its in bits

Survey

Results from last issue's survey question: What email client(s) do you use?

There were 65 responses:

12 use Apple Mail
0 use Elm
2 use Entourage
30 use Eudora
0 use GNUmail
16 use Google Mail (GMail)
1 uses Mulberry
3 use Mutt
0 use Opera
15 use Outlook
1 uses Outlook Express
2 use Pine
24 use Stanford Webmail
14 use Thunderbird
0 use Windows Mail
9 use other:
1 uses squirrelmail
5 use Yahoo Mail
2 use Gnus
1 uses mhmail

Staff Profile

Anne Pinkowski and friend.

How would you describe your current job responsibilities?

As Senior Application Administrator, my primary responsibilities include application administration and development, applications strategy, architecture and design, and technical leadership developing and maintaining systems. The systems our team presently supports are: Remedy (HelpSU), Pinnacle, DocuShare, Infra, Pathworks, and Journyx.

In addition to my technical role, I am also the manager of the Application Support group which means that when things go wrong, it’s all my fault.

Which aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

There are only two aspects of my job: 1) technology and 2) people. I enjoy supporting both, but I would sacrifice technology for people any day! A world without technology is a whole lot less scary than a world without people.

I enjoy supporting technology because…

technology tends to reinvent itself just as quickly as we learn it. It’s like highway repaving: just as you get to the end of the highway, you have to start all over repaving the beginning.
developing and implementing technology requires me to think about how that technology is used by people.
technology is a medium that allows me to help people.

I enjoy supporting people because…

understanding people is far more challenging and rewarding than understanding technology.
technology starts and ends with people.
I believe that people are more valuable than technology.

What did you do before you came to Stanford?

Prior to Stanford, I spent twelve years as a Network Analyst with my roots in Novell. In my career, I have had the opportunity to perform deployments in China and Europe, but the most exciting experience was working in the Galapagos Islands at the Charles Darwin Research Center.

What do you like to do when you're not at work?

When I am not playing with my dogs or playing disc golf with my boyfriend, I can be found making art. Found objects and neon are materials I often utilize. However, since the purchase of my home, I have been working on a 120 square foot mosaic mural on the back of my house. Each tile is no larger than 3/8 inch in size.

What is your favorite movie, book, song?

My favorite book is called Hope for the Flowers. My favorite movie is Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

Staff Happenings

Jared Sanz-Freilich joins the Order Processing team on May 15th. He has a broad technical background including cell equipment and service sales, inventory management, IT consulting, and internal auditing. He is also a business entrepreneur: he has his own disc jockey business and handles all aspects of club events. We'll have to learn more about this; our Christmas party may never be the same! Jared will primarily be handling the data center orders as they come through OrderIT, branch their way into Remedy, and work their way through the many internal fulfillment groups.

Brenda Rehbein joins the Order Processing team on May 16th. Brenda's background includes various positions at HP/Agilent and more recently in the Psychology department at Stanford. She has HR, staffing, and financial accounting experience. Within her department, she provided financial oversight to over 140 PTAs. She has used Trovix, Peoplesoft, Kronos, Oracle Financials, and was the department STAR. Her experience will enable her to step right into Order Processing. Brenda will be handling all of our residential clients.

These two new hires into the Order Processing department conclude a staffing quest that began with the OMR initiative. We now have a total of eleven full-time employees in the Order Processing group: eight dedicated order processors, one project coordinator, one process consultant, and one lead. In the coming months, we hope to ramp up to full productivity and begin to optimize order fulfillment activities in our group.

- Suzanne Schiessler
Shared Communication Services; Order Management

I have implemented some job reassignments within the Help Desk Services group to address a number of needs going forward, and to better position ourselves to provide excellent service to the campus community.

As our efforts around Knowledge Management continue to grow, effective Monday, May 7, Tom Goodrich will focus his time on managing our Knowledge Management program and metrics efforts. Jason Cowart will add the supervisor functions to his current role and manage the Technical Analyst Group.

