Discussion on:

A day in the life of a small college CIO

As an IT pro who used to work at a college that is a similar size of Westminster, I can see that the processes and activities are very similar. Where I worked, there was only 5 of us, and the IT Director (not CIO because he doesn't want that "Chief" in his title) rolls his sleeves up seemingly as an escape (as well as the lack of personnel) from the meetings, committees, and paper work that takes up a majority of his day. It's important for the managers to stay up on current tech and what's inside, else you end up with a director similar to that seen on The IT Crowd.

Hi Scott,

I'm interested in how much of your time is spent dealing with licensing issues. I manage Microsoft's cloud computing group on LinkedIn and I plan to get their resident licensing expert (Samantha Bramwell) into the group to answer questions on this topic. Do you have any you'd like me to ask her?
BTW the group is at http://linkd.in/nAX9S4 if you're interested in joining. Quite a few members have similar jobs to yours....
Cheers,
Caroline White
(http://www.white-write.co.uk)

I have a relative in a similar post. He seems to spend a lot of time on (1) worrying over software/system purchases, (2) customization, (3) retaining the good tech workers he has at the low compensation levels the institution can afford/wants to spend, and (4) dealing with academia's turf wars/politics. Another relative is CTO at a start-up (well, a series of start-ups over time). I've almost always worked with super-computers in an academic or scientific/engineering environment. Two of us have worked in defense/aerospace, one did some consulting, one some recruiting/placement, one at a regulatory agency, one for a state legislature. The 3 of us are the designated family "computer people" so the rest seem to herd us together at family gatherings, but we do such different work that we can't even talk shop. We don't use the same operating systems, the same kinds of apps, the same programming languages or frame-works, the same terminology for data storage... It's like we're in 3 totally separate industries.

An interesting read and I think the responsibility sections represent what any IT Manager, Director or CIO would do / see / carry out with a team of 10 or less staff (as an IT Manager for a small retailer this is definetly a similar breakdown to my day).