New Job at Ford Motor Company

I am pleased to announce that Jinny and I are relocating to Michigan in a few days. Then I will begin work at the Ford Motor Company in a leadership rotational program for IT professionals.

If this is the first you have heard about the Potters and Michigan, allow me to fill you in on my life of the last 2 years. In 2008 I started in the full-time MBA program at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. Since then, I have done some international travel, worked in the college’s IT office and enjoyed some tailgating. I was lucky enough to spend last summer in an internship at Ford's world headquarters. My experience was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am thrilled that it has led to a full time position.

During my time in school, Jinny devoted herself to reviving the UGA web developers group (read the write-up), speaking at international conferences such as SXSW, promoting the first graduate level adoption of the WaSP InterAct Curriculum and generally elevating the college’s web presence to unprecedented heights. Did I mention she will be looking for work?

So that's our story. This move will be a major life change for us, but we are excited to see what new adventures the Midwest holds.

InfoPath Form Security Levels

Have you ever emailed an InfoPath template to a recipient who says there is a problem opening the form? Perhaps the recipient got the error "This form cannot be opened because it requires the domain permission level..." If this has happened to you and you don't understand the error message, then you probably need to do some reading about InfoPath security levels.

Here is a work around to this particular error.

Download the file to your hard drive

Right-click on it and select "Design"

You will get a warning pop-up in InfoPath, but click OK to open in design mode

Save a new copy of the file from InfoPath to your hard drive

You can now edit the new file without error messages. But do yourself and the world a favor and read up on security levels in InfoPath at Office Online Help.

Oklahoma Business Environment

I recently took a trip west to visit with my aunt near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Knowing I had an interest in business, she was able to pull a few strings and set up a wonderful set of activities. Here are some of the highlights.

My first stop included a visit with the Marshall Brewing Company. Based in Tulsa, this operation aims to "bring the art, quality, and enjoyment of craft brewing to Oklahoma." And boy do they; in wonderful 22 ounce bottles. I had the opportunity to meet the brewmaster Eric Marshall who was nice enough to interrupt his lunch to talk about his experience in beer making. Prior to founding the company, Eric traveled to Munich to study and apprentice. He then returned to his hometown to build Tulsa’s first production craft microbrewery.

MBC's director of sales and marketing, Wes Alexander, gave us a tour of the bottling operation. I was in luck because the bottle line was active that day. I suppose there is not a lot of observable activity during beer fermentation. But the bottling line was a different story. One employee would place labels on the bottles which would then be sent to another who filled and capped them. Next the bottles received MBC's signature hand-dipped wax over the cap. This step looked labor intensive, but the effort pays off by giving MBC's bottles a unique appearance and strong shelf appeal. Finally, the bottles are placed in a packaging and prepared for shipment.

After my visit to the MBC, a supervisor from the global energy company BP gave me a tour of the world's largest oil storage facility, the tank farms of Cushing, Oklahoma. Imagine a large empty plot of land. Now add miles of crude oil tanks some of which wider than football fields with well over million gallon capacities. The tanks tie into an elaborate pipeline system that serves our nation and beyond. This facility provides storage for an immense volume of crude oil during the journey between ocean tankers and refineries in the US and Canada. The work can be dangerous as well since some of the crude oil contains toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. To protect workers, the farms are armed with sensors to monitor vital metrics. If something should go wrong, the workers would by notified to evacuate. Sounds like working at a tank farm could be a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Finally, my business tours concluded with a visit to the Tidal School Vineyard. My aunt works at the vineyard so I got a behind the scenes look at their operations. I was impressed to learn that the company has different revenue streams beyond its wine sales. The business hosts weddings and events on the grounds and also sells complementary products from other vendors in its gift shop.

In all, I had a wonderful trip. It was interesting to learn how business works out west. I cannot wait to go back.

Terry New Orleans Relief Effort

I am excited to be heading to New Orleans next week to help with Terry College's annual volunteer build. For the last 3 years, our school has sent a team of MBA volunteers to help individuals and families affected by Hurricane Katrina. Although it has been four years since the storm hammered the Gulf Coast, there is still significant need for assistance from those attempting to rebuild their lives.

