Ryan Rutan
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MIS, The University of Texas at Austin - McCombs 2004
What work brought you to your job today?
After a 3 year "career" in technology consulting for the Energy/Online Trading/Consumer Reviews industries, I returned to college (McCombs) and earned my BBA-MIS degree in 2004, formerly a CS undergrad. Upon graduation, I started work at National Instruments where I've worked in numerous technology spaces including: Email Marketing, Web Analytics, Enterprise Content Management / Syndication, CRM, Open Source Software, and Online Collaboration Management.What do you do in your current job?
Primarily, I am a technical lead/architect for the NI Community Team, which facilitates Web 2.0 initiatives around customer created content for ni.com. As part of this role, I work with business stakeholders to transform their ideas into technical roadmaps and onto final products. In addition, I am the founder/chair of NINJA, an international community within NI for Java development and standards geared towards training and assisting Java developers.What do you value from your MIS education?
The class that I valued the most was MIS 375: Strategic Information Management. The use-cases and strategic thinking the course required solidified my transition from computer science to MIS. On a general note, the breadth of offerings in non-MIS courses at McCombs helped me to establish a firm basis for successful business practices, both in my current position and future ventures.What is your advice for current students?
Technologies rise and set like the sun. Business concepts such as revenue, profit, loss, and efficiency are absolute across all industries. Making technologies work within these concepts is your focus....not the technologies themselves.