stages of JAD processes. The Staff Workstation project is also being jointly staffed by both Dynix and Horizon participants. Despite early comments that Telecirc was strictly a US-based product and had limited application to international participants in its current state, CODI and ALS envision that the majority of JAD projects will provide many opportunities for global sites to become active participants at the design and development stage.
While the JAD process is new to CODI, we hope that after a few projects, we will have a better idea of the impact on administrative support and project flow, and will no doubt require finessing through the next several months.
Areas that JAD does not currently address are issues relating to:
1) How to submit projects to be included in the ALS Product Development Plan (lobbying, white papers, etc.)
2) How to begin collecting enhancement requests for the newer product lines (WebPAC, PAC for Windows, CAT for Windows, and the NextGen products, particularly the Connect-Lib series), which may already by in process without the benefit of JAD; and
3) Creation of what CODI is currently calling a "Bright Ideas" web-based database, which will collect the requests and ideas, including custom work, of sites unable to participate in JAD groups and wanting to make graphical-based recommendations before a specific module or product is placed in the Product Development Plan.
The primary purpose of this database will be to allow developers to see what clients are asking for before they start on a project, and will permit clients to dream and propose specifications well in advance of announcement of product plan projects. The CODI Board will continue to review JAD and refine it as necessary throughout the coming year.
All of this, however, is not possible without your participation. JAD will only be as successful as the volunteers and creative resources of those involved in it. The potential is great: the ownership and responsibility of the participants, whether in the US or around the world, is also a serious, but rewarding undertaking. Many of us have already gone out to tender, or will be forced to do so in the next few months.
One of the strongest selling points that ALS continues to have, is the strength and depth of their user group communities. We are all poetic, lyric, and substantive contributors, hard at work on the continued success of this product in a global user environment. The alternatives, going to tender, as many of us have already discovered, are expensive, time-consuming, and exhausting. It is with this in mind that I would encourage you to provide positive and productive support of our vendor of choice, ALS, and welcome your participation as active players in the global user group that we enjoy here today with one another.
We look forward to the "sunrise" on the new "horizon".
On behalf of the CODI Board and the US user group, thank you for allowing me to speak to you this afternoon.
References
Cahill, James, The Lyric Journey : Poetic Painting in China and Japan, Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-674-53970-2.
National Geographic Explorer, Montserrat, c1997, National Geographic Society.
Zhang, Kaiping. Personal comments. Axe Library, Pittsburg State University, KS, 1998.
Send comments to: suzyq@pittstate.edu
Susan M. Johns-Smith
Axe Library
Pittsburg State University
1605 South Joplin Street
Pittsburg, KS 66762
Phone: 620-235-4115
This page last updated Monday, 28-Oct-2002 15:58:26 CST