Who Says Its Not Easy Being Green?

Ten months ago we finally moved into a brand new building here at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.  This is a building that had been in planning and construction for years.  A building that by design and in practice was to set a tone for a commitment to environmental responsibility. This commitment can be seen from the Gold LEED status of the construction project to the reduction printer waste to the banning of space heaters in offices.

And the big solar array on our roof. (more on that below…)

As for my part in all of this, I had to consider how to ensure that IT was a part of the commitment to sustainability as well.  This isn’t always easy, PCs and servers by their nature are typically power hungry and full of toxins and heavy metals that are recycled frequently.  They also add to the cost of heating and cooling of the building over all.

To meet this challenge we virtualized our entire environment and managed to drop from 35 old school physical servers to only 4 and a storage array.  As for desktops, we eliminated 99% of them and now run over 250 virtual Windows 7 desktops on 4 servers. That’s means we reduced the number of machines from nearly 300 to 8 plus attached storage. All of this equipment now lives in a hot aisle containment system monitored and powered by an APC power management system. (and as an aside, when the power went out in all of San Diego county, we didn’t skip a beat)

What’s cool about this besides the fact that its just plain cool is that we can measure our impact on the environment in energy savings and in the fact that we recycle less equipment and do so less frequently.

Back to the solar array.  I just ran some sample numbers yesterday and it would appear that if we add up all of the power consumed by all of the servers, network switches, storage, security equipment, WAPs and phones throughout the building it is essentially a wash when compared to what we generate on the roof.

Talk about being green.

San Diego Magazine / COX Tech Exec Award 2011

In May of 2011 I was honored with a much unexpected award from San Diego Magazine and COX Business.  Each year COX honors innovative technology executives and directors in the San Diego area.  In 2011 I was selected for the Exemplary Award as a result of the great work we did turning Thomas Jefferson School of Law into the most high tech law school in the country.

Attached is short story on the event.

It was a terrific honor and a wonderful event.  I look forward to going as a guest in the future!

Two Years Of Work Nearly (nearly) Complete

Two years ago I moved to San Diego to help build a new Law School.  We open next month. Below is a local news story on the new campus and the impact it will have downtown.

http://www.10news.com/video/26166906

Sarasota Opera | Web Redesign

The Sarasota Opera Web site struggled to communicate the richness of programming offered by the opera and did not represent their newly renovated theater. Because Sarasota patrons tend to be retirees who range from upper-middle class to wealthy, Sarasota recognized that the site needed to be a balance between presenting a “sexier” look and feel while retaining strong usability. By renovating the site they hoped to reach out to younger patrons while still serving their existing ones in order to continue to develop a strong audience for ticketed events.

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Microsoft ThinMan Concepts | Application Flow & User Profiles

POP worked closely with the developing markets team at Microsoft to do concepting for Microsoft discovery and user testing sessions in Asia. Microsoft’s ThinMan project is a “getting started” concept aimed at helping new computer users become comfortable using Microsoft products. The work done by POP included crafting simple personas and user experience flows in order to help Microsoft craft their local user testing.

Download ThinMan Personas & User Flow (PDF 278KB)

Lyric Opera of Chicago | Pre-Discovery & Pitch

Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the premier opera houses in the United States. This was not well reflected in their site at the time of this project. POP met in Chicago with key stakeholders to run 2 days of discovery meetings and create a project proposal. In preparation for this discovery POP worked with Lyric to collect survey data from current Lyric supporters as well as analyze site metrics. The below documents are samples of how POP communicated what was learned from these exercises.

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Seattle International Film Festival | Web Redesign

The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is the largest film festival in the United States. POP has a long history of working with SIFF, as well as other film festivals around the country. These film festivals typically run all event and venue management via a proprietary application developed by POP. SIFF’s primary goals included creating a branded experience that represented the festival’s world class status, offering a richer multi-media experience, and creating an effective market channel for the SIFF Cinema experience which runs 365 days a year.

Melbourne Theatre Company | Web Redesign

The Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) came to POP for a complete overhaul of their existing Web site. The existing site was managed via HTML editing, lacked any kind of dynamic content and failed to reflect the richness of the theater and MTC’s new building. The theater company’s primary goals included increasing online ticket sales, creating a compelling site to encourage return visits, and improving Web site management by implementing a CMS. This site launched in September 2008.

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