I was recently at a higher education conference for academic advisors where every time the campus tech support office personnel were referenced, they were called “tech guys.”

For example: “Our tech guys are going to be configuring our database.”

I was asked to be on a technology panel on academic advising and Web 2.0 technologies. During what was probably a long-winded answer to an audience question, I decided to point out that our campuses have “tech people” or “tech folks” on staff in our IT offices. I said something about the fact that tech guys is such a sexist phrase as it makes women invisible and centralizes men as being technology experts.

On a related note, Jason Kottke has been keeping track of the gender diversity at some of the most well known and attended web conferences… WebVisions, a web conference in Portland, Oregon seems to contain a bit more gender variation than some of the conferences that Kottke references, but not by a lot. Of 38 total speakers, only 8 are women.

My brain feels like the egg in that frying pan…it’s a bit cooked. I will have had over 60 appointments this week. Faces and names have blurred together into something that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Frequent topics of discussion this week include: “fun” classes, study abroad, dual-enrollment, graduation, financial aid, class standing, course overrides, changing majors, the location of the Registrar’s Office, Spring term classes, bacc core, studying, transfer credit articulation, closed classes, waitlisting, Phase 1 and Phase 2 registration, the sauna-like temperature of my office, recitations, the OSU Luau, caffeinated beverages, social justice, the benefits of being a Mac user, the aesthetic limits of Poling Hall, course petitions, long term planning, transcripts, practicum/internship applications, and the height differential of my chair versus my guest chair.

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iStudentAffairs.com: A social networking site for Student Affairs administrators. 661 people have already signed up. The site runs off of Ning. I’m not sure if I have the life space for another website, but the discussions on iStudentAffairs.com have been interesting.

Technology panel: I’ll be on a panel for Academic Advising + Web 2.0 at the regional NACADA conference in Vancouver in March. I guess I’ll be chiming in on anything to do with accessibility, blogging, wikis, web statistics, podcasting, rss, etc. I’m walking out if someone calls Facebook an “emerging technology.”

Academic Advising Wiki: I have convinced my colleagues that an internal knowledge base a.k.a. a wiki, would be highly beneficial for our office. I demoed an installation of MediaWiki (similar to the Oregon State University wiki) and hope to get it up and running next month. For more information on higher education and wikis, check out these videos on “21 days of Wiki Adoption“:

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Oregon State University’s Office of the Registrar website contains a mélange of information for students, families, staff and faculty. Last week, while perusing the site, I noticed this link at the top of the Registrar’s homepage — “OSU Students Interned During WW II.”

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It’s a bit disconcerting to read an article on the earthquake readiness of buildings at your place of employment. Especially when your office is in one of the five buildings “identified as the most in need of seismic improvements.” I’m guessing that being in a structure of “unreinforced masonry” is probably not the safest place to be when the ground starts shaking.

I decided to purchase an abacus for my desk. Students need at least 180 credits to graduate and at least 60 of those credits need to be from upper division courses. I decided that it would be interesting to see the reaction from my students as I calmly ignored my computer screen (with their credit information) and flicked away at my new abacus.

I am ornery.