Brought to you by the IT Community Champions, Connect with Colleagues is an effort aimed at better connecting all of us across our IT teams.
Set aside some time to invest in building a new relationship or furthering an existing one by participating in the our next campaign. Join the #it-connect channel and be paired with an IT colleague on the first Tuesday of each month. Learn more about the campaign.
Had a nice afternoon donut break with @Alan Zhong. We talked about our reverse commutes pre-CoVID (Burlingame-Newark for him, Union City-Redwood City for me), getting our kids ready for school (1st and 2nd graders for him, UO for me), our career paths (Hospital for him, University for me), and similarities between our jobs with solutions alignment. It's always nice to connect with colleagues from the hospital.
Met with @Lily today. It is amazing to discover connections and to realize I am not the only LOTR fan on campus. This donut app has been a great way to build a stronger sense of community with our peers that we would not have met otherwise.
@Michael Fox and I had a chance to meet up today, and had a great chat about how work-life has changed, policies for Zoom meetings, Krispy Kreme donuts (it was fitting), how we're finding time to get away from the screen (hammocks and biking), how Tech Training is handling teaching all remote classes, and resources for those with home internet issues.
Had a good chat with @srikanth_govada this morning. Showed each other own home office setups and talked about how we and our families are adjusting to extended social distancing. We both appreciate the savings in commute time but are looking forward to when we can resume some in-person interactions.
Had a great time with @bradimm sharing our career stories, learning more about our families, San Francisco and our hobbies.
Great to chat with @hope_l_johnson yesterday about Stanford, how UIT has evolved since I moved to H&S, and our shared love of singing (and dismay that it's become quite a dangerous habit of late).
Met up with my fellow R&DE IT colleague @luis_valencia for our first 1:1 / donut meetup. We talked about some of the challenges with the initial quarantine and juggling family life in the midst of all it. I learned about his previous employment before coming to Stanford, and although we shared a similar path, we are both grateful for the slower pace compared to corporate life. We also talked about our commute experiences coming from the East Bay and how taking advantage of the public transportation perks doesn’t always end up in our favor as doing so adds a significant amount of additional commute time. Overall, it was a great meeting and look forward to connecting again!
Fun catching up with @Sean Brandt since our 2012 STLP cohort days. We talked about family life with SIP, work schedules, commute time savings, and our career tracks. Also compared our ITLP 2017 and 2018 cohort trips. We will definitely connect again in a few months! Thanks Sean for the donut chat!
Just had a super-fun IT-Connect/Donut trio with @suminjoo and @kmrphy11 (via Zoom, of course). We talked about contract language, coming to Stanford, cloud computing, virtual machines, the SoM-SHC TDS "unification", and more. Good times, and a nice break from the current WFH isolation.
@Marianne and I had an excellent introduction today. We chatted about our experiences over the years working with our spouses. And about the joys of being a Product Manager when it's for a great product that helps people versus so many products in the Valley that just try to "be sticky" and make money. Bonus: I got to meet her adorable 2-year-old!
@Smitch and I had an excellent introduction today. I learned a lot about a great organization that supports computers for the university and the efforts that they have rallied to help with remote support. We discussed how Covid-19 has impacted us both and the organization and how it has brought various departments together and strengthened communication and relationships across Stanford.
@hope_l_johnson and i have always seen each other's names but now we finally had the chance to meet each other! we talked about minnesota (where she's from) and differences with california (and UCs!). we both also discussed how we're dealing with shelter in place too. it was so nice chatting with you, Hope!
@lorinda and I met this past Friday. We chatted about our careers at Stanford, our families, and how we are coping with the Covid-19 pandemic as an Institution and with home life. I am looking forward to her showing me around her department when we get back to normal.
@Kate Junco and I got a chance to officially meet this morning. Great conversation about working at Stanford and impact of Covid-19.
Great chat with @Chad today about being at Stanford for nearly 2 decades each, how COVID is affcting our work, and lots of other stuff too.
Thanks @dean for a great conversation today! It was really uplifting to share silver linings of the Covid-19 situation and hear more about the powerful work you’re doing in Stanford’s Seed program. I look forward to showing you around SRWC some day!
@Tori and I had a wonderful talk yesterday. We caught up on our current work projects and shared stories about connecting with family and friends over Zoom. Thanks Tori!
