CAUSE98 - THE NETWORKED ACADEMY: THE FINALE

Citation

Boone, M.D. (1999), "CAUSE98 - THE NETWORKED ACADEMY: THE FINALE", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 16 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.1999.23916dac.001

CAUSE98 - THE NETWORKED ACADEMY: THE FINALE

On 11 December 1998 the end of an era, 27 years of CAUSE annual conferences, took place at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, Washington. During those many years, the CAUSE association has become known for hosting the premier conference dealing with managing and using information resources in higher education.

What was CAUSE?

CAUSE was incorporated as the "College and University Systems Exchange" in February 1971 in Illinois with 25 charter members. The first CAUSE conference, attended by 118, was held in December 1972 in St Louis. In 1977, the name of the organization was officially changed to CAUSE, "The Professional Association for Development, Use and Management of Information Systems in Higher Education." When I first became a regular conference attendee, CAUSE83 had 500 attendees; however, it was rare to see a librarian at the annual fete. The only other librarian I recognized during the conference was Sharon Rogers of George Washington University. Of course, librarians were not the only information professionals who were in short supply. Prior to 1985, the scope of membership interests did not include the management of academic computing; it was very much an administrative data center crowd.

Even though the members' interests began to broaden to include academic computing and library information systems, the small conference approach permitted all attendees to fit into one hotel or resort complex, most always in a December warm spot. By 1988, conference attendance passed the 1,000 mark. CAUSE91, its twentieth-anniversary conference, was greatly influenced by the emergence of the Internet and the formation of a consortium consisting of CAUSE, EDUCOM, and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), known as the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). CNI's mission is to advance scholarship and intellectual productivity through the development of a rich array of networked information resources. By the mid-nineties, CAUSE annual conference attendance passed the 2,000 mark, on its way to 1998's record attendance of 3,600.

What was CAUSE 98 ­ The Networked Academy?

Passing the Leadership Torch

The final CAUSE conference began on 8 December, and on the next day the record-setting 3,600 attendees from 50 states and 25 countries came together for the final opening session, which was to feature the passing of the leadership torch from Jane Ryland, president of CAUSE from 1986 to 1998, to Brian Hawkins, the newly appointed president of EDUCAUSE. Ryland had been a very hardworking and popular leader. She was instrumental in shaping the association's emphasis on professional development and its commitment to making appropriate resources available to all who could benefit from them. To honor her leadership in these and many other areas which have helped define the heritage of the new organization, the new board took a year-old EDUCAUSE Fellowship Program for the twenty-first century and renamed it the Jane N. Ryland Fellowship Program. This program is designed to provide access to needed professional development opportunities for technology personnel at less-advantaged institutions.

Steve Jobs Conducts Fireside Chat

Following Hawkins' opening remarks, he introduced the featured speaker, Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder and Interim CEO. Jobs is also Chair and CEO of Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning computer animation studios which he co-founded in 1986. Pixar's first feature film, Toy Story, was released by Walt Disney Pictures in November 1995 and became the highest domestic grossing film released that year and the third highest grossing animated film of all time. Before Pixar, Jobs co-founded Apple Computer, where he co-designed the Apple II computer, led the development and marketing of the Macintosh computer, and oversaw the growth of Apple into a two billion dollar company. Also he co-founded NeXT Software, which was recently acquired by Apple.

Hawkins was not quite sure about what Jobs was going to do. Neither was Jobs. He came out in his jeans with a high stool in hand and proceeded to engage the audience in a "fireside chat" that focused on their questions.

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  On compensating copyright owners with allowing fair use: "Intellectual property is owned by people and they should be compensated. Once a vehicle is in place to compensate these people, it will drain the hostility out of these confrontations."

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  On management: "I was told if you manage your top line ­ the quality of your people, the quality of your partners, and the quality of your strategy ­ the bottom line will follow. I believe that."

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  On using technology as a means to solve illiteracy: "This problem does not have a technical answer; it has a human answer. Computers cannot solve fundamental problems."

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  On the future of technological convergence: "People go to TV to turn their brains off; they go to their computers to turn their brains on. Why converge?"

