Notes from August 5, 2004 ITPAC Meeting:

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notes by Steve Lasley


Streaming Audio part 1 and part 2 from the meeting.

Steve Lasley presented the ICC AD sub-committee's IFAS OU Administrative Design Agreement for ITPAC's approval. A five minute presentation was followed by brief discussion. ITPAC voted unanimously to approve the agreement.

Steve Lasley presented the ICC recommendation on Exchange e-mail account retention for exiting IFAS employees. There was discussion that sought to assure that retired faculty and departing students could be handled appropiately via the proposed scheme and at the specific department's discretion. It was decided that this was so and ITPAC voted unanimously to approve this recommendation.

Jane Luzar (Associate Dean of CALS) gave an update of the status of the new videoconferencing system that is being implemented at 12 locations throughout the state. Patrick Pettus was introduced as the new, half-IFAS/half-UF videoconferencing staff member and a handout by John Pankow, updating the committee on the project status was circulated. Training (especially for extension and other non-academic uses) and conference scheduling details were discussed as being important issues to address before this system begins being used in the Fall. Joe Joyce expressed that unit heads should get an information package and/or have the system demonstrated so units know exactly what it is that we will have available. Joe also asked IT to supply costs involved for getting additional sites (e.g., Live Oak) into this system. Jim Syvertsen asked what would be done with the old Picture-Tel system. Ashley Wood said that the original idea was that Polycom would take those in trade for the new system, but he did not know what became of that. Certainly, some of the components (TVs and cameras) can be reused with the new system. Jane Luzar wanted it clear that this system was meant for much more than just Distance Education. A coming step in this program will be to get two county sites in each district connected; apparently those sites (larger sites with appropriate network infrastructure) have already been determined. Ashley Wood expressed interest in getting QoS at ICS so they could participate within this system on equal footing.

Jenny Brewer of ITNS and Joe Spooner of CALS, gave a presentation on Sharepoint integrated with Microsoft's Content Management System. They showed how such a system could help solve some of the problems that currently exist among IFAS websites: IFAS branding and uniformity of design for marketing reasons, keeping site information current, separating subject matter expertise from design and presentation aspects, and allowing for quality review in the web publishing process. Any number of programmable options could be integrated to assist in using the web, additionally, for collaboration within committees and project groups. Another very exciting use of this system would be to permit people to stop fighting with large email attachments; this system would allow one to have attachments autmatically uploaded to the web with the emails containing merely links to that location rather than the potentially very large attachments themselves. Joe Joyce wanted IT to put together the true costs of such a system and prepare a presentation to be made to the IFAS deans at an upcoming meeting. He also thought it would be good to contact the various unit heads and to determine their interest. Support from unit heads would mean a great deal to the deans if it could be elicited prior to the proposed upcoming demonstration.

The next ITPAC meeting is planned for early November 2004.