Town Hall Meetings Archives

Held on the first Thursday or Friday of each month, Town Hall Meetings are about building community and expressing opinions and views.

UB 2020 IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

August 25, 2009

UB's senior leadership charges Elias Eldayrie with developing a structured plan to be implemented within 12 months. Budget reductions have added a sense of urgency to identify efficiencies and savings. Five major divisions named that reflect new IT service strategies.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

March 20, 2009

Held in a round table format, the March 20th Town Hall included free-flowing exchange of experiences and discussions about project issues and goals.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

November 21, 2008

Strategies for file service consolidation are being redeveloped. A Shared IT Service Desk pilot implementation is being planned.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

May 2, 2008

In a presentation on Research Projects IT Update, Matt Stock provided information about Enterprise Research Computing Services (ERCS). Current projects include MyUB Research Channel and a PI Faculty profiling system. Jim Gorman, Manager of Application Development, Administrative Computing Services, facilitated an off-site demonstration of the ImageNow product in the PeopleSoft environment.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

May 2, 2008

In a presentation on Research Projects IT Update, Matt Stock provided information about Enterprise Research Computing Services (ERCS). Current projects include MyUB Research Channel and a PI Faculty profiling system. Jim Gorman, Manager of Application Development, Administrative Computing Services, facilitated an off-site demonstration of the ImageNow product in the PeopleSoft environment.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

March 7, 2008

Shared IT Service gets valuable demo feedback from participants. Improvements to systems components result from Strategic Information Reporting Initiative's implementation of data model. Sharepoint proves to be collaborative asset for SIRI. Campus-wide SPAM management improvements from Servers and Services Consolidation.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

January 4, 2008

Daniel Arrasjid, Technical Project Lead and Client Services Area Leader within CIT provided a status report on the Shared IT Service Desk team. Daniel gave a quick overview of the process and progress to date, and focused on the most immediate and significant accomplishment: a successful Request for Proposals (RFP). Scott Nostaja, Interim Vice President for Human Resources, gave a presentation on UB being a Great Place to Work.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

January 4, 2008

Daniel Arrasjid, Technical Project Lead and Client Services Area Leader within CIT provided a status report on the Shared IT Service Desk team. Daniel gave a quick overview of the process and progress to date, and focused on the most immediate and significant accomplishment: a successful Request for Proposals (RFP). Scott Nostaja, Interim Vice President for Human Resources, gave a presentation on UB being a Great Place to Work.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

November 2, 2007

Dell Account Representative Chris Chodora, whose purpose at the Town Hall was to describe the business activities, presented slides that introduced the Dell Account team organization. Bob Shibley, Director of Urban Design at UB, and Bradshaw Hovey, Associate Director of Urban Design, then presented the UB Master Plan, the feature talk. Finally, Steve Heist, UBFS Migration Project Manager, reviewed the project which is to move UBFS from DFS to a new architecture, providing a much larger 250M file storage for all users.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

September 14, 2007

Although the format for the September 14, 2007 Town Hall meeting was advertised as UB 2020 IT Strategic Transformation (ITST) Project Round Table discussions, organizers took the opportunity to address one particular set of issues with a presentation: "Where's My Dell Computer!", presented by Ray Volpe, the Program Director for UBMicro Services, the UB's authorized higher education reseller which offers of computer products at special educational discounts.

IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting

July 13, 2007

As several UB2020 IT Transformation projects move towards reality, the July 13, 2007 Town Hall meeting was an opportunity for three projects to present formative information critical to project initiation.

Integration of IT resources

March 2, 2007

The Shared IT Service desk project moves toward campus-wide shared IT resources while the Servers and Services Consolidation project plans for server consolidation.

Informal round table discussions

January 5, 2007

For about two hours, free-flowing exchange of experiences, discussions about project issues and goals, and exchange of questions and answers occurred among the eighty or so participants.

Workstation standardization

November 17, 2006

Presentation of the recommendations from the Workstation Standardization final report.

The benefits of bringing servers and services together

September 15, 2006

Joe Mantione, assistant vice president for communication and IT infrastructure reviews the Servers and Services Consolidation Team recommendations.

The Framework for UB’s future

July 18, 2006

Dr. James A. (Beau) Willis, Executive Vice President for Finance and Operations, and a key sponsor of the UB 2020 academic support transformations, spoke to an audience of nearly 200 UB professionals about UB 2020 as a framework for the future of the university, describing the evolution of UB 2020, along with its goals and objectives.

IT Entering Next Phase of Transformation

May 5, 2006

IT announced it is entering the next phase of their transformation at the IT Town Hall meeting on Friday, May 5th. As part of the next phase, campus-wide security management in the CIO office is being implemented. The office of the CIO is considering new roles to focus on strategic coordination of support for research and instructional computing

Strategies for Change

March 3, 2006

Four strategies for change were presented at the IT Town Hall Meeting on Friday, March 3, 2006. Elias Eldayrie (Associate VP for IT) described the four strategies for change and explained that within those four strategies, there are ten key initiatives. The strategies are to be used to create a model that is unified and supports the needs of the UB campus.

IT Strategic Transformation Draft Recommendations

December 16, 2005

The Town Hall meeting of December 16, 2005, heard a presentation of the draft IT Strategic Transformation recommendations, which identify specific goals to help position UBit for the future. Along with those recommendations, the Executive Committee unveiled a Bill of Rights that outlines the basic levels of support expected by the community and a set of Guiding Principles for achieving successful transformation.

Draft Governance Model Presented

November 4, 2005

Deep thinking was going on at the ITST Town Hall meeting on Friday, November 4th. A draft governance model was presented. Voldemar Innus (Vice President for IT and CIO) urged Town Hall attendants to review the governance committee descriptions and memberships and to provide feedback as soon as possible. The governance model was developed from the data the Best Practices and Institutional Models Subcommittee collected from the twelve or so educational institution CIOs they interviewed.

Data Uncovers IT Challenges

October 5, 2005

The IT Environment Committee presented its data findings at the IT Town Hall meeting on October 5. Through the data collection, four challenges were ascertained. The four challenges were: insufficient and unpredictable funding, insufficient staffing, security without sufficient staff, and heterogeneity of support needs without sufficient staff.

Data Collection Efforts Presented

September 9, 2005

Bruce Pittman of the UB IT Environment Subcommittee presented on the data collection efforts at the Town Hall meeting on September 9th. The charge of the subcommittee is to conduct a careful and thorough examination of the existing organizational structures, processes, systems, and resources presently used to deliver IT services across the campus. A data environment sub-team was established, a questionnaire was created, and the campus was surveyed.

Transformation Vision Outlined

August 4, 2005

As part of the ongoing UB 2020 strategic-planning initiative, 130 members of the university community gathered at an IT Town Hall meeting to discuss why the university is re-evaluating the way it does information technology business.

Initial Presentation

July 7, 2005