Staff Happenings

Comings and Goings

There are no staff changes to report in this issue of its in bits.

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

Tech Briefings

Tech Briefings

Fridays
2:00–3:30 p.m.
Turing Auditorium

Friday, September 18

Apple Presents — Snow Leopard OS — Wyn Davies, Apple. Join us for this Briefing as Stanford's Apple representative Wyn Davies gives an overview of Apple's new operating system — Mac OS X Snow Leopard. He will also discuss any new Apple announcements.

Friday, September 25

Drupal Workshop, Part 1: Installing Drupal — Sharon Krossa, IT Services. This is the first in a series of hands-on workshops covering Drupal installation and development at Stanford. Bring a laptop and follow along!

Part 1 — Installing Drupal will go step-by-step through:

  • Installing Drupal using the Stanford Collaboration Tools Installer
  • Enabling included contributed modules
  • Basic configuration

In order to follow along and install your own Drupal installation during the workshop, you will need to be a member of the -admin PTS group for a department or group AFS account. See the Drupal Workshop, Part 1 for more details about requesting department/group AFS space and/or adding someone to a relevant -admin PTS group. Requesting a new department/group AFS account or that you be added to the -admin PTS group of an existing department/group AFS account takes time, but needs to be completed BEFORE the workshop.

Note: There will be a very limited number of temporary accounts available for use by attendees who cannot get access to a department/group AFS account. Please use the link at drupaltraining.stanford.edu/workshop1 to let us know if you will need access to a temporary account.

Check the Tech Briefings home page for future sessions and to subscribe to the mailing list. Also see the Tech Express home page for information on upcoming presentations.

Technology Training Courses

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff:

Excel 2007: What? You Don't Know Excel Yet? (Level 1) (ITS-1141), Thurs, Sept 17, 9:00–4:00, $325

Web Design: Forms Using PHP and HTML (ITS-2504), Mon, Sept 21, 1:30–4:30, $195

OrderIT Site Training (ITS-8301), Tues, Sept 22, 8:30–12:00, Free

Excel 2007: Tables, Functions and Linking (Level 2) (ITS-1142), Wed, Sept 23, 9:00–4:00, $325

ReportMart1 Introduction (ITS-8401), Wed, Sept 23, 1:30–4:30, Free

Excel Transition from 2003 to 2007 (ITS-1137), Tues, Sept 29, 8:30–12:00, $195

Word Transition from 2003 to 2007 (ITS-0927), Tues, Sept 29, 1:00–4:30, $195

Upcoming Web Certification Workshop:

Certification Workshop: Web Professional in the Stanford Environment (ITS-2606), Wed, Sept 30, 9:00–4:00, $325
More information at webcertificate.stanford.edu.

Free Web Certification Coaching and Information Meeting, Fri, Sept 25, 12:00–1:00, Turing Auditorium

  • Get your questions answered about your preparedness
  • Plan the next steps in your curriculum
  • Meet others with the same goal and network with them
  • Find out more about what it takes to pass

Free Upcoming Email / Calendar Training:

Full schedule available at emailcalendartraining.stanford.edu

Stanford Email (Webmail) (ITS-2110)

Stanford Calendar (ITS-2300)

Introduction to Stanford Webmail (Lecture) (ITS-2020)

Introduction to Stanford Calendar (Lecture) (ITS-2121)

Cool Tips and Tricks for Stanford Email and Calendar (Lecture) (ITS-2117)

Outlook 2007 Mail (ITS-2111)

Outlook 2007 Calendar (ITS-2118)

Apple Mail (ITS-2113)

Apple iCal (ITS-2114)

Thunderbird Mail (ITS-2112)

The full listing of Current Courses is available at itsupcoming.stanford.edu, or on the Tech Training (techtraining.stanford.edu) web site.

Sign up at http://axess.stanford.edu.

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.

- Nancy Baumann
Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There was one new job postings for IT Services this week.

Req. #35670: Client Support Representative, 100% FTE, Range 1A3, Fixed-term (one year), Vicki Hallett, hiring manager.

The IT Services Client Support Representative will have responsibility to support and manage all in-person client requests handled at Room 190 Forsythe Hall. In-person client requests include handling distribution of loaner cell phones, issuance of University ID cards, key distribution to the University facilities personnel, cable modem pickup for residential network services, cable TV digital box distribution to students, and signing for package deliveries to Forsythe Hall.