Our 'krewe' will be working with Habitat for Humanity to reconstruct houses damaged in the storm. My classmates who went last year tell me that I better have some old clothes and be ready to paint. Some other classmates were placed on a demolition team and turned loose with sledgehammers. Knowing these characters, that's a scary thought. I figure either way, it can't be too bad since some of the people who went last year are going back for more.

After a day of building, the teams usually head out in the evenings to take in the sights. That sounds like a well deserved break. I've already started my list: Mother's Restaurant, Cafe Du Monde and Jackson Square; but I need more ideas. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Candemonium is Back

Each fall the Terry MBA program holds a lively competition between our classes known as Candemonium. The "1st Year", "2nd Year" and "11 Month" classes face off in a mad can sculpture competition to raise donations for the North Georgia Food Bank.

Each class selects a team prior to the event to perform planning and design work. After about a week of scheming and can collecting, the teams commence in a no-holds-barred construction effort. Teams are encouraged to go big - the more elaborate, the better.

This year's event was a big success and lots of fun. In all, we collected 2,513 cans which is a total of 15,971 ounces of food - an amazing feat. My class, the "2nd Year" class, won the sculpture contest this year with our mammoth Etch A Sketch. We also took the prize last year with a Rubik's Cube built for very big hands. It seems our design team has an affinity for oversized toys.

This year the "11 Month" class donated the most cans. They also put forth a live model of the King of Vienna Sausage to sit on their royal design (see photo above). I'm so glad my classmate Jon found a second use for his Halloween toga. And in stroke of design irony, the "1st Year" class gave the world a 2-D sculpture of Tuna made from Tuna. Great job classmates.

Information Security at UGA

Did you know that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month? What do you mean I'm a nerd? Regardless, it is that time of the year when those of us in technology should be reminding our friends, family and coworkers of the importance of IT security diligence.

The IT folks here at the University of Georgia are going all out with a Fall Computer Health and Security Fair to raise awareness. The event is held in the MLC, October 20. Students can take in their ailing laptops for some serious clean-ups or overhauls. They will also be doling out knowledge regarding the behavioral changes people can make to mitigate their exposure to risk. Perhaps they should set up a Linux install booth. :)

If you can't make it to the event, you can also go the self-study route at the National Cyber Security Alliance. UGA's InfoSec office has made some basic information security tutorial videos available online at their security awareness website. Students can gain access to these videos as a guest. They are pretty basic, but a good start.

At the very least, please consider changing your passwords this month if its been a while and make sure you have updated anti-virus protection. And remember to use a strong password. Microsoft's Online Safety website has a good article on this. Remember that we are all in this together. Stay safe.

Molly Holzschlag at UGA's MIT Program

Tonight I attended a class from the University of Georgia's Master of Internet Technology program. The class featured a presentation from world-renowned speaker, Molly Holzschlag. She is a Web standards advocate, instructor, and author of 35 books covering web development and standards.

The presentation she gave this evening was wonderful. To say Molly knows her stuff with respect to web design would be an extreme understatement. As I understand it, she is one of a handful of major contributors to the architecture of the web as we know it and has a major influence over what it will become tomorrow.

Molly incorporated a great deal of web and technology history into the class which I found unique. She pointed out that in the quickly changing world of technology, we sometimes forget to reflect on how things came to be. She reminded the class that an understanding of the past is necessary to progress. I thought this was an interesting and wise approach.

Molly Holzschlag's visit to Terry College is part of a larger partnership between the Master of Information Technology program and the Web Standards Project (WaSP), an international coalition promoting web standards. The MIT program at Terry College is the first masters-level program in the world to implement the WaSP InterAct curriculum. The project describes itself as seeking to "ease the challenges schools around the world face as they prepare their students for careers on the Web." It is exciting to see web standards making inroads into academia and especially at our school. Go Dawgs and all that.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chimchim/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0