 |
Happy Endings Todd Stauffer
(tstauffer@webintosh.com)
Support by Any Other Name
Donna Ladd, the woman who broke the Yale/Intel grant story for Mac Home Journal, is also the person whom I affectionately refer to as "she who works in the other side of the house." We both have home offices in our Colorado residence from which I tend to write computer books while she pursues investigative stories -- tech-related and otherwise.
So, I've been privy to the Yale ITS materials that have come her way, including internal memos, intriguing then-and-now snapshots of Web sites and the paper trail Donna pieced together for her story and some of the follow-ups.
What got me writhing and writing, however, is something Updegrove told Donna in an interview this past Friday evening. On the phone for over two hours, they hashed out Updegrove's side of the story after Donna's article hit the Web. (Updegrove refused to be interviewed on four separate occasions while the original story was being written.)
The Back Story
In case you're curious, everything in Donna's original story is well-documented. Intel does characterize the grant as a "migration" grant and did suggest to the Yale ITS staff that they look beyond "typical commodity PC" uses and suggest ways that Intel machines can fill roles traditionally played by Macs and Unix machines. Intel has also made it clear (as has Updegrove) that the grant is about marketing and product placement, not computer science. Intel wants the computers placed strategically with decision-makers in Ivy League and highly reputable schools (no poor school donations here) who are willing and able to influence others on the campus and elsewhere.
Of course, all that's well and good -- except for the timing. Yale's proposal was due to Intel shortly after Updegrove sent a letter to incoming freshmen in which he said he couldn't guarantee Mac support beyond the year 2000. The implication, then, is that Updegrove and staff were working on both at the same time in the hazy college days of June. Did the recommendation seem like a good idea because they were preparing the Intel grant request at the same time? And how about the timing of Mac support? The Intel migration grant lasts three years -- exactly the length of Updegrove's estimate for Mac support on the Yale campus.
While freshmen who owned late-model Macs were encouraged to bring them to their first days at Yale, students considering a new purchase were strongly urged toward Windows machines. The reasoning? Students the year before had only chosen Macs 25% of the time according to Updegrove -- figures for which he has no reference available, although he is ultimately in charge of the Yale computer store.
This year, few Macs have been stocked in that store and Yale's online ordering system (along with the package deals offered in brochures mailed to freshmen) fails to include a single Mac system. That probably won't affect those Mac sales numbers Updegrove quotes next year, though, will it?
The Quote
"We have 2,000 faculty members; I can't get them all together in the concert hall," said Updegrove, referring to the impossibilitiy of consulting the university population about the migration grant Yale pursued from Intel. Instead, around 25 faculty were involved, all of whom were "pre-screened" to meet Intel's criteria.
Updegrove was able to communicate his potential lack of Mac support to all of the incoming freshmen this year. But he couldn't fire off a questionaire to department heads on the Yale campus? Hold an intranet-based survey? There's no way to reach a decent percentage of the campus leaders to ask their opinion of this migration grant from Intel and a plan to curb Mac support at Yale within three years?
Updegrove's university administor title: Director of Information Technology Services. He's in charge of tech support on Yale. What do "support" and "service" people do? Do they make blanket decisions for campuses? Do they roll over other people's wants and desires in the wake of a grant they've received as principle investigator? Do they shut out the real decisionmakers -- the professors and lecturers -- who have to use the equipment on a daily basis?
I guess they do at Yale.
The Line
Maybe that's not fair to say. After all, Yale is just attempting what a lot of campuses around the country are doing -- grab some cool, free Wintel powerhouses offered by Intel. It's not every computer on campus, and it's not going to axe all the Macs and Unix machines over the next six months. In fact, to hear Updegrove say it, Yale is essentially playing a tune on Intel's marketing machine. Yale is taking cool computers and giving up very little.
But if that's true, why does it coincide so nicely with Updegrove's own migration plan? An estimated 50% of computers in use on Yale's campus are Macs (culled from the only Yale figures available that say seniors have 75% Macs, sophomores have 25% Macs -- which Updegrove recommends averaging -- and the medical and liberal arts schools are predominantly Mac.) But, in three years' time, Yale may not be able to support Macs.
Why is Updegrove moving Yale to Intel machines? His only concrete example: There's better Oracle support on the Wintel side. Hell. Oracle may even buy Apple this month. They'll at least have a close relationship in the future. That's not reason enough.
Updegrove asked Donna if "the critics are suggesting that all 25 of the universities (which received Intel migration grants) are under an ethics cloud here." Most university ethics policies are written so that even creating the appearance of impropriety is punishable. But so far it hasn't been revealed that any of those other universities have clacked a death-knell for support of one company's products while accepting a US$2.7 million grant from its competitor.
You only get one coincidence per believable story, and Mr. Updegrove claims two. First, it's a "coincidence" that the freshmen warning letter was prepared at the same time as the Intel grant proposal. The second "coincidence" is the timing -- the Intel migration grant period runs out at almost the exact same time that Updegrove anticipates an inability of Yale's part to support Macs in June 2000.
One Last Request
All you Updegroves, you school boards and you IT leaders out there need to stop throwing around your own platform biases and techno-inflated egos and do your job -- support the people who have something real to accomplish. If they ask for pens, do you buy them pencils? If they ask for phones do you bring CB radios? Just because you understand one sort of technology doesn't make it the best tech for everyone in your organization. Let them use the computing tool they're more familiar with, find more useful or thing is most powerful.
Instead of creating an atmosphere that dictates what you think is best for everyone, create an environment where everyone is encouraged to make their own decisions. It's not up to you to decide what's best for your constituency -- we're beyond that stage in computing. It's your job to create an environment where each individual's computer choice can be fully explored and exploited, regardless of the corporate brand names you've typed into your CV.
So go service and support that.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]