Greetings!
Six months of silence on this blog has some people thinking the effort has been abandoned (and still others thinking that a certain General's secret hit squad had taken out another opponent). But, that is not the case. CAPTek, as a place for public discourse on the use of technology in the Civil Air Patrol was just taking a long, deep breath.
Why you ask? After the introductory post in December 2006, the intention was to release a new blog post at least every other week after the first of the year. But, then January turned out to be a surprisingly busy CAP month. In the course of dedicating (waaaay too much) time to the organization, there were several interactions with NHQ which lead to a blow up.
It was the same old stuff that always gets to all of us. Stuff like training in Mission Base Staff on WMIRS sortie tracking the Friday night before the big Saturday SAREX operations, and then the next day having a new (and broken) interface being released with no prior or post notice to members regarding the changes (Yes, effective change management will be a later blog post). Or, spending three hours trying to get OpsQuals validations to actually work. You know, the same old complaints.
Well, I realized that over the course of a few weeks I had moved from a very good "we can make positive change" attitude, to a very bad "let's get them all fired" attitude. The final nail in my bad attitude coffin was the umpteenth email to an address listed on www.cap.gov's "Contact Us" page which bounced. I had spent numerous hours over the past year corresponding with national... just to get the email addresses fixed. And on January 11, after the 4th round of notification to NHQ, there were still 6 bad email addresses.
So, I wrote up a long and cheeky blog post ranting about "If there honestly isn't enough technology talent at NHQ to keep email addresses updated, why should I think that there is enough to keep my name, contact information, and social security number secure?"
Luckily, before posting I realized that, although the facts were true and the frustration justified, the motives behind my actions were just plain piss poor.
And so I made a decision. For six months, I'll keep collecting notes on blog posts I want to do, but I will not post anything until I'm certain my attitude has changed. A few days after that decision, a NHQ staffer finally took action on correcting the email addresses.
The six months have elapsed and my attitude is back into the positive. I've got a huge stack of blog post ideas saved up, and they are going to come your way regularly.
First up is a series on Civil Air Patrol's web presence. The three part series will be rather high level, and avoid some of the nit-picky things that I'll save for three line posts later (like complaints about nationalcommander.com and capchannel.com).
Thanks for sticking around this long! Please feel free to share the captek.blogspot.com link with other interested CAP members, and subscribe to the news feed!
All my best,
KidMystic
04 May 2007
12 December 2006
CAPTek Blog - An Introduction
For the past decade, I have been trying to fuse two of my loves: Technology and the Civil Air Patrol. My personal successes have varied, but I have learned a lot along the way. As a technology professional, I count myself among a luck group who gets to spend much of the time playing with all things tech. As a squadron commander, I am even luckier because I work with some of the biggest-hearted individuals on the face of the planet. But, when I look at the role technology plays in our organization, it makes me down-right mad. Technology promises to make an organization more effective (do more) and efficient (with less money and time). While technology should make the lives of my comrades easier, it often does not.
In the Civil Air Patrol's every day business and in its emergency activities, the implementation of technology organization-wide has left much to be desired. While programs such as ARCHER are astonishingly successful for a little volunteer group like the CAP, other basic tools like eServices are appallingly substandard. As a nation-wide organization, our distributed nature could benefit immensely from strong, high-quality tech tools, but they do not seem to be coming fast enough.
As a whole, our organization struggles with technology. Surf the websites of a dozen random squadrons, try to email a quarter of the ___@capnhq.gov email addresses on NHQ's "Contact Us" page, or try to get eServices to work in a standards-compliant web browser - and you'll be frustrated. If our organization was half as professional as it thinks it is, I would be happy. We can do a much better job.
So, I have decided to start this blog: CAPTek. The work of MidwaySix and CivilAirman as the early CAP Bloggers has set a high bar. My goal is to discuss the technological tools we are or should be using, searching out their fine points and exposing their weaknesses. The effort is done with the belief that open discourse on the subject will lead CAP members to demand more, hold CAP leaders more accountable, and help improve our organization's ability to fulfill its missions and take care of its members.
