April 10, 2012 at 11am EDT via Google+ Hangout.

Attendees: Chris Eagle, Jim Phelps, Todd Piket, Jesse Safran.

  1. Set up Google Hangout.  It took about 15 minutes for everyone to get connected.
  2. Introductions.  All introduced themselves.  This is Jesse's first New2HE call.  He works for Green Mountain College, a small (<1000 students) college in Vermont.  He mentioned the have a very limited IT budget and are also remote, so their services are more limited.  The other people on the call are from large institutions and Jesse was able to give a different perspective to several discussions during the call.
  3. Discussion. The discussion this month was around resistance to change, and in particular, passive resistance (just waiting for the initiative causing change to go away).
    1. Chris gave an example of people nodding their heads but not really embracing change.
    2. All commented on how cultures are hard to change; that HE requires more political capital than private industry, and that just showing justification (money savings and/or productivity gain) isn't sufficient.
    3. Some techniques to engage people were discussed including: shareholding mapping, "fast or right?" (users choose right when explicitly made to choose), using examples of past successes, and patience (change usually is somewhat slower in HE). 
  4. We did not cover the question in item 4.  These will be covered at a future meeting.
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