The Falcon's View

Speaking to audit class - tough!

My first stop on Thursday was with an "Auditing Information Systems" course, comprised almost entirely of accounting majors, of whom only a couple had any designs on auditing. What a tough crowd. I was completely off my pace, which didn't help. But, worse, I couldn't get them to say anything. No questions, no real interest, they just didn't see the relevance to what they hoped to do.

What I think I found most striking, besides my sheer inability to string together sentences and the unusual profusion of sweat down my back, was that these students did not seem interested in exploring the topic of IT audit, compliance, infosec, and so on. I mean, here's someone (me) directly from the trenches, and they really didn't care. Pretty sad... ah, well... I emailed the prof. and apologized for being out of it and a lousy speaker... she said that a couple students had come up to her later and told her it was interesting. I know of 1 student for sure who thought this - but he was also in the Comp Sci class the next morning...

Speaking to Comp Sci majors class - fun! mythbusting!

Friday got off to a much, much, much better start. The first class was with primarily junior and senior Comp Sci majors, taking the slot of their normal embedded class. They had several questions, were very interested in the different aspects of the biz, and so on. Dr. S. posed several questions to help keep things moving, generally along the lines of "Comp Sci Myths." One myth, for example, had to do with the concern that programming was a profession to be avoided due to outsourcing. Interestingly, though I can't recall the specific article reference, I had just read an article from an Indian exec that they were starting to outsource work back to the U.S., such as around project management, architecting solutions, etc.

This group of students was far more engaged than the previous group, and that was helpful. I also felt far more at ease given the more technical audience. Before starting the talk, I wrote as many AOL companies on the board that I could think of, ranging from Moviefone to Xdrive to Weblogs and many in between. Everyone was struck by how much AOL owns and is involved with. We're not just an ISP! :)

I talked quite a bit about Web 2.0 and the potential it represents. Part of this discussion talked about the long tail model and emerging opportunities to identify and exploit niches. For an example, I pointed out that the local ag market was centered on sugar beets. Question posed: Is it possible that there is some way to pull together data from different resources into a format that could represent a new useful service to the area? Perhaps a mash-up of some sort might suit the bill.

At one point, pulled off my top-layer long-sleeved shirt to introduce my new AOL 2.Open shirt - "just mash it up!" - as a visual prop/gag. Got the appropriate laughs. :)

Overall, this was an excellent session, helped immensely by the questions from Dr. S. Lots of myths to go around, it seems, and always helpful for an outsider to provide consistent answers without prior briefing. Comp Sci gets such a bad rap these days, and for no good reason. The simple fact is that it's a challenging Science, much less well defined like Physics or Chemistry. Nonetheless, it's a growing field, if only people take it on entrepreneurially.

Speaking to Comp Sci 101 class - also fun!

Friday afternoon, flush from an excellent conversation over lunch with M about psychology and security (see below), I then had the chance to speak with students in an intro Comp Sci class about the virtues and future of pursuing a degree in Comp Sci. This was a course of different make-up entirely versus the morning session. In fact, one of the students had been in the disastrous Thursday session. Most students were there because it was a requirement, either for their program or because they needed the general credits.

Unlike with the audit class, this group seemed much more willing to talk. I asked a lot more questions about what they hoped to get out of the course, out of their programs, etc. I asked what they had learned thus far, to which one of the accounting majors said "that I don't want to major in Comp Sci!" I pursued that a bit, until she became self-conscious and unable/unwilling to answer more. The reason given was "it's too hard!". I admitted that this was, in fact, a legitimate reason, since thinking about computers was not necessarily a normal way to approach life.

I spoke in this class about the long tail market, too, and some of the advances of Web 2.0. Perhaps the best attention grabber was discussion about the Josh Groban concert I'd attended earlier in the week. Concordia has a strong music program, so these students were interested to hear about my experience. I told them about the extreme use of plasma panels for special effects, announcing that this was an exciting technical feat! I talked about how this was clearly a complex Computer Science project that had met with success (the hardware, the integrated controllers, the software, the CGI itself, and so on).

On top of this, I then talked about some of the other technology involved, such as the vocoder (possibly spelled wrong) that Groban used to create an artificial choir using his own voice on a song. These were all great things. I pointed out that we all dealt with computers on a daily basis and, while we often just wished that things worked, it was also useful to understand how they operated and why they sometimes failed.

Dr. S. was in this class, too, and he helped keep things moving. Though, to be honest, this class seemed to move along well enough just through asking people questions, getting them discoursive, and going from there.

