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Articles:

  • How Digium Phone Licensing Works

    How is this product licensed? Each Digium system requires an Active Software license during first purchase/setup and licensing (subscription) for each mailbox/endpoint you wish to set up. In our case since we purchased the software independently of the appliance our cost has been   Software + T1/PRI Card+Analog Gateways + 600 Titanium Subscriptions + 600…

  • Three MOOCs Provide Opportunities for Learning About Gamification…Right Now

    If you want to learn about gamification the timing may be right for you.  There are two upcoming MOOCs on Gamification with January 27th and March 17 start dates and a third one with  a learn at your own pace schedule.   University of Pennsylvania’s  Kevin Werbach’s Gamification course on Coursera begins Monday  January 27th…

  • Why did I become a fan of Open Source

    It was 8 or 9 years ago as the CTO of a small rural institution that I began implementing open source solutions for the enterprise. I had always been frustrated that many innovative technologies were out of the financial reach of my institution but the demands for services were continually increasing.I do call this the…

  • Digium Switchvox Phone System Deployment at Casper College

    Introduction Definition:   VoIP is short for Voice over Internet Protocol, which a category of hardware and software enabling people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls rather than by traditional circuit transmissions of the public switched telephone network PSTN. VoIP deployments for institutions the size of Casper College (700ish phones) have…

  • The High Cost of the High Cost of Higher Education

    Future discussion of President Obama’s proposal for free community college will be ugly whether you support the idea or not.  It’s how our political system seems to operate.  Personally, I will be watching as I don’t yet know enough to say whether or not I support any specific proposal although I do generally agree with…

  • Why Higher Ed must change and how IT can help

    There are truly monster sized challenges in effectively delivering quality technology services in higher education. The size of the monsters small schools are facing are smaller than the larger institutions, but proportionally the threat is the same.  We  really need each other and we need options…and we need to understand Dragons.  Why do we need…

  • The Generalists Path to Learning about BI & Analytics in Higher Education

    Sargent Shultz from the 1960’s era show, Hogans Heros often declared, I know know nothing,  I see nothing, I am not here   That is my disclaimer…. I know nothing about BI and analytics. The problem is there is this huge clammer for someone who does know something about BI and Analytics.   I often hear  the…

  • The Knowledge Free Call Center’s Impact on Open Source in Higher Ed

    In 2007 I began doing a talk called Unplugging from the Commercial Software Grid: Why Free is Better Even if you Have a Budget .  The original talk focused on my experience from moving from the open source LMS Moodle from WebCT but has had several forks over the years. I think this presentation is…

  • Knowledge Free Support Centers vs. Commercially Supported Open Source

    I have heard more than once in the past year how IT is realizing how important people are to the success of projects.   We are hearing this from peers, consultants and vendors.  What a great trend.  However,  I am also in the business of writing POs for licensing and services to many of these same…

  • Bart Eat Your Carrots: “A Tale of Two Remotes” or “Vendors Pay Attention to Your Users”

    A couple of weeks ago I attended the  Mid Sized Enterprise Summit and had the opportunity to dialogue with Simon Dudley of Lifesize.  Simon is certainly a knowledgable video guy and very engaging speaker.  We had a great discussion about video conferencing as that was a major part of my professional career for 15 years.…

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