K12IT

In addition to developement and maintenance, the Application Team here provides support for our SharePoint installation. Our current configuration includes a several public facing websites in addition to our intranet. Of course the public sites require that any elements we want to publish will require unauthenticated -- anonymous -- access. As you may be aware, SharePoint is all about permissions and one the most time consuming and tedius processes in SharePoint administration is setting up access for users, in large part beause there doesn't seem to be any cohesive native tools for broad based maintenance. Now you would think that settting up a site as anonymous access -- everybody can see anything without having to log in -- would be easier than trying to maintain the permissions configuration for 200 Active Directory users and in some ways it is.  I thought this too until working on a new website revealed that Microsoft's implementation of "anonymous" included some of those nefarius "features" you hear jokes about. Don't get me wrong... I am not an MS basher. I develop in a Microsoft centric environment. But if it quacks .... well, let me give you a link to something that explains it better than I could. It was also the solution to the problem I was encountering and has been the solution on more than one occasion.

"The Truth Behind Anonymous Access in SharePoint 2007"

Meeting Challenges and Celebrating Successes was the theme of this years’ AESA Annual Conference held in Savannah, GA. This was their 25^th ….. and my first. According to the current President of AESA, Dee Alarcón, the intent of the annual gathering was to “…provide many ideas on how to leverage resources by partnering, collaborating and sharing ideas”. Ironically, attendance at this conference was way down, most likely due to cutbacks related to the down economy.  Budgets are getting tight as fund sources shrink or disappear and in times like this, it is better to keep your head up and your eyes open rather than adopting the “bunker” mentality. When you’re in a bunker, your vision is very limited and vision is what is needed to survive the tough times.

Meeting Challenges and Celebrating Successes was the theme of this years’ AESA Annual Conference held in Savannah, GA. This was their 25^th ….. and my first. According to the current President of AESA, Dee Alarcón, the intent of the annual gathering was to “…provide many ideas on how to leverage resources by partnering, collaborating and sharing ideas”.  Ironically, attendance at this conference was way down, most likely due to cutbacks related to the down economy.  Budgets are getting tight as fund sources shrink or disappear and in times like this, it is better to keep your head up and your eyes open rather than adopting the “bunker” mentality. When you’re in a bunker, your vision is very limited and vision is what is needed to survive the tough times.

Vision was the focus of the breakout session present by Andy Pechacek, Deputy Executive Director for Region 4 ESC of Houston, TX entitled “The Future Role of ESA’s – In Search of Blue Oceans”.  From Wikipedia:  “Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy book first published in 2005 and written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of The Blue Ocean Strategy Institute at INSEAD, one of the top European business schools. The book illustrates the high growth and profits an organization can generate by creating new demand in an uncontested market space, or a "Blue Ocean", than by competing head-to-head with other suppliers for known customers in an existing industry.^[1]  . This was a nice introductory look at the concept put forth by the book – a book now on my reading list!

Another session I attended was “The New Paradigm for Cooperative Purchasing: On Line Reverse Auctioning” presented by LEARN Regional Education Service Center of Lyme, CT. A reverse auction is nothing more than a web-enabled RFP process that provides a method for vendors to actively lower their bids based on real-time bids of other participants.  Based on the stated savings profiled, this would be a great budget-stretcher, especially if employed in conjunction with a purchasing cooperative – the power of economies of scale. The trick is to find an Auction host a reasonable price.

“Survivor: The Island of Safe, Cost-Effective Student Computing” was another presentation by LEARN Regional Education Service Center of Lyme, CT and was all about a partnership  with a company called Grace Global to provide an e-Classroom environment via networked teachers and studenst issued custom-built notebook computers. The ‘take-away’ from this for me was the notebook PC. As soon as I saw this compact, feature rich, standards based, hardened machine I thought not of students, but of our Itinerant Therapists. We currently issue them full-sized laptop’s that often take quite a pounding due to the …well...itinerant nature of their users. The real kicker was the price – about $500 each! This is definitely an alternative to consider.

The last session I was able to make was “Shared Technology Services: How ESA’s Can Be the Missing Piece in the Puzzle ” offered up by Josh Sumption, Manager of Information Technology, SW/WC Service Cooperative of Marshall, MN. He outlined their model for providing  technology  support for participating school districts and providing a full service “complete IT Department”. In my opinion, this is – or should be – one of the key fundamental concepts for the ESA’s moving forward. Technology is such a specialized, rapidly changing field that relegating this responsibility as a secondary duty for teachers or other district staff doesn’t make sense. Benefits include purchasing power, shared common projects, standardized implementations and research and development. I definitely see this as a “Blue Ocean”.