Molly Broad on Technology-Mediated Learning

The next day Molly Corbett Broad, president of the University of North Carolina and chief executive officer of all 16 of North Carolina's public institutions that grant baccalaureate degrees, gave the second of three keynote presentations. Prior to her presidency in North Carolina, she served as executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer of the California State University system. Her multimedia presentation, "The Shape of Higher Education in the Network Age," focused upon her perspective on how campus networks will lead to network-based and network-driven institutions. Broad cited three factors driving the rising demand for technology-mediated learning:

1. 1.

   The dramatic rise in traditional enrollment in higher education ­ By 2007, we will experience the highest level in high school graduates since the early 1970s. Broad warns that campus space will not be available to meet this demand.

2. 2.

   The growing need for higher education in the workforce ­ Companies are expected to spend $60 billion on training employees. Information technology provides the flexibility students need to tailor their education needs.

3. 3.

   The growing demand and competition in higher education ­ "Teenagers are the most experienced in functioning in an IT-enabled world," Broad commented. "We must be prepared to teach them with more than blackboard and chalk." They will expect that technology mediated services are available.

Broad concluded by saying that information technology serves a wide array of learning styles that traditionally have been served in the classrooms. IT enables students to learn better and have higher interaction with faculty. She emphasized the power of IT in improving students' attitudes toward learning.

Webcasts of Jobs' and Broad's presentations are available at http://www.educause.edu/conference/c98/webcast98.html.

Charles Garfield , Final Keynoter, Talks about Peak Performers

The final CAUSE general session speaker was Charles Garfield, author of Peak Performers and Second to None. He is a leading authority on achievement, serves as a strategy advisor to America's preeminent business leaders, and serves as clinical professor at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco.

Garfield speaks from experience. As a mathematician and computer analyst, he led the team of engineers, scientists, and support staff on the Apollo XI project, which landed the first two astronauts on the moon. He began his keynote address, "Peak Performance 2000: Competing for the Present Through Exemplary Service, Teamwork, and Technology," by describing the elements any organization must incorporate to maintain a position at the cutting edge as downsizing, reengineering, mergers, and acquisitions pose real challenges to executives, managers, and employees. He believes that technology represents a vital source of competitive advantage in such an environment, but that it can only enable, not create. People create, says Garfield, and their ability to do so can be suffocated by over-reliance on technology for solutions. He emphasized this point with an admonition, "Peak performance is not easy. All high-achieving organizations have practised hard work."

Characteristics of many high performance team members:

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  frequently don't get publicity;

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  have made internal decision to excel; and

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  have a good track record of previous performance.

Often you find high performing teams in an environment with poor pay, poor working conditions. Why?

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  value-based work;

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  supportive work relationships;

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  strong mission; and

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  understandable, important challenges.

Garfield went on to explain that successful teams all have a common focus on "discretionary effort." The members are willing to go far beyond expectations. He posited five major organizational challenges that we all face:

1. 1.

   How do we put "high performance assessment" into the hiring process?

2. 2.

   What are the characteristics of high performers that are predictive?

3. 3.

   How do we give high performers autonomous projects?

4. 4.

   What steps can we put into place, which allow management to act as consultants and coaches, not cops?

5. 5.

   How do we effectively communicate mission, goals and values to staff?

Many of Garfield's points seem to repeat what we already know intuitively; however, they are different enough to strike a positive chord when we hear them again. For example, he says that high performers are usually people who make it happen ­ they are the "tigers." People who are helpless and reactive are the "elephants." And the people who wonder why it happened are the "hippos." He goes on to say that we must work at getting the "hippos" back into the game. This can be done by:

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  listening to their stories to find out why they are "hippos;"

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  developing a six-month improvement program with three-month evaluation periods; and

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  providing them with mentors.

For an organization to be highly successful, Garfield has concluded that it must contain high performance teams of individuals who are fully aware of an agreed-upon mission, a set of attainable goals, optimal feedback systems, sufficient resources and a system of appropriate rewards.

Hot Topics for 1999

In addition to the three keynote speakers, a Current Issues Committee session, "Hot Topics for the Coming Year," was held. The discussion was based on the work of the committee members who have identified the following hot topics for 1999:

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  Network Issues ­ providing adequate bandwidth and resources for video for instruction; integrating voice, video, and data services; and Internet2 issues, including library applications.

