About Ez Info Mgmt

What Am I?

I use the label "Information Technologist" to loosely define my knowledge, skills, and abilities dealing with information systems. In general terms, I am a Knowledge Worker. Some people think I am a "Computer Guy" because I work with computers; I'm not. I really work with information, and the computer is my tool. I really don't care how it works.

Life defines us as we build our skills and acquire our values.

Work defines us: I retired from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture. I was (and still am, at heart) a conservationist.
Our children help us to grow: I am a father and step father to grown children. I am a grandfather. I was a foster parent to about 30 children.
Our love of tradition helps define our values: I am a Tennessean who moved away for a number of years as my work carried me about the country. I returned home to live on the Century Farm of my childhood, my father's childhood, and my grandfather's childhood with my parents and other relatives.
Our friends and community give us insight: I am an active member of my community where I serve on the boards of directors for the public library, the chamber of commerce, and the tourism association.
Our skills come from experience and study: I have seventeen years of real-world experience developing and building information systems on a nation-wide scale. During that time I worked with multiple USDA agencies to consolidate services and share common data. Much of that time I spent using "people skills." I am a manager.
School prepares us: I'm not old, just mature. When I was in college, they kept the computer in the same room with the rotary calculators they used for statistics classes. Hence, no computer or information technology classes until much later in my career. The analytical abilities I found in the chemistry lab or in the field doing plant growth research sustained me as I built skills for information technology.

What Have I Done?

As an Information Technologist I was often a project manager empowered to create software, databases, or special studies or reports. Sometimes I was a team member or facilitator in larger projects that crossed agency boundaries where USDA was consolidating services and operations. My projects ranged from

Software and database development, including technical writing of user manuals for complex software delivered to almost 3,000 offices where programs and conditions vary widely.
Leadership of a USDA customer service study training moderators from five USDA field agencies using guidance from four major land grant universities. The study resulted in dozens of focus group meetings across the country that cross-cut cultures, enterprises, scales of operation, and ethnic backgrounds.
Team member for organizational development and reorganization of USDA's field agencies in multiple initiatives. (It took USDA several tries to get it right.)
Leadership in creating Internet Web Farms for USDA to provide improved performance, management, and security.
Prototyping new technologies, e.g. content management systems
Special studies and reports for top agency leadership for conservation programs and planning policies

What is a Knowledge Worker?

Just being labeled as knowledge worker does not really say very much. Keep reading to see why two very different career paths were much the same.

Being a successful knowledge worker requires creating new knowledge--taking information from many sources and putting it to work in several ways.

Knowledge workers, like me, ask lots of questions because they have to understand the information--information is only accurate where it was intended to be used. Information is only useful if you can use it correctly.

Sometimes knowledge workers regurgitate what they learn in multiple forms. If you like to see graphical illustrations, you'll like what a knowledge worker does with information. It's all about making sense of the entire picture, details and all.

So how can a farm planning, soil conservationist be like a software project manager or computer systems analyst?

As a conservationist, I drew spatial maps of natural resources and engineering diagrams of earth dams and other structures designed to control the flow of water.
As a "computer guy" I drew maps showing data relationships and the flows of data in work processes.
As a conservationist, I created plans that scheduled the rotation of crops, best management practices, and labor while evaluating the effects on budgets, timeframes, government programs, and other limiting factors.
As a software project manager, I lived by detailed project plans that considered the relationships of different tasks, budgets, assigned resources, and similiar limiting factors.
In either line of work, I had to explain my work to people who had to spend the money to accomplish what I proposed.

I think it's all a lot alike.

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