Author: Randi Honkonen

TEDxColumbus

Back in November, I had the opportunity to attend TEDxColumbus to hear some amazing speakers.

I always enjoy listening to Joe DeLoss, and I loved having the opportunity to hear about Hot Chicken Takeover. The business model for Joe’s fried chicken empire is fantastically simple, and it works! Customers get great chicken and folks with rough pasts get a new start on life. Such a win-win!

JoeD

I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about heroin addiction. I always hear people say things like “if they wanted to stop, they will, they are just lazy.” Although I never believed that, I couldn’t stop those thoughts from popping into my head. But thanks to Crystal Oertle, I have a much better understanding of the struggle addicts go through. The control of drugs or alcohol or whatever is so strong, I can’t even comprehend it, but I am much more astonished by people who beat the cycle of addiction. Crystal’s story is incredibly powerful, and I encourage you all to take the time to listen:

 

Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah!

#WorkLife

With the upcoming move to Mount Hall, OCIO and ODEE team members have been collaborating and sharing resources when possible, and it’s a beautiful thing!

I had the honor of working with the ODEE Media Services Team on a video to promote the Top Hat tool to professors. Top Hat is essentially the BYOD version of clickers. Students can download an app instead of spending (too much) money on a piece of plastic that is only good for one thing. Check out what the professors had to say about it!

The culture teams are also starting to collide! This week, we held the first combined Above and Beyond Awards reception with OCIO and ODEE nominees and winners. The BIG All Team meeting also showcased projects from OCIO and ODEE. While we are two separate organizations, we have so many overlapping services and we share the same core values. It’s been great to see both sides of the house working together on great things.

Boots

Boots-crop

These boots were made for walkin’!

Just a quick recap of my August show: everything went well! The audience loved it and no one was seriously injured! Always a win.

It’s officially fall which means it’s officially boot season which means my dance show photo is a great segue into what’s going on in the OCIO this fall semester…

  • We offered Student Advantage (aka free Microsoft) to all students. Yay!
  • BuckeyeBox now has unlimited storage and a larger max file size. Yay!
  • We’re asking students how we can improve wireless using an Instagram contest. Neato!
  • ODEE is working on a video to show how easy Top Hat is (the tool that lets students use their smartphones to answer poll questions in class, record attendance, etc). Super cool!
  • We just had our combined Staff Appreciation “picnic” today. A Rock, Paper, Scissors champ received a trophy. Huh? Yep.

As for the part of me wearing the MBA hat, this semester is allllllll math. You down with NPV? Yeah, you know me!

That’s all for now! Time to root through my closet in search of more boots!