The Campus IT Plan is not just a static collection of 300 IT efforts planned at Stanford, it’s a springboard to making connections with fellow IT colleagues, learning about new technologies, and expanding one’s awareness about the IT landscape at the university. That’s how Jon Pilat sees it anyway.
In a voluntary assignment, Pilat, director of IT at the School of Humanities and Sciences, challenged his team to browse the Campus IT Plan, find an initiative of interest, reach out to the contact of that initiative to learn more about it, and share learnings in a presentation at a staff meeting.
“One of goals of the Campus IT Plan was to increase awareness of IT efforts on campus, particularly in this first iteration, by collecting the major initiatives of each unit. I was looking for ways to make progress towards the awareness goal in the H&S IT team,” said Pilat, who served as a member of the inaugural Campus IT Plan steering committee.
So far, about two-thirds of Pilat’s team is participating, including Product Manager Ritika Bhalla, who focused her interests on Land, Building and Real Estate’s IT effort titled “Evaluate location-based analytics using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).”
“The review of the plans helped me to go through the variety of initiatives being carried forward by different university schools and units, and identify where my interest areas lie,” said Bhalla. “I was intrigued to find out more about how data can help in managing the campus better, and the various ways in which LBRE is leveraging the data that is collected.”
Staff development opportunity
For Pilat, the goals of the assignment were multifold, and included opportunities for his staff to develop and grow their networks in new ways. Specifically, he wanted his team to:
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Gain broader awareness of the IT landscape on campus
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Build relationships through introductions and outreach with other IT professionals
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Explore new technologies through this outreach
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Present and work on public speaking and presentation skills
“I think it has given the team a better appreciation for the breadth of IT at Stanford,” said Pilat. “One of the things that we’ve come to appreciate is that not only is distributed IT fundamentally different than central IT in the types of initiatives that are prioritized, but the different distributed IT organizations (even school to school) are also different from one another and have significantly different priorities.”
An assignment worth trying
Other IT teams could benefit from a similar Campus IT Plan assignment, said Bhalla.
“This is an excellent exercise to not only understand the multitude of initiatives being carried out around the university, but also to interact with IT professionals from across the campus and have some meaningful discussions that you otherwise would not have,” she said.
“Exercises like these will go a long way in strengthening collaboration and knowledge and resource sharing across the campus.”
