Day 1: June 6 – Main Conference

• 7:30am-9:00am: Registration and Breakfast
• 9:00am-9:45am: Keynote Address –Melissa Woo –Chancellor Ballroom
• 10:00am-10:45am: Breakout Sessions
  • Championing Accessibility Takes Down Barriers
    James Quisenberry; Leslie Sherman; Tim Offenstein; Keith Hays; Mike Bohlmann
    Accessibility for technology has received attention in higher education due to some high profile legal action against Universities with web sites or tools that were not accessible. But this kind of accessibility is not only required by law, it is the right thing to do. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is committed to making its technology environment accessible to students, faculty, and staff and has expanded its policies to require accessible technology. Come learn about aspects of this policy and the emerging resources available to support it. Our panel will share several elements and answer your questions.
    Location: Technology
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
  • Connecting Your Applications with Enterprise Data; How Can We Help?
    Jared Crowe, AITS; Jeff Heckel, AITS; Peter Herrig, AITS
    An overview of the integration solutions that AITS offers, and a look into how those solutions can help to bring enterprise data closer to your application and its users.
    
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • How Do I Get Information Out of My Head? Transferring Institutional Knowledge
    Wesley Pate, AITS Service Desk
    You have inspired your department’s culture. You and your team have managed to navigate formal and informal networks together. What happens when part of your team moves on? How can you provide institutional knowledge to your part-time staff? To your successor? This presentation will show proven strategies for keeping institutional knowledge with your team and department. The Service Desk uses a series of videos, Tips and Tricks, to provide an in depth discussion of procedures and processes at staff meetings. Tips and Tricks shows what we do and most important, why we do it that way.
    
    
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
  • How to Be A Male Ally in Tech
    Candice Solomon-Strutz, AITS
    Are you committed to partner with women in tech and work toward equality in the workplace? If so, come educate yourself about the challenges some women in technology experience. Then learn more about your role in being an ally and advocate. Women in tech do not need extra help, but the current environment in which they work does need help. As we look ahead, we’re hopeful that more people will show up as allies for underrepresented people of color and women in the workplace. Will you take a stand? Will you leverage your voices and your power to make a real change to improve diversity? Our workplaces desperately need it. And we’re here to help show you the way. Becoming an ally is a journey. Join us.
    
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
  • Mjolnir and Stormbreaker: Configuration Management Applied
    Joanna Delaporte, Infrastructure Engineering (Datto, Inc); Edward Delaporte, IT (Firstech, a subsidiary of First Busey)
    This will be a birds of a feather round-table format in small groups, guided to discuss challenging topics related to configuration management. Bring your difficult challenges and knowledge to share. Topics discussed will include undoing configuration mistakes, deploying to the cloud, auditing, securing stuff, managing inventories, ticketing, monitoring, processes for change, disaster recovery.
    
    Location: Quad Room
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
  • Work Breakdown Structure Overview
    Tanya Williamson, AITS; Christina Molitor, AITS
    An introduction to Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) that provides an overview on how project teams can determine tasks necessary to complete project work. This session is recommended if you if you are attending the day two Project Management…Breaking Down Tasks and Building Up Schedules workshop.
    Location: Humanities Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
• 11:00am-11:45am: Breakout Sessions
  • A11yFirst for CKEditor and Drupal 8: Creating Accessible Content As You Edit
    Jon Gunderson, Disability Resoures and Education Services; Nicholas Hoyt, Disability Resoures and Education Services; JaEun (Jemma) Ku, University of Illinois Extension
    Content Management Systems (CMS), like Drupal 8, allow authors to edit web content using WYSISWYG editors.   Most CMS authors have little understanding of accessibility principles and the technical details of HTML accessibility to insure the content they create is accessible to people with disabilities.  Some CMS editors are configured with an accessibility checker, but the utility of this feature is dependent on the author invoking the checker.  A checker-only approach reinforces the remediation stereotype for accessibility, which is extra work for the author.  The A11yFirst project goal is to provide a proactive approach to making web content accessible by providing features that guide authors in creating accessible content by default (e.g. headings), just in time accessibility feedback (e.g. link text and text alternatives for images), and help information on making accessible content.   Information will be provided on the A11yFirst for CKEditor distribution and the Drupal 8 A11yFirst Editor Enhancements module.
    Location: Alma Mater
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • Information Security
    Chuck Geigner; Jeremy Watson; Larry Dunham; Taylor Judd
    Open discussion on information security on our campus.
    
