Are you interested in building an “All Stanford IT” Online Community Solution? This would be a central place to share information; and find out who's who in IT at Stanford?
We shared ideas and looked at gaps that currently exist and what a solution might look like.
We’re looking for people to validate this idea and volunteer some time to put it into action.
During breakout, we looked at gaps, solutions, barriers to implement/maintain, adopt, etc. such a solution.
To seed the discussion, here are some possible features:
Live interactive webinars
Recorded lightning talk videos “extending that IT Unconference energy and feeling”
Build an online IT Community directory for a broad view of all those with IT roles and responsibilities
An all-Stanford IT directory
Sharing initiatives/strategies (this will be handled by the Campus IT Plan site, but we’d like to link to it)
Ability to quickly retrieve information about ongoing projects, opportunities for collaboration
Forum to share info/scheduling for quarterly in person lunch and learns, all-IT happy hours, etc.
Written content to share project updates/information
Blogs…
Articles…
Live/dynamic dialogue
Chatter/Messenger/Slack
Other
means to have live conversations with colleagues
Facebook-like
conversation threads
NOTES:
Jackie and Sean related how the idea came out of STLP for an online site or tool to bring people together. How do you lead change? How do you continue the feeling found at the Unconference, how do you create the more formal lines of communication that continue after the Unconference is over?
This would be something that is open to everyone, not just IT on campus, but even SLAC, management company, and possibly people outside of IT.
We don't want to duplicate something that already exists, but want to leverage existing solutions whenever possible. So, we broke into groups and asked:
What are the gaps in the existing solutions?
What features is the community looking for?
What are the barriers to such a solution, maybe from your organization?
Some table ideas:
Sharing Information
The challenge is getting to the right piece of information, especially when there are multiple sources, and the same information is presented in different way by different sources. Is there a central place? If not, how do we determine information authority?
Events
Could we hold more frequent events like the IT Unconference, distributed events? These would me more focus meetup type of events, smaller, shorter, with no need to cater.
For smaller conferences, what is the problem? Is it getting the space or the people?
If you have information about people's skills or what they working on, you could find the right people to attend a meeting.
Create meetups, possibly virtual, on specific topics.
Profiles
How can we leverate Stanford Profiles (CAP)? Profiles is great for professional profiles, but could be more useful for professionals at Stanford. There is, of course, the issue of people not filling them out. What would motivate them to?
We'd want information of what people you've worked with, what projects you've worked on, what skills you have. Like a LinkedIn internal to Stanford.
Can you add information that might not be professional information, like where you've grown up, outside interests, etc.
Onboard / Overall IT Picture
How will a new person at Stanford know where to go when they need help? Provide organization information about the various schools, units, etc. A place to know where to go when you need something.
Other ideas:
Provide a safe space where you can ask questions, put out an idea to be debated.
Have a global, super search, where everyone can contribute to the index.
Take some pointers from dating apps that allow you to see lots of people in a short period of time and decide which to connect.
Tech Briefings, Live Webinars beyond the ones that UIT puts out.
All-IT virtual meetings.
Can IT connect to the people doing IT research at Stanford? How do we connect with that side of Stanford?
Some issues:
The motivation to interact with others in places like Workspace / Facebook at work. Some groups are motivated and some are not.
How to leverage and consolidate existing solutions, instead of adding one more to the mix.
Keeping things up-to-date, maintained, keeping the energy alive.