Today I had the wonderful opportunity to grab some coffee (sadly no dounts) virtually with @Dani Aivazian. A pioneer of working remote, she imparted some great tips on successfully keeping connected while working remotely and I don’t think she’ll mind that I share it with the rest of you, since this is how we are all working now. She calls it “connection before content”. Take the time to check in with your co-workers from asking how someones weekend was before you get into your Zoom meeting to even just doing a virtual walk down your Slack channel’s “hallway” at the start of your day to say hi. We both connected and contented touching on many areas from our jobs and what we do, to the topic that is on most of our minds, how we are all coping with this new reality.
It was fun catching up with @Steven Savage! We shared our work at home set up and discussed how Stanford will emerge stronger in terms of remote work and teaching after this health crisis.
Had a great conversation with @golfieri yesterday. We talked about life at home since SIP started and various technologies. It was great to meet you!
@luis_valencia and I met for virtual coffee today. We chatted about what it was like to be essential onsite personnel (as you can see him in the office), the challenges of Shelter In Place with kids, staying healthy, and being grateful for being part of Stanford!
@Robert Uy and I chatted about covid 19 and how this has affected our teams as well as how our paths led us to Stanford and life before the dotcom 2.0 bust.
Met up with Jaime Walter this afternoon. Very cool to hear his stories about the start-up world, his many trips to Tahoe for skiing and boating, and how he got to Stanford (twice!). Enjoyed our time @Jaime!
@kurt_howerton and I talked about working in today's environment, staff happenings, ServiceNow and our IT jobs. Thanks for the meet up!
Great conversation with @chris.roat. We talked about integrating good IT practices with research, both going to Cornell, both living in Davis, and now both working at Stanford.
Had a great conversation with @bradimm about how our experience has been working from home, our IT/professional background, and also talked about characteristics that a leader has. Thanks for the meet up Brad!
Met with @mccbeth this afternoon and talked about how we're adjusting to working from home and how our two groups (VPTL/UIT) have recently come together to support faculty and students with their Zoom questions. It was a lucky match!
Met with @cjwest today. We discussed allergies, Working from home, the pros and cons of living alone or with others during the pandemic, the great job Stanford is doing in responding to Covid. We discussed webpages and clinical trial recruitment. And meet Jacob too! Such a sweetie and a comfort in such unprecedented times!
@Matt Wood and I met yesterday and talked about running data centers and raising children during a pandemic, and about his path leading to Stanford (my path leading to Stanford is very short).
@jlee61 and I met yesterday to talk working at home with young kids, getting me a proper office chair, missing the commute, and saving money on cell phone plans.
@hyperboy and I met today! We talked about keeping in touch with family during a pandemic and the benefits of working at Stanford.
@Marianne and I met today, and ended up chatting about parenting during a pandemic, the learnings from rolling out a system that was built for one school to other schools, and the enthralling delights of Daniel the Tiger (especially for Olivia Liang)
@Tori and I had a great conversation today. It was nice to catch back up, as it had been a while since we had last worked together on a project, being in different schools and organizations. We talked about how work from home is going for us and how we are coping and what will it be like as we move forward and how nice it will be to be able to get outside more and visit loved ones who are far away. We also talked about current projects we are working on, our careers and how we got here, and what a small world it is as we found out that we both grew up in the same state on the east coast! (PS..Sorry for the lacking Zoom lighting!)
Met with @York today and had a nice conversation about careers, COVID impacts to work, current projects, children, etc. Great to meet up.
Had an excellent, informative time chatting with Chris Rose today. We discovered a shared interest in better supporting students' technical needs.
@latha12 and I met over Zoom and has a great chat. We learned about each other job's functions, our interests and family.
@Elisha Sullivan and I connected at GSB coupa. We had a great conversation, especially about "bilingualism" ... the ability of tech folks to speak non-tech and the ability of non-tech folks to speak tech. And we reviewed our long careers at Stanford.
@Raye Keslensky had coffee today and talked about burning man, illustrations, tech support for parents, Stanford commute life!
@amit and I had a great chat about our careers at Stanford (6 yrs for him, 2 for me), snorkeling in Hawaii, and hobbies/interests!
I enjoyed having virtual coffee with @emma.pease today and learning about her work with Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and GradeGrinder.net. We talked about life at Stanford before computers and our Stanford career journey (Emma, 35 years, WOW!)
Tina (@tdelcont) and I met and talked about our journeys to Stanford, our assimilation to SRWC, and how we still love to visit the Historic Campus.
@Annie Stevens and I met today and talked about our roles at Stanford, what our teams do and our career journeys so far! Thanks Annie, for coming to main campus from RWC specially for the meetup!
Joel Infeld @jjivmc and I talked about music and piano. We also shared our favorite anime series: One-Punch Man and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba!
