The Tech Director's Expanding Universe: Risk, Leadership, and Onboarding with Dan McGee, TLIS

Narrator: 00:00:02

Dan, welcome to Talking technology with ATLIS,

 

Narrator: 00:00:05

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

 

Narrator: 00:00:08

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

 

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We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

 

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special guests from the Independent School community,

 

Narrator: 00:00:17

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

 

Narrator: 00:00:21

And now please welcome your host. Christina Lewellen,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:25

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:27

talking technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:29

President and CEO of the Association of technology

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:32

leaders in independent

 

Bill Stites: 00:00:33

schools. And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

 

Bill Stites: 00:00:36

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

 

Bill Stites: 00:00:39

Jersey,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:00:40

and I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:00:42

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:00:45

school in Richmond, Virginia.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:47

Okay, gentlemen. Now, normally I would

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:49

start by asking how you are. However, we got on our call

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:53

today to start this podcast recording, and I can tell that

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:00:57

both of you are in the mix of the beginning of school, you're

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:01

looking like you're carrying some weight on your shoulders.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:04

And so where you guys generally bring a lot of light and

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:08

happiness and energy to my world, I feel like I need to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:11

repay the favor, so I'm going to bring the cheerleader vibes

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:14

today and try to get you in a good mood by the end of this

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:17

podcast. Do you think I can do it

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:19

perfect year? This is the highlight, the smiling

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:22

moment of my day, so I don't doubt that one whatsoever. I'm

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:26

all in. Okay. I

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:28

mean, you guys are at least game for a

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:30

great conversation, which I know we'll have. But I do know, in

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:33

all seriousness, it's been kind of a rocky couple of days

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:37

heading into the school year. You guys just have a lot coming

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:01:39

at you. Are you just taking it one task at a time,

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:44

trying to, trying to, that's always the big piece

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:46

of it is just trying to figure out how to get past the one

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:50

thing and on to the next, and do it in a way that works. Well,

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:52

I'm still trying to clear the inbox. Hiram told me a very

 

Bill Stites: 00:01:56

scary detail about the number of messages in his inbox. I'm

 

Bill Stites: 00:02:00

hovering in the 300 range right now, which has got me twitching.

 

Bill Stites: 00:02:05

That pales in comparison to what my friend Hiram has, which I

 

Bill Stites: 00:02:10

shudder to even think about it, Hiram, what's your number 23,000

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:15

what in the Wait a minute. Okay, that is

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:18

insane. Now I know ATLIS is a little bit advanced because of

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:22

the fact that we don't send internal emails to each other.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:25

So if you eliminate all of my staff emails, that certainly

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:28

helps, right? But I have three unread emails right now, and I

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:32

don't even have to scroll to get to the bottom of my inbox. I can

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:35

see my entire inbox in front of me. I know this is probably

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:02:38

making your eye twitch, but how do you have so many.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:02:41

I store everything in folders as well, and so that

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:02:44

count stays active based on the folders that I have, and it

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:02:48

just, you can't seem to swipe left enough to delete emails as

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:02:53

they're coming in.

 

Bill Stites: 00:02:56

There were a few days where I was, like, locked

 

Bill Stites: 00:02:58

in on a project and it would take, like a couple of hours,

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:01

and when I returned to my inbox, there were like 40 new messages

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:06

in the inbox. So you compound that with every project or thing

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:11

that you take on, and then it just builds. I would get through

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:15

them by the end of the day, and you wake up the next morning and

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:17

you've got another set of them, and within the first hour of

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:20

school, you've got another

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:03:21

group of them, and that doesn't include

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:03:23

notifications that you're receiving from systems as well.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:28

I feel like I would burn it to the ground.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:31

You hear about people who go on vacation and then they just

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:34

delete their entire inbox when they get back, because they

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:36

figure if it was important enough, the person would send it

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:39

again or whatever. Like, I feel like, if I had hiram's inbox, I

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:42

would probably just delete the entire thing and just start

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:03:45

over.

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:46

And the thing is, it's not just like a simple

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:48

response. A lot of times it's like, all right, I now need to

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:51

take 20 minutes and dig in on this one thing, to figure out

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:55

what's going on, to solve that problem, to get them the

 

Bill Stites: 00:03:57

response back, so I don't get three more emails on the same

 

Bill Stites: 00:04:01

issue within the either the next day or the next day and

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:04

a half. So when you were asking earlier how

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:07

things were going right now, I'm just trying to keep it between

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:09

the mayonnaise and the mustard as we're driving along, and I'm

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:12

going to turn on the 80s music here, and I am aspiring to love

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:17

her boy working for the weekend, because this weekend I get to

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:04:20

see my baby girl at Parents Weekend up in Virginia.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:23

Tech. Nice. All right. Well, we're seeing

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:25

some rays of sunshine coming from Hiram, which is good news.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:28

But let me also add a new layer on top of this, which is that we

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:32

have a wonderful guest with us today. We have Dan McGee. Dan,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:35

you're a smiley guy by nature, but you in particular need to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:39

bring it today, because I'm holding down the fort over here

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:41

with guys who have insane inboxes. So before I introduce

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:45

you, Dan, can you tell everyone how many emails are sitting

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:04:47

unread in your inbox?

 

Dan McGee: 00:04:49

Okay, so it's not so pretty, but not nearly to the

 

Dan McGee: 00:04:53

extent of hirams. I have 158 emails unread in my inbox right

 

Dan McGee: 00:04:58

now, which I'm twitching. Like I walked in the door today

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:01

twitching.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:03

If we put this video online, everyone will

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:06

understand why I'm the most smiley, and Dan is the second

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:10

most Smiley. And then today, Bill and Hiram, you guys are

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:13

just toast. You're buried in your inbox. But let's set that

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:16

aside for a little bit of time, and we'll chat with Dan. Dan,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:19

you are the chief technology officer at the Laurel School

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:22

Based in Ohio. You've been there for quite a while. You also just

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:26

joined the ATLIS board, so it's really awesome to have you in

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:30

ATLIS leadership. So how are you today, aside from those 100 plus

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:34

emails waiting for you,

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:35

aside from that, I'm doing pretty good. I'm really

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:37

happy to be here and talking with you. Great people.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:40

