IT Professionals Forum Conference

HomeSessionsArchives

Spring 2016 Conference

The Spring 2016 IT Professionals Forum was held at the I Hotel and Conference Center on Tuesday, June 7, 2016. 

The format was different this year. We are focusing on training and workshop opportunities in the Spring, while saving panels, updates, and presentations for the Fall event. The Spring 2016 IT Professionals Forum was a 1/2 day event with instructors teaching twice -- once in the morning and once in the afternoon -- to permit units with constant staffing requirements to cycle all their staff through as they wish.

Event Schedule

  • 8:30 AM Morning Registration
  • 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Morning Training Sessions

Lunch is not provided

  • 1:00 PM Afternoon Registration
  • 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM Afternoon Training Sessions

Conference session video presentations

View recorded sessions from the the Spring 2016 IT Professional Forum.

IT Professionals Forum Videos

Descriptions of all sessions

  • A Hands-On Introduction to Campus Cluster Computing
    Neal Davis, Computational Science & Engineering; Maxim Belkin, Physics/Computational Science & Engineering
    This 3-hour workshop series will introduce you to the concepts in High-Performance Computing, as well as the Illinois Campus Cluster and its operations. This includes shell basics, cluster structure and operations, batch job management, the environment, and related topics of convenience for users. (We assume that you have some command-line experience before, with either PowerShell or Bash.) Users are encouraged to bring a laptop and follow along with the exercises. Installation instructions (if necessary) will be provided. This material is presented by Computational Science and Engineering and sponsored by the Illinois Campus Cluster Program.
  • Apple ala Mode - Making Macs Easy as Pie in the Enterprise
    Matt Childress, Technology Services; Keith Mounti, Apple, Inc.; Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Jake Rundall, Technology Services
    From the basics of binding (and why you should) and speedy setup and support we'll also cover enterprise security and remediation and what is available on campus now and what you can anticipate down the line. This 3-hour workshop requires a Mac per participant.
  • Basic Networking Overview
    Jim Bennett, Cisco
    This3-hourclass will be spent going over the basics of networking. Topics range from IP addresses to VLANs to Wireless. No previous network knowledge necessary. Topics covered include: Network Models Basic Connectivity and Hardware LAN and Switching Technologies WAN and Routing Technologies Securing the Network and Remote Users Wireless LAN Technologies
  • Fundamentals of Facilitation Skills
    Amy Glenn, Business Process Improvement Shared Service
    This 3-hour interactive workshop is intended for new facilitators who want to develop and/or improve their facilitation skills. The course will cover the fundamental facilitation tools that can be applied to any type of facilitated session, whether it is a staff meeting, planning session, a brainstorming session, or any kind of meeting that you want to be meaningful and productive.
  • Influencing Skills and Their Role in Leadership
    James Quisenberry, University Housing; Candice Solomon-Strutz, AITS; Jackie Kern, Technology Services; W. Jason Strutz, University Library
    An important skill for leaders is their ability to bring ideas to different stakeholders and build support. This 2-hour workshop will help you understand some of your skills with influencing others and illustrate why those skills are valuable. We'll discuss which influence skills are effective, and which aren't, in our workplace culture. Participation in this workshop has a prerequisite of completing an influence strategies exercise, a short self-assessment of your current influence tendencies.
  • Manage Your Network with Iris
    Ryan Walker, Technology Services
    Learn how and why to use Iris, a tool provided by Technology Services Networking that gives campus IT Professionals granular self-service access to Technology Services-managed switch ports in this 2-hour training session.
  • Microsoft Transform the Datacenter Immersion
    Cesar Larrea, Microsoft
    Microsoft's Transform the Datacenter Immersion is a 3-hour in-person facilitated engagement that allows you to take your own journey in understanding how the Microsoft Cloud Platform responds to changing business needs with the power of a hybrid cloud infrastructure. The pillars of Microsoft's Transform the Datacenter are: 1. Today's business runs on IT 2. Datacenter without boundaries 3. Cloud innovation everywhere 4. Dynamic application delivery
  • Privacy and Information Security Variety Show
    Eric Hayes, Privacy and Information Security, Steve Gatses, Privacy and Information Security, Wayland Morgan, Privacy and Information Security, Matt Mairs, Privacy and Information Security
    This 3-hour hands-on will be split into three separate sections, each with a security or privacy focus. The first session will be an overview of privacy, followed by a hands-on portion on configuring GPG, generating a public/private keypair, and using it with Thunderbird and Outlook. We will also try to cover implementation of Perfect Forward Secrecy. The second session will be a walkthrough of the options available and steps to go through for logging to the centralized service. We will segue into ways that this log data can be used once it is being centrally logged. The third session will be an introduction to web application testing, with demonstrations of some specific tools that can be used to find common vulnerabilities within web applications that your unit may be hosting.
  • Project Management Key Concepts
    Noni Ledford, AITS; Christina Molitor, Technology Services; Kandace Turner, NSCA; Stacey Valuch, ACCC
    This 3-hour training session will provide an overview of key concepts to managing projects at the University of Illinois. Attendees will participate in discussions about project management and in group activities to gain a better understanding of overall project management fundamentals.
  • University Purchasing
    Daniel Szajna, Procurement Services; Justin Johnston, Procurement Services; Teri Merrell, Procurement Services; Mark Taylor, Procurement Services
    This 2-hour in-depth purchasing overview including constructing a Sole Source and the associated timelines; Procurement Rules, Statutes and Policies; and Consortium Contracts and Terms, as they relate to IT. An Open Q&A Forum will conclude the session.
  • Tableau Dashboards and Data Sources: Supporting Your Tableau Users
    Michael Painter, Technology Services at Education
    In this 2-hour workshop, we'll briefly overview the landscape of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server, what your users can do for free on AITS's Tableau server, how to get setup, and what requires the desktop tool. Then we'll practice using Tableau Desktop to create and share a data source (a 2-week free trial of Tableau is available online if you don't have a paid license). A shared data source takes the burden of data modeling off the business user so they can focus on creating visualizations. And finally, we'll practice creating an interactive dashboard, which allows users to interact with your data in a controlled way that requires little to no end-user training.
  • vRealize Automation
    Kyle Holt, VMware; Matt DiCapua, VMware
    This 3-hour lab will demonstrate the ability to use vRealize Automation to rapidly automate the deployment and management of a variety of IT services and applications. It will also show how vRealize Code Stream provides release automation and continuous delivery. It covers key features of vRealize Automation, including use cases from the perspectives of the consumers, business managers, and administrators. You will also explore the integrations with vRealize Application Services and vRealize Code Stream, and review tenant configuration. - Journey to private cloud, Self Service Catalog - Journey to private cloud, Deliver Infrastructure Services - Journey to private cloud, Deliver Applications and Middleware - Journey to private cloud, Deliver on DevOps - Journey to private cloud, Governance, and Security.
  • Writing and Administering Your Own Service Assessment Surveys
    Dawn Owens, CITL
    Increasingly campus units are charged with collecting their own service assessment data using online surveys and other data collection tools. This 2-hour presentation will teach you good data collection techniques, how to write more valid and reliable questions, and to avoid common pitfalls encountered by inexperienced data collectors.