I’m working on a couple of posts about my sisters graduation, those should be coming tomorrow. FYI.

Today was the first day at my new job and it was a busy one. I got there nice and early and then after getting my office key and laptop, I met with my boss about some of the things I need to do to get started. While it was most of the things that I had thought about, it was amazing to find out all of the department and program heads that I will have to work with. The list came out to be between 7 and 10, which is going to make for a lot of meetings in the next 30 days.

There are two very interesting things about William and Mary:

1. The division of resources is quite incredible. The School of Business has its own marketing department, its own IT department, its own HR person. This on one hand makes for a very efficient new hiring, but integration across campus is difficult. This was evidenced today in a meeting with IT. The Marketing and Communications of the School of Business (MarComm) has its own intranet, but it is neither elegant nor fully functional. This meeting with IT was to discuss using the College IT’s portal, provided by Luminus , to create an “intranet” for admitted MBA students. This is an excellent idea, but the implementation is going to be very difficult. School of Business has its own login, separate from the rest of the College, and the School of Business has its own calendaring software that isn’t immediately able to integrate with the rest of the College.
2. MarComm is responsible for only marketing to potential students. This is good because it allows for my department to focus on getting quality students into the programs that are provided, but it does feel like there are silos being created all the time. “That isn’t our responsibility,” is something that I think I’m going to hear a lot, which at time will be very frustrating, but at other times, could be excellent. This might cause me a little concern because while I know I have been hired to manage the website, I know that the website extends beyond the pure marketing part.

I am back on a PC, which is okay… only okay. I am working to get it all setup and get my personal productivity system setup. I am looking at David Allen’s GTD Outlook plug-in, but I don’t know if I’m ready to drop $70 yet.

I will try and blog about my sister’s graduation tomorrow, but we will see how much work I get done tonight and tomorrow.