Tom will work with Linda Pilkin on the development and release this summer of the Knowledge Management service, as well as being responsible for its ongoing care and feeding. Tom will be responsible for continued evangelism of this service across campus, growing its capabilities as a single, centrally-supported, generally-available resource (think Remedy) over the coming months and years. Tom will also manage the day-to-day metrics duties, working closely with April Wen.

Jason will manage the Technical Analyst Group in his role as Senior Technologist. In addition to continued direct support of our customers and working on IT Services projects, Jason will assume the managerial duties.

I look forward to these changes, and will be working with the group to maintain our high standards of customer service and excellent technical ability.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

I am very pleased to announce that after an exhaustive search, Sean Hoffman is joining our Windows Systems team on May 21st, 2007. Sean joins the team as a Sr. Windows Systems Administrator and will join us as a resident of Polya Hall.

Sean brings over ten year's experience in Windows systems engineering and administration, and is returning home to the Bay Area from Pennsylvania where he spent the past five years as a Sr. Systems Engineer for MediMedia USA.

Sean was a Computer Science major at Arizona State University and, thankfully, isn't rooting for the Phoenix Suns in the NBA playoffs.

All of us in Windows Systems are excited to have Sean on the team. Please join us in welcoming him to Stanford by stopping in to introduce yourself.

- Barry Magsanay
Shared Application Services; Windows Systems

Heather Ramamurthy has joined the Project Management Office as project manager for Self Help Knowledgebase, Remedy Implementation, System Monitoring & Reporting, and is assisting with the Email & Calendar integration project. She comes to us via Sun Microsystems, eBay and Gilead Sciences, where she led a broad range of system, storage (NAS & SAN), and software development projects.

Michael Dave has joined the Project Management Office as project manager for Workgroup and Organization Provisioning, Kerberos Migration and Guest Accounts. He joins us from Amazon.com, HP & Microsoft, where he has developed expertise in managing software development projects. He has successfully led and launched several projects with Amazon.com's Search Data Architecture Team.

- Joyce Dickerson
Client Support; Project Management Office

The following people recently joined Information Technology Services. Welcome!

Brian Leetham (Nan McKenna)
Brian Spyksma (Brian Wankel)

The following people have left Information Technology Services. Please contact their manager if you need to follow up on any open items.

Quanah Gibson-Mount (Heather Flanagan)
Greg Koss (Joyce Dickerson)

its in bits welcomes more detailed employee news submissions from all staff. Please submit to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu

Tech Briefings / Tech Express

Tech Briefings

Fridays
2–3:30 p.m.

Turing Auditorium

May 18: What Google Can Do for Your Web Site

Nancy Blachman, author and developer of Google Guide, will show you how to get more visitors to your web site and generate (more) revenue. She will share her experiences in designing, developing, and promoting Google Guide, which is now the top result for queries.

In this presentation, Nancy will cover creating content for your web site, linking to search results, getting your site listed in Google, improving your site's ranking, publicizing and advertising your web site, and generating revenue from AdSense.

May 25: No Tech Briefing

June 1: What's New from Apple.

Stanford's Apple representative, Wyn Davies, will talk about the recently released Apple products. Wyn will answer your questions about these latest offerings from Apple, as well as answer questions about future releases.

Check the Tech Briefings home page for upcoming talks, specials, and last-minute additions.

Tech Express

12–1 p.m.
Turing Auditorium

The next Tech Express will be June 21: iTunes at Stanford

Stanford on iTunes provides access to a wide range of Stanford-related digital audio content via the iTunes Music Store, Apple’s popular music jukebox and online music store.

Check the Tech Express home page for future sessions and to subscribe to the mailing list.

Technology Training Courses

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff.