    
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Medusa AWS Project Presentation
    Seth Robbins, UIUC Library IT; Joseph Troy, UIUC Library IT
    In February 2019 the UIUC Library went live with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) implementation of the Medusa Collection Registry (medusa.library.illinois.edu), Illinois Data Bank (databank.illinois.edu), and the Library’s Digital Collections (digital.library.illinois.edu). This effort moved over 130 terabytes of digital collections to S3 storage, and implemented the supported web applications using Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), serverless (AWS Fargate), and container (Elastic Container Service – ECS) technologies. This move provided greater durability and reliability of data that are increasingly central to the Library’s mission of curating and preserving information. The presentation will discuss the motivation to move to AWS, the architecture of the AWS services used, and the challenges overcome by the Library team. Also discussed will be the changes made to the medusa, databank, and digital collection web apps to adapt to the AWS ecosystem. AWS serverless technologies, Fargate and ECS, to manage images in the web interfaces are also presented.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Breaking Out of the Box – Research, Data, Storage, Cloud Computing
  • Presenting Your Personal Brand
    Cordelia Geiken, Tech Services; Laura Brauer, Financial Analysis Group, Tech Services
    Have you ever been at a party or networking event and had someone ask you what you do for a living? Do you instantly lock up? Hem and haw, wondering, “How do I explain to this person what I do in a way that they will understand?” This is an issue many of us face, whether we work in a technical field or not. This presentation will take you through some reflective exercises that will help you craft a personal Elevator Speech that you can use to introduce yourself smoothly and peak people’s interest, helping you to create a positive first impression.
    Location: Quad Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
  • State of Apple in the Enterprise
    Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Matt Childress, Mathematics; Drew Coobs, Technology Services; Keith Mountin, Apple
    Apple System Engineer, Keith Mountin will present the current State of Apple in the Enterprise. After the presentation he will answer questions on the entire Apple product line.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
• 11:45am-1:00pm: Lunch, Poster Sessions, Vendor Showcase, and Networking
• 1:00pm-1:45pm: Breakout Sessions
  • Agile State of Mind
    Andy Gherna, Technology Services; Ester Cha, Technology Services
    Software development at what used to be CITES and is now Technology Services was difficult because the expectation was that waterfall style development was the only way to get work done correctly. But projects were running long and team members grew more frustrated with the process due to a lack of communication and pivoting the work was explicitly cut out of the process. A few teams dared to try something new and what grew out of it was happy stakeholders, developers and software that was delivered before it was expected that “just worked” when it was deployed. Our 5 year overnight success with scrum and other agile methods continues to this day to be adapted as our working environment changes. Our talk will give you a high level overview of what scrum is, how we started, where we are today, and what we’re looking at for the next 3-5 years.
    
    
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Made Easy with Terraform
    Kala Maturi, Technology Services; David Riddle, Technology Services; Yoon Lee, Technology Services
    As Technology Services is in the process of moving services to the Amazon cloud, it is important for service admins to have access to AWS resources to perform their day-to-day tasks following the principle of least privilege. We have established a process to determine the level of access needed on specific AWS resources. After migration of two services into the AWS cloud, admins are pleased with the level of access they have received, and are able to perform regular maintenance on services without our intervention. We will discuss where we started with AWS IAM, the process we established on managing IAM roles and policies, and how we use Terraform to write IAM code. We will also discuss our future goals on managing IAM roles and policies.
    
