4:00 - 4:05 – Announcements

Ken Rogerson convened the meeting and brought attention to attached minutes from April 5th 2018 and April 19th 2018, which were motioned upon, seconded, and accepted. Ken also noted that the committee appreciates the record of these meetings and the efforts to accomplish this task. Tracy Futhey joined the meeting via audio. Ken also announced that the ITAC website is being moved and redesigned so members of the committee should check it out and provide feedback.

4:05 – 4:25 – Project Discover, Michael Faber, Evan Levine

What it is: Project Discover is a new platform designed and built by the Innovation Co-Lab. The site serves as a digital matchmaking service for students interested in project-based learning opportunities and experimentation. Users can create a profile for themselves (to indicate interest in joining existing projects), and also create or browse project profiles.

 

Why it’s relevant: Helping students organize into groups based on complementary interests and skills for project-based work is a recurring pain point for many units on campus. The manual process of meeting with students and connecting them where appropriate cannot scale to support the growing variety of needs across Duke. As the Co-Lab continues to develop new features for Project Discover, we welcome feedback about specific use cases where other groups could benefit from a platform like this.

Discover, a recently developed matchmaking site connects people to projects and the goal today is to demo it, have people use it, and seek feedback to enhance it. While running the Innovation Co-Lab, Michael Faber noted that people usually fell into two camps where on one hand, someone is interested in developing a skill or wanting to develop a project but doesn’t have an idea for it and on the other hand there’s a person with a great idea for a project or a project owner but doesn’t necessarily have a team or the skill to build it and make it happen. Historically, this problem was solved manually by connecting both parties, however, this approach is not scalable and the problem is not unique to us.

Students often come to the Co-Lab with project ideas but no way of finding others who may be interested in joining and therefore, Discover is a way to find potential teammates by skill set (i.e. design, marketing, backend development) and also functions as a platform for students to look at existing projects and connect with the project owner. The site is now live and broken down by projects and people, and after logging in, you can create a profile, add skills and interests, add a bio or a major to advertise to the world, and also add links to other sites like LinkedIn for validation of credentials or a plug-in with GitHub or link with a resume.

Fuqua students are using similar matching “pseudo helpers” by asking questions that facilitate the right connections and also add value based on how one works i.e. leaders, workers etc. and the kind of people that may work well together. Integration with Scholars@Duke will be a good plug-in along with Roots classes taken at the Co-Lab. Future editions may include having a project seek the right person based on specific parameters and it would suggest people who match the criteria. The long-term plan is for students to show off their work, add value and richness by adding project updates and overtime the project pages to become useful public artifacts.

Questions/Comments:

Q1: Are you leaving the project entries free-form or are there tags associated with them?

A: There is a dictionary of tags which is heavily based on Computer Science and Web Development currently but will continue to be updated and enriched as more projects are added.

Q2: Do the projects and profiles persist after graduation?

A: Yes, people will be marked inactive after they leave but the project will exist as an archive for example for job hunting

Q3: When you check “Let’s Collaborate” what does it trigger?

A: Currently, it logs that click and sends an email but there is no internal messaging built in such as meeting opportunities and chat etc. just yet.

Q4: Since this is designed and aimed towards matching projects and people, what is the potential value or relevance in this to match training events or mentorships i.e. someone wants to take violin lessons?

A: We might be able to take the same underlying technology and replace it with people and mentorships or skill sharing. Eventually, we could pull this out of the Co Lab and make it generic for other applications.

Q5: Could this be used for the Code+ or Hackathons and integrated with similar technology and communications?

A: Yes, we can but it would not have any messaging built in.

Q6: How well is this integrated for people who do not speak any of these languages? Is there a mechanism that helps people articulate what skills they want for their project?

A: We are looking into ways to generate and better organize this and make it less descriptive and more prescriptive and have project translators built in.

Comment: Other use cases can be the independent study projects at School of Nursing or tutors for classes and the Scholars@Duke integration.

4:25 – 4:40 – IT Service Desk Update, Paula Batton, Rodney Cozart

What it is: The OIT Service Desk is the first line of defense for central IT support at Duke. Faculty, students, and staff can get help from our live call center service desk and walk up service desk nearly 24 hours a day. This presentation will review the latest developments and data from the Service Desk.

Why it’s relevant: For many, the OIT Service Desk is their first contact for IT issues on campus – and, in some cases, it may be the only contact. The customer service experience can have a lasting impact on the relationship with IT at Duke. We will take a deeper look at how the Service Desk’s performance is evolving to meet the needs of its customers.

The OIT Service Desks at the American Tobacco Campus and the Link located in Perkins Library merged in 2014 to provide extended and improved support and also to include services to DKU. The staff rotates duties between the two desks and also includes 28 students from area universities to provide a consistent support experience while focusing on improving relationships with the customers.

