Architectural rendering of the new LSC building.

This week’s IT Briefing this week exemplified the growing collaboration within LITS…and beyond. The IT Briefing is a chance for members of the IT support community throughout Emory to hear about current and upcoming projects and ask questions of the subject matter experts who conduct those projects.

This week, the presenters were:

• Felicia Bianchi and Ceray Doss-Williams, who discussed the Library Service Center with amazing photos, fascinating technology, and a succinct description of the collaboration between Emory and Georgia Tech. “I can’t wait to go back to Oxford and tell my Dean,” said Mahbuba Ferdousi, the associate dean of IT at Oxford. “That’s a real paradigm shift.”
• Jay Flanagan, who discussed the Office 365 migrations, re-stated the importance of the password change and collaborated with Anne Marie on ways to use Office 365 to assist in the password change.
• Anne Marie Alexander, who discussed the password changes, added to some points Jay discussed, then flawlessly provided the first public demo of the new MyPassword tool about to be launched. “I was glad to see that demo,” said Rosa Weston, “and there are important things in it I need to ask Anne Marie.”
• Paul Petersen, who offered the best infrastructure overview we’ve seen and answered questions regarding network vision and strategy.
• Derek Spransy, who gave several security updates and presented key information regarding a subtle but important change in DNS policy to help protect the network.

Core Upgrade diagram Paul Petersen presented at the July 16, 2015 IT Briefing.

These presentations were gathered independently but complimented each other, demonstrating the communication and collaboration between the Library, Infrastructure, Project Management, Identity Management, Enterprise Services and IT Security.

Thanks to everyone who presented this week and other LITSers in the audience, including Holly Crenshaw, John Pine, and Chris Alexander, who were also called upon to answer questions about the various projects.

If you have considered attending the IT Briefings, this is but one example of what you will find. We know that it is often difficult to schedule time for the IT Briefing but the expertise in the room is impressive and the Q&A with our customer set is often informative and vibrant. Plus, the food is good.

Our hope is that more LITS personnel will take advantage of these opportunities to meet face-to-face with some of our customers.

The next scheduled IT Briefing is August 20, 2015 in the 4th Floor Auditorium of the North Decatur Building at 10:15 AM. You can see the slides of several years worth of the briefings at http://it.emory.edu/news/it_briefings/index.html.