Getting Underway

We have each been asked to volunteer our time and talents to create and recommend a Technology Plan for NCHS. We have been asked to give a three year commitment to this task and to phase the development of the program over a three year period.

The chair of the committee is Trudy Van Kirk, Director of Business Development at Rodata, Inc. I am assuming Frank Orga, President of NCHS is a co-chair. We had an organizational meeting at North on April 23rd. Present were Joe Brosky, Winfield Craig, Paul Lamping, Jim Lenkner, Jason Lucia, George Appel and Greg Schmidt - co-chair by phone. Other members were unable to attend. i.e.; Lou Lazzarro, Laura McGinnis, Walt Quinn, Will Ryan and Nick Valadja. After introductions we explored planning strategies. It was strongly agreed that we have been presented with an opportunity to develop and recommend a world class plan to NCHS.

I suggested that we should utilize 21st century technology tools by using a wiki to develop the plan primarily because of it's collaborative quality and a blog to journal the process. The committee approved; thus this blog and our planning wiki. The wiki is a "Wetpaint" wiki and requires your subscribing to visit it. Much of our work can be done online.

I have looked at over 90 technology plans on the web and found a Guide that seems to fit the bill for our use. Register for the site and download the pdf. I have developed the wiki to this point using that guide. The wiki serves as a kind of "learning platform" for our committee's work; aptly described by Trudy as 'reverse engineering".

My plan is to use blog posts to think out loud, put forth ideas and document each major step in the process. I humbly ask committee members to frequently visit this blog, particularly between meetings, comment on posts, make suggestions, criticize and provide guidance for me so that I may reflect the will of the committee in my service to the committee.

Trudy suggested that we meet the 4th Wednesday of each month at 5 PM at North. Our next meeting then would be May 28th.

Fortes in Fide!