A little while back I wrote about finding a CIO blog. A rare find. Well I found another one today. It is by Peter Siegel, CIO at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. Because of the concentration of youths in the college and university environments (and the core mass demographics of bloggers), I find Peter's recount of a point made at the Seminars in Academic Computing conference to be very refreshing. Peter recounts:

A major "buzz" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz,
definition #3) at the conference was that we all need to put ourselves
in the shoes of the "Internet generation," at least if we are going to
do our jobs well. The sense was that since many of us learned about
technology in a different (read: earlier) age, it was very hard for us
to understand just how our students or even our newer faculty think
about and assimilate new technology. Our students multitask, they are
comfortable with a new tool a day, and create strong friendships and
alliances in cyberspace in ways that scare us or, worse, we don't even
recognize. When I watch my own kids (now 18 and 22), I think it is true
they are very comfortable with new technology (though I can program
better than either of them) and how they communicate with their friends
still strikes me as awesome (but strange). So is what they say about
us, the pre-Internet Generation, true?

Good case for not letting the generation gap (and customer/constituent gap) get too large. I am personally hoping to see more blogging by administrators and alumni in the college and university environments.

Steve Shu