EDUCAUSE Southeast Regional Conference 2009 - Think Stops

EDUCAUSE Southeast Regional Conference 2009 - Think Stops

Think Stop #1 Question: Cloud Computing – What is your institution doing?  What are the impacts on infrastructure?

• Hosting Zimbra
• Google Apps for one.  Less work and equipment.
• As we outsource student/faculty/staff email, our network becomes a hyper-critical infrastructure
• (Followed by comment)  We can’t outsource email due to HIPAA concerns L
• (which was followed by comment)  is  any email system secure enough to meet HIPAA standards?
• Would Major Regional Universities Consider controlling the cloud for their Region?  Instead of waiting for someone else to host?.....
• (Followed by comment 1)  what about regional consortia or your network provider see NCREN in North Carolina)
• (and by comment 2) Depends on what’s in the cloud.  We do storage cheaper than Amazon & would host.  VM’s are pretty cheap too, but we aren’t so good at hosting apps.

Think Stop #2  Question: Social Networking – How are your virtual and physical spaces converging?

• Building a geolocation service to identify your locations and find nearby friends.
• Use this with conferences & LMS to make intelligent “push” content decisions. For instance:  last time you were in Library, you were doing chemistry, so pull that up next you are in Library
• Would love to see the LMS/CMS vendors embrace and integrate social networking tools as a long-term strategy.
• In RTP (Raleigh/Durham) we do things like tweetups and other type events to connect.
• Using videoconferencing mesh to enable more inter-building medium-quality collaboration.

Think Stop #3:  Question: Conferencing Tools – How is your campus using them in Academics and Administration?  (Large Fixed Systems?  Meshed Video networks?  or others?)

• Valencia CC uses GoTo Meeting for faculty, inter-dept. meetings and to replace travel wherever possible
• Just did what is probably last refresh of dedicated videoconf room and Tandberg MCU, Small WebEx/Connect is popular. Multiple smaller conf rooms that connect in a mesh is also a new direction.