October 15 - 18, 1995
David Houston
This was the second trip to SIGUCCS for me. Not surprisingly, I met a lot of new faces, learned a lot about a number of topics that are very germane to all of us, and managed to gain a valuable perspective on the "situation" that we all share in User Services.
Sunday workshops proved to be very fruitful. I attended a morning session on Networks: the Technical side of things. This was invaluable for me in that it filled in the gaps I had about the big picture of networks. It didn't get too technical, but instead presented a very good overview of all of the components in the Network: the cables, the routers, hubs and repeaters, the protocols, etc. and helped me better understand how all of this fits together.
The afternoon session was a Not-so-technical intro to the World Wide Web. I had expected a too basic intro to HTML etc., but instead, got a more advanced offering than I had hoped for. The presenter was only slightly hampered by the failed Internet connection, and instead offered the listeners a solid view of the various components in HTML, and, impressively, a good foundation for how the actual process works. I managed to meet and discuss with several others the problems that surround the use of CGI-BIN scripts, and may have found a useful work-around. I plan to breach this topic with Kevin Turner at my earliest opportunity. Clearly, this particular item must be dealt with if we are to move on with Web publishing.
The opening plenary gave us a very solid speech by Vinton Cerf, the "father of the Internet". He touched upon the history (details I didn't know), talked about growth, and ventured some interesting opinions on where we may be headed.
Monday's sessions were generally productive: I had a nice look at the implementation of a problem tracking system at Rice University in Texas. They planned very well, but in spite of it, still had some problems. Useful look at what I believe may be the top product in the PTS software arena: Apriori. It was almost frightening to discover that Apriori costs upwards of $100,000! This will make it's selection problematic for us, I suspect! Next, a modest discussion of how the "Postmaster" serves as a campus wide resource at Virginia. This offered a few interesting tidbits. Finally, I took in a discussion of the rigors of making the transition from central to local support at Emory University. Clearly, the trend at many places is towards distributed support. And many are grappling with the same kinds of issues that trouble us: how to provide adequate support to a widening client base that demands more all the time.
My presentation in the afternoon went well. No major gaffs, thankfully, and some interesting and well considered questions and discussions all of which centered around the Departmental Field Support project. I managed, I think, to convey a good picture of the structure that is currently in use, and also got a few good ideas for further development of this program. Alas, I suspect that the section discussing the pitfalls of the Internet in the context of social erosion may have been lost. This aspect of Internet use and growth is, in the opinion of myself and many others, going to present us with some very difficult challenges.
The latter half of the afternoon brought new views on the problems around network applications and their distribution, the configuration of Student labs (in Australia!) and an interesting concept involving Service Level Agreements at Fermi Labs.
The BOFS session afterwards was a venture into the problems surrounding nearly unanimous movement of Web publishing: the travails of converting from paper to electronic, the difficulties surrounding the maintenance of the documents in multiple formats, and the problems involved with the balance of users demands and realistic expectations.
The following day brought a useful panel of computing department directors from various universities and a discussion about how to better manage the often difficult relation between manager and employee. In this case, of course, the focus was on the relation between the User Services staff and the upper management of those departments. It's certainly clear that there are problems the originate on both sides and solutions must emerge from both parties if changes are to be made.
My next session was focussed entirely on Student Consultants and gave me insights from three different universities. The first, from University of Rochester, outlined the entire process of hiring new student consultants. Interestingly, she used a model of training that took place in the spring, with mandatory Saturday sessions run by the existing group of students. While some new recruits were added in the fall, the majority were hired in the spring and were hitting the ground running when the training took place in the early fall. Many, if not all, arrived back at the campus a full week prior to the beginning of classes.
It would seem the University of California at Berkeley would not have a dearth of problems. The sheer size and scope of the campus is daunting! But indeed it turns out that the main problem facing the Coordinator there revolves around organization. Her paper includes an invaluable interview questionnaire which I plan to dissect and reorganize for use in my hiring. Most attendees were rather taken aback at the high rate of pay given to the Berkeley students - until it was pointed out that the overall cost of living is significantly higher there than in other parts of the country. Overall, they seem to be doing a very good job managing with a full boat: 31,000 Students, 20,000 Faculty & Staff, a large number of computer labs, and 150 Student Consultants to run them.
Finally, the management of students at Puget Sound University was taken up, with some useful ideas offered for the maintenance of morale and effective discipline (at the risk of using too harsh a term!) being highlights.
The last session of the afternoon was devoted to the Indiana
University KnowledgeBase. This session was well attended - it is
clear that this is a topic of interest in many universities and
college. In fact, one of the points discussed during the session was
around standards and the feasibility of sharing a knowledgebase
across the Internet between different universities. Whether or not
this comes to fruition will be an interesting aside. The tenor of the
workshop was to describe the development and evolution of the huge
knowledge database at IU. With humble beginnings, it is an impressive
system - albeit one with some growth needs. The real surprise, shock
to many, was the fact that this project is maintained essentially
manually! Little automation exists, and the university clearly has
the necessary resources to maintain this track for quite some time.
My talks the following morning with the Director from Rice (whose
session I attended on Monday) confirmed my concerns around the
difficulty of manually maintaining such a large database. This is
clearly NOT the way to accomplish this, but I can't offer a huge
amount of hope as to easy solutions to either the development of a
KnowledgeBase or the connection between a PTS and such a data
structure.
The last BOFS I fit in was very useful. Only 3 persons discussed and shared a lot of information about the challenges of placing students in departments as support persons (the DFS project, for me). We managed to come up with a few good ideas, and were largely successful in offering the other person an answer to problems that they might be experiencing. It's certainly true that the real value in SIGUCCS lies in more than the sessions and workshops: the interpersonal networking creates some very strong and useful resources.
The closing plenary on Wednesday morning was a pleasant surprise. Lauren Woodhouse offered the audience a dynamic presentation on mental gymnastics, calling on all of us to take proactive steps to reduce the tendency that we all seem to have of retaining - and often giving too much credence to - the states of mind that can be so destructive and negative in our lives.
Overall, the conference was hugely successful for me. The willingness of everyone I met to network, the sharing of information and generally polished delivery of most of the speakers was a solidly renewing experience. I haven't yet developed any firm notions of a presentation for next year, but it may yet become a reality.
Last revised: 01 Nov 1995
Questions? Send e-mail to the author.
Author: David Houston
Computing and Information Technology,
http://www.uvm.edu/cit/
Copyright 1995 The University of
Vermont