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Exploring EdTech Interoperability Standards: LTI and Caliper
    Liam Moran, CITL
    Two critically important interoperability standards for Ed Tech are LTI and Caliper. LTI is a standard that since 2012 has allowed 3rd party applications to integrate with Learning Management Systems to share identity information and grade book access. Caliper is a learning activity reporting standard that allows the aggregation of activities across applications used in a course. Learn about these standards and tools you can use to put them to work for your projects.
    Location: Humanities Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Exploring the Next Generation Web Accessibility Evaluation and Inspection Tools
    Jon Gunderson, Disability Resources and Education Services; Nicholas Hoyt, Disability Resources and Education Services; Mark McCarthy, AITS
    This birds-of-a-feather session will discuss the current use of web accessibility testing tools and evaluation techniques and explore the requirements and features of the next generation tools. The Accessible IT Group as Disability Resources Education Services (DRES) is starting to work on the next generation of browser-based web accessibility evaluation and inspection tools and we are looking to get user input in their features. The session will provide a forum for people to share what they like about current tools and also share their frustrations and pain points in web accessibility evaluation. This information will be used in the design and development of the next generation of AInspector tools from DRES. We encourage people in all aspects of the web development process, especially people new to accessibility, to join us to help understand your perspective and needs in supporting the campus IT accessibility policy.
    Location: Innovation Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Homebrews: Unsung Tools for IT Pros
    Rick Lindquist, Technology Services; Sergio Correa, Technology Services
    IT Professionals have so many tools available to them, it is sometimes easy to miss some basic time-saving apps, scripts, or web tools. We’ll highlight a few old favorites and some lesser-known utilities that can help make everyday tasks a little easier.
    Location: Technology
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • How Can I Help You?
    Lindsey Sharp; Anya Kanevskaya; Julia Hartman; Jen Anderson
    So much of the technical and e-learning support on this campus is in the hands of our students. Hiring, on-boarding, and providing continual motivation to student workers is a wholly different ballgame exercise in working with full-time staff. Our presenters will share with you how they have successfully created cultures of helpfulness within their student-staffed customer support environments.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
• 2:00pm-2:45pm: Breakout Sessions
  • Media Commons 2.0
    Eric Kurt, Media Commons, UGL; Susan Muirhead, Media Commons, UGL
    The Media Commons has experienced great growth and change in the past year. This session will reintroduce their services and will focus on the latest emerging technologies and instructional resources available. The Media Commons 2.0 now offers VR and high-end loanable technology, renovated spaces such as self-use media booths, studios and media computer labs, expanded media workshops and lectures in the classroom, in addition to the consistent support we provide through consultations, tutorials and blogs.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Process Automation Overview (MODIFIED)
    Michael Painter; David Gerstenecker
    The original presentation by Adam LeGrande and Larry Gibson on AITS’ specific K2 implementation has been cancelled. However, Michael Painter and David Gerstenecker plan to hold a fill-in session on automation in general.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • The Library Moves to Serverless AWS Technology to Deliver High-Resolution Images Online
    Joseph Troy, UIUC Library IT; Alex Dolski, UIUC Library IT
    The Illinois Digital Library went live with over 130,000 images in AWS S3 storage this February. The Digital Library uses home-grown dynamic image server software to drive a feature-rich web interface for viewing and manipulating these images. This underlying technology has recently been migrated to AWS’s ECS Fargate serverless platform, which enables the Library to provide strong and scalable performance while minimizing compute and storage costs. This presentation will begin with a brief background on web image delivery techniques, and then discuss our situation at the Library before and after the transition to AWS. The bulk of the presentation will be a technical description of how we are using Fargate to serve a large collection of high-resolution images, with the goal of providing a “template” for other AWS serverless projects.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Breaking Out of the Box – Research, Data, Storage, Cloud Computing
  • Tools to Understand Your Process
    Kristi Moore, Business Process Improvement Shared Service; Amy Glenn, Business Process Improvement Shared Service
    Have you been asked to describe your process but unsure how to communicate it in conversation? This session will teach you the tools on how to put a process into content, generate a visual picture, identify areas to improve and how to measure the success of your process.
    Location: Quad Room
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • Virtual Hosting Updates
    Tom Grissom, Technology Services
    Updates on the Virtual Hosting Service architecture, future plans and roadmap
    
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
  • Women in Technology
    Candice Solomon-Strutz, AITS; Cordelia Geiken, Technology Services; Laura Hayden, Engineering IT Shared Services; Debbie Fligor, Technology Services
    The WIT Leadership team will facilitate an 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. We will cover the successful spring events, upcoming summer events, and plan to promote the return of a fall mentoring/peer coaching program.
    
