Session Descriptions

Off balance: Find your work-life balance as a 24/7, on-call, in-demand IT geek (ZOOM)

Short description:

Whether you have been working in the IT field for 10 months or 10 years you know by now that clients have needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With all of the pressures that both work and personal life bring, can you find a happy balance?  Join us for a panel discussion as several PSU IT professionals, that have busy IT lives and busy home lives, share their challenges, lessons, and strategies to find the balance that they need to operate at their highest levels personally and professionally.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees will learn:

• How to define what work-life balance means for them
• Strategies for creating and maintaining their work-life balance
• Methods for dealing with unbalance and hiccups (peaks and valleys)

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Programmers and Developers, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Project Managers, Networking, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Building KU's custom, enterprise content management system with Drupal

Short description:

In June 2019, KU Marketing and Communications and KU IT kicked off a redesign project aimed at updating the university’s more than 600 school, department, and unit websites. The collaboration between KU Marketing and Communications and KU IT resulted in a custom content management system (CMS) implementation with a distinctive and modern design. Join us to learn about the tools that helped facilitate the partnership with our marketing and communications counterparts. Discover lessons learned throughout the design and development processes.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees can learn about Drupal, if they're not already familiar with the CMS. We will also talk about the software tools we used to facilitate our collaboration with KU Marketing and Communications. Some of those tools include: Pattern Lab, Gitlab, and Zeplin. Finally, we will also talk about lessons learned from the previous system and how we used those lessons to guide this process.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Programmers and Developers, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Project Managers, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

The research cyber-infrastructure ecosystem (ZOOM)

Short description:

An exploration of existing and upcoming resources for research cyber-infrastructure (computing, storage, network and people).

What can attendees expect to learn?

There is a broad set of resources available for research, education and those that support the infrastructure. Activities at campus, regional and national levels have led to projects that are beneficial to a variety of other projects. This should be of interest to a general IT audience as many of these resources can be leveraged in their own professional development.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

The transformative effect of broadband infrastructure on higher education (ZOOM)

Short description:

In the typical paradigm, we expect that each time there is a new need to move data on or off of our campuses, there will be some incremental fee. Cloud migrations, business continuity, VoIP, remote learning, etc.; the one thing in common is the need to reliably, predictably move more and more data. But what if the wide area network looked more like the Enterprise LAN? With direct access to middle-mile fiber optic infrastructure by the higher ed community, we can realize this goal – a new initiative becomes the cost of an optic, or an interface, and not a recurring service provider charge and a contract term. As KanREN has seen over the last decade, direct access to middle-mile fiber has a positive transformative effect on everything from time-to-deploy, to basic viability of new projects and initiatives. This presentation will discuss this effect, and KanREN's vision for institutional broadband infrastructure for Kansas.

What can attendees expect to learn?

How access to middle-mile fiber optic infrastructure accelerates technology adoption and enables innovation. What is possible for the future of Kansas higher education, and what it will take to get there.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Educational Technology Staff, Project Managers, Networking,Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Changing the culture one dad joke at a time (ZOOM)

Short description:

The KUMC Project Management Office established a cross-functional team in 2018 whose purpose was to review new technology prior to purchase. The team had two main goals - preventing issues during project implementation, and providing better information to our Information Technology and Security teams. Prior to this, there was little communication between IT departments, and teams often found work dumped in their lap with the expectation that they will "make it work." 

This case study describes how the creation of this team helped to streamline processes, improve outcomes, and unexpectedly broke down barriers creating a ripple of cultural change.

What can attendees expect to learn?

How KUMC implemented a new process that had positive and unexpected ripple effects on the organizational culture, and how they might replicate at their own institution.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Educational Technology Staff, Project Managers, Networking, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Free stuff! 2021 edition

Short description:

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that we love free stuff. We love it even more when budgets are tight, which is an ever-present problem in higher education - particularly right now. What if you didn't have to spend a cent to get some high quality tools that solve some of your most common problems? In this session, we'll cover four free, enterprise grade platforms that require very little setup to hit the ground running. These tools include a ticketing/helpdesk system, a downtime alert system, a real-time, student-facing chat system, and a system for fostering prospective student contacts. Every single one of these platforms is cloud based, and for the most part they all "just work." Whether you need one of these types of platforms but haven't decided what to invest in yet, or you want to find ways to save in your IT budget, it's always worth it to look at how tools like these can add huge value without costing a cent!

