As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts-I am on the “SIF Outreach and Documentation” team. This group was created after I pitched during my SIF interview the idea that communication on GSU’s campus could be improved. I, to my slight embarrassment, realized I had fallen victim to this challenge when, during my interview, I answered the “what would you do with a giant bag of money” question by basically explaining things that are already taking place in The Exchange, and the Digital Aquarium. I had no idea, and to be honest-still don’t have a clear understanding, of what those spaces offer students and faculty. And as I’ve been working with the rest of the SIF O&D team, it is becoming clear why that would be the case.
The first task the team has set out to accomplish is creating a collective list of technology spaces on campus ( think computer labs, the digital aquarium, etc) that are open to all students. Once we complete this collection, our team will make some web-based maps, a series of short informational videos, and any other promotional items we may think of along the way as a resource to share with all of GSU. The idea here is that we create a visual, informational advertisement that is consistent across resources that students, faculty, and staff can utilize to simply familiarize themselves with the resources. In my attempts to collect information for this list-I started to find myself in a vortex of confusion and frustration.
Why the heck don’t these open hours match the last webpage I saw?
Why does another website say this location is no longer open?
Where even IS this building that this supposed lab is? Why is it not on the campus map?
The Exhange and CII-their merging? So now what do they offer me?
Through these questions-arose frustration. If it wasn’t my specific responsibility to find and record information about these resources-I would have thrown my hands up in the air (and not to say aaaahh ohhh). This, my friends, is the beast that the digital information age has created. Old pages are left out there to provide false information.
And here we are-the SIFs-with our mops and buckets, prepared to clean up this mess.
October 6, 2014 at 12:09 am
Most of the stuff in institutions and businesses have to be stable platforms that have worked for…well ever since these systems evolved. Due to this, we just stick with what works. ADP is probably one of these systems that practice this logic, and it works. Until the next Java update or whatever comes out and kills everything, which happened the week this post was made.
This is just part of a larger conversation happening throughout the technology world, and most of it relies on the businesses and whether they care or not about technology and its accessibility.
Places like CURVE, Google, and other efficient companies are where these conversations are happening and, eventually, where they will be released for practice throughout the world.
Hopefully that makes some purpose for all of this. It’s a small war fought behind the public eye.