    Location: Humanities Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
• 2:45pm-3:15pm: Snack, Poster Sessions, Vendor Showcase, and Networking
• 3:15pm-4:00pm: Breakout Sessions
  • Affiliate NetIDs – Where Are We Now?
    Pat Schlehuber, AITS
    Is your unit or department struggling with identity and access management for your affiliate users? Managing accounts and access for non-traditional users can be cumbersome and requires going through numerous channels. Renewals of accounts and transfers of ownership can be a concern with increasing security requirements. Come learn about how University Identity and Access Management teams are streamlining the netID provisioning process for affiliates and what that means for you. We’ll also review affiliate roles and eligibility and include a demo of our new application.
    
    
    Location: Chancellor Ballroom
    Track: Breaking Bottlenecks – Process Improvement, Workflows, Customer support
  • Communicating Training Needs and Opportunities
    Ginna Moore, Technology Services, WebStore (FAST3)
    This session will explore training opportunities available on the Urbana campus and how to communicate these opportunities effectively to all audiences.
    Location: Lincoln Room
    Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
  • Endpoint Services Birds of a Feather
    Gary Bernstein, Technology Services; Evan Taylor, Technology Services; Drew Coobs, Technology Services; Scott Balsamello, Technology Services; Beth Shirk, Technology Services; Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Keith Sumlar, Auxiliary Shared Technology Services
    Open Discussion about EndPoint Services tools including SCCM, Workspace ONE, Munki, MunkiReport, WSUS, Dell Data Protect, and Malwarebytes.
    Location: Alma Mater Room
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
  • Network Automation and Orchestration with Ansible
    Kapil Agrawal, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
    Manually provisioning and managing configuration for several network devices can be a tedious and error prone job. NCSA’s Network engineering team has been using Ansible as their primary tool for network automation. This presentation will highlight how NCSA networking has been using Ansible for managing network configurations in an automated fashion and recent efforts towards automated provisioning of network devices in a multi-vendor environment.
    Location: Technology Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Protecting Privacy & Security of Participants in Online Environments
    Ahmet Ilci, ATLAS
    User privacy and data security are important elements for technology services. This presentation creates an opportunity to see work from ATLAS’s IT staff about providing reliable and secure information technology services to support and enhance the educational, research and administrative activities of students, faculty and staff in LAS. People that use online systems and also IT professionals, not only from the online learning field but also any field, can hear convenient strategies and recommendations from ATLAS professionals in this session.
    Location: Humanities Room
    Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
  • Regional Partner Lessons Learned
    Troy Gagne, Technology Services @ Illinois
    This session will be an open discussion to gather what worked well and what can be improved upon for future ITPF events in regards to our regional partners.
    Location: Innovation Room
    Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
• 4:15 PM – 4:30 PM: Closing Remarks and Sponsor Quiz / Prize
• 4:30 PM: ITPF Connect Event at Houlihan’s (located in iHotel)

