DLT Direction Setting Feb 23 2007

At our meeting on Friday afternoon, we took a quick look at how the goals are going. Other updates included: we have a new agenda for the Library IT Strategies (formerly known as IT Priorities) meeting that's going to have us focusing on a "big picture" discussion for the most part. I've got to make a couple of updates to the draft agenda but will send it on then. We also talked about a request we've just submitted to the Libraries to establish a regular weekly maintenance window. We're also going to be moving the weekly staff meetings to a different day but it'll be a few weeks before we can put that in place given current heavy schedules.

Goal #1: Develop a culture of collaboration and team-work by integrating more fully with ITS.

Janis reported that DLT, ITECH, ITS Emerging Technologies and ITS IT consultants are going to meet from 8 - 10 am on March 2. The goal of the meeting is to brainstorm and share ideas on ways we can collaborate in technical and other areas. We're hoping that both ET and the IT Consultants can serve as conduits for DLT/ITECH to other areas in ITS that share our technology interests.

Goal #2: Strengthen our partnership with the Library to better serve students, faculty and staff.

Peggy and Jack reported back on this goal. This DLT/ITECH team is calling itself the "Strengthening Partnerships Group" - good name! They met on Thursday and came up with a three phased approach to "work towards fostering an improved technology environment within the University Libraries". These are:

Phase One: Laying the foundation through Identity Presentations;
Phase Two: Brainstorming and collaborating to improve working relations;
Phase Three: Implementing and communicating to the larger University Libraries audience.

The team is soliciting ideas from both groups for presentations with a deadline of Tuesday, February 27. They'd also like to know how much time you'll need for your presentation. Suggestions to Peggy and Jack. Effectively, the team is looking for commonalites and overlaps, and gaps where customer needs aren't being met. The team (Jennifer, Peggy, Jack, Jeff, and Sylvia) meet again this Thursday.

Goal #3: Look for operational efficiencies and invest in R&D for new technologies.

Currently asking everyone's opinion on a documentation system; eight responses so far. Joni is evaulating a new edition of Zope. Justin demoed the DLT wiki. Justin used our Direction Setting content to get the wiki started. We then had some discussion in our meeting on the uses of blogs vs. wikis vs. knowledge bases.

Goal #4: Commit to professional development, training and information sharing.

Now that the wiki is in place, we'll be creating a space there to communicate and collaborate on professional development and training. We are moving ahead with SANS Security Essentials Bootcamp training for several infrastructure technologists in April at Michigan State.

Goal #5: Implement project management in collaboration with our Library partners.

Several folks have expressed interest in the Learning Tree project management training that Paul Peworchik advertised last week. We've got to select a couple of folks by Wednesday, February 28th. ITECH has also identified some local training and we're going to explore that too.

Goal #6: Make DLT a "preferred workplace".

Ongoing; time will tell. (How's that for a project plan?) As for the conference table chairs in Mairéad's office; got two new ones. Need some tall(er) people to try them out.