What Me CIO?

Today is the beginning of my new job: Interim Chief Information Officer. I should say my additional job. I will still be Director of Learning Technologies. The leanest administration in higher education here in Wisconsin, ya know.

That Interim puts kind of an odd spin on it. There's no press release for an interim appointment and by definition, it's temporary. It's not uncommon around here for the interim appointment to turn permanent, but that's not written down anywhere. Anyway, CIO is a "limited" appointment, serving at the pleasure of the the Provost, in this case, so nobody ever has a lock on an administrative job.

I kind of prefer "Acting" as a preface to the title. I once heard Dustin Hoffman relate an anecdote about working with Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man. Hoffman went deep into the method approach, dieting and running long distances to prepare for the role. Sir Larry's response was "Wouldn't it be easier just to act?" That kind of appeals to me as an approach to the job.

Provisional Chief Information Officer has a nice historical sound, but that's even more temporary and undefined than Interim.

I haven't decided how I'd like to be addressed by my staff. I'm leaning toward "Il Cio," but "El Jefe Informaciôn" has a grand ring to it too.

This should be interesting.