Lost in the shuffle of activity last week was a May 18 milestone; that day marked 20 years of my edtech career, the day I started my job as “programmer analyst/instructional systems” at the Maricopa Community Colleges.
Wow was I green, but also a sponge. After my immersion of system culture at an Ocotillo retreat the first weekend, I was off to San Francisco to learn bout this new video technology called QuickTime.
They left me alone that first summer, with my Quadra 900 as I immersed myself learning about HyperCard, gopher, videodiscs, etc. I could go even more Old Man with memories but I will stop.
I do have to say much of what we have now, including a hand held mobile device for publishing to a web (from a taco shop) which was then a future… I might have never guessed to be. That alone gives me a lot to be open to looking the other way.
Closing out the cobwebs, I am thankful for then MCLI director Naomi Story, who saw some potential in the kid (and joked that she hired me because I wore an earring); Vice Chancellor Alfred de Los Santos who was a mentor and showed me the power of provocative questions: colleague Maria Harper-Marinick who alway was and is a dynamo if energy also is now Vice Chancellor, Jim Walters who gave me a disc labeled “Mosaic” in 1993 and changed my life, colleagues Juan Marquez and Vance Williams who were on my hiring committee and still at Maricopa (I think), “mother” Betty Field now retired but always a guiding influence… wow the names are flooding in now.
So what will my next 20 look like (probably sans mullett)
What a pair of decades, Alan. A lot of history, both yours and the world’s.
And a neat photo.