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StrengthsQuest

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Hannah recently attended a leadership conference where all participants were asked to complete the StrengthsQuest assessment of their own individual work profiles.  (Read more about her thoughts on the assessment.)  She recently got access to this same testing for anyone in the department that was curious about their own strengths and I just completed the evaluation.  The results were pretty spot on, especially those contained within this Insight Report.  Really powerful stuff and I’m now looking forward to finding the top strengths of the other test-takers!

The art of science

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I kind of want all of these scientific field notes as prints for my walls.  I’ve always loved the style and the way they are art that truly serves a purpose, even if just a personal one (mainly conveying information from site to office).  I’ve also thought about getting a tattoo of a cryptid on several occasions and this is the exact aesthetic I’d want it to employ.  This book on the topic (with lots of illustrations) may have just moved to the top of my coffee table list.

(Wired)

MC 101 Wrap Up: The West

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Now that I’ve had an entire week off the road and in the office, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the first five Media Commons 101 sessions that I put on at my western campuses.  Looking back at the sessions, I feel confident in saying that they achieved exactly what Carla and I had hoped for, namely reaching new people in the Commonwealth.  Of the 63 people that attended my sessions, 67% were “new”, at least to me which means that I met for the first time a lot of faculty and staff that I would not have otherwise – or at least not for a very long while.  And in meeting these individuals, I discussed quite a few new ideas for projects, leaving each campus with at least one wholly new Media Commons collaboration.

I also had a chance to better experience campus culture during the MC 101 sessions.  Because the just-in-time nature of my past travel has me on campus for course times and then back on the road, there isn’t often much time to interact with clients and contacts in a more relaxed session.  This is especially true with campuses that bring me out for mostly evening classes.  As much as I enjoyed getting to learn about the community members at my campuses, they seemed to relish the opportunity to have me there long enough to really talk at some length about their courses, research, projects and plans.  In addition to follow up visits for new projects, my hope is that I can continue getting closer to these fascinating Penn State people by visiting each campus more often – and for longer periods of time, ideally on a regular schedule.

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Looking at the evaluation data in full, it’s clear that the sessions were very well-received overall.  27 people (42%) responded to the survey sent at the end of each MC 101 and 21 of them felt that the Media Commons overview at the heart of the programming was Excellent (the other 5 found it Good – and one didn’t respond).  

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Unsurprisingly, Refreshments scored very well across the board.  Organization was certainly the best rated logistical element of the MC 101 sessions that I coordinated with Pacing and Communications coming in a close second and third.  Venue was a mixed bag and I’m still trying to figure out what might be an ideal space.  While I prefer the round tables and gallery feel that made the Forum on Media + Gaming, it’s possible that trying to recreate this same atmosphere at all campuses is just not feasible.  Something to continue pondering as I look forward to August’s last two sessions at Beaver and Mont Alto.

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Most importantly, most respondents found that MC 101 was Relevant to them professionally and even more thought that the session – and Media Commons – was Interesting.  All but one person would attend this event again or recommend it to a colleague.  (That one person simply prefers that the next session be something more in depth than MC 101 since they’ve already attended.)

Salt in the wounds

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Not only is Audi not bringing us the newest A3 until model year 2013, they are now on the fence about whether to bring the Q3 (a 2012 in Europe) to the US until even later.  This dithering has already swayed me to the Volvo camp for the next lease (test driving this Thursday to be sure) but now they are letting US auto journalists like Autoblog drive the forbidden Q3?!

Audi, you are a cruel temptress.  (And I think you know that.)

Unexpected beauty

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Sometimes the world we inhabit can be stunningly beautiful when least expected.  Case in point:  after winging through four hours of Maryland and Pennsylvania driving tonight, I stopped in at the carwash off of Benner Pike as it does a better job with bug splatters than the one on Atherton.  Through some magic of alignment and happenstance of time of day, I managed to pull into the no-touch wash bay just as the sun was setting with the frosted door as a frame.  The result was sublime.

The Singularity will be tweeted

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The power of elites, based on money and nominal authority, will be complemented and balanced by people representing new forms of power and influence. Individuals and groups will self-organize into power blocs of an unexpected nature, and wield influence.

Wired put up a great guest column by Craig Newmark that’s got my brain all twitchy.  I write about it now having not fully digested it, so this post is both an encouragement for others to go read what Newmark has to say – and a reminder for me to re-read it thoroughly.  However, it plays out fast and likens Ben Franklin to DARPA and caffeine consumption to social networking with quite a bit in between.  Could we have already stumbled into the dreams of Ray Kurzweil?

