As a person who never runs out of opinions, but has always had a challenge getting them down in a blog post, I’m thrilled to be part of Blogging Idol. I’ve been a sporadic blogger over the years, but have recently resolved to make it a part of my regimen. My latest endeavor is Turning Technology Invisible.
It’s not that I think I have anything brilliant to say, but it has been the snippets of thought and statements from colleagues, books, and speakers at conferences that has influenced my thinking over the years. Blogging is another medium that will allow IT leaders to share and learn from each other.
I’ve been in the engineering and technology world for a few years, most recently as the CIO of an independent school in Oakville, ON, where I’ve been challenged with developing and implementing a technology model to support the delivery of 21st century education to 21st century learners. While small, we are sophisticated, and this place is an ideal “skunk works” to change the way technology is delivered in education.
I’ve also had the pleasure of leading great IT teams at both Sheridan College, where over 5000 of the 15,000 full time students were in a mobile computing program, and at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, where we built a brand new medical school based on a completely distributed platform – students and faculty were located hundreds of miles apart and collaborative technology (voice, video and data) were used extensively.
Over the years, I’ve developed a few scars and calluses from bringing technology enabled change. I’m delighted for the opportunity to share with you. Blogging Idol will create the impetus for me to blog regularly.
Kevin.
While I'm currently the CIO for Appleby College in Oakville (the best IT job in Canada), I've had a great ride in a number of positions in various locations. I've lead a team of more than 100 staff at Sheridan supporting a constituency of 50,000 users, I've been part of the founding team building a brand new medical school in Northern Ontario based completely around distributed education, I've started 3 companies, consulted internationally, drove my gorgeous wife crazy moving around all over, raised 2-1/2 great kids (I'll round it up when the final one leaves home), and occasionally scratch the ear of our butt ugly dog. My craft is not IT, but building IT organizations that support challenging and new ways to do things. I am utterly convinced that we as IT leadership need to dramatically change how IT is delivered, before we get relegated to a costly overhead department. In the midst of all this fun, I've had the distinction of being awarded the inaugural 2010 IT Leader of the Year (SME) Award from Computerworld Canada for my work at Appleby College. I'm humbled by the honor and thankful that some of my ideas actually make sense to someone.
