My DoIT role has been a multi-year exercise in keeping a bunch of plates spinning. My goal is to make our employees feel like their tech is dependable and running buttery-smooth so they are free to create solutions and help customers overcome the literacy crisis in the United States.

I've had the opportunity to try my hand at quite a bit here. It's been humbling. There is so much I don't know, and everything is interesting. Of course, some tech areas are more interesting to me personally than others.

Fortunately, much of IT is a collection of solved problems. So many smart people are doing good work, sharing their knowledge, and either open-sourcing their solutions or starting services. I've been able to start numerous projects and then outsource the maintenance. All our custom work uses software services.

I've come to appreciate the power of Saas options. The Air Force spoke of concepts or technology as "force multipliers" that can make a small group of people comparable in power to a larger group. Saas options have been a "force multiplier" for us at Logic of English. They've helped me to hire slowly but develop solid solutions quickly.

My approach has been to outsource if it’s not a product of our company or a custom tool supporting our core business. For instance, I've outsourced device management but wrote an InDesign Plugin for curriculum development and hired a web developer to take over our web of marketing sites (strong opinion: websites should always be fully custom).