Awesome. So as usual, we'll start with kind

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:43

of your journey, and have you tell our listeners a little bit

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:46

about yourself. But also, if you don't mind, could you tell us

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:05:49

about the

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:49

Laurel School? Yeah. So Laurel School, we're in

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:51

Shaker Heights, Ohio, right outside of Cleveland, so we have

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:54

the benefit of being in the suburban area of Cleveland, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:05:58

we have another campus that's about 17 minutes away. That's

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:01

rural, and we can get to downtown in about the same

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:04

amount of time. So we have a lot of places in the area that are

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:07

great, like our middle school today. They're all at the Rocket

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:11

Mortgage Field House, which is where the Cavs play, and there's

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:14

a big announcement coming about W NBA. So lots of excitement

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:18

there. But we are a girls school, a K through 12, and we

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:21

have boys and girls in our early childhood, so we cover a wide

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:26

variety of ages, and we really have just possibilities for

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:29

every student here at Laurel, especially in technology.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:06:32

That's really amazing. And you've been

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:06:34

there for a while, so you've been the Chief Technology

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:06:37

Officer since 2012 is that when you started

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:40

there it is, yeah. So I started at Laurel after being

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:43

a technology director at another independent school, another

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:46

girls school. And I like to joke too, I have two boys, so of

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:50

course, I spend my entire career basically in girls schools, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:06:54

they can only attend for a very short time.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:06:57

Yeah, too bad you can't do like an

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:06:58

exchange student situation with Hiram, right?

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:01

That would be pretty useful, although I think they

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:03

maybe missed me a little bit.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:07:04

So what's your background been like? Were

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:07:06

you a teacher before you got into technology?

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:09

It's funny, I was studying to be a teacher when I

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:12

entered for my bachelor's degree. I thought, You know

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:15

what? I want to travel the world. I want to do an

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:17

international business. And I got into an economics class, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:20

the first day I said, this is really not for me. And my

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:23

roommate was doing the same thing, and he said the same

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:25

thing the first day. So we both declared different majors. I

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:28

became a German major with an education minor, and so I wanted

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:33

to be a German teacher or a German professor, and I decided

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:37

I went on and got a master's degree in German Studies. And

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:40

then the writing on the wall before the economic crisis, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:43

sort of the mid aughts was there, and programs started

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:47

closing, left and right. My program closed. I couldn't go on

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:49

and do a PhD like I thought I could. And so I thought, well, I

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:52

guess I'll go out and find a job. And there really weren't

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:56

jobs teaching German, somewhat to my surprise, after spending

 

Dan McGee: 00:07:59

six years studying all of this, and I sort of was throwing

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:03

resumes out, and I had a background in computers, so I

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:07

had worked summers for Harley Davidson dealer systems, which

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:10

is their software division, and I wrote documentation for them

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:14

on their software, and just had kind of an interesting

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:17

background there. And I thought, You know what? I've done that?

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:19

And when I was in college, I worked for the IT department

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:22

there. I'm going to try applying to some computer related jobs,

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:26

but in schools, and I came up with one and was hired. And so

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:30

the rest is kind of history. So I kind of think I'm one of the

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:34

last of the group of people the you seem good with computers,

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:39

come lead technology at our school. Like I didn't have the

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:43

formal training or degree to support it, but I had know how

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:47

and not afraid to just try. So I got into that, and then moved to

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:52

my current role after I was there for a few years. I can't

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:55

imagine doing any other job in my school like this is

 

Dan McGee: 00:08:58

secretively the best job in the school,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:09:01

it was that trs 80 you played with as a youth. It

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:04

definitely was getting those floppy disks out.

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:07

And, you know, I remember saying to my dad, I was probably, I

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:10

don't know, eight, like, what is that next to the computer? Oh,

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:13

well, that's a modem. And even after you explained it, I didn't

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:17

know what it did. But, you know, now it's just a completely

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:20

different environment. But I feel like those formative

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:22

experiences really helped me tinker and play around and

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:26

figure things out.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:09:28

Impressed that you had a floppy disk as opposed to

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:09:30

a cassette.

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:32

My brother, actually, he still programs on a Commodore

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:35

64 with a cassette. Love it like really throwback stuff. You're

 

Bill Stites: 00:09:39

kidding me? That's awesome.

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:41

No, not at all. He bought it in the 80s, the mid

 

Dan McGee: 00:09:44

80s, and still uses it to this day.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:09:46

That's a whole nother conversation that I

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:09:48

think we probably need to go to. Maybe we need to have your

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:09:50

brother on the pod at some point to ask why. But in the meantime,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:09:55

since you're bringing this energy about having this opinion

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:09:57

that tech director is the best job at a school and. Since my

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:10:00

friends today are feeling a little overwhelmed with all the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:10:04

things they have on their plate, tell us a little bit about why

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:10:07

you think being the tech director is the best job at an

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:10:10

independent school.

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:11

Well, a double edged sword of that is you're never

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:14

bored, and that can go either way. And I think we all feel

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:16

that every year, every day is just a little bit different

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:20

lends itself to its own craziness, I think too. But I

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:24

get to see and do so many different things with so many

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:27

different people. There's so many opportunities to make a

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:31

change in the school, make a difference and make things

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:33

better. And I just love tinkering. And I think that

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:38

extends even to just the work in the school, working with my

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:41

colleagues, working with students as well. Tinkering

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:44

isn't just sitting down in a room and playing with a dei boy

 

Dan McGee: 00:10:47

or electronics.

 

Bill Stites: 00:10:48

You know, one of the things that we'll always ask

 

Bill Stites: 00:10:51

is, what encompasses your role as director of technology?

 

Bill Stites: 00:10:56

Because I know what my role was when I started, changed, and

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:02

after it changed, it changed again. I love going down and

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:06

talking to the people in our ed tech department, talking with

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:09

our librarians, but I also enjoy getting in and having

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:12

conversations with our development office or our

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:15

admissions team. So what does that look like for you there at

 

Bill Stites: 00:11:18

Laurel?