MC 101 Wrap Up: New Kensington

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Today was the fifth and final of my MC 101 sessions for the Summer and I’d say the programming went out with a bang.  New Kensington had the largest turn out of all the campuses I have been to with 17 people in attendance.  Of those, about 65% were faculty, many of whom had not worked with the Media Commons in the past.

Deborah Sillman graciously offered presentation support to me throughout the overview and afternoon sessions, sharing information specific to NK’s installation and community and providing examples and supporting information to really enhance the message of creating more engaging projects via our resources.

Though a full house, 031 ITC proved to be a great room for the event, making possible a fair amount of conversation during lunch with its U-shaped configuration.  The flat panel TV with HDMI port that was brought in ahead of time worked out really well for the experimental afternoon session, too.

About that:  Deborah arranged for a voluntary afternoon workshop on using our Mobile Media Pilot technology to create short videos.  I used the iPad 2 as a teaching tool connected to a display for the first time today, which was a great way to show mobile iMovie – and come to the realization that there are enough differences in interface that also showing the iPod touch on a document stand might be a good augmentative strategy for later training.  The participants really enjoyed getting out into the field with the iPod touch and produced good results in just a short time (around 45 minutes total).

Update: Evaluation

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Participants at New Kensington were asked to rate the Overview session that started out the day.  Responses were entirely positive, with 5 choosing Excellent and 1 choosing Good.

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They were then asked to rank the entire day as Relevant and Interesting to them professionally.  4 Strongly Agree that MC 101 had relevance to their work and 5 Strongly Agree that the materials covered interest them.  

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Finally, participants were asked to rank the particulars of the day. Organization and Pacing scored highest marks with 5 and 4 Excellent responses, respectively.  Communications and Refreshments received a 3/3 Excellent/Good split of responses, with the latter’s lower numbers probably resulting from a morning coffee mix up.  The venue received 2 Okay marks, perhaps due to the full house we had which made 031 ITC a bit tight.  

All respondents would attend this event again or recommend it to a colleague.  The anecdotal responses also praised the way the event made MC resources approachable, as exemplified by this comment:

Absolutely an excellent workshop! The facilitator/presenter Nick was conversational and presented technical information in a very easy to comprehend way. The links and information were all very useful, and a lot of good questions from the attendees. Very impressive.

MC 101 Wrap Up: Greater Allegheny

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I’m now in the homestretch of my MC 101 sessions, rounding out my last week in Pittsburgh with my fourth session at Greater Allegheny.  I arrived at campus early, but still found that the Traina presentation space was already being set up by Gil Loshelder (AV) and Housing & Food Services (catering).  The space was excellent for the kind of event that I’ve been putting on and I think that is going to reflect in the evaluation data.

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Ten people attended the overview and the Chancellor, Curtiss Porter stopped in over the lunch hour, bringing the total up to eleven.  Two faculty clients who we have worked with in past semesters were present and the rest of the crowd was staff from across many areas of the campus.  All participants were very interested in discussing the potential of the Media Commons for their departmental projects and the faculty were very curious about the Mobile Media Pilot as a means to shake up their courses for the Fall.

I followed up lunch (which was excellent) with a tour and a bit of hands on time for a few staff members who hadn’t yet seen the MC space.  All three left with a good idea of ways they could take advantage of the editing space for media projects they had been considering for a few months.  

One unexpected and exciting item to come out of today’s session was an offer to have the Media Commons featured as a one page spread in the upcoming GA Alumni magazine.   Really looking forward to working on that when I get back to the office.

Update: Evaluation

Only three of ten participants have submitted feedback, but I wanted to share the data so far and will come back around to update everything if more submission are received.

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Two thirds of respondents thought that the Overview of the Media Commons and our resources was Excellent while one third thought it was Good.

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All those participants who responded Strongly Agree that the MC 101 event was Interesting to them and two of three Strongly Agree that it was professionally relevant.

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All logistical aspects of the event were ranked positively by the three respondents.  Organization, Pacing and Venue received the highest praise while Communications and Refreshments were each marked as Good.

Everyone polled would attend the event again or recommend it to a coworker.  The only anecdotal feedback concerned a more hands-on session being included with MC 101, presumably in the afternoon (which had not gathered enough group interest to merit booking one at this particular campus visit).