Thu, May 17, Web Design Level 1: The Basics, 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., $150

Fri, May 18, Access Level 2, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., $275

Mon, May 21, Excel Pivot Tables, 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., $150

Mon, May 21, Excel Tips and Tricks, 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., $150

Mon, May 21, Photoshop Lite, 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., $150

Tue, May 22, Excel Level 2, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., $275

Wed, May 23, Introduction to ReportMart1, 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Free

Fri, May 25, XML Introduction, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., $275

Thu, May 31, JavaScript, 9:00 AM to 04:00 p.m., $275

Tue, June 5, PowerPoint Tips and Timesavers, 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., $150

Wed, June 6, Explore techport.stanford.edu (Open Lab), 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Free

Wed, June 6, Tips and Tricks in Sundial, 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Free

Thu, June 7, Excel Level 1, 9:00 a.m. to 04:00 p.m., $275

Classes with low enrollment may be cancelled one week in advance. More information on courses, registration, and training is available at the Technology Training Services site.

- Leni Silberman
Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There were no new job postings for IT Services this week.

To view the complete listings or to apply for a position, visit the StanfordJobs web site at: jobs.stanford.edu.

There are other open Information Technology positions at Stanford. To see what other opportunities exist on campus, link to the full list of all open IT positions at Stanford

Quote of the Week

"The Web has a way of making people forget everything they've learned about design, marketing, and good taste."

- Fred Showker

News

A Note From Bill...

For much of the calendar year, IT Services has been working on a Data Center strategy to accommodate the growing needs at Stanford for both research and administrative computing. The strategy is divided into three sections: Immediate (1 year), Intermediate (2 to 3 years), and Long Term (4 to 5 years).

The Immediate strategy is to upgrade the power and cooling utilities at Forsythe Hall. The project includes updating the raised floor space on the first floor and increasing the capacity of Forsythe by roughly 100 racks. This is not enough to take on the expected future needs of research computing, but would accommodate the immediate needs of our clients over the next few years.

I am pleased to report that the Provost funded this $6.5M project and work is already underway. Our target date for completion is the end of March 2008. As many of you know, we are very tight on space in Forsythe right now, and we are working closely with clients to find ways to accommodate their immediate needs. We are also beginning a project to work on server virtualization, which will reduce the number of physical servers required to provide services, in order to make much better use of the space.

Concurrently, we are developing the strategy for the Intermediate term. This will involve building a 4,000 to 6,000 square foot facility capable of much higher density computing than Forsythe. Because building a new facility involves significant lead times, we must work on getting a design and funding approval in the current calendar year.

There are many possible locations for this interim solution, but the Provost has asked us to concentrate primarily on three sites. The first of these is at the North Campus in Redwood City. The second is at a site in Livermore where the Libraries already have an Auxiliary Library. The third site is on SLAC land in San Mateo County.

We expect to have a report to the Provost this summer analyzing the possible plans, and making a recommendation of what to take forward. To do this we are also developing the long-term, state-of-the-art data center strategy at a conceptual level. We need to plan for the future in a way that maximizes the intermediate investment but does not overly constrain the University's future choices.

Once the Intermediate plan is funded and underway, we will turn our full attention to the more detailed planning for the longer term. The long-term data center will be focused on research computing. This is an exciting strategy for IT Services to develop, and we are working closely with all of the key stakeholders across campus to make sure that their future needs will be met.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Integrated Email & Calendar: Update

The Integrated Email and Calendar discovery project is in the final stages of the information gathering phase. An independent analysis from Forrester Research has been completed.

The data from the classroom tests has been analyzed and published. On the basis of ease-of-use and functionality, no clear winner emerged from the top three candidates. Instead, all three performed well and each has pros and cons.

Additionally, the extended test concluded last Friday with an additional 20 surveys submitted from around campus. Analysis of that data continues this week.

Vendor presentations for business and technical audiences concluded on May 10th. Notes from those presentations can be found in Docushare.

The team is now working toward the culmination: a recommendation from the selection team and the IT Services collaboration team. Final selection will occur in the last week of May and a recommendation will be made to the Systems Governance Group in June.

- Ammy Hill
Client Support; Campus Readiness

Bob O'Leary To Depart Administrative Systems

On May 6th, Randy Livingston announced that Bob O'Leary and his wife had decided to return to the Boston area to provide long-term support for their aging parents. The following is a reprint of that announcement.