@Frank Toy and I discovered that we have two children born within days of each other, who are now 7 and almost 5. I also learned that in his role on the CRC Raptor team to provide computing support to clients across the historic campus, Frank walks between 3.5 and 5 miles per day! Now, that's impressive. So nice getting to know you, @Frank Toy!
Thanks so much @hyperboy for stopping by SLAC to grab a cup of the pink drink with me! We discovered we share the same love of hating to keep track of time! :) and that we love to live in the present not past! It was so nice to meet somebody out of my SLAC bubble. Thanks Brian!
It was a pleasure meeting up with Manju for a quick bite/coffee this am. We talked about our rolls in service to Stanford (she 20yrs, me 13 yrs), commutes, job duties, and a future activity of exploring downtown RWC for lunch
Wonderful time meeting and chatting with @Marianne from H&S IT. We discussed everything from networking and printing solutions, to project management and finding good places to eat!
It was great coming up to the Redwood City campus to meet up with @James de la Cruz to talk about our jobs, paths to Stanford and hobbies (if you ever need help setting up a freshwater fish tank, James is your man)
Met with @Rebecca Tran this afternoon. Talked at length about what we do, all the IT initiatives that we are a part of, and differences of working in centralized and distributed IT teams.
Met up with John @jdimario at Lane Library who was kind enough to give me a "taste" of TechBar that their team had set up on a permanent basis.
Also, to join us was @Galen who had shared his IT experiences through the years. Overall, it was a very good experience. Invited them for a visit at Stanford's Redwood City Campus.
What an amazing experience getting to meet with Alex @Alex Skrenchuk this afternoon at the Stanford Lane Library, Tech Bar! I really admire his dedication to his research and effort to analyze user interactions with biomedical ontologies. John @jdimario also joined in for our conversation! Thank you!
So cool to meet with Raye Keslenskey from UIT this afternoon (she joined back in October). Did you know that there are regional Burning Man events all over the country? No? Well, Raye can give you the inside scoop on which ones you don’t want to miss. Great to meet you @Raye Keslensky and welcome to Stanford!
It was fun having lunch with @swl today! Turns out we both have 2 daughters pretty close to the same ages. And neither of us is from California, although he grew up in a more exotic location than my Wisconsin childhood!
@Jeff and I had coffee today. We talked Cloud Ops and optimization, working at UCSF, living in SF, the CXS all hands meeting, and client first organizations!
Late post: Ann-Marie and I have been emailing each other for years and thanks to the @donut program, we finally got to meet in person and it wasn’t because we had to schedule any meetings! We talked about education and life at Stanford. It was great catching up with you @ann-marie and I look forward to seeing and chatting with you more this year.
What fun it was to meet @kmrphy11, a manager in UIT's TCG group, who joined Stanford just less than a year ago after a 26-year-career at State Farm. We learned that we both are Illinois natives, and made big and rewarding life changes for Stanford. Best part: her smile is contagious! So nice to chat with you, Kimberly!
I'd like to thank @sbhutkar for taking the time to meet up on Zoom today. We were able to talk about our careers here at Stanford from Historic campus to SWRC, our commutes and the things we enjoy doing. I look forward to meeting up again!
@Sangeetha and I met this morning for our donut-pairing, after literally passing each other dozens of times on campus. We chatted about our journeys to Stanford, both career-wise and commute-wise. We discovered that we have kids at similar ages and marveled together at the whirl of anxiety and excitement that is facing our high school seniors who are waiting to hear back from colleges. It was wonderful to chat with you, Sangeetha!
Thanks @donut for the pairing! It was nice meeting @Sam - we talked about Sharks, our work functions, and differences between university & hospital trainings and buildings! Hope to see you at IT Unconference and IT Community at Stanford events (Zoom lightning talks)
I enjoyed coffees with @Ignacio Yanez, UIT - TFAC this afternoon, although he's the one who took our selfie!
@kevin and I had a great lunch and an even better conversation today. We talked about our respective backgrounds and he gave me some great leads on trails to hike. Although we didn’t take a selfie, we looked awesome.
@Kseniya Kupri and I chatted about ADAPT, TED Talks, Porto Bakery, and backpacking in Patagonia over coffee at the Cardinal Brew today.
@jlee61 and I had a nice chat over Zoom today, talking about what we do at Stanford, along with the merits of a fold up wall-bed to allow you to multipurpose a home office as a guest room!
@George Dias - enjoyed the warm afternoon outside of Cardinal Cafe and caught up on fun travels, the gym, UIT Refresh Program and what exactly does Cynthia do?
