Backdoor Tech          

Your daily helping of technology

Saturday, November 17, 2001

 

This site started out as an experiment for the XMIT 6 course at the University of Maryland University Unversity College's Executive Program for a Master of Science in Information Science. Now I am converting the main page to a weblog and reorganizing the rest of the site for a more functional architecture. I've already removed some content that was only of relevance to the classes themselves while they were in progress. While I was studying, the content was dictated by the courses, assignments and projects that I and my classmates had to do. Now I want to turn it into a tool for registering my career interests.

There are plenty of websites and weblogs out there dealing with IT, web development or the Internet. Since I have a full-time job and another area of interest, Peru (see Peruvian Grafitti), I don't want to invest time and energy in repeating what others have done. But at the same time, it's going to require some exploration to find a true voice for this part of my online persona.

As with my other web presences, I have often found that just pointing towards the best references sites is a valuable exercise. In deed, therein lies its relevance for me because the links point to resources that I am going to continue using at work. Part of my job at the OAS involves venturing into new (for the OAS) technology areas and getting a handle on issues and crucial factors. I am going to be coming back to a lot of what I've learned over and over again.


Where We're Coming From

In October 2001, I was a member of a group of 17 IT professionals that took their first tentative steps together towards a graduate degree in information technology. Over this period, we learned together, we griped together and we ate stirred-fried vegetales together for lunch until fast food started looking good. Our classes took place at the Shady Grove campus of the Maryland University System.

In April 2003, we finished our course work and we graduated on May 17. But our professional journey does not end with that ceremony. This site is meant to be a landmark for the classmates who shared 18 months. I also intend to use this site as a learning area. It's part of my mental makeup to register things on the Web as part of my continuing learning process. After all, the technologies that we studied are in constant evolution and flux.

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