2010.01.13 NuTech Meeting-UNL CIO’s Year 1 Planning

It seems the title of this month’s UNL NuTech meeting was a bit misleading though I found the meeting to be very interesting and full of information to share. The room was much fuller than I had seen it in a long time. Though I didn’t take a formal count there must have been over 75+ people in attendance. The meeting kicked off with Mark Askren, CIO describing Information Services’ direction over the next few months. His message has remained the same, which for me is a tell tale sign that IS is not wavering in our mission to offer infrastructure and scaled solutions to help achieve the mission of the university through teaching, research, and service.

I’m sure by no means a complete list but highest priority within the short term (3-6 mo):

• IDM
• Security
  • vulnerability testing
  • purchased security software
  • organized group is for support
• Shared Storage
• Desktop support
  • LanDesk and/or others

John Gilliam was also gave a quick update regarding new ideas surrounding video and presences awareness, unified communications (not just e-mail, im, and voice). He explained systems that need to integrate with each other, adhoc desktop video conference scheduling and more.

David Defruitter and his staff from CBA ITS described the services they are currently offering of which seemed to focus on desktop support though they also are experienced in web2.0 app development, backup solutions, virtualization etc. The CBA ITS web site has a comprehensive list of offerings.

A new acronym (which slips my mind and my scribbled notes) formally known as CIT was unveiled by Bob Losee. He briefly explained the changes that are occurring in their department moving more toward and academic offering than service offerings. Contact him directly for more information. He described their strengths in CMS offerings, especially business management and decision making regarding content provision. They also offer many of the services that other shops offer as well on campus.

Univerisity Communications, Bob Crisler described their presence in design and adherance to web standards. This affords the best scale and support model.

My descriptions of the above are very truncated and highly edited, the main thing I took away from the meeting was that there are many IT and Web experts in the UNL community. Mark described a need to pull together and collaborate whenever and where ever possible. He also described a future of data centers, power consumption, and the necessity of economies of scale. It will be imperative for our institution to begin to monitor power consumption and look at utilizing data centers in the cloud.

The last thing that stuck in my mind is that Mark has mentioned in various discussions that it seems that in higher ed, we always think of 20 ways we are different or special. He mentioned that we need to begin to think about how we have similarities and maximize economies of scale in those areas. Build upon community source projects and leverage our personal networks to achieve our goals.

2009-11-13 ITS Staff Meeting

I found that our ITS staff meeting was very productive. Pam lead a discussion of IS Values that we could agree and take forth as a common platform through our organizational changes. Mark also attended and pointed out our necessity to change, as has been referenced by consultants and other peer institutions. Unfortunately I did not capture our board comments. I look forward to minutes posted. Final thoughts, while we have our smaller (ITS meetings) I feel that it be highly important that these values be commonplace that pervade the organizational culture.

On another note, Gary Caster sent out a synopsis of our ‘effective meetings’ effort that has occurred over the last 6 months or so, though I was a bit confused as to how to read the charts. In a sense I think generally they state that IS as a whole is in consensus that meetings are important, though agendas need to be established and the topics need to be addressed specifically without a lot of straying. One final thought is that while most IS employees felt that the right people were at the table, action items were lacking at the conclusion of the meeting. I personally would like to thank Gary for his efforts and I for one found the process and data valuable.

Effective Meeting Survey

UPDATE: Pam subsequently sent out a note mentioning that the directors are going to work with HR and map job descriptions with roles. Members of the organization will then be asked for feedback as an overlay on how accurate the descriptions are to the actual job duties being performed.

ITG Staff – 2009-Feb17

We will be hosting a regional BlackBoard Conference Thursday and Friday mostly geared toward system administration and what will be coming in Bb 9.0. Thursday night will be a socialization get together to kick the conference off at Lazlos.

Bruce will be attending the classroom advisory board to brief them regarding classroom technology needs.

IS staff meeting and project updates will be tomorrow morning.

Leona will be coming on full time to help with BlackBoard support through the end of the fiscal year. A grad student has also been requested to help with support.

Instructional Technology Advisory Committee discussing the BlackBoard contract negotions for the upcoming years. Bruce is also insterested in creating a user survey for instructional technology services. Utilize campus services for creating the survey. Bruce will encourage the committee to think about how to reach all the constituents including students and staff.

Andrew reported that he attended a Journalism and EE&O meeting that they have interest in using Breeze to decrease travel costs and administrative expenses.

Walt attended a Postgres database administration in North Carolina. He gained valuable information from the session.

ITS Council – 2009-Feb04

Evaluation information will be distributed starting February 16. There will be a supervisor evaluation to be distributed at a separate time. The response will be anonymously distributed to the next level supervisor for use in the person’s current evaluation. Final deadline for all to be completed is May 4.

Asset list has been distributed, a review of items on the list will be established shortly. Electronic feedback will be requested. Instructions to be included.

Multiple responses to Pam’s request regrading Budget scenarios were received. Many good ideas were gleaned and very helpful.

Pam passed around a document describing 2008 top articles from Educause as well as Business week. If there is more interest, she requested that you contact the office for additional information.

• Greg described server maintenance engagement regarding food allergy program.
• Claudette mentioned  potential of savings regarding FedEx versus UPS.
• Tom Hansen requested Interior Design students as a project to determine a redesign of the computer shop. He will be moving forward to take action and develop a potential budget.
• Todd has interest in recording the IS staff meeting as a proof of concept using Camtasia Relay.
• Bruce reported that Kevin Borgeson has accepted a position with BlackBoard Inc. Clickers will be used at the IS meeting to gather feedback.
• Norm reported that Jason L. in the labs will be deploying sub-notebooks for check-out. Students have requested that laptops be checked out in Harper residence hall. Jeff is working on a large spreadsheet to break down per room expenses, maintenance, etc. Instructional Facilities Design is beginning a large installation of cameras and additional equipment in the Barkley center. Primary use is mostly capture, but some live observation will take place. Another project mentioned was an overhaul of Facilities conference areas.
• Patrick reported that the Sophos installer for mac is currently being worked on to resolve some issues.

ITG Staff – 2009-Feb20

The Vision

Integrate complex technologies in simple ways to improve the learning environment for our customers.

The Values

To foster a work environment that will promote and support a meaningful and successful experience of our vision, we adhere to the following values:

Practice Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership is consistently listening, speaking and acting from a place of honest self awareness. The more this is practiced, the deeper the awareness becomes and the more authentic our actions. This encourages us to act with integrity, which the dictionary defines as “An unreduced or unbroken completeness or totality”, and “Moral soundness”. Authentic leadership calls us to consider our actions within the context of our vision and the mission of the University of Nebraska, and the best interests of our customers.

Be Innovative
Being innovative allows us to come up with creative solutions to challenges we are presented with. It fosters the creative process and reinforces a “can do” attitude.

Have Courage
It takes courage for anyone to step out of their familiar comfort zone to try something new, or to challenge the status quo with a better alternative. This quality of spirit is encouraged in our work environment and encourages risk taking.

Share
If we share what we do with one another, with our customers and with anyone else who may be interested, then we quickly break down the illusion of separation and foster a “we’re all in this together” attitude and quickly realize that helping one another is helping ourselves as well.

We recognize that living these values will bring about a culture in our workplace that will foster:

• Being responsible and taking on responsibility
• A safe environment for taking risks to try new things
• A “can do” attitude
• Finding joy in what we do
• Giving customer service a priority in all we do
• Recognizing the value of everything we do within the context
  of our vision