CIT Extension (CITx)
CITx is a half-day extension event connected to the Continuous Improvement in Technology (CIT) conference held in the Fall and Spring semesters. The goal of CITx is to empower Illinois State's IT professionals by providing them the latest IT news from around campus, opportunities for social networking with their colleagues, and collaborative brainstorming on current topics.
The Spring 2018 CITx event was held the afternoon of Friday, April 13, 2018, in the State Farm Hall of Business.
IT News (1 pm - 2:30 pm, SFHB 139)
Get the latest IT news straight from campus technology leaders. Dr. Todd McLoda, Dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology, will provide the opening remarks.
Networking Break (2:30 pm - 3 pm, Atrium)
Catch up with colleagues over cookies.
Redbirds of a Feather Discussion Sessions (3 pm - 4 pm)
Following IT News, attendees will break up into discussion groups to collaborate and share on the topics of the day.
Standard Operating Environment for Endpoints (SFHB 131)
Facilitated by Dan Taube
Join us to discuss the practice of providing a standard operating environment on university-owned endpoint devices. With the right approach, an IT unit can reduce support challenges, increase data security and protection, achieve compliance with regulatory requirements, and meet the needs of their end users with a common and consistent experience. Topics will focus on the approaches IT units take to equipment builds, policy configuration, patch management, and security with the goal of highlighting where we are alike and where we differ.
Service/Infrastructure Monitoring (SFHB 150)
Facilitated by Tim Walsh
Things that go bump in the night. Do you know what your environment is doing?
Join us to discuss monitoring, and how to determine what's really happening with your infrastructure and services. How do you best leverage that data to reduce downtime speed service delivery and increase client satisfaction? Come collaborate on what to look for, monitoring standards, and documentation/notification methodologies for organizations both large and small.
Growing Your IT Career (SFHB 148)
Facilitated by Dean Plumadore
Recap: The group held an open discussion facilitated by Dean Plumadore. Group participants were asked if they had thought about what they wanted to do next in their career. This should be a universal question for all staff no matter where they are at in their career. It is good practice to take a step back from the day-to-day responsibilities of our jobs and reflect on what you want to be doing in the next three to five years.
Perhaps you are already doing exactly what you want to be doing and in that case, the answer is easy! It is sometimes easy to lose sight of what makes you happy in your work in an advancement-driven society. If you are happy and satisfied with the role that you are in and with the work that you do then then you may want to be in exactly the same place in five years. That is ok, even enviable!
However, if the answer is something different then that leads to more questions. How do get from your current role to the next one? What skills, knowledge, and personal growth is required to make the leap from what you do today to what you want to be doing tomorrow? Are you taking advantage of the free opportunities you get as an employee for education at Illinois State University to pursue an advanced degree? Are you building the right kind of relationships within your team, department, division, or college to ensure that you understand and are in sync with the priorities of the institution? At the end of the day, we ultimately own our careers and as such it becomes our own responsibility to take the steps towards where we wish to be.
The diverse perspectives of the discussion participants proved to be valuable to all in attendance and helped with breaking free of the day-to-day silos of thinking we tend to get trapped within. The strength in understanding how others think, what questions they are asking, and what things they are doing helped to inform the group discussion and gave much to consider by the end of the discussion.
Useful Bots for Teams (SFHB 149)
Faciltated by Nathan Stien
ISU staff have largely embraced Microsoft Teams as their new chat platform. MS Teams offers a relatively simple API to support custom chat bots which that can be used from any programming language. In this session, we will discuss the possibilities this offers for custom bots at ISU which could simplify staff interactions with important campus systems like Cherwell, ReggieNet, OIM, CS, etc.
CITx After-Event (4 pm, Pub II in Normal)
Keep the conversation going at the Pub II after CITx.