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:19

Yeah, definitely all of those groups, those are folks

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:21

that I talk to regularly, and if I don't talk to them regularly,

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:25

I realize, oh, I need to go visit them. I haven't talked to

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:28

them in a while, but really it's so many things. Hiram Bill, you

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:32

guys have been at your schools longer than I have, and I've

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:34

been here 14 years. So you can imagine the things that have

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:37

been collected on my plate and things that have been added just

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:41

by my longevity at the school. One thing that I've been in

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:44

charge of and worked with heavily is like risk management

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:47

in the school, which is not an easy topic, really, and it's a

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:51

wide topic. So that's something that you wouldn't necessarily

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:54

see in this role, but I think it relates, because there's so much

 

Dan McGee: 00:11:58

about it, and a lot of it's really project management, which

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:01

I think is a necessary skill that all of us need to have in

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:04

technology, but in management and leadership roles. So that's

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:09

kind of an outlier. We're building a new building at our

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:12

other campus right now, the one where I'm not at at this moment,

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:15

and so managing that project is like a second job, or like a

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:20

part time job. So that is something that comes around.

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:23

It's not every day in the life of our school, but when it's

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:27

ongoing, it becomes something that's really key to my day to

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:32

day work, working with teachers in every capacity, working with

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:36

parents. You know, if you take a project like we've just rolled

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:40

out a new attendance system, and when you look at that, that

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:43

touches on parents, students, teachers, admin assistants,

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:47

division directors, all of those people combined, that's a huge

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:52

number of people that in our school. That's well over 1000

 

Dan McGee: 00:12:56

1500 people when you include students and parents. So really

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:00

working with all of those different people, you have to

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:04

manage that and manage the relationships, just as much as

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:07

you're managing the software and the questions that come up, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:11

that really contributes to the excitement at the beginning of

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:14

the school year. I must say,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:13:16

you mentioned risk management that takes a variety

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:13:19

of different forms in independent schools under that

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:13:24

hat of yours. Does that extend beyond cybersecurity?

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:29

Yeah, it does. So what I've done is I've developed

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:33

a dashboard that really is a Google Sheet, and it has tabs

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:36

for things like governance, the reputation of the school finance

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:42

HR, just to name a few, I think there are eight total

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:45

categories, including technology and cybersecurity, but it

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:49

encompasses all of those. So I'm part of the audit and risk

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:52

committee of the board, and my job, and my role in doing that,

 

Dan McGee: 00:13:56

is keeping track of this and presenting the information to

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:00

the board and helping them review in their capacity as

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:04

board members and make sure that the school is managing risk

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:07

successfully. And we've been able to do that. It's been a

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:11

process, probably over the past seven or eight years since I've

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:14

been working on this, and really all the time it's just

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:18

tightening it and getting back to it, because I think we're

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:20

managing risk every day, at least in our roles as tech

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:24

leaders and other leaders in the school. We may not realize it,

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:28

but we're doing it. And then when you get back to the

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:31

dashboard and it's time to evaluate what's there, you see

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:35

that scope. And so it's really key to keep that front of mind

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:39

and making sure that everybody knows what's happening in terms

 

Dan McGee: 00:14:42

of how we're managing risk in the school.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:14:44

So Dan, I'm really fascinated that you have that

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:14:47

many tabs for risk. I'm curious is the appetite for risk

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:14:53

variable across each of those areas, because there's a certain

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:14:58

level of risk that you say the school. Role is willing to

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:15:01

assume. But how about each of those different areas?

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:04

I think it depends on a lot of things. So it depends

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:07

kind of on who is in the seat for those roles, whether it's

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:10

the HR director looking at HR risk, the CFO looking at

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:14

financial risk. Sometimes it's dependent on their role,

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:17

sometimes it's dependent on their personality, and sometimes

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:20

it's dependent on the makeup of the board. If you have a lot of

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:23

lawyers on the board, they may be a little more risk averse.

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:26

And I think over the time period of looking at risk within the

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:29

school, we've seen it shift a little bit and focuses naturally

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:33

shift. So I think right now we're focusing a lot on changes

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:37

in leadership. We have a new head of school, and so with that

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:41

presents opportunities and possible risks, so we have to

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:44

maintain the good reputations that we've had and kind of grow

 

Dan McGee: 00:15:48

with that.

 

Bill Stites: 00:15:50

Dan, I want to drill in on that last piece,

 

Bill Stites: 00:15:52

just really quickly, because when you talk about all the

 

Bill Stites: 00:15:55

different areas of risk, I'm curious as to how you as the

 

Bill Stites: 00:15:58

tech director, are assisting with this, because I think this

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:02

might fall in the communications area, and I'm just curious of it

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:06

is the reputational risk piece. How are you assisting with that

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:12

piece of it at the school? Because the other areas, I kind

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:15

of got a good mental picture of what that might look like. I'm

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:18

wondering what that means. And what do from a reputational

 

Bill Stites: 00:16:21

sense?

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:22

That's a great question. I'm not doing anything

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:25

specifically on the reputation side of it. I'm really the

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:27

arbiter of the dashboard. So we'll get together at a

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:31

leadership meeting and say, Okay, those of you in these

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:34

different roles, it's time for us to sit and spend 3045,

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:38

minutes looking at the risks. And then we set the clock, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:42

we go, so I'm really just the cheerleader and the person that

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:47

surfaces it up to that group. And then the individuals then

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:51

take on their own components of it. And then if there's

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:53

tightening within the sheet, if we need clarification, I'll put

 

Dan McGee: 00:16:57

a comment on it and say, Hey, so and so. What do you think about

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:00

this, or can you finish this? Can you fix this? So I'm glad I

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:04

don't have to bear all of that, because that would be way too

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:07

much for me to do. But really it's the project management

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:11

piece where I come into play, keeping it organized.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:14

In particular, one issue that we

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:16

talk a lot about with safety, security oversight project

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:21

management is in the realm of off boarding and onboarding, and

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:25

how those systems are really important in a school situation,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:29

both on the student population, the leadership team, the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:32

faculty, but you also have some experience with Head of School,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:17:36

onboarding, off boarding. Tell us a little

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:39

bit about that. That's right. Yes. So our Head

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:41

of School, Anne Klotz, was here for 21 years, which is a long

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:45

time for a head of school. And so she retired this summer, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:49

we welcomed a new head of school, Christina Breen, to our

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:53

school in July. And so managing a head of school transition is

 

