Day 1: November 7 – Main Conference

• 7:30am-9:00am: Registration and Breakfast
• 9:00am-9:45am: Keynote Address – Lowa Mwilambwe – Chancellor Ballroom
• 10:00am-10:45am: Sessions 1
  • Project Management + SharePoint = Success!
    Philip Nyman, Tech Services/Software Services; Larry Gibson, AITS; Renee Beere, AITS; Ryan Ladd, Tech Services; Todd Nelson, Tech Services
    Join staff of the Tech Services and AITS Project Management Offices on a tour of the SharePoint sites they use to manage their enterprise IT projects. Tips, techniques, and lessons learned will help you use SharePoint to manage your project initiatives.
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • 18 Tips to Prevent Ransomware Attacks from Ruining Your Day in 2018
    Steve Krause, UI Foundation; Joe Marton, Veeam Software
    Ransomware is on everyone’s minds. This informative session will teach you some great ways to insure your production data is protected from ransomware and how to make sure your backup data is as well. We will cover the latest design strategies and user training topics.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: More than meets the eye – Programming, development, and security
  • Globus: An Overview
    Tim Boerner, Technology Services & NCSA; Greg Nawrocki, University of Chicago – Globus
    Researchers at hundreds of universities, national labs, government facilities, and other research institutions use Globus routinely as they work with and transfer large amounts of research data between resources. Come get an introduction to what Globus is, how it works, and some of the key features that it provides to you and the researchers you support. More importantly, find out how it can make your job supporting research data easier.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • Secure Amazon API/CLI Access Using Shibboleth and Duo
    David Riddle, Technology Services; Keith Wessel, Technology Services
    Storing Amazon access keys on developer and administrator workstations presents security challenges because these keys are long lived, unencrypted, and relatively difficult to rotate and manage. Technology Services has developed awscli-login, a user-friendly open source plugin for the AWS Command Line Interface, to help address this issue. It allows users to securely generate and automatically rotate short-lived Amazon access keys using their personal Shibboleth and Duo credentials. These short-lived credentials can be used to access the Amazon API and command line tools such as Terraform without having to store any long-lived credentials. We will discuss the overall architecture, the plugin’s user-friendly feature set, and provide a live demo.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Heavy metal – Infrastructure, cloud computing, and cutting edges
  • ATLAS Internship Program: Higher Ed Meets Vo-Tech
    Michelle Rome, ATLAS; Julia Hartman, ATLAS; Hannah Jones, ATLAS
    While technology and the Humanities are not always seen as something that go hand in hand, companies like Google and Microsoft have stated that in high-tech environments soft skills have more importance than a computer science degree. The future leaders of tech are Humanities majors with great communication skills, public speaking prowess, and fantastic team-building abilities. In the College of LAS, ATLAS is integrating technology into the Humanities. We give College of LAS majors hands-on experience with technology in real world workplace environments through our rapidly-growing internship program. Come and find out how interns from history, anthropology, and creative writing could be the next Sergey Brin or Bill Gates.
    Location: Humanties
    Track: Transforming people – Education, training, and leadership
• 11:00am-11:45am: Sessions 2
  • CMDB- What Do You Want to Know?
    Jennifer Trevillian, AITS
    AITS has been using configuration management in conjunction with change management for 8 years. Come ask about anything related to our CMDB and the EDW data.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • Leveraging DocuSign to Improve Workflows
    Julie Wagner, Records and Information Management Services; Brent West, Records and Information Management Services
    Learn about the basics of DocuSign, an e-signature platform that can be used to create forms and simply routing documents to multiple signers. Many departments across the university system are now successfully implementing DocuSign to improve their routing of contracts, signed documents, and other records.
    Location: Humanties
    Track: Transforming people – Education, training, and leadership
  • What the Students Need: In Their Own Words
    James Quisenberry, Auxiliary Shared Technology Services; Dan Steward, Sociology
    Student panel providing feedback to the IT community based on the student experience.
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Wild Card – Anything goes!
