I go way back with Cole Camplese, when I was still at the Maricopa Community Colleges and he was at Penn State University doing assessments with a click wheel iPod.
He was the person in 2007, when I was “what is the use of twitter” who gave an actual compelling use case. We’ve blogged back and forth forever. He came to a conference in 2008 at Mesa Community College where we meet for the first time, we hung together at NMCs and EDUCAUSEs. I’ve visited him and his lovely family several times to State College, and last year after he moved to Chicago (the entire family and I watched The Big Lebowski in his basement). We’ve done a lot more that is not close to bloggable 😉
A great colleague and a great friend.
So tonight I saw in my twitter stream one of a series of photos I’ve seen Cole doing. It looks like he’s honoring his IT staff on a regular basis:
Rodney: n. (1) a network technician with skills of an engineer. (2) Someone who selflessly trains others. #ITSExcel pic.twitter.com/kjLxxiwM30
— UChicago IT Services (@UChicagoITS) September 22, 2016
#ITExcel seems to be what he is tagging IT Excellence (not spreadsheets, whew). When I looked at the tag, I warmly noted his consistent big smile, but also how similar a lot of the photos looked.
A wheel clicked.
In the time I finished a bowl of chili for dinner, I had pulled 25 of these photos. Not only is Cole’s smile consistent, so is his dark suit jacket and light shirt 😉 I found in Photoshop I could line them up almost perfectly with his shoulders.
So this happened…
Don't know why I GIFed this, but the consistency of @colecamplese in championing #ITSExcel staff is impressive pic.twitter.com/Ob8Y1zAqs4
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 23, 2016
All in fun, but also, it’s a great montage of the people he is working with now. Ya know I love ya, big guy. I think we could summarize this with a diagram….
Top / Featured Image: Mr CIO at University of Chicago! I took this when visiting Cole in 2015… my flickr photo https://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/21804267604 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Totally awesome, my friend. This falls right into that middle space, where friendship overlaps with ingenuity. Thank you for the kind words and the stroll down memory lane. For a couple of guys first connected by the Internet we sure have spent a lot of quality time together in real life. Thanks for making me smIle (again).
Hunh. Yet another compelling case for the generally annoying and useful animated gif! All technologies are shaped by the soul of the human(s) who start with the clay and the light in their hands and their hearts.