Dan McGee: 00:17:57

sort of the granddaddy of onboarding and off boarding, you

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:01

have somebody who holds so much institutional knowledge, so much

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:04

information, so many different roles, especially when you look

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:08

at that risk management dashboard, they are involved in

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:11

all of those pieces, in a level that I'm not. And so it presents

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:16

its own challenges, its own risks, its own complexities. And

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:20

you know, when you have a head of school who's been in that

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:23

role for 21 years, more than 20 years, you have so much that has

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:27

changed in technology over that time period. And so as you're

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:32

working to off board that person in that role, it's like being an

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:36

archeologist. You're going down through the rock and the

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:39

different layers of technology and the things that they've

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:42

collected and amassed in their time, and you're sifting through

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:46

it, and you have to play sort of a game with that. There's so

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:50

much in there. I didn't realize how much would be involved. It

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:54

was my first, and probably not my last off boarding of ahead of

 

Dan McGee: 00:18:58

school, but there were a lot of things that I had to learn along

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:02

the way

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:03

that's really interesting and quite

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:05

complicated. I'm sure I could imagine. The same could be said

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:09

about transitioning a tech leader. We should talk to Jeff

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:13

Dayton, our colleague on the board, because he just retired

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:16

after a long time and just even off boarding himself, probably

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:19

was quite a project, right?

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:22

I think about that too. Like when I first started

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:24

at my job, everything is sort of personality dependent in

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:28

figuring out things and what is left for you. And nobody wants

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:32

to think all the time on their job. How do I need to leave this

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:36

for somebody else? But you kind of have to on a certain level in

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:39

order to make sure you're doing a service to your school,

 

Dan McGee: 00:19:42

yourself and your legacy.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:45

Absolutely, we talk about that a lot around

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:47

ATLIS, business continuity planning is how we kind of frame

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:51

that up, you know, talking about coming in as the last of this

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:55

group of like, Hey, you're good with tech lead our tech

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:19:59

strategy. G at our school, right? So you're part of that OG

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:02

crew. I think part of what that did for you, good or bad, is

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:07

that it pulled you into our T list item writing, because you

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:10

do have a breadth of knowledge in a lot of different realms, as

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:15

what I call the unicorn. I think Hiram and Bill refer to you guys

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:18

as the OGs. I say unicorn. We brought together unicorns to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:22

help write the technology leader in independent school

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:25

certification program. You were among the first people to obtain

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:29

that certification. You helped us write it. Tell us why you got

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:35

involved in that and what that experience has been like for

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:20:38

you.

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:39

So I think in our schools, nobody knows what we

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:41

do, even people in our department, sometimes we don't

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:45

know what we do, right? Our head of school doesn't know. And if

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:48

we disappear, how are we? They going to find somebody? And this

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:52

is not saying that what we do is irreplaceable, but it's hard to

 

Dan McGee: 00:20:57

find somebody who has the capacity to come in and figure

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:00

this stuff out. So that was really sort of the reason for my

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:05

existence in tlis, is adding my voice to this super wide ranging

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:11

conversation of what is the technology leader in an

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:14

independent school and what makes them successful? I think

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:18

I've been fairly successful. Obviously, we make mistakes,

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:21

right? But I've been able to figure it out, or I wouldn't be

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:24

here still. And it is such a wide ranging job, it's changed

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:29

so much, really. I mean, even in my 14 years here at Laurel, the

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:32

things that we do on a day to day basis are completely

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:35

different than what we did in 2012 and they're completely

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:38

different than what we did in 2020 and so I think that makes

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:41

it that much more important to be able to assess what people

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:45

know and say there is a standard really. Even though independent

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:49

schools can be a cottage industry, there are things that

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:53

are common among those roles. If it's not a dictionary, it's a

 

Dan McGee: 00:21:58

thesaurus, helping you to find what it is,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:01

and those roles, I think, have gotten more

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:02

complicated. I mean, certainly since the pandemic, I really

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:05

feel like T list had a certain halo effect, or this perfect

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:10

timing. It was very fortuitous that the T list program, the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:14

funding from EE Ford, it all sort of was born out of this

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:19

additional layer of complication. They got

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:22

sandwiched on top of everything that you guys were already doing

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:25

in a normal school situation. So then here comes covid, and then

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:29

everything after covid, and now we're in this realm of AI. So

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:33

that role, I think, continues to get more complicated, is that

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:22:38

your experience?

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:39

Oh, definitely, yeah, I mean 2020, was where we really

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:43

put the foot in the accelerator, and I don't think we've lifted

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:46

it since then. And not only that, we've been adding to it.

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:50

So you mentioned AI, that's something that's really just

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:53

been added to our slate, and nothing else has really come off

 

Dan McGee: 00:22:57

of it. And so that's been a big, big, big focus you can't

 

Dan McGee: 00:23:01

understate or overstate, really, the role of AI. It's super huge

 

Dan McGee: 00:23:06

in our schools, and it's something that we have to be

 

Dan McGee: 00:23:08

involved in, and we have to be really on top of so many other

 

Dan McGee: 00:23:13

topics that are coming our way in our schools, because people

 

Dan McGee: 00:23:16

look to us as experts, inside experts, especially

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:21

so all three of you, what could come off the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:23

plate? How can you slow this down? I know you all feel it.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:27

What are the solutions? I mean, I'm trying to stump you a little

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:29

bit on purpose, being slightly provocative with my question.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:32

But like, if somebody wanted to make this better, if your

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:35

leadership teams wanted to make it better, what could make it

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:23:38

better? What could slow it down? I think

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:40

what's interesting. I'm actually kind

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:42

of having these conversations right now, and I think it's a

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:44

Christopher, it's fair to say, we need an extra body. Sometimes

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:47

it's something as simple as an FTE. And then I think as

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:51

schools, there's always a tendency to be shrewd and say,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:53

Well, can we get away with a part time person versus a full

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:23:56

time person? And I think when you're dealing with some of the

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:00

topics that Dan has already mentioned, like risk mitigation,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:03

onboarding, off boarding, you're talking about a lot of sensitive

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:07

information, and it's very different than, say, a help desk

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:14

technician, where they're not necessarily dealing with some of

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:17

the domains that our roles are dealing with on a regular basis

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:21

that have risk associated with them. You need somebody who is

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:26

judicious. You need somebody who has a keen understanding about

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:31

sensitive information,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:24:33

a unicorn. You need a unicorn. Yeah,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:36

and so it's not somebody that you can also get

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:40

for $20 an hour or $25 an hour, you need somebody who can

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:44

actually serve in this capacity to be a true sounding board for

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:49

you as a tech director, so that you can say, hey, what do you

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:53

think about this? Let's execute this together and do a little

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:56

bit more cross pollination. Because what I think all of us

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:24:59

are experiencing. In this space is the best schools do cross

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:03

pollinate, but most of us are still very siloed, and even

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:09

using Dan's best approach of trying to create that legacy for

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:13

the next person, that's a lot of work.

