Margaret L.
Thornberry
This spring I realized I had to chose between the increasing demands of my work as
Association Coordinator with Association Management Solutions,
a fast-paced job of organizing meetings
in cities all across the country, managing membership, and posting technical specifications for the
IP/MPLS and
IPsphere forums, and my desire to
spend more time on pro bono projects, such as the effort to save Fremont's
Center Theater as a community performing arts venue, serving
as President of the Fremont Cultural Arts Council,
traveling and keeping after my old farmhouse. I will miss AMS...I've enjoyed working with a great group of people--who really know how to party and
at the same time get the job done!
Since my retirement from Pacific Bell in 1996 I've been blessed with opportunities to work
on interesting projects with great people at several fine firms. One of the most fulfilling was at
Network Associates (now McAfee), where I developed a comprehensive
and up-to-date global internal website, providing employees with current on-line information about their benefits,
the resources available to them, and company policies. The high quality/high content internal site was developed
with minimal resources by setting up robust processes for managing content, in partnership with internal departments.
This was a very satisfying project, allowing me to put my systems training to practical use.
Systems Management is the study of how systems work
(or fail to work the way we wish they would) and the practise of applying
systems management concepts and tools to analyze and influence them.
Systems surround us--computer systems, the environment, our bodies,
our social institutions. My background in Systems Management has helped me manage
projects, web sites, computer networks and to a degree, my teens.
I've found that the
most difficult part of the work I do is determining where to draw the line between the
system being studied and everything else that affects the system--it's essentially an
arbitrary decision. For a short overview of how systems concepts can work in practise,
click here.
Master's thesis, The Impact of Computer Mediated Communication on Culture
and Society: A Systems View, is available by request.
Web sites exist to convey information. It's possible to build very sophisticated
web sites and html pages and still communicate clearly, using designs that are
visually simple and easy to navigate. The more complex sites I've authored under contract
using these concepts are not available on the web (intranet-based and protected by
confidentiality agreements and security firewalls) but here are a
few pages I currently maintain.
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