One of the more interesting parts of this session was when I brought up questions of privacy and disclosure. I asked how many students had Facebook accounts -- all of them raised their hands. Then I asked how many of the 3 profs in the room (the "old guys") had Facebook accounts -- pretty much none of them (I think Dr. S. may have had one). I then asked the students, "Is there information on there that you wouldn't want your mother to see?" Suddenly there were a lot of red faces. I pointed out that while Facebook was originally just targeted at college students, it had recently been opened to anyone. Had they considered the potential impact their posts might have on hirability in the future? One student, a senior art major, said that he had gone through all his online sites at purged anything he thought might be considered questionable by a prospective employer. I told him this was a good process to go through and suggested he might want to work with the career center to help make a checklist for other students. But, I also asked if he had checked Internet archive sites, too, like archives.org. "How much data is archived on the Internet forever? Do you think about this when you're posting pictures from a wild, drunk outing somewhere?" Again, folks were a bit red-faced. I tried to get them to talk about differences in what they considered "private" information, vs what older generations would consider private, though they were generally quiet on the subject. Still, an interesting discussion, if mainly from the reactions! :)

Overall, the extemporaneous approach seemed to work well, particularly when I could be geekier. The first course, I was just out of sorts, having not slept well the night before and coming in straight off the road. Can't always be on our A game, I guess!

Good to see the 'rents

The main reason for my visiting Moorhead was to see my parents. While I didn't get to spend a lot of time with them, it was truly a wonderful experience to be home, relaxed, for a couple days. Mom made dinner both nights (and learned that I don't like green peppers - sorry, mom!). Dad showed me almost all of Grandpa T's old home movies (off of 8MM and Super-8MM reals, digitized). Some interesting stuff on there. I don't ever recall Grandpa filming us, but he did on a couple rare occassions. What I found most fascinating were the films of my dad as a child, with my grandparents much younger. I only remember them as nearly retired (probably in their 60s, or darned close). Amazing how much (and how little) people change over time. Makes me wonder what I'll look like when I get old.

Great chat with M about psychology and security

Over lunch Friday, M and my dad chatted about things. M and I specifically wanted to chat about the research I'm slowly getting started on the psychology of security. He found the notion intriguing and encouraged me to pursue it through formal academics. With his positive support and endorsement, plus a conversation with R on Sunday of a similarly positive notion, I'm now starting to look into various programs in cognitive psychology to see if there might be a fit. I've also dropped M a note to get his opinion on how to best approach a program with my research idea. I don't have a background in psychology, but have always found the brain to be fascinating. I've always thought about a future in sports psychology, but this is also of equal (or greater) interest to me; namely, trying to figure out why humans don't respond well to computer risks, and how to apply that knowledge to building better apps and systems that protect users better while also doing a better job communicating/expressing risk in an easily understood and processed manner. We'll see how that goes...

Changing perspectives on driving times/distance

I remember a time when I thought driving around the Twin Cities (say, from Bloomington to Maple Grove) was a big deal. I used to think driving into Minneapolis was a pain (which it is, during rush hour, but not when traffic is light). Now, having lived in the Washington metro area for a while, I've realized that the distances aren't all that far. I mean, I drove to St. Cloud after my slightly-delayed flight Wednesday night without any problem. Sure, I was tired, but not as much as I had expected. Similarly, I drove from Eagan to Uptown to meet R for breakfast Sunday morning, then drove directly out to the airport from there, and we're talking maybe 20 minutes to get there, and then 15 or so to make it to the airport. No big deal. Funny how perspective changes over time...

Changing perspectives on my career

As mentioned above, I think I've decided to attempt a return to graduate studies, probably around Fall 2008. This will be the big change, needing to leave my current job altogether and pursue school full-time. Hopefully I'll be able to get a nice package assembled that will cover costs. In the meantime, I'm trying to squirrel away enough money to pay for some of that eventuality, such as moving expenses. And, hard to tell, we may also be expecting by that time (is part of "the plan" today).

This is an exciting point for me. It's nice to make the decision. Now I just need to work on the "where to go" part and then start trying to sell my research plan to cognitive psych programs. I think there are lots of potential applications for the research. It's just a matter of getting a couple studies completed, a dissertation drafted, and some classes attended. I think I need to take a statistics course somewhere (GMU? NoVA?), as well as maybe taking an intro to psycho course. We'll see. File under "continuing education" I guess.

Never let the mind be at rest -- or else it may never return to attention when you need it! :)