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:17

The other thing that I think is problematic, I'm

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:20

going to say here at MKA, but is, I think, indicative of a

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:23

number of independent schools, is we're additive in a lot of

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:26

ways, and very little gets taken off of anyone's plate. I think

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:30

it's a systemic problem.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:32

Bill, I dare say, What was the last thing that got

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:35

taken off your plate?

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:37

I don't even know that's the rub. You think about

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:40

it and like it was like, oh, you know, as soon as copiers got on

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:43

the network, that was it, as soon as phones went off of a

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:47

local PBX and went into the cloud, that got added in

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:25:50

the lighting system, 100%

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:53

I mean, it's unbelievable. And the lighting

 

Bill Stites: 00:25:55

system, I mean, I spent an hour on a call yesterday looking at a

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:01

Lutron lighting control system and having to figure out, like,

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:05

where all of that plugged in? Because, Dan, as you mentioned,

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:08

you know, you take on construction, right? There's

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:11

another language you talk about, languages, German, you know, you

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:14

got to learn the language. You got to learn all these

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:17

languages. I spend half the time in these construction meetings

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:21

googling what they're absolutely saying, because I don't know the

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:23

acronyms. I know what it's like to sit on another side of the

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:27

conversation with all of us, on the IT side of things that are

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:30

like, What are they talking about with all these different

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:32

acronyms? You know, go to a construction meeting, and that's

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:35

exactly what that's like. So it's very hard to think about

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:38

the things that can come off your plate due to what I'll say

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:43

are the ongoing complexities of them. But something that you

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:46

mentioned around the work that you're doing with your

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:48

librarians, I find us spending a lot of time talking with those

 

Bill Stites: 00:26:55

tech or ed tech adjacent areas of the school. If there is an

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:01

area where some of that work can be picked up, it's in those

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:05

overlap areas, and where I think about that, particularly visa

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:09

vie our librarians, is when we start talking about the research

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:13

cycle, and we start thinking about the ways in which our

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:18

librarians, our media specialists, work with our

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:20

students and our faculty on research and what that means,

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:24

and I think about the research cycle and the way in which

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:27

technology informs that cycle, that's the single best place. I

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:31

think we've gone for a true partnership and a way of not

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:36

offloading, but a way of sharing the burden of how are we going

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:41

to deliver on all of those things when we talk about the

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:44

portrait of a student, what they look like when they graduate?

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:47

Where does that and how does that happen in a schedule that

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:50

is constantly losing time in schools? How do we do that? We

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:54

do that through the librarians. And that's been one of the

 

Bill Stites: 00:27:56

single biggest places where I've been thankful for a partnership.

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:00

Yeah, I think the more holistic education you can

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:03

provide, which is what you should provide, the more complex

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:06

it's going to get. So Bill, you mentioned the librarians, like

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:10

two things that are really big topics with us right now.

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:13

Obviously, AI, our librarians are deep in that, especially in

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:17

our middle and upper schools. And my librarian in middle and

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:20

upper she said, I don't know that I should be on the AI

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:23

committee, because I don't always agree that it's the best

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:25

solution. And I said, That's exactly why you should be on the

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:28

AI committee, because you need to be that voice in the room

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:31

that's questioning it and working it in terms of research

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:35

and where it's appropriate. And then a conversation this morning

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:38

that we had, you know, copyright is not keeping up at all with

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:42

our current digital environment and streaming and things like

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:45

that. So we've blocked all movie streaming because we know that

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:49

those services don't align with what we can show in our school

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:53

environment. But we use an external service. We use swank

 

Dan McGee: 00:28:57

for that which has 45 46,000 titles until it doesn't have

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:02

what we want, and then we have to examine with the librarian,

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:06

with the teacher, why they can't show this thing on Amazon Prime

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:10

that's really, really cool, integrates with what they're

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:12

talking about in class, but we also can't run afoul of these

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:16

copyright agreements and these use policies, and that's All

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:19

Time. That was a 30 minute conversation this morning where,

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:23

I mean, it's a risk management conversation, I suppose, too,

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:26

right? Everything comes back to each other. At some point. I was

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:30

telling a teacher the other day. I think my job is kind of like a

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:33

Seinfeld episode. You can't tell the whole run from start to

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:37

finish of a Seinfeld episode unless you tell the whole

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:40

episode, right? Everything comes back to each other at one point,

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:44

it seems. And I think everything just gets a little trickier and

 

Dan McGee: 00:29:48

a little murkier as we dig deeper and deeper

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:29:51

Dan. What's interesting is you use the term

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:29:53

murky, and I think this has been the challenge even within ATLIS,

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:29:59

defining. What it is to be a tech director, because it varies

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:04

so much from school to school. When you're hiring a CFO, you

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:08

know what you're getting when you're hiring an HR person? You

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:10

know what you're getting, an athletic director? You know what

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:13

you're getting a physics teacher? You know what you're

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:14

getting. The unicorn example that Christina mentioned earlier

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:18

is so incredibly apropos, because it's dependent on school

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:21

size, it's dependent on funding. It's Do you have managed

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:24

services all these different pieces and parts? And I found it

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:29

fascinating when you said, I don't know what you do. When

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:33

somebody asks that question, and whose job is that, to try and

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:30:39

provide the agency for tech directors. Do you think

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:42

I mean, at some respect, it's us in the job.

