My name’s Ken Newquist — welcome to Learning the World, my blog at Lafayette College. As Lafayette’s director of web applications development I’m responsible for:
- Managing the development, deployment, expansion, maintenance, and retirement of web applications at the college, including Moodle (Learning Management System), WordPress & Drupal (Content Management), and various third-party web applications that interact with our web environment.
- Overseeing the Web Application Development Department, consisting of a team of three web developers and myself.
- Reviewing, scoping, and managing web-related projects involving third-party vendors.
The name of this blog is taken from the book Learning the World by Ken Macleod. It’s a novel of first contact, between the crew of a generational starship and the alien inhabitants of a newly discovered world. The thing I enjoyed most about the book was its portrayal of a free-flowing, fail fast, fail-often culture aboard the starship But The Sky My Lady, The Sky! that encourages rampant experimentation and speculation among its young people.
As you might have guessed, I’m a huge speculative fiction fan, and enjoy reading science fiction, fantasy and horror novels whenever I have a free moment. Find out what’s on my bookshelf today by visiting the “What I’m Reading Now” category.