Bob O'Leary and his wife Joanne have decided to move back to the Boston area to provide long-term support for their aging parents who are experiencing significant health problems. Bob will continue to lead Administrative Systems through at least the summer. He will be on campus full time for at least the next six weeks, and then on site every other week. Ganesh Karkala will assist Bob in managing day-to-day AS affairs during the weeks that he is not on campus. During the next two weeks, I will be meeting with Administrative Systems directors and other key individuals across Stanford to develop a strategy for filling this key role.

I am extremely grateful to Bob for his excellent leadership of Administrative Systems during the past two years. During this period, he has strengthened the organization and stabilized our major administrative applications. He brought focus to the importance of application integration, reliability, scalability, performance, and cost effectiveness in thinking about new applications and enhancements. The Administrative Systems team completed numerous enhancements and application upgrades during Bob's tenure. In addition, Bob is leading the development of a longer-term strategy for administrative systems at Stanford, which should be completed before his departure.

Please join me in thanking Bob for his many contributions during the last two years and wishing him well as he makes this transition.

- Randy Livingston
Vice President for Business Affairs

Departmental Email Accounts

IT Services and Administrative Systems have successfully collaborated to improve the way we handle non-SUNet ID email accounts. As of this week, Departmental Group email addresses and accounts can be requested via the web form. Departmental email addresses and accounts can now be managed through StanfordYou and sponsored using a new interface in Sponsorship Manager. This restores and enhances functionality that was lost when the mainframe was retired in 2004.

Thanks to Meei-You Lee, Huaqing Zheng, and Russ Allbery from IT Services and Madhu Gottumukkala, Dorothy Bender, Natalie Wang, Lynn McRae, and Carol Oliver from Administrative Systems' Middleware team for all of their hard work on this project.

- Jon Pilat
Shared Application Services

OrderIT from a Client Perspective

In an effort to make the client experience with OrderIT seamless, and to improve internal processes for Order Management, Vicki Hallett will be doing a one-hour demonstration of what it is like to order IT Services—from a client perspective.

Discussion about impacts to various service fulfillment groups within IT Services will be addressed and questions will be answered or noted for off-line discussion and resolution.

We (the Order Management Governance team) encourage you and your staff to come to this brief session to better equip all of us to work within the new Order Management process guidelines.

Friday, May 25th 3:30 to 4:30
Turing Auditorium

- Suzanne Schiessler
Shared Application Services; Order Management

New Home Page Almost Ready

Fresh from recent graphic and functional improvements, the draft IT Services home page and searchable service catalog are "going into the home stretch" prior their release on May 30th. Whether you've already given the pages a look or you haven't had a chance to review them since the first invitation (published here in its in bits in February), now would be a great time to weigh-in on the content and layout.

A quick view of the home page and test of the new catalog search and browse functions takes only 5-10 minutes, and there's an easy-to-use feedback form linked from each of the draft pages.

- Dave Ream
Client Support; Documentation, Design, & Delivery

Space Planning

Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain, Senior Director of Capital Planning and Space Management, and Noel Hirst, Business Affairs Finance and Facilities Manager, will host several meetings to provide updates to Business Affairs employees about facilities on and off the main Stanford Campus.

The presentation dates, times, locations are:

May 22 at 10:30 to 11:45, Turing Auditorium
May 22 at 2:30 to 3:45, Turing Auditorium
May 25 at 10:15 to 11:30, Kissick Auditorium; Arrillaga Sports Center

The expected agenda topics for the session are:

Main Campus Master Plan
Early Planning for North Campus
Pre-North Campus Move
Work Anywhere Task Force

In addition, each employee will be asked to complete a survey to help with planning related to moves and the North Campus. The precise survey timing and information about the scope of questions is being finalized now. We expect that the survey process will happen during June. We will communicate that information just as soon as we know more.

- Nancy Ware
Planning & Communication

New Remedy Queue

For the past several months, the Application Support team has been investing a significant amount of time and resources in functional cross-training. The days of associating the support of an application with the name of a single support individual is slowly becoming a thing of the past, but not without significant training, studying, after hours reference manual reading, and mentoring.