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:46

We're hired and we're trusted to know what needs to be done, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:49

we get the job done. And it kind of goes back to that cartoon

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:53

that I saw a long time ago, where, when everything's going

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:56

right, what do we pay you for? When everything's going wrong,

 

Dan McGee: 00:30:59

what do we pay you for so you almost can't win, but you can

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:02

win all the time too, right? And so as long as you have that

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:06

trust in that relationship, like with your head of school, with

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:09

your other leaders in the school, then things are moving

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:12

in the right direction. Things can get off the rails, I think,

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:15

pretty easily, pretty quickly, but hopefully the work is

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:19

visible, and if it's not the things that aren't breaking and

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:23

the things that are running smoothly, people just understand

 

Dan McGee: 00:31:26

that's part and parcel to the job too. What do you

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:29

think you would say to someone who would

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:31

want to come into a role like this, Dan, like if someone

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:35

approaches you, let's say, at an ATLIS event or another industry

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:39

event, and says, you know, I'm thinking about trying to be a

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:42

tech director. I want to be a CIO, a CTO at an independent

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:46

school. What is your advice in terms of mapping that, in terms

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:51

of being ready to be the unicorn? How could somebody

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:54

prepare for that when your job is so big and it's like trying

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:31:58

to catch smoke in a lot of ways?

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:01

Yeah, it really is like trying to catch smoke. You

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:03

know, I had somebody who hired me in my first school and I

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:06

probably wouldn't have hired myself, to be perfectly honest.

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:09

I don't think that I would have. I'm glad that I was hired. But

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:13

if somebody came to me and said, You know, I'm thinking about a

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:15

role like yours, you have to look at it in a balance. What is

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:20

your experience, and that's wide ranges of experience. And then

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:24

what's your attitude and your aptitude? Whenever I'm making a

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:27

hire, I really am looking for those things, but especially

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:30

attitude and aptitude. In an independent school, you have to

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:33

have certain habits of mind, a certain kind of attitude, to

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:37

work in that environment, because it's not always the

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:40

easiest place. A lot of times it's the most fun, but you have

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:45

to be able to roll with things right, and be adaptable and

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:48

aptitude also, because the things that I know now I didn't

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:52

know a year ago, or five years ago, 10 years ago, and you have

 

Dan McGee: 00:32:56

to be able to be adaptable and have the aptitude to learn. And

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:00

if I don't know the answer, I know exactly where I'm going.

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:03

I'm talking to one of you. I'm talking to somebody in the ATLIS

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:05

community. I'm finding somebody definitely who knows the answer,

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:10

and you have to have that network too. So I think if that

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:14

person came to me, I'd say, Well, if you don't have that

 

Dan McGee: 00:33:16

network, I'm helping you start that right

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:18

now. That's really interesting. And I if I

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:21

can go back to the attitude place, I think that we're seeing

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:24

a lot of burnout, not just among faculty, but among

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:29

administrators as well. But it's got to be hard for you guys to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:33

be around faculty all the time, because a lot of them are

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:37

feeling the weight of the world. So do you have advice for either

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:42

your own tech team or for just tech leaders in general? Because

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:45

it's infectious, right? Like you pick up on the energy of people

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:49

around you, and if the faculty, the admin, the heads of school,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:53

oh, that job, forget it like that's insane, right? So how is

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:33:57

it that you keep smiling when the people around you are

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:34:01

carrying a lot of stress.

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:03

I mean, it's a balance. It's really hard to

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:05

keep things in balance. I think the low point for just about

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:09

everybody was that return to school at the very first part of

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:12

the pandemic. I remember coming to school, sitting in my office,

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:17

basically, with the door closed most of the day, having meetings

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:21

on zoom with people in the school, people just like tearing

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:24

up and being emotional about the whole situation, and if we see

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:28

that as a low point, I guess everything might be easier. But

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:31

really, I think the most important thing that keeps me

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:34

afloat, mentally and my colleagues as well, is just

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:37

having a good community around you and having people who you

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:40

can trust to lean on and support you. And I know in my

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:44

department, we have that my most recent hire was two years ago,

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:49

and the one that I hired before that was 2017 on the tech side.

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:54

So we have people who have a long time in my department, long

 

Dan McGee: 00:34:58

standing relationship. Relationships and a deep bench

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:02

of experience in independent schools like Hiram, you

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:05

mentioned those Help Desk roles, like my person in the Help Desk

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:08

role, he's worked as long as I have in independent schools. And

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:12

I think one of the benefits that's kind of helped me in

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:15

terms of centering like my own ethos, my own mood, is being

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:20

able to lean on those people who maybe they had a less senior

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:24

role originally, but their longevity in that role has sort

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:28

of bumped them up and allowed them to level up. But also me,

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:32

so I think that becomes visible, and I think the small wins that

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:37

you get, either personally or as a team, are very helpful. I

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:41

remember we had a teacher who left a couple years ago, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:44

when he left, he said, I've worked in a few schools. I've

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:47

never encountered a team like yours who've been so helpful and

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:52

so on top of things, what we need to do. You know, not

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:55

everything's perfect, but it's moments like that where you can

 

Dan McGee: 00:35:58

sense the trust and it feels good, especially when you have

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:02

like those low days where just everything you touch seems to

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:05

break or take three hours to do

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:36:07

absolutely Dan, I'd like to pivot a little bit

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:36:11

so you are new to the board and you have experienced your first

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:36:16

board retreat. What excites you most about your potential career

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:36:23

here on the board with ATLIS.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:36:26

I mean, I know it's got to be the AX

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:36:27

throwing, right?

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:28

I was going to say the opposite. It's not the AX

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:30

throwing, because I was absolutely terrible at that,

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:34

although that was a lot of fun. You have some potential, yeah?

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:38

Well, we have our first Governance Committee meeting

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:41

this week, and I'm really excited about that, because I

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:45

see that as kind of a direct relationship to the work that I

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:48

do in the school. I'm definitely able to see how that

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:52

professional development that I'll be gaining through that

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:55

role with ATLIS is going to help me come back to Laurel and say,

 

Dan McGee: 00:36:59

Hey everybody, I've learned these strategies, and we can use

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:03

this right away, because I think it's important to be inward and

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:08

outwardly reflective, look and see what others are doing,

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:10

whether it's the ATLIS board, whether it's other schools and

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:14

really that opportunity, you can't put a price tag on that,

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:18

like I don't need to go and get another Master's degree or an

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:22

MBA. I just need to talk to everybody on this podcast, or

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:26

everybody who's listening to this podcast, because I'll be

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:29

able to learn so much. So I think the learning is really

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:33

what is key and what really is exciting about jumping into the

 

Dan McGee: 00:37:36

ATLIS board,

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:38

the service is the best professional development.

