Information Systems and Services

In this podcast, we feature an eleven minute interview with Albert DeSimone, Commuications Director for the University of Georgia. As a Communications Officer at the University of Georgia specializing in Information Technology, Mr. DeSimone assists students, faculty, and staff with Web-related projects. He was interviewed at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Southeast Regional Conference regarding his presentation entitled, "Assessing "Portalness: A Guide for CIOs and Other Decision Makers".

The abstract:

Assessing the effectiveness of a portal solution requires more than statistical analysis. In this presentation we will go beyond simple quantitative analysis (number of "hits" or visits) to assess the effectiveness of a portal based on qualitative attributes (integration, personalization, and customization) to assist in the evaluation of a current or future portal implementation.

 

In this 56 minute podcast, we feature the opening keynote address from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Southeast Regional Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a speech by Beach Clark, Vice President of Information Technology at the Georgia Aquarium entitled "Information Technology at the Georgia Aquarium: A Trendsetter's Perspective".

This session will portray the challenges of implementing information technology projects at the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest aquarium. It will focus on lessons learned, system features that bolster business, and suggested areas of improvement both internally and with technology.

 

I should have knocked on wood yesterday.  Toward the end of the day I sighed and thought about what we had accomplished this year in MICA's technology department.  This was a big mistake.

The penalty for this arrived first thing this morning with a 108 degree server room. 

We are fighting the fight along a thousand mile front, seemingly.  We have spent much of the last year getting support for a set of upgrades and a shift in how we approach technology at MICA (see MICA Connected).  We have also developed the best staff we have ever had -- I mean a really, really great staff.  We have worked hard to develop internal decision making and communication processes.  We have collaborated with peer institutions.  We have worked creatively with vendors.  It seemed like there was nothing that could stand in our way.

 

to be continued . . .

 

The opening keynote address from the 2007 EDUCAUSE Enterprise Conference in Chicago, Illinois. This speech was given by Kenneth C. Green, Founding Director of the Campus Computing Project, the largest continuing study of the role of information technology in American colleges and universities. This speech, entitled The Changing Role of Enterprise Systems: From EDI to Internet Icons, is approximately an hour and three minutes long.

Over the past 15 years campus administrative information systems have morphed into enterprise systems. This presentation will focus on the promises (implied and inferred) in this transformation from EDI in the 1990s ("systems will share data"), to the Internet-spawned expectations for online resources and services, to the recent Spellings Commission report mandate that campuses "bring data" from their enterprise systems to address critical assessment and outcome issues.

Beacon Technologies has a history of working with Universities to provide IT services including website design and development, programmatic solutions, content management systems, ecommerce solutions, and other services.  Beacon began their work in the education sector with providing the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Genomics department in combination with Duke University with a website that captured the departments need for a highly technical, yet clean and functional look and feel.   The designers at Beacon Technologies are able to transform a vision into web graphics that convey the sophistication that today's graphic design demands.  

Since their humble beginnings with the UNCG Genomix department, Beacon Technologies has gone on to work with Wake Forest's MBA school site providing search engine optimization to designing and developing the entire website for Texas Southern University.  

Many schools are now moving to provide ecommerce solutions to sell their school's products directly on their websites.  Beacon has been able to capitalize on this by providing turn-key ecommerce solutions.  A good example of this is NC State's Engineering department's ecommerce store in which they now sell school products and resources nationwide.  

In this 35-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from Tim Antonowicz in a session entitled Server Consolidation: A Case Study in Success. He shares how Bowdoin College has saved nearly $300,000 in hardware costs using HP Blades and VMWare.

In this 45-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from Geoffrey Robert Dengate and Janice Rickards in a session entitled Milking the Model: Getting the Most Out of Integration and Centralization. They will describe the Griffith University model for the delivery of information services, highlighting the benefits it provides and factors facilitating its success, and will conclude with speculation on further development of the model in the future.