2015 Annual Meeting - ITComm CG
IT COMMUNICATIONS CG
Join the Constituent Group:
Use ITCOMM resources:
https://sites.google.com/a/educause.edu/educause-wiki-site/it-communications
Annual meeting
October 28 2015
11:40 AM - 12:30 PM
Agenda:
15 minutes of CG business - the ITComm constituent group, cabinet and co-leaders; goals for the next year (more coffee shops, yay!)
Welcome by Cathy McVey - co-chair of ITComm group
Cabinet members help keep the group moving along
Virtual Coffee Shops - online presentation and meetings in Adobe Connect, includes open dialogues and group therapy
Listserv - mailing list is very active for our group; recent long stream about social media channel use in our organizations
Identified panel members for EDUCAUSE proposals, assigned mentor.
One of those panels was selected for the online conference. Cathy and Harvard ITComm talking about setting expectations. Sorry you can’t see it - if you are only here face to face. You online participants, don’t forget to tune in.
Wiki - samples, templates, job descriptions, etc.
Sign up for ITComm list if you haven’t already - 998 members already. We are one of the biggest and one of the most active. http://www.educause.edu/discuss/constituent-groups-about-information-technology-management-and-leadership/it-communications-constituent-group
The ITComm Cabinet - Cathy is listing the 10 members. See announcement in ITComm list.
Shout out to Julie Gillis, Patrick Chinn, Greg Stauffer and Kerri Testement for serving as charter cabinet members and stepping down to provide more leadership openings for other ITComm members.
Prizes!
Who came the farthest - outside the US? - winner came from Turkey!
Who has attended the most EDUCAUSE conferences? - winner says this is his 13th!
Title includes word communicator - who has been on the job the shortest amount of time? Winner - less than one month.
Coming in the next year: more coffee shops!
next topics probably modular content and social media / transparency in crisis communications
Survey coming - best time for coffee shops? We’ll ask you and go with what you want.
Succession Planning - Carlyn is rolling off as co-leader in January 2016 and Alison Cruess is stepping up to work with Cathy. Carlyn steps down to the cabinet as ex-officio.
HEISC - Higher Ed IT Security Committee in EDUCAUSE collaborating with ITComm group to increase and improve awareness and education re: security topics. Note about next meeting will go out to listserv.
Volunteer - watch for the survey next week. You tell us what you are interested in and we’ll make sure you get the opportunity to develop your leadership skills with our CG.
35 minutes of audience participation - hot topics and cool ideas for managing IT Communications at your institution
Carlyn will repeat the question for the online participation:
Question: Security topics - how much do people want to know (internal/external)? Balance between IT staff not wanting to share and community wanting to know more.
Answer: use in person - go out, meet and greet, without a paper trail, the CIO may not be as concerned.
Answer: put blog behind university login to put need-to-know details; put public facing (generic) announcements on separate site. Guide, partnership through appropriate levels. Concern of the techies is legit; hackers do read the “alerts” and go after systems.
Question: How to make communicators write to meet accessibility requirements? How do you get all communicators.
Answer: in classroom tech, she’ll talk to our campus, side stories of waiting until someone says “that needs to be fixed” before taking action.
Answer: under a lawsuit for not appropriately accommodating a student re: accessibility. but rumors… everything on the web will have to be reviewed, not necessarily taken down. interesting that this is an IT-involved but not IT-mandated project. General counsel, public affairs, provost, etc. must all agree. Not yet determined how far it extends (archives?)
Answer: our division is going through a project where we are taking all IT division web sites through a tool called waveaim.org then will expand to rest of campus to make all sites ADA compliant.
Question: Relationship manager for students, doing a lot of outreach. hard to get students to focus group, hesitant to go individually invite them. What is sustainable?
Answer: At Rice - use IT Ambassador in every residential college. More details coming.
Answer: UTSA - student coalition - students who participate - get a lunch, invite all the 28,000 students but get 70-100 students for hour-long lunch and presentation, we get feedback there. When you get a hot lunch in the fall, it really draws them.
Answer: UTED - gives prizes for students taking surveys
Answer: mobile app for students based on feedback from students, put on Tech Fair - vendors give away swag, provide info
Question: how many have student advisory committee:
Show of hands - about ⅓ of group
Successful engagement? For the most part
Free food works. We put out the pizza say come talk to IT. Only student workers can present, not any IT staff. Talking their language. IT staff may sit in room and observe but not intervene.
Pretty small student base but meet with student government officers once a month, works pretty well.
Question: how many people experiencing change in role of communicator? - about 10%
Comment: have first full IT communications person recently; how do we push out info, but engagement is more how to gain bi-directional conversations. This needs to be a Coffee Shop Topic
Comment: also trying to explore bi-directional communications
Comment: communications group may be good at communications but doesn’t really know IT. Shifting how send information out. service or account managers units working with the communicators to improve?
Question: what is your organization structure. For example, I’m the only one in my communications group. How does it work -how do you get more staff?
Answer: even with the number of people we have, it is difficult to keep up. Our communicators can’t be here because they are in another EDUCAUSE session, we did all the office 365 training and the sharepoint sessions are fully booked. That gives us a captive audience for outreach. that training is mandatory so we definitely see people. My communications team is two full time and two part time staff.
Answer: added to a department of one for communications - he can’t do it all. email, video, social, and I was brought on; first challenge is to get help and we’re looking at internships.
Answer: set expectations for ourselves. One person or a small staff really can’t do everything. We are setting ourselves up for failure if we don’t define our scope and priorities. How much time are you spending on outage and emergency communications? Can you streamline or collaborate with the service owners on those?
Answer: Core Data is one way to look at staffing module - how many people are staffed in IT Communications compared to FTE for staff/faculty as one gauge.
Answer: trying to advocate for an additional communications position often seems as a soft skill add-on and intrinsic value is not always understood well. If we can show what a difference it makes to reach students, etc…
Question: I am one person running communications now, everything from video to special events. How do you get your colleagues to understand and adopt the communications plan?
Answer: We deployed something on campus, engineers gave us a week to get up a web site. Had to show how IT Comm could partner with engineers and departments across campus - worked!
Answer: partnering with our Project Management office - the PM said every project had to have a communications plan. Good to hear from someone other than the comms person.
Answer: if you have a small ITComms shop, must build relationships with peers and directors. Get your comms plan embedded in software development life cycle, hardware refresh lifecycle, etc. Leverage and share resources. At the Help Desk, we took on the outage and emergency communications. We can see all the communications that go out and can provide feedback to the other IT departments to ensure buy-in.
Answer: Biggest thing that worked for us in working with other IT staff is data. Annual user survey is how we show data that proves how communications worked successfully.
Answer: Build strong relationship with CIO or other lead IT executive. You are there to build and maintain their organization’s brand. You can be a valuable arm out into the university’s world.
Question: how many one-person comms shops here?
15-18 out of room of about 70 people in room.
Question: how many people have NO ONE doing communications in your university?
21 out of 70-85
Comment: being reactive is perceived as being negative. IT folks providing highlights - not normally communicated out, helps university customers understand better, helps affirm the IT staff doing the work.
Comment: EDUCAUSE resources promo. educause.edu/ncsam
Comment: Blending bi-directional communications: just recently took on position involving IT Relations (shared understanding at senior level executives(, but also have IT Communications (marketing/ promotions)
Thanks and goodbye!