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:41

You'll get serving on a board as someone who is new to the board

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:44

this year as well. Last night, we had our first finance and

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:48

Facilities Committee Meeting of our board, and I've served on

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:51

that committee, on the facility side of it for quite a while,

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:54

but with ATLIS, I'll be serving on the Finance Committee, and

 

Bill Stites: 00:37:57

it's always been one of those black box areas where I'm like,

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:02

I kind of get it, but not really. And, you know, by the

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:05

time I'm at the board meeting, a lot of the discussions have

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:08

already been had, you know, in a lot of those areas. So I'm very

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:10

eager and interested for much of the same way that you're talking

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:13

about from a governance perspective, getting in and

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:16

being able to do the work a little bit more. I think it just

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:19

will help inform all of us. So it's my long winded way of

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:24

saying, if you think about serving, if you're interested in

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:26

serving, do it, because you'll get more out of it than you

 

Bill Stites: 00:38:29

could have ever

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:30

imagined, I think too a testament to Christina, the

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:34

board, everybody ATLIS staff, here's a little call back right

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:38

the onboarding for the board. I went to our executive assistant

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:42

to the head, and said, ATLIS has it figured out if we need to ask

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:47

anything about tech setup, those kinds of things, I know where I

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:51

can direct you and we can learn a lot. So that was really,

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:55

really great to see. And I mean, obviously this is a tech

 

Dan McGee: 00:38:58

bleeding edge organization, I would expect nothing less,

 

Dan McGee: 00:39:01

right? But it's there all of that stuff and more.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:04

Well, thank you for that. And also, I mean,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:06

a big part of that is that I not only report to a board as a CEO,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:10

but I serve on boards, and I think that it makes me a better

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:14

leader in a staff capacity, because I've served on great

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:18

boards with healthy cultures and really buttoned up

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:22

communication, and I've served on really unhealthy boards with

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:25

terrible cultures, you know, and so it's important to me to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:28

experience those, because then I can kind of bring that to the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:31

table. So appreciate you saying that. So I have a question for

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:35

you about AI, and in particular, your background with language.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:39

Obviously, there's a lot of advancement in the realm of

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:42

language, and for those immediate translations, we've

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:45

had the Google Translate plug in on our websites for a while and

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:49

things like that. But now there's actual tools that are

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:53

growing in popularity. They're being embedded into the other

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:39:57

tools we already use, let alone. You could just go to chat, GPT,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:01

or whatever bot you prefer, and ask it to translate something so

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:06

especially as we talk about the need for a human and humanness

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:11

compared to the speed and efficiency and accessibility of

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:16

AI, where do you fall on the spectrum? Dan, like, do you feel

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:20

like you know your degree in German? I doubt you would do

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:24

that today. I doubt many kids will do that. Or do you think

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:27

I'm wrong? Do you think that there's still that human in the

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:29

loop, piece of it, that an AI bot or an automatic translating

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:34

technology is going to just not get right? It's pretty

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:37

impressive when you see some of these things where you know,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:39

you'll upload a YouTube video, and you're speaking in English,

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:42

and then suddenly you the AI bot version of you is speaking

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:46

another language that you don't know. So it's moving quickly. So

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:40:50

I'm just curious what you think about all that.

 

Dan McGee: 00:40:52

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, honestly, if I had it to

 

Dan McGee: 00:40:55

do over again, if I would study German, but I also teach

 

Dan McGee: 00:40:58

computer science at the school, I don't know if I study computer

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:01

science either, which might be like a sinful thing to say, but

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:06

I've had ai do things for me, from a programming perspective,

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:10

that would have taken me months to do, and it's just like out of

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:13

the box a day later, good to go, ready to use. So I think the key

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:19

in that, though, is I knew kind of what I was doing, what I

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:23

needed. I knew how to interpret what it was giving me. And that

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:26

makes the human aspect, the human component, that much more

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:29

important. And kind of looping back to librarians, we think

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:33

about when the internet came out in force in schools and online

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:39

databases, you know, even think back to when Encarta was on like

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:43

a CD ROM, right? That didn't mean that a kid could just sit

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:47

there at a computer and look up something and then just be done

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:51

with it. They still need somebody who can explain it to

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:54

them. And AI is like a step forward with that, but it's

 

Dan McGee: 00:41:58

almost like an overeager teaching assistant, they're

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:02

going to be a yes man, yes woman, whatever, and kind of

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:05

just affirm whatever you already believe. So that makes it that

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:10

much more important again, for a human to be in the mix, and a

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:14

human that maybe is a little bit smarter than you or just a

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:19

little more seasoned than you, like I had a teacher in high

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:22

school that said, study with somebody smarter than you. I

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:24

think that applies in so many aspects of life, but it

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:28

definitely also applies here with AI, can you

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:42:31

tell us a little bit about where your

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:42:33

school stands? Yeah.

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:35

So personally, I'm never like an absolutist. I'm

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:39

more a pragmatist, middle of the road, and we jumped into AI, at

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:43

least in like a sandbox II kind of way, pretty early on. But we

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:48

didn't move super quickly to adopt tools. We wanted people to

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:52

really try things out. And I think that's really in the ethos

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:56

and the spirit of an independent school. Teachers and students

 

Dan McGee: 00:42:59

come to our schools because they want something different. They

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:02

want something more personalized, tailored to them.

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:05

And if we just sign on to a one size fits all box, basically,

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:12

that doesn't really fit with that. And I was just talking

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:15

with someone in the school earlier today, and I said, you

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:17

know, I'm really glad we didn't sign on with XYZ tool a couple

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:21

years ago, because I'm sure right now it would be in the Ed

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:24

Tech graveyard. So we have to be really measured and careful, and

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:29

that's what we've been doing, letting people try things out,

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:32

giving them some guidelines. Policies can be great, but I

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:37

don't think people ever read them. If you just tweak that

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:39

word and say, guidelines, I think it becomes much more

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:42

workable and much more helpful to kind of show people the path

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:46

and give them some possibilities. Like I had a

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:49

teacher come up to me yesterday and say, Okay, what was that

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:52

tool that you showed me right at the beginning of school during

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:55

meetings? And I said, Oh, it was Google's notebook, LM. And she

 

Dan McGee: 00:43:58

said I gave it a task that I thought it could never do. It

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:03

did it better than I could do and better than I thought it

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:05

could. And so I think that too shows that's kind of our

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:09

approach. Let people go there, try it out, and they're going to

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:14

learn more by doing it, and they're going to see the benefit

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:18

of it more than if I say this is a great thing, because I say it

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:22

often, I had a committee working with me this summer, committee

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:25

of teachers working on AI and I said, this is not the Dan group.