@Kelly Miller Schnaps and I met over Zoom today. We caught up on projects and recent events, and reflected on the challenges returning from leave to organization and cultural changes. And we made plans for working together more in the future!
It was good to meet @James de la Cruz for lunch at SRWC and learn about his background as a software engineer. We got to share about our various travels and learn more about our career paths that brought us to Stanford.
@tim_keely and me enjoying our time together via Zoom. We chatted about our roles at Stanford, how ended up here, and our love of the Stanford culture
I had a great chat with Mai Tran from SLAC today! We discussed our current and previous roles, career goals, and of course, the rolling blackouts. It was nice to meet with someone I normally would not run into!
Kehn and I met today during lunch. Got to hear his journey about serving in the Army (he’s still in the Reserves), coming up to speed on all things Room Support at SRWC, and how he’s getting ready for baby #2 in December. Congrats again @Kehn Hermano!
This morning @emma.pease and I were able to grab a beverage, sit out in the sun and chat about our various roles at Stanford.
Lovely time catching up with @York in SRWC. We chatted about the PG&E outage (he’s affected!), his transition from university to hospital employee, our appreciation for the better commute to SRWC versus historic campus, parenting, and even a little bit of work! Glad to have connected with York outside of our regular work connection.
It was great meeting with @Manju yesterday. We discussed our experiences at Stanford, our daily commutes, her team's move to RWC among other things. We promised to catch up again over lunch soon!
Had a great coffee and chat with @peacock today at Coupa. We talked about all the changes we have seen at Stanford, the challenges of management, work/life balance, and the value of working at a place like Stanford!
It was wonderful to meet and chat with @Stephen Arod Shirreffs this afternoon outside Coho. We talked about our time at Stanford (we both joined around the same time), learned about what we do in our groups and were pleasantly surprised to find that we have a common interest in Indonesia!
I had the pleasure of chatting with @diane_l._lopez today. We discussed Stanford career journeys, compared growing up in Los Angeles vs. Montana, and talked retirement plans. It's never too early. Thanks for a great conversation, Diane!
Met with @Sibi Joseph this afternoon. Gained more insight into how our groups interact indirectly and talked about our Stanford careers. Nice to meet you, Sibi!
Had lunch with @germaine at the Cardinal Hall Cafe and I provided a tour of the UIT Service Desk. We talked about our Stanford careers, our sons, STLP and many IT related areas. Thanks for the meet-up!
@T.C. Chen - ISO and I had lunch last week, and talked about kids, how we got here, and security. Lots of security... :-)
@jlcicero and I met up last week. We had a lovely conversation about our Stanford careers, upcoming travel plans, and family. It was awesome to chat with my office neighbor.
@Laissa Lai and I finally met at Coupa/Green Library today after missing each other due to vacations. Laissa had an incredible vacation in Santa Fe and went to the famous hot air balloon festival, while I just got back from a week in Cabo. What a great conversation! We are both passionate about the value of good data and how crazy challenging it is to get there. Looking forward to staying it touch!
@melanie_gordon and I met for lunch today! We talked about life, jobs, taking time for self reflection and also learned we are only a city away from one another and we share a pretty cool name!
@Rachel and I met for coffee today. We had a great conversation about our roles, the TDS merger, Communications and clinical trial recruitment. I learned about the #take5 channel and am excited to hear more about what other teams do!
@Swathi and I connected and had fun and informal conversations about our time at Stanford, projects, and life in the Bay Area. Thanks for taking time out of the day!
@Tracy Yuan and talked about exiting opportunities in the pipeline for Vendor Management. I also gave her a tour of the ITOC Command Center.
@kevin_haney and I met and talked about current projects and careers before Stanford
Cathleen and I met, she is the person that made the awesome Neurodiversity video for the Town Hall!! We had a wonderful chat about family, travel, living in the Bay Area and a little about work.
Had a nice lunch with @chmp1 Chad Morales! Great number or topics covered ! Thanks Chad!
@charub and I connected over being residents of Fremont, our commute stories over the Dumbarton Bridge, and women in the workforce - juggling being a mom and having a full time job! Charu also gave me such great insight for tips/tricks to being a new manager. Thank you donut for this opportunity!
Enjoyed connecting with @Eli for coffee and chat about IT systems, continuing studies and PMP training/certification. Always interesting to find out what others do in their jobs around our campuses.
More than 100 of our colleagues joined the movement during the month-long campaign this past July. This resulted in at least 90 introductions made, 70 Slack conversations, and 64 meetups. This page captures sampling of the share-outs from participants, who either built a new relationship or furthered an existing one.
