October Career Update
I am still taking on challenges in the Office of Instructional and Research Technology at Rutgers University. I am getting more involved in the bug tracking process for Sakai. I am now a member of the international Quality Assurance working group for Sakai. I am in the process of verifying fixes that have been put in place for the release of the upcoming version. Closing bug tickets on an international level makes me feel very good about myself.
IT folks that are coming out of school should definitely try to volunteer their time to a well-organized open source community. I have learned so many different aspects of application development in the past few months. The Application Development Life Cycle has many parallels in other areas of IT and my experience with it on this project has been very educational.
I have also been charged with taking a look at the local CSS for the release of the next version. Rutgers wants to be ahead of the game when it comes to developing the next round of help documentation where we will most likely need a lot of new screenshots. If we can develop that documentation well before the release, that means less headaches come deployment time.
I am working to complete my Rutgers University IT Certification. While it has no validity outside of the University, I am interested in any supplemental education that I can get from the school. So far, the program has been very good. This morning I completed a class titled ‘Setting Objectives and Analyzing Risks’. It was a good refresher course for a lot of the research that I have already done in Risk Management.
Yesterday, OIRT attended the Rutgers President’s Award Ceremony. We were nominated for the Bridge Award which is for departments or groups that show extraordinary service to the University. We set up a table to talk with the folks there about Sakai and what it is we do. Here is a shot of our booth and the team, complete with chef hats (an homage to Hiriyuki Sakai, for whom the CMS is named).