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:29

This is the AI group. And we're all talking about these things.

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:32

I'll bring you things to discuss, learn and talk about,

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:36

but I'm not dominating this conversation, because that's not

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:39

helpful for anybody, because we don't want this to be

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:41

personality dependent.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:44:43

Dan, do you have a student AI group or club?

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:48

We don't yet. That's something we definitely want to

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:50

do this year. We talked about that this summer. I think it's

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:53

really interesting, like when we've had conversations with

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:57

students about AI. So I mentioned I teach computer

 

Dan McGee: 00:44:59

science. Clients, I actually showed Google's notebook, LM, to

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:02

my students. I just gave them a test yesterday on their first

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:06

unit, and I said, Here's notebook. Lm, I loaded up all of

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:10

my slide decks, my lesson plans, all my materials for that unit,

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:14

and I gave it to them. And that kind of freaked them out a

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:17

little bit. Surprisingly, I turned on the little podcast

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:21

thing that it makes it's not going to put this podcast out of

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:24

business, but it's pretty good, right? They were freaked out by

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:27

it. Then there's even a video summary. Now that's relatively

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:31

new, and I think their sort of reticence about it is really

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:36

refreshing, and gives me hope that they're not just going to

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:39

sign on to these things and not think about it and think about

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:43

how it fits in their life.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:45:45

Dan, we're at the beginning of a school

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:45:47

year. What is on tap for you this school year? Are you

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:45:51

looking forward to anything? Any big projects you're tackling?

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:54

Yeah, right now we're working through a network

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:56

project that just didn't get completed over the summer.

 

Dan McGee: 00:45:59

Sometimes it happens, we're replacing all of our switches in

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:03

our campus here in Shaker Heights, and that's a big,

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:06

ongoing project. The weird thing about it, as complex as it is

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:11

now, it's a little bit easier in some ways than it was five years

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:15

ago, two years ago, 15 years ago, and things are just a

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:19

little bit more plug and play, easy to use. That's a big

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:23

project. We're looking at our Wi Fi in general too. So relating

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:27

to the network, we're going to kick off a survey soon doing a

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:31

heat map of our school to make sure that we've got coverage set

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:35

the way it needs to be. And the terrifying aspect of that is

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:39

we're going to be looking at outside Wi Fi, exterior Wi Fi.

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:42

So we might need to hold a support group for me soon on

 

Dan McGee: 00:46:46

that, because that is a big topic.

 

Bill Stites: 00:46:50

Dan, let me tell you, if you need anyone to talk

 

Bill Stites: 00:46:52

to that was my past two summers, happy to jump on a call off of

 

Bill Stites: 00:46:57

the pod. That would be great and talk through all of this,

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:00

because there is a lot to all of it, for sure.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:47:03

Yeah, same here we have places, especially because

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:47:06

of all the streaming of athletic events in the various locations

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:47:10

on campus,

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:11

I found out we got a huddle camera yesterday, or

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:13

actually this morning. I said, Oh, that's new. What's that

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:17

power cable from? That's from our Hudson camera. Oh, okay,

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:21

cool. I didn't know about that.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:47:23

Watch that throughput on your internet

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:47:27

connection. It's a resource hog.

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:30

It's great. How you find out about those things, not

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:33

that you were involved in the conversation, not that you were

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:35

discussed or consulted. It's like, oh, yeah, we got one of

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:38

these, or we have three of them. How are we gonna, you know,

 

Bill Stites: 00:47:40

like, yeah,

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:41

like, how do we get this to work? Wait, get what to

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:44

work. Yeah, the other big project, we're upping our

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:47

bandwidth to five gigs, so that will be a big improvement. Wow,

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:51

either this week or next week, jealous, it'll be really nice.

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:54

And it was cheaper than what we had before, which was really

 

Dan McGee: 00:47:59

something we're

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:01

gonna have to put that video up because

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:03

Hiram and Bill's reactions. Are you guys jealous? You want Dan's

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:07

bandwidth?

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:48:08

100% sure. Why not stream everything 4k

 

Dan McGee: 00:48:13

I'll tell you offline how much it costs, and you'd be

 

Dan McGee: 00:48:16

surprised

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:17

see all you need to get these guys in a

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:19

better mood is just a little pod therapy.

 

Hiram Cuevas: 00:48:23

Sounds like a candle scent pod

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:25

therapy, I'm not sure I want to know what

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:27

your candle scent would be. I

 

Bill Stites: 00:48:28

don't want to smell that scent. It might smell like

 

Bill Stites: 00:48:34

whiskey, is all I'm saying. Probably smell like a chai latte

 

Dan McGee: 00:48:37

at this point of the year, it would just smell like

 

Dan McGee: 00:48:40

sweat and tears, maybe

 

Bill Stites: 00:48:43

smells like despair.

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:47

Well, my three unicorns. Thank you so

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:49

much, Dan. Thanks for being a part of the pod. It was great to

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:52

have you on and great to get to know a little bit more about

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:54

you. We love that you've joined the ATLIS board, so I know we'll

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:48:57

be spending some time together, and hope you've already reviewed

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:49:00

your agenda for the Governance Committee meeting. That's my

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:49:03

homework assignment to you. Absolutely awesome. Thank you so

 

Christina Lewellen: 00:49:06

much for being here. I really appreciate it.

 

Dan McGee: 00:49:08

Thanks. It was awesome to be here with all of

 

Dan McGee: 00:49:09

you.

 

Narrator: 00:49:12

This has been talking technology with ATLIS, produced

 

Narrator: 00:49:15

by the Association of technology leaders in independent schools.

 

Narrator: 00:49:19

For more information about ATLIS and ATLIS membership, please

 

Narrator: 00:49:22

visit the atlis.org if you enjoyed this discussion, please

 

Narrator: 00:49:26

subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your

 

Narrator: 00:49:30

colleagues in the independent school community. Thank you for

 

Narrator: 00:49:33

listening. You.