Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #18

This week was mainly about UCISA17 which is the Management Conference for UCISA - Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association.  There is a live stream of all the main sessions here if you register your details.  There was also a Twitter feed at the conference hashtag #ucisa17.

Among other things, I was pleased to represent the University of Wolverhampton on the panel for the JISC Digital Strategy Forum. This was a "University Showcase" session and was well attended.  We hope to increase participation from senior leaders in the forum and to have a well-attended event which we are hosting at Wolverhampton towards the end of April.

There were several attempts at an "East Midlands" meet up.  Birmingham City University are more than willing to host a proper get together for anyone interested and show local Universities around BCU including new developments/refurbishments.

Highlights of the exhibition for me included learning about a new authentication system layer (two factor authentication) which has been developed for the HE market and come from the US and is now going into York.  Also useful to talk to Proof ID and Oxford Computing Group who could potentially solve a couple of things - dealing with "associates and non paid staff" account management etc, and supporting Office365 migration.  I also spoke to Telepen about new attendance monitoring and room booking products - the new service that has gone into the Library  at Birmingham looked attractive and efficient.  The Samsung showcase was interesting and I spent an hour chatting to the MD of WellKon who was demonstrating the wellness app they were launching at conference. Given our Well@Wolves week I thought this might fit very well with both a digital agenda as well as an existing wellness agenda.  The students who were with my demo liked it a lot (they were from Lincoln). They were offering a one-day on-site activity which was student focused.  Samsung would like to join our advisory board and would be willing to potentially do a Wolves specific showcase - perhaps as part of a "digifest" activity.

I have also been making progress with CAST on a quick review of the University mobile phone contract.  Any phone on this contract now has flat rate call and data charge. I am just on the look out for any that could be terminated which wasn't done during the process. I will let you know if there are any (there may of course be none).

I have written up some feedback on a meeting with the Head of IT at Wolverhampton City Council. There are some specific opportunities to follow up and we have a further meeting in diaries shortly.  I was particularly interested in the possibility of sharing rack space temporarily in the server rooms for mutual benefit - that could be a big cost avoidance opportunity to explore.