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees can expect to learn about four free, cloud based, enterprise grade tools that each have specific uses in a university context. Attendees will also get some specific tips about how to implement each tool, as well as demo’s of each one with some best practices for their usage.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Programmers and Developers, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Support Staff, Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology, Project Managers, Networking, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring

Security Onion: From PoC to production

Short description:

At CHECK 2019, we presented some open source proofs of concept the security office had developed. One of those, Security Onion, grew into a full-fledged production environment, logging 150 million events a day. This presentation will discuss that process, and how we did it.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Implementing open source security tools, working with open source vendors, scoping and hardware specifications.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Support Staff, Networking, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, General IT Audience

The pandemic pivot: How higher education pivoted to meet the IT needs brought on by the pandemic (ZOOM)

Short description:

Join us for a discussion with PSU stakeholders to discuss the unique needs that have arisen during the pandemic and how IT has pivoted to meet some challenges and fallen short for others. This is a panel style discussion where we will visit with members from PSU’s central ITS dept, The Center for Teaching Learning and Technology, and most importantly PSU faculty and students.  As we discuss the areas that we can improve upon as well as the areas that we are strong, we invite you to come prepared to share success stories and challenges that we can all learn from as we face a “new normal” in higher education.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees will:

• Gain an honest look at where IT in higher ed is meeting the challenges of the pandemic as well as where IT is falling short.
• Learn how one university pivoted to meet a variety of challenges.
• Share challenges that they have faced and how they pivoted to meet those challenges as well as fell short in some cases.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Support Staff, Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology, Networking, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Making the makerspace: How we created the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab

Short description:

In response to a generous gift by the Sunderland Foundation, K-State Libraries and the Division of Information Technology collaborated to produce the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab, an academic makerspace in the university's Hale Library. The original concept was simple: oversee space renovations, identify and procure relevant emerging technologies, build community, and develop academic programming through outreach and classroom enhancement. One year in, however, a fire shuttered Hale Library and all seemed lost. Fast-forward 3 years: Hale Library has undergone substantial transformation, our committee has persisted despite the global pandemic, and the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab has opened its doors for early pilot programs and select student use. Join members of our planning committee as we travel back to 2018 and revisit the complexities and inspiring moments of how the "Innovation Lab" came to be.

What can attendees expect to learn?

This panel discussion will cover the challenges faced by Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab planning committee members with respect to project management, construction, technology selection, academic programming, operations, and project buy-in.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Programmers and Developers, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Support Staff, Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology,Project Managers, Networking, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring

Exploring university hosted cloud, video sharing, and social

Short description:

The WSU Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics has been utilizing NextCloud to bring together departmental documents and collaboration. This talk will review our current use of NextCloud and explore extending this to Video (via PeerTube) and Social (via Mastadon). Finally, we’ll discuss the concept of a KBOR Fediverse among all our Universities.

What can attendees expect to learn?

• Selfhosting
• NextCloud
• Fediverse

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, Educational Technology Staff, Enterprise Platforms & Hardware, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Project management to the rescue: A hero during pandemic pandemonium (ZOOM)

Short description:

Learn how PSU's project management governance structure set us up to meet the pandemonium of the pandemic head-on and work through many unpredictable journeys along the way.  PSU will share their PM story leading up to the pandemic, including their processes driven by shared PM governance. In addition, PSU will share how PM unknowingly prepared them for a worldwide pandemic and guided them through new and unsuspecting pandemic projects.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees will:

• Gain an understanding of PSU's IT project management governance process
• Hear from University members of the governance body
• Learn how PSU has successfully prioritized a long list of projects through shared project governance
• Acquire a comprehension of how proper PM management processes can prepare your IT team for the most unforeseen circumstances

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Support Staff, Project Managers, General IT Audience

DevOps : How to get started with CI/CD pipeline and Kubernetes

Short description:

DevOps facilitates cross-functional communication, end-to-end responsibility, and collaboration for speedy software development to provide better quality and customer satisfactions. The building blocks of DevOps are automations with CI/CD pipeline to shift left of unit testing, and integration tests, as well as . Coconfiguration of monitoring and security.

What can attendees expect to learn?

• The opportunities that come with building an innovative and collaborative DevOps environment
• Shift-left testing to help software delivery teams to perform tests earlierReducing to reduce to reduce the amount of overall end-to-end testing
• Actions to implement, or improve, and continuously deliver within the organization
• DevOps security challenges and considerations

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Manager, IT Security Professionals, Programmers and Developers, Project Managers, General IT Audience

Using Discourse to drive content and student engagement (ZOOM)

Short description:

This will be a presentation about my evolving use of the open source discussion forum software, Discourse, to deliver content and engage with my students in math classes. This includes asynchronous lectures and embedding forums within my open source textbook. I'll also share how the rest of the WSU math department has begun implementing Discourse to support their needs.