Loving the Connect with Colleagues program! @trinag from the School of Engineering and I connected today! Learned a lot!
I enjoyed connecting with @Sam on campus today!
Enjoyed connecting with Alex and Virgina
@Ken Doran and I had a nice chat this afternoon!
I had a very nice talk with @Jim Knox yesterday. It was great to hear about his long career at Stanford and how it advanced to where he is today and sharing our experiences at Stanford.
Pleasure to meet @Jie Tang today! We shared our career stories & talked at length about our Stanford experience so far.
For my donut, I was connected with Glenn Peacock @peacock. Glenn’s name was familiar to me from seeing him in common slack channels, but it wasn’t until we got paired up in this program when I learned his face is something I see everyday! He did an ad for Parking and Transportation, and this ad was posted in my building for months. Glenn was a Stanford celebrity to me, and I had never met Glenn before today. After coffee, I took him to my building to show him where I recognize his face and where his ad was posted. We agreed that this was an appropriate location to take our selfie :slightly_smiling_face:
I had the pleasure of getting to know Mark Riesenberger from the SoM Tech Bar. We shared stories of our Stanford careers over our combined 50+ years. :blush:
I had the pleasure of reconnecting with a former building mate Chris Rose, UIT Service Desk ETS/ESS Manager. Similar to Mark & Cynthia, we also shared our career journeys at Stanford. Interestingly enough, we both have moved into different roles since we were last in the same building together so it was nice to catch up and swap stories :slightly_smiling_face:
@Blake Gentner @George Dias - UIT End User Experience I enjoyed our :donut: get-together this morning, even if we did forget to take a selfie! Looking forward to :wave: at you both as we pass each other on either campus, and catching up from time to time.
@Sarah Wilson and I got together in Cardinal Cafe earlier today. Our donut meet-up was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect!
@lhooper and I had a great chat about work culture this morning at the Cardinal Cafe. Wonderful meeting you Lisa! Thanks :donut: for connecting us!
Mai Tran, Marissa Mancilla and I connected in a three-way virtual chat today to get to know each other. Mai is located at SLAC and has been at Stanford just a few months. Marissa has been at Stanford with the OTL for about year, and just moved into SRWC Academy Hall. It was a pleasure meeting two members of our IT Community I would have otherwise likely never bumped into.
@mellani_miller and I had a Zoom donut meeting today. We talked about career journeys and new jobs and family and managing stress. We talked about visions for the future and made plans to keep brainstorming together. It was another great opportunity to (re)connect!
@hhadi and I just completed a Zoom meeting. We discussed our jobs and our groups functions. Looking forward to Haedar visiting the UIT Service Desk to see 5HELP in action. I'm anxious to visit his group in Hoover Tower for a tour of the Hoover library digital services. Yay Donut for the Connect!
@lhooper and I learned that we're both Cantonese and worked at Stanford for the past 19 years!
Mark @riesenberger and I met over lunch today. Really enjoyed it! A wide-ranging, fascinating chat. Learned about the SoM Tech Bar. We both remember the '89 earthquake at Stanford. Yay :donut: for the connect!
I had a great time chatting with Shannon Santanocito when she was on campus last week. So nice to see @shannons in person after many Zoom calls!
@Dani Aivazian and I met via zoom! It was so wonderful reconnecting with Dani and learning all about her career journey, family, exciting initiatives she is working on... she was easy to talk to and open up too! She is oh so inspiring!! Thanks donut!
I met up with @kmrphy11 and we shared our Stanford stories and observations on IT in higher ed.
@dilipk and I had a great talk at GSB
I met up with @matt_wood last week at Y2E2 coupa and had a great chat about data centers, Google and a bunch of other things. We totally forgot about taking a picture
Met with @John Maul for a great conversation over coffee!
Met with @jlcicero for lunch at SRWC and to talk about our teams, kids, and Spongebob Squarepants.
Met with @vishnu this afternoon! Learned about his ergonomic research at the Occupational Health Center working with Professor Rajan Puri and his upcoming plans to do research in the AI Vision Lab in the CS Department working with Juan Carlos Niebles. And when not solving world problems, he enjoys tennis and badminton - see you on the courts!
@Sara & I met today (my first donut pairing!). Sara was one of the first who welcomed me to UIT on UIT Community page 3 years ago and we finally got the chance to sit down and chat! We discussed our career journeys, HTML/websites, our kids and experience as working moms. Thank you @donut for this pairing & I had a great time getting to know Sara better!
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