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

“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

- John Stuart Mill

News

A Note From Bill…

September is a very busy time for IT Services. Students and faculty return to campus, and the new academic — as well as fiscal — year begins. At the start of each fiscal year IT Services obtains funding from external sources to support some of our projects.

One key funding mechanism for projects is through the systems governance group (SGG) process. This group is chaired by Randy Livingston and is made up of the Administrative Deans of the seven schools, key central business offices, some faculty, and organizations such as the Libraries, the Budget Office, and the Registrar’s Office. Each August we present proposals to SGG for funding.

During FY2009, the SGG process funded a number of projects including whole disk encryption, configuration management database (CMDB), Livermore auxiliary data center and recovery exercise, Zimbra email and calendar, secure IM, and some other document and collaboration services. I would like to thank everyone who worked on these projects and made them so successful.

This fiscal year (FY10) we have once again received funding from the SGG for quite a number of projects. The SGG-funded projects are:

  • Stanford email and calendar (Zimbra) v6 upgrade
  • Secure email
  • Authentication infrastructure improvements, including Kerberos
  • An expanded recovery exercise at the Livermore facility
  • Operational support for UNIX Spires
  • Secure AFS
  • Outsource undergrad student email
  • SUNet ID for life

I am excited to see that once again IT Services will be given the opportunity to make these types of meaningful contributions to Stanford. Your Director or Executive Director can answer any questions you may have about these SGG-funded projects.

It is important to remember that external sources of funds are not the only way our projects receive funding. As you know, there are several large-scale projects already underway that we are funding through internal means. These include continued work on the CMDB, Converged Communication, and Trio projects. All are important to our continued efforts to improve the way we work.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Student iPhone Pilot Closure

A year ago, last June, IT Services was inspired by the Office of the University Registrar (Tom Black) to look into the possibility of issuing iPhones to all incoming students. The thought was that the iPhone would be required for the curriculum (like a computer is now) and students would use various applications to handle not only their school activities, but other personal applications as well.

Apple, AT&T, the Office of the University Registrar, Residential Computing, and IT Services met several times to plan. We decided to pilot this service through IT Services to determine how we could scale this activity to all incoming freshman in FY2010. ResComp identified 27 student volunteers, who were issued iPhones in November, 2008. After examining the "lessons learned" from the last eight months of the pilot, we have determined that we do not want to go into this service for students. In addition, due to the economy and other funding criteria, the program will not be offered to incoming students this fall. Tom Black continues to work with Apple and AT&T directly on this initiative, and perhaps next fall, this program will be offered.

It’s always a good idea to pilot services to truly understand what resources are involved and how issues are handled, and whether IT Services is prepared to take on a new service. In this case, we learned that serving students on tight budgets involves many inquiries about their billing, more than we were able to handle in a timely manner. Also, we determined that we did not want to take our resources away from their work for faculty and staff to work with students on their queries about monthly bills and charges.

Kudos to the Cell Support team for handling this pilot and helping us understand more about the potential for this service. It’s nice to see a pilot that serves a purpose of testing the water before we jump in!

- Suzanne Schiessler
Order Management

lynda.stanford.edu

Tech Training is pleased to announce a partnership agreement with lynda.com (online training video tutorials) whereby the Stanford community (faculty, staff, and students) receives a 20% discount—or $300 per year (rather than $375)—for Premium Membership. Staff can be reimbursed by STAP funds. You can find out more about lynda.com and other online resources, (i.e., Books 24x7 and the Safari collection) available through SULAIR at onlinetraining.stanford.edu, where we will continue to add online training resources in the future. TechPort was sunsetted as of 8/31/09 and will not be renewed.

- Nancy Baumann
Tech Training

Multitasking: Does It Work?

Clifford Nass, professor of communication at Stanford at director of Stanford's CHIMe (Communication between Humans & Interactive Media) lab, discussed multitasking research recently on NPR. From the program notes:

"Multitasking. We all do it. Texting, emailing, talking on the phone. But can we do it well? A new study from Stanford suggests that people who are more likely to multitask are actually the worst at it. We talk to one of the authors of the study about what it means for people of all ages, from babies to college students to older workers."

You can learn more about Professor Nass's study, or listen to a podcast of the program.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support

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, October 7, 2009.