MGDJoker - After reading your articulate single sentence I don't care what you're talking about.
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dropdead - I reread your post, very nice build out already. Cisco AP's for the externals, cabinets wired for the future. You undoubtedly work in the system and are spot on with the blade servers and thin clients. You stay abreast of technology and are a consummate geek. Give up your can of compressed air for the reverse shopvac and rejoice! voip/mumble voip.usagaming.net 1tb traffic per month. We're #1 :)
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Karl Dommershausen, no such thing as a 30 year plan in IT. With the application of Moore's law what the heck is Dr. Smiley extrapolating over 3 decades... in IT? I'm always leery of those that can put together wonderful presentations and are engaging orators. They tend to be the best sales people in the business of self preservation.
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Listen, I don't know Dr. Smiley or his vision. Put Dr. in front of his name and he's pulling six digits correct? On top of that the district hired a consulting firm to find him? Ties to the community? Oh yes he's relocating here. Good for us. Here today and gone tomorrow like so many other consultant outcomes. I'd bet money dropdead and 100 more like him are from Southern Wisconsin and have a vested interest in the success of this area.
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I typed the above and then used that cool tool called google:
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He would be paid $124,000 a year. His benefits would cost an additional $39,677.
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Smiley has been at Waunakee less than 18 months. He previously was the information technology director for the Stoughton School District, where he had worked for 17 years.
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Smiley was a Peace Corps volunteer on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent from 1986 to 1988
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I like Dr.Bob much more however for that kind of bacon he seems to be lacking some security creds. I'm sure there is a special consideration between his education in administration, with minors in school business administration and mediation and conflict resolution,double-major bachelor's degree in accounting/management of information systems and a master's degree in special education for the hearing-impaired, both from Ball State. Maybe he can fill in vacations for another administrator? Seriously though strong candidate with LOCAL TIES! Kudos! Just lacking some security certs.

JozeMozes after reading your statement about wireless. I realized you had no idea what you're talking about.

baegucb said:

"Rewire with cabling? lol, way to waste money. Wireless unless you want to spend big bucks for people to pull cables and repair the damages. And yes, I am aware of issues like bandwidth contention.
Not my problem though, since I am in Milton school district"
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Then if you're aware of bandwidth trends you would quickly agree that multimedia demands bandwidth. You more or less counter your own argument.
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vnvet, districts and government would rather hire those with professional titles and esteemed college degrees than those with a proven track record in IT/IS consulting learned old school. Listen, I don't need a $1000 oscilloscope to recognize that a rail on a power supply is dead or ripples , rather another good $50 power supply to see the problem go away. That's common sense and what is most lacking in government. This applies down the line to every precious dollar needed for our kids. Everyone in this facilities need to become a steward of that dollar, from the Janitor to the Superintendent. Don't get me wrong, there is a need for well educated IT/IS staff but that is typically at the NOC/Security level.
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dropdead, sounds like someone was intelligent enough to draft a build out of the facilities infrastructure. I ponder disaster mitigation? That is where the cloud truly shines! Communities cannot afford data centers however local government could and what better place then the seat of county government? You could have your county data center integrating all aspects of county wide IT needs and save a BOATLOAD of taxpayer dollars to boot.
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Concerning Google Docs however I quickly learned in college that open source is cool for us hipsters but academia runs on MS Office, between OpenOffice and Google Docs, even I purchased MSOffice due to every demographic of professor using a different version of it.
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Anyways dropdead, looks like you and I should grab a watts meter and demonstrate the power savings alone of centralized blade servers. Wonder if Janesville wants to hire a couple of concerned locals to keep it cheap, lol. I doubt it, look how long it took them to transition from inkjet to laser.

I wish that all of you could have been at our Committee meeting last evening at Adams School. Dr. Smiley's presentation was extremely impressive. For the first time since the dark ages, we have a comprehensive inventory of all our hardware, with software counts being next, plus which schools have a deficit in technology and why that deficit exists. He presented a 30 year plan for continuous updating, which will move forward each year to show all new ideas and what it will take to arrive where we need to be. In other words, it will be a moving snapshot.

Yes, the obsolete hardware cycle is short, but usefulness is considerably longer and that is the important piece. There are many aspects to technology and saying a few catchwords will not solve our needs, or our wants, which are considered for what may be our future direction, but not the immediate driving force for our district.

On start-up, only essential programs reside on the individual computers, depending upon the needed usage. Dr. Smiley is working on a plan to update all systems, networks, and equipment to stay within our current budget or at least with the best fit for the least expense. The past tech plan was completed by getting along with what we had and filling only the most dire needs, so a new path is being developed for the future. He has only been here for seven months and his direction has a laser focus upon our education, our budget, our future, our children’s future, who will be required to support us someday. Without the best education they may become a burden. We must stop the inward spiral of more for less, because it cannot happen.

