A day well spent at WordCamp Philly

Posted on 10/31/2010 by William Stites

http://www.wordcampphilly.com

I go to WordCamp not because I am a programmer, but because I am a member of the WordPress community. I’m a user, I’m an advocate and someone with questions.  On October 30th I attended my third WordCamp, WordCamp Philly (@wordcampphilly / / wordcampphilly.com/#wcphilly), and I was not disappointed.

This idea of community was something that Owen Winkler (@ringmaster – http://owenw.com) did a great job at describing in his session “Be one of us: The WordPress Community”.  He spoke to all of the ways that someone can participate in the WordPress community through posting to forums, attending meet-ups and WordCamps, to more detailed ways of participating including posting screencast, writing documentation and the contribution of themes, plugin, and code.  It was a feeling that went throughout the day at WordCampPhilly.

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Posted in Blogging, Conferences, Technical | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

iTunes Phishing Receipt PSA

Posted on 10/01/2010 by William Stites

Consider this my public service announcement (PSA) for the day.

A number of people at my school have been reporting that they are receiving bogus emails in the form of iTunes receipts that would seem to be phishing for information.

How do you know if you’ve received one of these messages?

1. Look at the amounts:
Not only do these amounts not add up, they are completely inconsistent.

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Posted in Cyber Security, Technical | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Project Management… and I used to wonder.

Posted on 09/26/2010 by William Stites

For a while after I graduate college and would get together with my friends from college I would ask…

What are you doing now?

They would answer with something like the following…

I’m a project manager for an insurance company where I manage…

I had a hard time figuring out what it was they actually did.  But now, as we are trying to do more and more at our school, I find that I am coming to understand the thing that had once confused me. My role as Director of Technology has less to do with actually “doing” things; instead, I am called to manage all of the pieces involved in getting things done.  Unfortunately, the shift means I am no longer able to be as hands-on as I once was.

I recently saw a cartoon from ProjectCartoon.com that really put things into perspective for me and gave me a good understanding of what all of this meant.

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Posted in Administration & Management, EdTech, Schools | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

So it begins

Posted on 09/19/2010 by William Stites

So it begins… williamstites.net.

Now… I am not new to blogging, but this is the first site that I have with my name directly attached to it. I have been blogging at edSocialMedia for over a year now, I have the blog associated with the Irish Studies program I run, and another blog I was playing with where I was writing under a pen-name  (was a little experiment), but this is going to be where I focus a lot of my thoughts, ideas and comments.

If you are wondering what to expect here, all I have to say is this will be where I think out-loud and hope that in doing so you, my reader(s), will get something out of it.  I consider myself a professional in my field, but by no means an expert and if I come off that way at any point please put me back in line. I think to be good at what you do you need to surround yourself with people who are better than you are, being willing to ask questions and above all else listen.

So that’s it for now.  You can check out the ‘About’ section for a little more about me but there’s little there at moment (9/19/2010).

 
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