Academic or academic

(1) Academic: academician, an educator who works at a college or university.

(2) Academic: hypothetical or theoretical and not expected to produce an immediate or practical result.

These are 2 of the definitions of academic. I have through most of my life aspired to the first of these 2 definitions having been influenced by teachers in my life and my parents. In my association with academia I have come to realize why both definitions have very close meaning, and I have always tried to stay away from the second of these definitions.

The experiences I have had in my research work have been extremely varied, having started my Ph.D career as an environmental engineer. It did not take much time for me to push the limits of where I wished to go in that field – so I turned my attention towards the broader field of software engineering for which I had a strong “knack”

As I expanded my work and research and took on varying projects I developed a strong desire to work on project that had a real meaning and impact. The first project of this type was Drugnet which was an FDLE project, but that led to more project in public safety. The current FINDER project has been a direct result of that early desire to do something with a strong positive impact – and any deep look into that project will reveal the incredible impact that it has had. Not to say it has been without its critics, I’ve learned that even doing the right thing will put you in the line of fire nearly every time.

One other project that I took on – which really was an incredible interest of mine was SCINET, which was championed by a number of strong visionary people in Seminole County government. The entire idea was to look at government operations with a holistic and unbiased approach and to do what was necessary to increase the efficiency of government. With SCINET we had a willing government participant with a strong champion within the government organization. When I took the project on – a colleague of mine who I know and respect warned me that the nature and culture of government was designed to breed inefficiency and mediocrity and that the project was doomed at the start. I took this as more of a challenge than anything else.

Over the years the project had solid successes. We analyzed the government processes, we made changes, and we built software to support these changes and new processes. The software had a leveling effect of bringing accountability to government workers – for once, everyone could see true productivity. The project was not without its challenges and often played out like a video game. Each time we would vanquish one challenge – usually in the form of people, another more powerful foe would take its place. I did, however, have my team and we marched forward. How much was saved by Seminole County as this project moved forward, - I do not want to steal the thunder of my graduate students who have quantified this savings and are publishing it as a result of their thesis and dissertations – but we’ll go with “quite a bit”

Now I face more challenges in the project, and as a direct result of shying away from the second of the two definitions. The software and analysis produced has real monetary value. If you even want to see the true color and motivations of people you have to confront them with the temptation of money. I have faced this same situation with the FINDER project, and now get to see it with this project too. It seems to be human nature that is compounded in a government setting – that when the possibility of one person doing something of distinction presents itself, others will ensure that they are pulled back down into the masses. This should be an interesting period of time – we hopefully will find a way to work out the IP here, I always hold the optimistic hope that “cooler heads will prevail”. We’ll see how it goes on this one – stay tuned and hope for me as I stay with definition 1.