  • Shib in a Box: Containerizing the Shibboleth Service Provider
    David Riddle, Technology Services; Keith Wessel, Technology Services; Andy Gherna, Technology Services; Jeff Dimpsey, Technology Services
    Technology Services is currently developing an authentication microservice that enables service administrators to protect microservices with Shibboleth without having to employ unnecessary components, such as Apache and shibd, allowing for lightweight, single-process containers. Protecting containerized applications with Shibboleth can be challenging, so this talk will explore the possible solutions, their limitations, and why we are developing this solution for the University’s online course catalog.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: More than meets the eye – Programming, development, and security
  • Globus: Beyond File Transfer
    Tim Boerner, Technology Services & NCSA; Greg Nawrocki, University of Chicago – Globus
    We will demonstrate Globus capabilities from the perspective of a researcher, systems administrator, and application developer. This is a high-level introduction to all aspects of the Globus service, including the web application, command line interface, and platorm-as-a-service. You will learn how to share and publish data, and how to set up personal endpoints.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
• 11:45am-1:00pm: Lunch, Poster Sessions, Vendor Showcase, and Networking
• 1:00pm-1:45pm: Sessions 3
  • NSF, XSEDE, Campus Champions and Extreme Scale Research Computing
    Dean Karres, Beckman; Jay Alameda, NCSA
    An introduction to the XSEDE Campus Champions program and its desire to assist researchers in accessing the Extreme Scale Compute resources, shared datasets and other facilities scattered around the US.
    
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • Building Success: Transform Your Organization with a Checklist
    Abby Razer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale Information Technology
    Do you struggle with teaching others a new or changing process? What would it mean if your organization could be: *Accountable *Building clarity *Building consistency *Building success *Easily updated *Reducing errors *Repeatable *Saving Time *Shareable Check the boxes to transform your organization…give your brain a break that’s ok! Come learn in a fun interactive session how checklists are transforming training with a real-life examples. This session will help you build the skills you need to create your own effective checklists in any area.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Transforming people – Education, training, and leadership
  • Creating Conscientious Email Senders with Email Authentication and Fraud Defense
    Eric Frahm, Technology Services
    Modern trends in email defense are forcing major providers, including Google, Microsoft, AOL, and all federal agencies to implement and enforce email authentications measures such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has begun the process of moving to a DMARC reject policy, and this will impact how our campus users will need to approach business email needs. This session will be an opportunity for Q & A about our email fraud defense efforts, the solutions we are putting into place to make this possible, and the cultural changes that will need to happen among the non-technical users on campus. This is also the opportunity to provide feedback on what further communications and assistance can help with these efforts across campus.
    Location: Humanties
    Track: Transforming people – Education, training, and leadership
  • Network Technology Transformations
    Chuck Hayes, Technology Services; Chris Skaar, Technology Services; David Zych, Technology Services; Brad McDuffie, Technology Services
    The campus network is constantly undergoing transformation as both technology and customer needs change. At this session you will hear the latest updates on what has already transformed as well as planned upcoming changes. The topics covered will include WiFi, the upgrade of the ICCN optical network, the campus wired network, IPAM, and the campus VPN service.
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Heavy metal – Infrastructure, cloud computing, and cutting edges
• 2:00pm-2:45pm: Sessions 4
  • Use Cases in Deploying AWS Cloud Services
    Akin Johnson, University of Illinois at Chicago | College of Medicine Office of the Dean
    AWS has a ton of products available for deployment in the cloud. Due to the overwhelming nature of these services and names, it is often difficult to know how to navigate the array of choices. The presentation takes an existing on premise case and deploys a comparable cloud based solution. All cases will take into consideration the following areas listed below but will always start with identifying what is needed security wise and setting up your account (IAM role) and how to use the command line to query your environment. Design; Deployment; Security best practices; Storage & Database; Network & Content Delivery; Security, Identity & Compliance; Analytics; Server Less Computing; Management Tools.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Heavy metal – Infrastructure, cloud computing, and cutting edges
  • Apple Education Fall Update
    Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Matt Childress, Mathematics; Drew Coobs, Technology Services; Keith Mountin, Apple
    Keith Mountin from Apple will present on all the new Apple announcement from this fall and look at some of the new features from macOS Mojave and iOS 12.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Wild Card – Anything goes!
  • Misadventures in Group Management
    Michael Painter, IT Partners @ Education
    Our IT shop manages our college’s Active Directory objects. We leverage the AD for a variety of permissions and emailing needs, so it is important to keep our lists up-to-date. Many groups are ad-hoc, but, increasingly, we are using our college personnel directory to indirectly manage our AD memberships. I’ll overview some of the tools we’re using and the duct-tape and bubble gum that’s holding it together.
