By Suzanne Askren
Network World, 07/23/01
Network professionals, as with any group, are more than just
the jobs they perform. They may not get much of a chance to show them during
office hours, but many have hidden talents in the arts and beyond. Here we
profile three IT masters who spend their off-hours pursuing other passions.
Looking through the heavy-metal
lens
CIO by day, Megadeth photographer by night.
Those two seemingly opposing worlds make up the life of Adam
Bielawski, CIO at DigitalCars.com, a car-buying service in Wheeling, Ill.
Whenever he gets the chance, Bielawski grabs his Nikon N90 and hits the hard
rock/heavy-metal circuit in the Chicago area, photographing acts such as Megadeth,
Iron Maiden, Pantera, Motörhead and Danzig. But it's not all fun: Photographers
only get to take pictures during the first three songs of the set, and in
Bielawski's case, he doesn't get paid.
"I consider myself a professional amateur," he says.
But Bielawski is trying to get into music entertainment photography,
and Midwest Beat is his start. The
magazine gives him concert passes and the opportunity to get published photos
for the portfolio he uses to pitch national publications.
Bielawski believes photography helps him round out his job
at DigitalCars.com.
"Developers never really see what they're creating from
the end-user's perspective; I see it from both sides. And I think learning
it from both sides is probably one reason why I was chosen for my position
here."
To top
On the mushroom trail
The remarkable thing about Dr. John Halamka is that he performs
his primary job as CIO for CareGroup Health Systems in Boston while also practicing
emergency medicine one shift per month. Halamka, who has been interested in
computers since his teens, knows 12 computer languages and has run a software
development company, simply believes that IT and medicine are inseparable.
"It's next to impossible to design meaningful
tools if you're not a technician, and by that I mean a nurse,
pharmacist, doctor, etc.," says Halamka, who also happens to be
associate dean of Harvard Medical School.
And, he's a mushroom expert!
Sign up for a Boston Mycological Society mushroom walk on
summer weekends and chances are Halamka will be leading the group. And, if
Halamka's on duty when you come into the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
emergency room feeling sick after eating a mushroom, then he'll try narrowing
it down to what type. After all, 35 of the 2,500 mushroom species in the U.S.
can kill you, he notes.
Halamka became interested in mushrooms during medical school
because of the different kinds he found in his backyard. He has endured hazards
while hunting for mushrooms, including a mountain lion jumping over his head,
but he wasn't ever in any real danger. And while his knowledge of mushrooms
has obviously helped him in medicine, Halamka believes the thought process
used in mushroom classification also goes with that used in programming. "You
literally go through 50 different binary trees trying to classify a mushroom,"
he says.
To top
The Zen of origami
If you have an encounter with Troy Tate, don't be surprised
if he sends you away with paper in hand. But it won't just be any piece
of paper. It'll be an intricately folded animal or insect, or modular boxes.
It's just his way of giving out the designs he loves to create with origami,
the Japanese art of paper folding.
Tate, network manager for CTS Corp., an electronic components
manufacturer in Elkhart, Ind., became interested in origami when he received
a kit when he was about 10 years old. He took it up again four or five years
ago because he wanted a hobby that didn't require much money and that could
be done anywhere quietly.
"Paper is so plentiful, you can just use a piece of LaserJet
or typing paper and cut it down," he says.
Tate finds insect designs the most challenging. "You're
dealing with square paper that has four corners and four sides, while an insect
has six, eight or more legs. You have to create that out of one sheet of paper,
without cutting or gluing," he says.
Those challenges, and the entire process of trying
to create a design out of paper, are not that different from working
in networking, says Tate, who is responsible for 40 servers that
support 8,500 employees worldwide.
"It's the Zen of the paper and all that design waiting
to come out," he says. "It's the same with computer systems. It's
also linear - you start at a certain point, continue point by point, and come
out with either a successful model or a somewhat less successful model. That's
true with network troubleshooting."
Askren is a freelancer in Evanston, Ill.