In order to increase exposure to the myriad of requests that we field as a team, we have decided to consolidate most of our Remedy queues into one queue. In addition to increasing exposure to the volume and types of requests fielded by the individuals in our team, we hope that with 14 eyes on the queue, we’ll be able to more promptly respond to the requests of not only IT Services, but the broader Stanford community.

Please take note that the following Remedy queues have been consolidated into one queue called ITS Application Support:

ITS DocuShare
ITS Time-Tracking
ITS Harvesters
ITS HelpSU Support
ITS Change Management
ITS Pathworks
ITS Pinnacle

- Anne Pinkowski
Shared Communication Services; Application Support & Database Administration

Employee Referral Program

We have completed the drawing for this month. Steve Quejada, a member of the Order Management team, is this month's winner of the $50 Visa gift card.

In addition to the monthly drawing, if your referral candidate is hired to an open position in IT Services you will receive a $2,000 referral bonus.

Contact Nilda Bonet for additional details including program rules, details regarding eligibility to participate, and the Employee Referral form.

Congrats to Steve.

- Nilda Bonet
IT Services; Human Resources

IT Services Strategic Planning

We are in the midst of defining a multi-year (3-5 year) Strategic Plan for IT Services. You will start to hear more about this during work group meetings and it will be a topic at the June 12th Town Hall session. Beginning next week, several draft sections of the plan will be available for local discussion.

The plan confirms the role of IT Services at Stanford to be:

Support Research & Administrative Computing
Provide Communications & Collaboration Infrastructure
Deliver Service & Organizational Excellence

From the perspective of defining initiatives, the scope of these areas include:

To Support Research & Administrative Computing

Data Center Strategy
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Centrally Managed Storage
Workstation Protection and Backup

To Provide Communication and Collaboration Infrastructure

Next Generation Network Services
Advanced Voice Services
Campus-Wide Collaboration Solutions
Enhanced Web-Based Services

To Deliver Service and Organizational Excellence

Rigorous Service and Process Management
Employee Development and Satisfaction
Effective Business Model
Client-Focused IT Leadership

The initial draft will also propose key deliverables and associated initiatives for FY08-FY10. We will send an announcement next week when the draft materials are available for your review, input, and local work group discussions.

- Nancy Ware
Planning & Communication

Grilling Days are Here...

Come out on Friday, June 15, to the lawn area outside of Turing Auditorium at 11:30 a.m. and enjoy a good old-fashioned BBQ! We'll be proffering the usual fare; dogs, burgers, something veggie, along with all of the the fixings stuff. Nothing fancy, just a (hopefully) sunny lunch on the lawn. See you there!

- The IT Services Grilling Team

IT Services Team Runs Amok...Again

Last year, they blamed it all on Nan McKenna, but she was undeterred. With aplomb, Nan again captained a ragtag bunch of ITSers in the Big Sur Marathon Relay event. Running under the moniker of "Are We There Yet?," Nan, Xueshan Feng, Dmitri Priimak, Tim Torgenrud, and Karen Zack cracked the 4-hour barrier coming in at 3:59:45. This year, the team finished 77th in the relay field, up from 94th last year.

Team member's legs ranged from four to seven miles, but most team members ran multiple legs (for no discernible reason!). ITSer Donna Cummings participated in the 5K event. Good job, everyone!

Also of note: Former ITSer Erik Cummings (a former relay member) ran the whole darn thing this year, completing his first marathon. Another former ITSer, Bill Roden, kept his "Grizzled Vet" tradition going by completing his 22nd annual Big Sur Marathon run. In the up-and-coming category, Maggie McKenna also completed the 5K event in a to-date best time!

- Tim Torgenrud
Shared Communication Services; Application Support & Database Administration

About its in bits

A regular summary of IT business, news about personnel, and pointers to other information of interest to IT Services staff. Coordinated, compiled, and published by the Communication Strategy and Standards Team. its in bits is published on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

Submissions are due by Noon on the Friday before the scheduled issue, to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu for consideration. its in bits is distributed via email to its-all-staff@lists.stanford.edu and the subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu. People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via mailman.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, June 6, 2007.

its in bits | IT Services | Stanford University | Computing & Communication