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: More than meets the eye – Programming, development, and security
  • The Face(s) of Research and Data Services at the Library
    Ashley Hetrick, Research Data Service
    This presentation creates the opportunity to meet and engage with the many faces of data services at the Illinois Library. Panelist will introduce themselves, provide information about what they do generally, and explain how they are supporting, contributing to, and transforming research and data services in particular at Illinois. Along the way, attendees will be provided with a very broad sense of the many ways research and data can be interpreted and applied, as well as of the breadth and depth of resources available to the campus. This is a prime opportunity for colleagues to form collaborations that can span quads, disciplines, and even institutions.
    Location: Quad Room
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • FormBuilder: Tips, Tricks, and Technical Features
    Tanya Wood, AITS
    Using FormBuilder for workflows or an event registration? This session will highlight the functions of FormBuilder, including some tips for easier form development. Then we’ll talk more about some of the technical capabilities within the tool, including web hooks to feed data, advanced routing, and the use of regular expressions in forms.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Transforming people – Education, training, and leadership
• 2:45pm-3:15pm: Snack, Poster Sessions, Vendor Showcase, and Networking –
  Illinois Ballroom
• 3:15pm-4:00pm: Sessions 5
  • Endpoint Services Birds of a Feather
    Scott Balsamello, Technology Services; Gary Bernstein, Technology Services; Drew Coobs, Technology Services; Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Beth Shirk, Technology Services; Evan Taylor, Technology Services
    Open Discussion about Endpoint Services tools including SCCM, AirWatch / Workspace ONE, Munki, MunkiReport, WSUS, Dell Data Protect, and Malwarebytes.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: More than meets the eye – Programming, development, and security
  • Women in Technology
    Candice Solomon-Strutz, AITS; Laura Hayden, Engineering; Cordelia Geiken, Technology Services; Debbie Fligor, Technology Services
    Open Discussion about Women in Technology Group (WIT) which provides a forum for discussion of issues facing women in IT in general and on campus, networking and coaching, and coordination of outreach efforts to girls considering IT as a career.
    
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Transforming People: Education, Training, and Leadership
  • Introduction to Illinois Data Science Initiative and Updates on Activity
    Dimuthu Tilakaratne; Nick Vance; Robert Brunner
    The goal of the Illinois Data Science Initiative is to articulate an implementable plan for integrating and elevating Data Science on our campus. This plan will position us to scale up into a cross-cutting, full-fledged Data Science program serving the Illinois community and its educational, governmental, and industrial partners. We will introduce you to the initiative and give you update on activities.
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Transforming ideas – Research, data, and communication
  • IT Communication and Transparency between Departments
    Allison Payne, College of ACES; Bobbi Hardy, Technology Services; Chris Tidrick, Gies College of Business
    The Microsoft Teams workspace for IT End User Services (go.illinois.edu/ITEndUserServices) is a platform for information sharing and networking among IT professionals who directly serve faculty, students, and staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The goal is a more unified customer service approach across IT support units that prioritizes customer need above organizational boundaries. In this Birds of a Feather session, we’ll share our existing communication strategies and welcome ideas from all IT Pros and service owners about, e.g. what information would be helpful to have more promptly during outages/upgrades of cross-campus services (Moodle, Exchange, Duo), feedback methods for service owners and consumers of those services, and how to incorporate the MS Team into existing communications processes to minimize duplication of effort.
    Location: Quad Room
    Track: Transforming Ideas
  • Terraform Provisioning on AWS
    Joanna Delaporte, Global Technical Operations at Wolfram Research, Inc
    With simple configuration files, Terraform can build, change, and version infrastructure. Topics demonstrated will include installing Terraform, provisioning, configuring, and deprovisioning resources using AWS. Multi-contributor version control will be discussed. If time allows, connections to cobbler for pxeboot provisioning and Ansible for configuration management will also be explored.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Heavy metal – Infrastructure, cloud computing, and cutting edges
• 4:15 PM – 4:30 PM: Closing Remarks and Sponsor Quiz / Prize
• 4:30 PM: ITPF Connect Event at Houlihan’s (located in iHotel) sponsored by CDW-G and DELL