The following highlights some accomplishments and the ways in which the Service Desks have achieved them:

  • Freshman Orientation and tours now include educating the students as to where the Service Desks are located and what services are offered to help them in a timely and efficient manner.
  • Use of Scorecards that provide reports and immediate feedbacks
  • Survey follow-up to resolve pending issues
  • Use of better Measuring Sticks to set clear and realistic expectations
  • Digital Signage displays at ATC showing service updates and pending items
  • Leveraging a sustainable funding model for replacing computers and or accessories

The breakdown of type of contacts to OIT service desks are as follows:

  • walkup 13%
  • self-serve 18%
  • phone 40%
  • email 17%
  • chat 12%

In conclusion, the Service Desks are continuing to innovate their methods and collaborate with Departments in order to provide excellent service.

Questions/Comments:

Q1: What’s your internally preferred contact method?

A: It is chat, since it’s live and provides immediate feedback resulting in a quick resolution and its also widely used.

Q2: Why do think there’s been a shift from phone to chat?

A: More people are available to chat and it is faster and quicker.

Comment: There are several departments that will be willing to fund and recruit students for low-level tier-1 support that can be mutually beneficial and a great opportunity to collaborate with OIT Service Desks.

4:40 – 5:00 – Ivy+ Updates, Paula Batton, John Board

What it is: Representatives from top-tier schools meet annually to discuss and share information in various areas. Topics include overall university directions, budgets, projects, online learning tools, and daily operations.

Why it’s relevant: Sharing experiences and discussing challenges with our peers helps provide a collaborative environment where ideas are formed and problems are solved. Paula and John will share their experiences at the 2018 conferences for the customer support and IT senior leaders groups.

John Board reported the following:

  • The conference was hosted at Duke and it was noted that Duke’s stability is the envy of all of our schools.
  • About half of all the schools are in the midst of major network modernization projects ranging in $40 - $70 million.
  • Duke’s own recent network upgrade completed few weeks ago and no one noticed it.
  • The DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) on one campus is being replaced with VOIP over Wi-Fi, which (it his hoped) will obviate the need for a DAS.
  • Most schools are getting rid of Data Centers
  • Duke puts interesting student App into production that have been developed by interns.
  • Schools are considering as to how much to centralize services of Service Desks, Help Desks, and Desktop support by first reaching for low-hanging fruit to bring the support up to the level and then advancing towards significant expenses.

Paula Batton reported the following:

  • Regarding Device support issues, most schools are supplementing their peak times with increasing hours and cost to provide services.
  • Another campus is using an AI vendor to search keywords associated with schools for routing tickets and also their facilities dispatch is handling some IT related issues.
  • We demonstrated our implementation of Planisphere that is our device management system and several schools were very interested in obtaining it.
  • Most schools are using Amazon’s Prime Market lists for purchasing needs due to higher transparency.

Questions/Comments:

Comments:

It’s been challenging to recruit entry level student hires to build the pipeline.

OIT has a dedicated HR that can assist in the hiring process.

5:00 – 5:30 – 3D Printing: Useful Objects, Chip Bobbert, and Barton Lawyer

What it is: 3D printing is a revolutionary technology that is changing the way we design products and raising the potential of what is possible. While it has many uses, this presentation will focus on recent efforts at Duke to create “useful objects” through 3D printing and digital fabrication. In particular, we will feature innovative collaborations, such as projects with the Duke Lemur Center and Duke Card.

Why it’s relevant: 3D printing is more than just the latest technology fad – it can create useable, useful objects to solve real-world problems. Duke is leading the way among universities in the 3D printing space, and faculty, students, and staff have the opportunity to use our state-of-the-art makerspaces to create useful solutions to their everyday challenges.

Chip showed off some of the lab inventions and allowed the audience to examine the objects individually and take a closer look.

The “Bluesmith” a research-oriented fabrication service started last year and has seen huge growth and potential. In its first year, the visualization lab doubled its capacity by completing 66 jobs for 3D printing. Plastics are not durable as metal and people need/want strong and long-lasting tools and parts to make useful things by turning napkin drawings into CAD. Also, in the last year, the lab has added a dedicated manufacturing room, a design hub along with an inventory system to manage CAD assets.

Now in it’s second year, the following projects have been the most significant:

  1. Card Reader Bracket - attaches to the Verifone stand to process Apple mobile payments and provides clearance for using the counter more efficiently. We created 300 brackets in batches of 50 and since built in-house, we can adapt and change as needed.
  2. Clamps – to secure cable and adapters utilized in hundreds of meeting rooms and provide a huge cost saving.
  3. Pulley for Lemur cages – the original equipment was defective and had to be replaced often so a better solution was designed at a fraction of the market cost using metal that will last long.

The latest equipment is a Water Jet cutter that uses sand and water to cut anything and cost $25,000.

Questions/Comments:

Q1: Will the design files if tied to a netid persist after the student graduates?

A: Yes, we have a curation process that uses Open Science Design and version tracking of 3D files.

Q2: Should we be concerned about patent and safety issues for medical devices and do you feel the pressure to develop procedures to build the metadata around these devices?

A: Yes, in the case of safety, we get the original files to build a quality model.