Meanwhile, back at the farm

So the obvious question coming from my previous post is “What are your new responsibilities?”  I was unable to talk specifically about what they were when I generated the previous post.  But now the announcements have all been made and I can talk openly about it.

Effective July 1 I will be working with the Software Engineering team on modeling a data warehouse for BYU-Idaho University.  In addition to the data modeling, I will also take part in building the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) processes and the reports.  The data warehouse architecture is fairly complex and involves gathering data from many different disparate systems which include an Informix database, some MS SQL Server databases, and possibly even an IBM iSeries.

This will be a fun challenge for me and I look forward to learning these systems and innovating the data warehouse.  This will be a giant leap for me in many regards.  First, being an Apple / Linux fan, most of my experience has been in scripting (ruby / java) and the general *nix environment.  The environment I will be working in will be the Microsoft development stack including C# on .Net, MS SQL Server, and Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).  Although I’m not terribly excited about leaving the comforts of my Apple OS X and Linux environment, I’m prepared to make the best of it.

Learning new programming languages and working in new environments is always good.  You get to see how other languages handle different problems and it makes you a better programmer in the end.  Since this is a personal goal of mine, to always improve my programming skills,  I look forward to the things I will learn.

I’m transitioning responsibilities this week and moving into a new role at BYU-Idaho. To date, I’ve been working with the Academic Technology department here on developing a strategy for the future of what they call I-Learn.  I-Learn is a conglomerate of Blackboard 8 and other learning tools like a flash media server and Adobe Connect.  Most of what I’ve posted here recently has come from activities, research, or task forces that I’ve been a part of.  This has been an exhilarating experience for the last 10 months and I’ve enjoyed it a great deal.

As I move away from I-Learn into my new role, I can’t help but think of this graphic from whatconsumesme.com that I ran across recently on twitter: