keeping the community informed

As the DaniWeb community continues to go from strength to strength, growing to more than 420,000 members as I write and with nearly 700,000 published forum posts, so the job of making sure everything runs smoothly becomes every increasingly important. Hopefully you, the community, can just enjoy the results of all that hard work that goes on behind the scenes. But this month let's take a few moments to salute the mechanics that keep the wheels of DaniWeb greased and running smoothly.

There is the team of volunteer moderators that ensure DaniWeb remains the spam free, friendly and most knowledgeable IT support community on the Web. So let's hear it for:

Ancient Dragon
blud
crunchie
digital-ether
jbennet
John A
MattEvans
peter_budo
Tekmaven
vegaseat
WaltP
wolfpack
~s.o.s~

Heading up the moderator team is the DaniWeb Super Moderator Narue

We also have a hard working team of regular Staff Writers, responsible for producing the IT news that DaniWeb serves up every day in our increasingly popular blog section. They are:

Brian.oco
EddieC
khess
Lisa Hoover
newsguy
Techwriter10

And finally, of course, the DaniWeb Administrators who take overall responsibility for ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Looking after community relations and acting as our Blog and Newsletter Editor is happygeek

While taking care of business, both in terms of the marketing and all the coding work behind the scenes, is DaniWeb founder cscgal

every month one member makes the DaniWeb hall of fame…

Please welcome our newest member of the DaniWeb hall of fame, slfisher who only joined our community four short months ago but in that time has already made an impact with her incisive and informative news blogging. By mixing up politics and technology you can be sure that her 'Public Policy Geek' blog postings will always be thought provoking. Sharon says that “people thought it was weird enough that I was both a writer and a computer geek. So then I went and started getting involved in government to pull that in, too. And, y'know, there's a heck of a lot more connections than one might think!” With writing that has appeared in PC World, Macworld and Wired, seven years as a Gartner research director and an internship for the Idaho State Legislature's Joint Finance Appropriations Committee behind her, we just knew we had to find out more about the latest recipient of our Featured Blogger badge...

Where are you from originally, and where do you live now?

“I was born in Rochester, NY, and lived in upstate New York for twenty years (going to school at RPI in Troy), then Northern California for twenty years (mostly San Francisco), and now I live in Idaho. I figure I'll live here for twenty years, which will get my daughter mostly through college, and then move some place else to retire. I'm thinking New Mexico. Weather's similar to Arizona and the food is better.”

How old are you?

“49 in December.”

What is your current occupation, and have you ever done anything unusual in the past?

“Currently I am a community development consultant, which is a fancy name for "goes to meetings for fun." A lot of what I do involves writing, politics, and/or computers, usually in some combination. I am also an online community facilitator for the Santa Fe Institute.

As far as "unusual"...I dunno. I worked at Burger King for three weeks. I've been a research director for Gartner. I was an intern with the Idaho Legislature's Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. I was a research assistant for Boise State University's Public Policy Center. I had a weekly paper route. Any of that seem unusual?”

What is your favorite computer or operating system and why?

“Windows? It's what I have, it's what I'm used to. I never found the Mac all that intuitive. But my favorite programming language was IBM 360 Assembler, so that should tell you something.”

What makes you stay here at DaniWeb?

“It gives me the opportunity to write about the intersection of politics and technology.”

Your blogs are always a great read, what drives you to write them?

“The technology community in general tends to be less involved in politics, and I'm hoping that by bringing up politics in a technological context, they'll get more involved. Plus I like pointing people to cool stuff I run into.”

What are your interests outside of IT and outside of DaniWeb?

“Uh...is there anything else? Urban design, my eight-year-old daughter, gardening, history and historic preservation, music, movies, long walks on the beach...wait, where am I posting this again?”

Name the best thing about DaniWeb, and one thing you would change if it were in your power?

“The best thing about DaniWeb is that I can blather on about things that interest me and nobody's yelled at me yet. What I would change -- I would like to be able to save stories in progress so that when my browser dies I don't lose the story.”

Any fascinating facts about yourself that you would like to share with the DaniWeb community?

"Fascinating....hmmm, no. Weird, abnormal, maybe....”

by Lisa Hoover

NASA is looking for organizations to become members of its CIO Executive Board, which serves under the Corporate Executive Board. Now that's a job I can get behind.

According to the official solicitation, "The membership includes unlimited accesses to proprietary council research for staff designated by the member CIO; a series of Annual Executive Retreats offering a unique opportunity for CIO's to interact with other Council principals; on site presentation of research of the most progressive IT departments; customized to the Council member's organizational requirements. "

The whole idea of IT at NASA just boggles my mind. I mean, how hard must it be to coordinate and maintain the infrastructure behind space travel, one of the most massive technological undertakings in the history of the planet?

NASA CIO Jonathan Q. Pettus told FedTech Magazine recently that security is a chief concern for his department. He says it's "particularly challenging because our mission is about creating knowledge and information, and sharing that with our partners -- with academia and with scientists, not only in this country but other countries. It’s a challenge to make the data available to those who need it, and yet ensure that we’re also protecting information that in many cases is a critical national asset -- important to the nation’s security and knowledge advancement."

Additionally, NASA is beginning to allow employees to telecommute or work remotely which adds yet another layer of technology -- BlackBerrys, notebook computers, and so on -- to support.

The job can't be an easy one, and Linda Cureton, CIO, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, says "a CIO needs to love her mission [and] use her knowledge of IT to its success." In fact, Cureton offers a number of useful suggestions that apply to IT departments everywhere, not just those involved in the space race.

"IT Governance establishes a process and a forum for informed decision making," says Cureton. "IT investments are made because of (a) mission alignment; (b) return on investment; and (c) ability to reduce risks. CIOs may know more about IT than someone in the mission area or the CFO, but it takes more than knowledge of IT to make the right decisions about IT on behalf of the organization."

It's easy to see how large-scale IT management principals would apply to smaller organizations, but what about the reverse? Assuming your company is a wee bit smaller than the whole space administration, what advice would you give to NASA about IT governance?