Thinking about blogging

I really enjoy blogging whether it's for work or personal use. I've enjoyed the casual format of it as a place to store and share thoughts.

I'm trying to think about how I can blog and get paid for it and was thinking about writing a Student Housing Technology blog. So much of my work is based on technology and it's really become the trendy talk at conferences (well, that and millennials and sustainability - which really is what the techno realm is all about.)

I wonder if anyone would read that in my field?

It's been suggested to me to also write a relationship advice column kinda like SATC. I just think there's too many of them out there right now.

Getting it done

I'm sorry I've been nonexistent on here lately. I've been so consumed with work and technology at work that I have no desire to do anything more than look at Facebook when I get home.  Turns out though, it's all been worth the hard work.

When I was hired, it was shared to me that the goal of the VP was to have a completely online room selection process.  Since I have experience with the particular software that was just purchased at that time, they selected me for the position.  While my experience with the software was only as an end user, I still was more familiar with its capabilities than anyone there.

My first year there, I worked to build an online housing application, which turned out successful and made for much less paperwork.  We hit a few bumps because I didn't know what questions to ask  (who knew you could turn up the speed of the internet to allow for more people to access the same thing at the same time?) but I learned as I went, and that allowed me to be better prepared to build the room selection process.

This year my attention was focused on improving the application from a better marketing standpoint and building the actual room selection processes.  Well, a week ago was our first live in-production test of online room selection with our two living learning communities and it was very successful! The software allows picking a room to be as easy as buying concert tickets online.  If a student knows what room they want and it is still available, the process takes less than 2 minutes.  This is far better than spending an hour in a line in the U center waiting for staff to fill in pencil rosters.

The day was a success, with only one glitch that myself and the vp of the software company couldn't have anticipated.  The glitch was more of a problem with the student's personal computer than a problem with the software.  We figured out a backdoor way around the issue, and that student successfully chose a room.

Earlier that week, I set up a Housing blog as a more casual venue for students to learn more about what's going on in our department.  I've really enjoyed writing in that and sharing some behind the scenes goings-ons in my department with the students.

We've got one more week of room selection coming up and I hope it goes as well as last Friday's.  It was just such a memorable moment in my career when the VP called me to personally congratulate me on my "technological achievements of this past week."  It's nice when you can really live up to people's potential.