One of my central mantras will be the call for open collaborative processes as CAP's technology utilization grows and changes. We have almost 60,000 people nation-wide who want CAP to function at its best - and many of us are technology professionals. Unfortunately, lack of skill on top leads to poor tools for us to use at the bottom. And when those tools are tightly controlled at the national level, even when us folks on the ground want to improve them, there just is not any access. By using open collaborative processes, professionals in the field can make their own contributions. I've wanted nothing more than to write a MIMS report which shows ground team members with trainee status, but there is no way for me to do that and contribute the solution back to CAP as a whole. To get our jobs done, how many of us have created our own solutions to crumby products produced by national?
The more open the process, the more often people at the bottom will develop innovative solutions those at the top could never dream of.
I want this discourse to also be open and collaborative. Please feel free to leave comments - positive and negative - on ideas which are posted. Also, I would like to call for other technology professionals to consider submitting articles to CAPTek. As a community, we can make life easier for the organization as a whole.
This blog is supported by the advertisements on the page. They don't produce much revenue, but every little bit helps. Click the links if you see something you fancy.
Thank you so much for reading this introductory post! I have a few dozen ideas for articles already, so please check back often. You can use the links in the upper right hand corner to add RSS/ATOM feeds to your homepage or feed reader to stay up-to-date.
I look forward to blogging with you very soon!
All my best,
KidMystic
In the Civil Air Patrol's every day business and in its emergency activities, the implementation of technology organization-wide has left much to be desired. While programs such as ARCHER are astonishingly successful for a little volunteer group like the CAP, other basic tools like eServices are appallingly substandard. As a nation-wide organization, our distributed nature could benefit immensely from strong, high-quality tech tools, but they do not seem to be coming fast enough.
As a whole, our organization struggles with technology. Surf the websites of a dozen random squadrons, try to email a quarter of the ___@capnhq.gov email addresses on NHQ's "Contact Us" page, or try to get eServices to work in a standards-compliant web browser - and you'll be frustrated. If our organization was half as professional as it thinks it is, I would be happy. We can do a much better job.
So, I have decided to start this blog: CAPTek. The work of MidwaySix and CivilAirman as the early CAP Bloggers has set a high bar. My goal is to discuss the technological tools we are or should be using, searching out their fine points and exposing their weaknesses. The effort is done with the belief that open discourse on the subject will lead CAP members to demand more, hold CAP leaders more accountable, and help improve our organization's ability to fulfill its missions and take care of its members.
One of my central mantras will be the call for open collaborative processes as CAP's technology utilization grows and changes. We have almost 60,000 people nation-wide who want CAP to function at its best - and many of us are technology professionals. Unfortunately, lack of skill on top leads to poor tools for us to use at the bottom. And when those tools are tightly controlled at the national level, even when us folks on the ground want to improve them, there just is not any access. By using open collaborative processes, professionals in the field can make their own contributions. I've wanted nothing more than to write a MIMS report which shows ground team members with trainee status, but there is no way for me to do that and contribute the solution back to CAP as a whole. To get our jobs done, how many of us have created our own solutions to crumby products produced by national?
The more open the process, the more often people at the bottom will develop innovative solutions those at the top could never dream of.
I want this discourse to also be open and collaborative. Please feel free to leave comments - positive and negative - on ideas which are posted. Also, I would like to call for other technology professionals to consider submitting articles to CAPTek. As a community, we can make life easier for the organization as a whole.
This blog is supported by the advertisements on the page. They don't produce much revenue, but every little bit helps. Click the links if you see something you fancy.
Thank you so much for reading this introductory post! I have a few dozen ideas for articles already, so please check back often. You can use the links in the upper right hand corner to add RSS/ATOM feeds to your homepage or feed reader to stay up-to-date.
I look forward to blogging with you very soon!
All my best,
KidMystic
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