We'll cover small howto’s for getting the system configured for mathematics and how IT departments can support and collaborate with instructors like me to get these technologies live.

What can attendees expect to learn?

How Discourse can be used to communicate with students in a convenient fashion. You'll see ideas of how instructors at your institutions could run online classes, upper division 'help labs,' or even a collaborative seminar.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology, Other

Leveraging COVID-19 to drive digital transformation

Short description:

With the sudden push to remote work, hybrid learning, and more online service delivery, now is the time to help drive change on campus to not just digitize business processes, but to digitally transform them. This presentation will discuss how Wichita State's ITS department is starting to help our users see the potential of going beyond just making paper digital, but how to truly leverage data, information systems, and custom development to reimagine a better way of doing and delivering business.

What can attendees expect to learn?

• What is digital transformation really?
• See real life examples of how WSU is starting to utilize true digital transformation on campus.
• Where are we going from here.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Programmers and Developers, Support Staff, Educational Technology Staff, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Endpoint management and security using PDQ tools (ZOOM)

Short description:

This presentation will cover our use of PDQ Inventory and Deployment for management of computers in our network. It will also discuss our use of security scanning tools (Nessus, etc.) to direct and automate these efforts.

What can attendees expect to learn?

• Tips and tricks for the use of these tools
• Best practices that we have learned
• Automation of patching and updating applications, hardware and operating systems

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Support Staff, General IT Audience

Additive manufacturing in the workplace: Why every team needs a 3D printer

Short description:

Sharing our experience using 3D printing and iterative design to speed up COVID response, save university funds, fill previously unfillable needs, and support our people and equipment.

What can attendees expect to learn?

A brief look at FDM 3D printing in general. What Washburn is doing. Why I think it’s awesome and why having a printer on hand leads teams to creative problem solving and innovation solutions.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Support Staff,Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Pain Point: Updating IT Policies

Short description:

While not the most riveting topic, updating policies is a part of IT governance that is often overlooked. In a quick review of nine IT policies across an average of eight universities, the oldest IT policy dated back to 1998. According to our Legislative Post Audit and now included in the review process is the procedure to review policies annually. IT policies carry the authority of the Chief Information Officer to ensure compliance and consistency of approach or level of performance. In the case of K-State, IT policies provide additional value of supporting strategic direction, as well as guidance in a highly distributed IT environment. This session will describe the policy review process developed in consultation with the Office of General Counsel and then walk through a few policy revisions using our process. The presentation will include changes made to policies, units on campus who were consulted, and any extensive deliberations resulting from policy updates. Updates will be provided on policies that were retired, or we hope to retire.

What can attendees expect to learn?

Attendees will learn the process that K-State is using to update their IT policies. They also will learn suggested inclusion in policies gleaned from a review of policies across the country. Also gather ideas on specific groups who were consulted based on the policy under review.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders

Amazon Web Services - Cost optimization

Short description:

The K-State Cloud team will go through the process we take to optimize our AWS bill on a monthly basis. Using this method we were able to save almost $50,000 in 2020.

What can attendees expect to learn?

We'll walk through how we identify optimization opportunities, the planning process for targeting optimization goals and how we track optimization metrics.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Programmers and Developers, Database Administrators & Application Administrators, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders

Helping users succeed in technology training (ZOOM)

Short description:

The KU Medical Center public websites consist of more than 15,000 web pages and 250 web editors. We want to share our experience designing and deploying a new training program that supports a variety of technical and non-technical users. 

What can attendees expect to learn?

How we analyzed an existing CMS training program and created a new one that contained a mix of self-guided, group and in-person training. We share our journey of identifying problems and creating solutions to save time and achieve the goals of having better web content and a editor base that is well trained.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

Programmers and Developers, Educational Technology Staff, Classroom Technology, IT Managers and Aspiring Leaders, General IT Audience

Editing digital imagery in research:  Exploring the fidelity-to-artificiality continuum

Short description:

Researchers can edit their digital images in high-control ways down to the pixel level in Adobe Photoshop 2021. What are the rules of play for digital image editing to stay on the side of "fidelity" and not fall into "artificiality" (and potential academic fraud)?  This presentation provides a walk-through of some of the editing capabilities in Adobe Photoshop 2021 and the real-world entanglements with these digital editing powers.  What can attendees expect to learn?

They can learn about some of the challenges in ETDR and instructional design work in terms of data representations when the data are digital imagery.

What audiences may be interested in your session?

IT Security Professionals, Educational Technology Staff, General IT Audience, Other