WatITis round-up
Posted by Jesse Rodgers on December 07, 2004 at 03:37 PM
I have been blessed this term – two conferences! Although the second is in raining Waterloo and about 2min from my office but meh (first being MAX ). Today’s conference is the second annual Wat-IT-is conference put on by the campus IT community for the campus IT community. It is a great little get together for the day, a real chance to put faces with email adresses. Here is my take on things.
Keynote
Since I had two presentations it is hard for me to get a real take on what people got from this. But I did attend the keynote. The keynote featured both the VP Academic Provost (Amit Chakma) and the Provost of IST (Alan George). Amit was a great opener, thanked the IT folks on campus, and added a little humour for Alan to bring in the details.
Alan’s keynote focused largely on the web services but he touched on a number of important IT accomplishments this past year. One that stands out is the School of Architecture. It is located about 30min south in Cambridge yet they have a 1GB connection to campus and are hooked in to the UW phone system. The CAT6 cable put in that building is amazing as well. Overall a huge accomplishment considering it has been some time since IST has had to set up a building that wasn’t on campus.
On web things the Web Steering and Operations team’s got a mention as did the urge to move to more accessible design. Angel got a couple slides as well and it really looks like things are moving. I have likely forgotten some things so if you were at WatITis fill in the details below.
Presentations
The day had a good mix of projects. I can really only speak about my two presentations: LAMP Services and AIF online. I will say they went well, no one fell completely asleep. The PDF’s and PPT files are going to be available so check them for details but I will say the underlying theme of both is ‘effective and successful collaboration.’
I did go to the presentation on internet kiosks. What fun it is supporting a computer that is open to the public abuse that is afflicted upon the poor PC. There are some interesting things being done by Food Services, IST, and the Library. But not ‘web related’ so I will keep on topic.
Lunch
The most important part of a conference, lunch. What a great job by Food Services to provide the hungry IT folks with excellent food. Of course what is more important than food to an IT person? Coffee.. that was good too.
Overall
Great job done by the organization committee. Everything was on time and interesting. My one suggestion for next year would be maybe this should be two days – one day presentations, one day workshops. Looking forward to next year.. hopefully I won’t have 3 presentations ;)