Day 2: June 7 – Workshops

• Wks1 – Built-In Windows Remote Administration Tools – Interact With PCs Quickly!
  Manu Pulikkan, Technology Services – Endpoint Services, Engineering IT Shared Services
  The hands-on training session will cover various remote administration tools within Windows that allow an IT Pro to interact with remote PCs quickly. Some examples include: Remote Group Policy updates Use Computer Management tools remotely – Device Manager, Disk Management, Event Viewer, Local Users and Groups, Services Remote registry access Execute commands remotely — Examples include PowerShell, WMIC, and others The session will cover the prerequisites to enable the use of these tools Windows Management Framework Firewall and Group Policy configurations
  Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
• Wks2 – Everyone Can Create – Ignite Creativity with iPad
  Paul Roberts, Technology Services; Matt Childress, Mathematics; Drew Coobs, Technology Services; Keith Mountin, Apple
  Join us to learn about Everyone Can Create, a new program from Apple designed to help unleash the creative potential in every person through photography, video, music, and drawing. In this session, you’ll get hands-on with some of the music and drawing lessons. For more information please visit Apple web site at https://www.apple.com/education/everyone-can-create/
  Track: Everything is a Hammer – Other topics
• Wks3 – Basic Presentation Skills Workshop
  Candice Solomon-Strutz, AITS
  Want to improve your presentation skills? Then this workshop is designed for you. Participants will review elements of successful presentations and effective presenters while gaining practical experience presenting to groups. Group activities will be used to help participants gain experience providing/receiving constructive feedback. Participants will understand the importance of preparation and ongoing development. Often IT Professionals have experience facilitating discussions. This workshop is designed to allow time to practice and develop your presentation skills which should pair nicely with your facilitation skills. Participants will learn from each other as well as the lead facilitator. The three hours will be necessary to provide participants with adequate time to practice the skills and a comfortable environment for growth. Throughout the workshop, an experienced facilitator will suggest exercises and practices to overcome presentation bad habits.
  Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
• Wks4 – Introduction to Git
  Dena Strong, Tech Services; Maxim Belkin, National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Edward Delaporte, Information Technology at Busey Bank
  For those who’ve wondered about Git and GitHub, but haven’t had the opportunity to work with it, campus Software Carpentry instructors will provide guided hands-on experience. You’ll learn how Git-style version control works, how to get started, the differences between adds and commits, the differences between pushes and pulls, what a pull request is good for, and basic conflict resolution. This introductory workshop is for people who are either new to Git or unclear about the way the different commands work. The next workshop, Advanced Git, will delve into topics like checkouts, rebasing, branch management, and the ways developers use Git for collaboration in the real world. Basic familiarity with the command line will be helpful. You can either bring your own laptop (including Windows or Mac machines) or use one of the Linux machines available in the computer lab where we plan to hold this workshop.
  Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
• Wks5 – Advanced Git
  Maxim Belkin, National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Edward Delaporte, Information Technology at Busey Bank; Dena Strong, Tech Services
  For those who are already familiar with the basics of Git and would like to explore more advanced uses and real world collaboration methods, Maxim and Ed go beyond the basics in order to explore the power of collaborative version control. Branching, rebasing, checkout, and other Git tools help you find the version you want of the section of code you want, isolate development code from test and production code, and reintegrate when a feature is ready for prime time. If you don’t take the Intro to Git session before this, then you’ll need to be comfortable with the command line and with Git basics in order to benefit from this class. If you already have Git on a laptop, you can bring it with you, or you can borrow one of the Linux computers available in the computer lab where the workshop will be held.
  Track: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Fast Moving Targets in IT) – Programming, Development, Security, Networking
• Wks6 – Crucial Conversations: How to Talk About Anything, Even When Stakes Are High
  Stephan Seyfert, AITS
  The elephant in the room is crushing you, your team, your organization, and your results. It’s time to talk about it. But how? Emotions are strong. Stakes are high. Opinions are opposing. It’s not safe. Most people resort to silence or a form of violence. But that gets us nowhere, and the elephant grows. Discover the tips and tools experts use to make it safe to talk about anything in this interactive session based on the award-winning best-selling content from VitalSmarts by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Participants will identify your own Style Under Stress, learn how to maintain focus on what really matters, discover the secrets safely talk about anything, and much more. It’s time to slay the elephant in the room.
  Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication
• Wks7 – Project Management…Breaking Down Tasks and Building Up Schedules
  Tanya Williamson, AITS; Christina Molitor, AITS
  After gaining a high level understanding of Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) during day one of the conference, this session will allow project teams and/or individuals to breakdown their current project scope into tasks and build schedules. We will provide expert guidance to assist the participants in breaking down their projects into manageable tasks to begin analysis of effort needed by team resources. Participants can begin building project schedules and timelines with initial effort estimates from their analysis. Attending the day one WBS Overview presentation or one of our past WBS training sessions is highly recommended for workshop participants. We also encourage participants to bring their own current project information to focus on during the session to gain the most value from this workshop.
  Track: Break Walls, not Teams – Project Management, Personal Development, Leadership, Communication