As Director of IT Communications at the University of Georgia, I have the wonderful opportunity of sharing, learning, and leading others within our organization in a variety of projects to create an information technology environment which contributes to the success of the University. The responsibilities are wide and varied: from the mundane duty of central server account management to the design and implementation of portal-based Web content, services, and e-learning environments in support of the entire University.

The More Things Change
I began working with online information delivery systems soon after joining my current employer, Enterprise Information Technology Services, on June 14, 1983. Of course, in those early days, there was no Web. But there was an IBM mainframe, where something called the Information Distribution System (IDS) was available. IDS, written by EITS, served a rather small community of UGA computer professionals. No Internet. No client/server. If you wanted computer-related documentation, you had to log onto "the mainframe in the sky" to access IDS documents.

As the requirements and expectations for e-delivery of information grew far beyond the single realm of technical documentation, I began to focus on EITS' role of becoming a delivery partner for content and service experts at the University of Georgia. We currently have a very formal partnership with Public Affairs; they manage the content and design of the main UGA Web site while we provide system administration and account management for the Web servers. With the University of Georgia Libraries and the Office of Instructional Development we have a less formal, though highly significant, partnership for Element K, an e-learning solution available to all UGA affiliates via the UGA portal (http://my.uga.edu). And the portal itself offers countless opportunities for similar partnerships.

The More They Stay the Same
Even though access methods have changed--from a command line interface on an IBM mainframe to the point-and-click Web browser--fundamental principles haven't changed. I still consider myself an information broker, just on a much grander scale than I ever imagined. It's a long way from An Introduction to JCL and about 150 other computer-related documents to hundreds of thousands of Web pages accessible to the world and a burgeoning portal providing personalized and customized access to Web services and content to all UGA affiliates.

I've Got Papers
I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Georgia in 1977 with a B.A. in English. I had planned to go to law school, but decided against it. So I stayed at UGA and received my M.A. in 1980 (also in English). My graduate thesis is titled The royalist muse : a study of the commendatory poems prefixed to William Cartwright’s Comedies, tragi-comedies, with other poems, 1651. I detailed how several popular British poets of the time were able to express their Royalist sympathies (they liked having a king) in their poetic eulogies to Cartwright (also a Royalist, in addition to being quite dead) during the Interregnum (which was going on at this time in England ... Oliver Cromwell, who didn't like kings very much, was in charge after having Charles I beheaded).

I have also presented papers at several regional and national conferences over the years, most on issues of document management and information delivery. Articles I have written for The Computer Review have been recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services on two occasions. In 1988 I received a third-place prize for the article "An Introduction to CDCNET" and in 1993 the article "Lassoing your Modem's NVRAM (and other bis-ness)" was awarded a first-place prize. I am particularly proud of my publications in The Edutech Report, "Harmonic Diversity and Campus-Centric Web Portal Design"; Educause Quarterly, "Directory Services: The Foundation for Web Portals"; and Educause Review, "The Wap Rap."

Northern Baby, Southern Man
I was born in Scranton, PA, in 1955. My family moved to Carrollton, Georgia, 4 years later. I grew up there, leaving to attend college in Athens, GA. I liked it so much that I stayed and now live in an historic district of Athens, where I am often visited by my two wonderful sons, Daniel and Steven. I enjoy running, playing pinball, restoring vintage Volkswagens, and collecting foreign tennis balls painted to resemble the heads of past and present world leaders.

Just kidding about the foreign tennis balls.