In a recent interview, CIO and Vice President Robert Grillo introduced Bacon reporters to his newly renovated office, with floors, walls, and ceiling tiled with iPad 2s. The project, funded by over $540,000 of Tech Fee money, is “what being the head of the Division of Information Technology is all about!”, said the giddy CIO.
When asked if the money would be better spent improving the network infrastructure and providing better online services, Mr. Grillo darted his eyes and made for the nearest wall, then ran around the edge of the room swiping a row of the expensive gadgets in his path, vociferating wildly, “Whee!”
After his spin around the room, we questioned Mr. Grillo as to how he managed to get all the iPads to function in unison and remain charged, despite being welded together with their charging ports covered. “It was simple; I opened the backs of each iPad, soldered and ran wires – daisy-chaining each device. This allows me to simultaneously charge each iPad from my desktop here.” Mr. Grillo pointed to his computer set up with three screens.
One of the screens was set in the portrait configuration and displayed a large amount of computer code, “It took a bit of coding on my part, in Apple’s Cocoa Touch API. You know, the API for iOS. With that I was able to set up a master iPad, here.” The CIO held up an iPad 2 that had been resting next to his Cisco VoIP phone.
“Using the Objective-C language I was able to get the entire thing to work in unison with a simple gesture on this iPad.” Mr. Grillo swiped the iPad and the entire room lit up with different shades of color, with the apple logo prominently centered on each screen.
After going into still more technical detail for quite some time, we interrupted Mr. Grillo and mentioned there had been complaints that he was unreachable in the last month or so. We asked if his iPad-tiled room had anything to do with the lack of communication with other FIU employees. He quickly responded, “Look, I hit a few snags, and I ended up spending a little over a month in my office getting it all to work. But it was worth all the effort.” The CIO paused for a moment and smiled.
“These kinds of projects can be time-consuming, and as CIO I never break my focus. I never let anything-” Mr. Grillo then broke off randomly and ran around the room again, swiping all the screens along the walls, repeatedly screaming “Freedom!” in a mock Scottish accent.
Bacon reporters caught up with Provost Douglas Wartzhok for an opinion on the CIO’s project. After a brief moment of incredulity, Dr. Wartzhok said, “When I suggested he find himself a padded cell, this is not what I had in mind.”
This is not the first technically misguided gaffe by the recently hired Vice President. In August 2011, when a student survey complained of the dank and depressing decor of Deuxieme Maison and Primera Casa resulting from a lack of natural lighting, Mr. Grillo spent $1.2 million securing 1,400 licenses of Microsoft Windows.
