blog.ecorrado.us

First Top 10 of the 2011 College Football Season 2011 October 10

Here is my top 10. As a reminder, my top 10 is based on performance not “predictions” of the future. This is why I don’t start the pole until October. I also add weight for the portion of schedule the school can control (out of conference). Scheduling cupcakes is not looked on favorably in my pole.

1. LSU (6-0). Normally I ping the SEC teams for their out of conference schedules. Well, LSU stepped it up and played Oregon (neutral field, but more home than away) and West Virginia, so kudos for them. They get the #1 vote for the first week of my standings this year.
2. Boise State (5-0). Once again Boise State opens on the road against a “big time team” and shows it can play with anyone. Boise State haters, why don’t you schedule a game up in Idaho against them in November and prove they can’t beat you?
3. Oklahoma (5-0). They had a few out of conference cupcakes but going on the road to play what many thought was a top 5 Florida State team shows me something. The impressive Texas win counter-acts the Missouri game where I don’t think they looked as good.
4. Clemson (6-0). Nice road win at Auburn out of conference followed by good in-conference wins against Florida State and Virginia Tech puts Clemson in my top 5.
5. Kansas State (5-0). I now the Florida schools haven’t been impressive these year, but K-State gets credit for an out of conference win at Miami (FL) and good conference wins at home against Baylor and Missouri.
6. Alabama (6-0). Beating Penn State at Penn State is a good win even if Penn State isn’t that good. The other out of conference games were against cream puffs though. Good in conference wins against Florida and Arkansas help them a bit in my rankings.
7. Illinois (6-0). Didn’t really know where to put the Illini. The victory against Arizona State who is 3-0 in the PAC-10 was impressive but the rest of the schedule is lacking. Once they play a few of the better Big-10 teams they will probably fall out of my top 10, but my picks are based on what they did so far, not based on my predictions of the future.
8. Oklahoma State (5-0). Despite putting up 70 against conference foe Kansas, I am not sold on the Cowboys. Toughest out of conference game was Arizona who is 1-5. A few props to the victory over Tulsa though as at least it is an in-state match-up.
9. Michigan (6-0). Nice out of conference win against Notre Dame. Notre Dame might not be the most impressive team but they only have one other loss (to South Florida). Rest of out of conference schedule could use some work.
10. Georgia Tech (6-0). Only out of conference game even worth speaking about was at Kansas. Beating Kansas in a basketball game is impressive, in football not so much. Still, at least they went on the road once against another BCS school out of conference. Should be interesting if they remain undefeated going onto the Oct 29 matchup with Clemson.

What I did on my September Vacation 2011 October 5

Last week I took off from work for some vacation, but I didn’t leave the library world behind. In fact, I co-presented a Webinar, “Cloud computing and libraries: The view from 10,000 feet, with Dr. Heather Lea Moulaison that was put on by Education Institute (Canada) and the Neal-Schuman Professional Education Network (USA), talked to an LIS class at the University of Missouri (incidentally, I was very impressed by the students), and attended and co-presented a session with Dr. Moulaison at the LITA National Forum.

I skipped the last couple of LITAs National Forums as in the past I have not found them as useful for me as some other conferences I go to. With limited travel budgets, you need to look for value. LITA does not appear to be highly subsidized by sponsors and isn’t a cheap conference compared to other library conferences and the content has been a little weak in my areas. However when an opportunity to present with my co-editor, Heather Lea Moulaison, of Getting Started with Cloud Computing: A LITA Guide in her home state emerged, I figure, hey, why not? What else am I going to do with these vacation days? If I don’t use some, I’ll lose them, so I might as well hang out with some library peeps.

I am not going to review the whole conference but I was happy to see what seemed like an increase in sessions that were more advanced (technology-wise). It isn’t that past Forums were bad, I just wasn’t the proper audience. Kudos to this year’s program planners. I’d like to see less long breaks and it seemed odd that the posters were at the end of the day Saturday with no food or refreshment, but oh well. While I am on it, this isn’t just a LITA thing, but I think at most conferences sessions are too long. I’d much rather see two 25 minute presentations then one fifty minute one. I think this is were Code4Lib with it’s 20 minute time slots does a real good job. Library Journal has a good review of the 2011 LITA National Forum (and I’m not just saying that because they liked our presentation, although I’m pleased that they did.

The slides from our LITA presentation, Practical Approaches to Cloud Computing at YOUR Library, are available on CodaBox.