We are fortunate to have Dr. Smiley, who is very talented and the fine staff of technicians who support him seamlessly. Our committee is made up of an ex IT manager, a current IT staff person, an extremely tech savvy business person, and an infrastructure engineer, who appreciate true development. You are always welcome at any School Board Committee meeting and all meetings are posted on our website. There are also informal listening sessions before the first board meeting each month and I welcome you, but I know most of you will not come, ask questions, or discuss these issues. That is your loss, when you are not part of the real district.

Karl Dommershausen

Finance, Buildings, and Grounds Committee Member
Janesville School Board Commissioner

Joze -Cat5E or Cat6 IS everywhere already with fiber between wiring closets. HP Kayaks and better ALL HP workstations (like z400s) running mix of XP and 7 are what they have in all the schools. Limited numbers of mac labs and mac pcs. LOTS of ipads in the elementaries. ALL monitors are flat screens. They have NICE Cisco enterprise class POE capable switches in every wiring closet and Cisco wireless APs EVERYWHERE in the District. Bandwidth is HUGE and cheap for schools. I think they have 50Mb at each elementary 100Mb at the middles, 200MB or 250Mb at each HS and up to 500Mb burstable to the downtown HQ. They already run MANY of their apps off of the internet/intranet these days so the processing power is NOT always needed at the PC anymore. They should be looking at centralized blade servers and thin clients for at least every elementary school/middle school/HS teacher PC replacement as they have the LEAST demanding usage or unique installs. Labs are where that gets tricky. Other benefits to thin clients are less power consumption at each desk and easy to manage, backup and secure, you can easily update everyone instantly (upgrades and changes are done on the server and only need to be done once for everyone to get them instantly) they need to keep these things in mind since they have such a small IT staff for 20+ buildings anyways. I hear it all the time from teachers and students that they CANNOT support the users and PCs they already have. The district uses Google Gmail and google apps and still they put full MS office on every box? There's no reason they couldn't push using Google apps or at least go to Office365 and online storage for 90% of what they do. These steps could go a LOONNG way to make these aging systems last even longer and phase in thin client tech wherever possible to keep costs down. Dr. Smiley is so far not the innovator we were promised he'd be; one trip and a video conference to China and they had tons of tech issues in doing so THAT was just SAD. All the things he's taken credit for were started by his talented staff, previous staff or HIS predecessors. There must be a concerted effort to save time and money when implementing such systems...not just replacing systems because they're old IF they still work or could be made to work. There must be a plan AND a need..beyond or at least implementing the stated technology plan. (see it here)

http://www.janesville.k12.wi.us/Portals/...

This is not how it has really worked before. They just made a blanket statement that because these PCs are xx years old, they need to go --not driven by use or system requirements of new educational software in most cases. Interesting to note that MANY of those on the committee that created our latest tech plan have been laid off, retired or moved on. For what we pay you Dr. Smiley so far I am not impressed.

Must be nice to have unlimited taxpayer funds. Why is it that every IT professional comes in to public entities and thinks that they have to redo the computer system? Happened with the last guy about 4-5 year agao and he was fired for being a crook. I been in IT for over 20 years, and when you don't have the funds, you make the old stuff work. I have found out that the best IT people are the ones who can do make the old tech work great, not bring in the bleeding edge technology.

Rewire with cabling? lol, way to waste money. Wireless unless you want to spend big bucks for people to pull cables and repair the damages. And yes, I am aware of issues like bandwidth contention.
Not my problem though, since I am in Milton school district.

One of the joys of modern technology that when you buy the newest and latest, it is outdated within six months to a year.

JozeMozes...I think you should replace Mr Smiley, sounds like you know your stuff.

I know, let's shower Apple Computers with millions of dollars for equipment that will be obsolete in a year.

Baloney, while I do not know the specific builds and whether they would benefit from ram or hard drive upgrades, they certainly would benefit from re-imaging from an install with all non-essential Windows services disabled.

This will buy the district time to wire these facilities for the future. Blade servers/virtual machines. Every room where computers will be utilized should have Cat6 or fiber, every lab or classroom should have 2xCat6 or fiber. Conduit is best.

Essentially a cost benefit analysis in the end to see if the manual labor involved will be worth the computer upgrades. There again I do not know the starting point of the original builds. Technology costs money, money that is wasted if the infrastructure isn't there to begin with, ie a corvette on a wagon trail.