• •

  Distributed Computing Issues ­ Adequately supporting IT professionals who are distributed in departments across campus. With mission-critical applications residing in departments, providing adequate disaster planning and recovery. Who is managing what? Is outsourcing an effective way of supporting academic technology infrastructure and services? How do you maintain and sustain robust production application in an era of diverse hardware, software, and network components? Unbridled demand for user/client support. Reducing help desk costs and other help desk management issues.

• •

  Authentication and Access Management for Networked Information ­ this issue includes remote access to services and databases.

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  Distance Education ­ distance learning for the residential campus; and providing adequate support to faculty and students.

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  Intellectual Property Issues ­ how universities handle Web-based courseware.

• •

  Addressing the Business Continuity plan for Y2K.

These "hot topics" are food for thought during 1999 and will be discussed over and over again under the new organizational mantle, EDUCAUSE.

What was EDUCOM?

Even though CAUSE and EDUCOM officially merged in 1998, serious deliberations about a possible merger had begun ten years before. EDUCOM was founded in 1964 by a group of medical school deans and vice presidents from Duke, Harvard, SUNY, and the universities of California, Illinois, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Virginia who met in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They wanted it to be an organization dedicated to the idea that digital computers offered an incredible opportunity for sharing among institutions of higher education. The first EDUCOM conference was held in 1966 at Duke with 150 in attendance. Each October thereafter until October 1998 the annual EDUCOM conference, thought of by many as the academic computing conference, was sponsored by a member institution. The last EDUCOM conference, hosted by the University of Central Florida and held at the Orlando Convention Center, saw thousands of higher-education "knowledge workers" gather for their last party.

What is EDUCAUSE?

Now that EDUCOM and CAUSE are no longer separate entities, what is EDUCAUSE and what can we expect from the new October-based single conference (see Appendix)? The new Web page states, "Recognizing a remarkable convergence of mission and goals, the members of CAUSE and EDUCOM voted to create a new consolidated association to galvanize thought and action at the intersection of higher education and information technology." Further, "EDUCAUSE will focus on the management and use of computational, network, and information resources in support of higher education's missions of scholarship, instruction, service, and administration." For more information about this important association you may visit http://www.educause.edu.

Who Is Brian Hawkins?

The newly appointed first president of EDUCAUSE is Brian L. Hawkins. He served previously as Senior Vice President for Academic Planning and Administrative Affairs at Brown University. He has been a member of the boards of EDUCOM, CAUSE, and the Coalition for Networked Information, and a participant in more than 60 panels advising colleges and universities. Hawkins is very well known and liked in a variety of academic circles. He is the right person for this new role of bringing two highly regarded associations together to form a single entity without losing the good points of each.

What, When and Where Is EDUCAUSE'99?

Of course, we have lost our two separate conferences. For some, this is good news ­ back-to-back trips to far-off places made for tough time and fiscal decisions; however, the bad news for some is ­ each conference had its own particular style, emphasis, and flavor. No matter what, there will only be one national conference for EDUCAUSE. The inaugural meeting, EDUCAUSE'99 ­ Celebrating New Beginnings, will be a forum to shape and define our agenda for the twenty-first century. The promo for this first meeting reads:

"We are entering a new century where technology and networking will be increasingly integral components of higher education. The exponential rate of change in the technology provides opportunities and challenges. We have a new association focused on enabling information technology to shape the nature of teaching, learning, scholarship, research, and the institutional management... The conference will bring together resource professionals to participate in a diverse, comprehensive, carefully focused program with many opportunities for interactive and one-on-one communication."

It will be held from 26-29 October 1999 in Long Beach, California. The three keynote speakers are Colin Powell, Rita Colwell, and Barry Munitz. For more information go to http://www.educause.edu/conference/e99. CAUSE and my reporting on the annual conference in Library Hi Tech News, for almost a decade, has ended with this review; however, I can assure you that I expect to be in Long Beach to see how two very successful conferences have become one. I may even write about it ­ who knows?

Boone is Dean, Learning Resources and Technologies, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti. Morell.Boone@emich.edu