UF's Peer2Peer Effort:

• March 25, 2003 - Notes from the Peer2Peer #3
  (contributed by Steve Lasley)
  • I was pleased to see a number of other ICCers there: David Bauldree, Benjamin Beach, Tom Hintz, Dwight Jesseman, and Earl Sloan. I'm sure they can chime in if I miss anything or have something wrong. The agenda (see http://www.it.ufl.edu/training/peer2peer) included talks on the new UF web portal, the UF Directory, and Best Practices for secure OS installation.
  • Mike Conlin previewed the features of the new "my.UF" web portal. Details of that project can be found at http://www.bridges.ufl.edu/portal. This new service goes live this coming Monday in a "quiet" rollout. This portal will give UF faculty, staff, students and other affiliates a single point of contact for accessing UF services (although initially those services will be quite limited to begin with, until more of ERP rolls out). The portal can be somewhat customized to the needs of each user and is meant to allow access to things based on your role in UF. The site will also publish time-dependent news items based on a simple author and publisher model. Training on this aspect can be accessed via http://www.bridges.ufl.edu/training. BTW, the ERP project is now called UF Bridges and the main website for this project is now http://www.bridges.ufl.edu.
  • Warren Curry discussed the UF Directory project (http://www.it.ufl.edu/projects/directory), how it provides an identity, and how it can serve and enable future information projects such as the ERP. (BTW, Active Directory and the broker was not discussed, but I flagged it as a request for an upcoming workshop on my evaluation sheer.) There are over a million records currently in the Directory. I believe he said that everyone that has been on the payroll since 1984 is in there as well as all students since 1977. The information is currently kept in a DB2 database, but will be eventually rolled into the ERP database which will become its future home. Warren discussed affiliations and roles. Karen Nabitsky, also with the Directory project, discussed Gatordex (see http://www.it.ufl.edu/projects/directory/apps.shtml) an application that allows folks to maintain certain parts of their own Directory information. This will be integrated with the upcoming portal.
  • Jordan Wiens discussed OS installation best practices. He has posted the essential details of this talk at http://net-services.ufl.edu/security/admins/build.shtml. This is a very good cross-platform resource that is worth a look from everyone. Jordans talk is available at http://net-services.ufl.edu/security/public/slides/secbuild
  • This was the most interesting and useful Peer-2-Peer that I have attended to-date. I hope it is indicative of future workshops. Please be aware that they are looking for topics and presenters. Should you be interested in presenting or have a topic that you would like to cover, contact them at IT-Training@lists.ufl.edu. Certain of the materials from this and past Peer-2-Peer workshops are posted at http://plaza.ufl.edu/alallen/p2p/presentations.html.
• March 28, 2002 - Notes from the Peer2Peer KickOff
  (contributed by Steve Lasley)
  This was the first of what is planned to be a 3-times-a-year deal. There were five presentations, summarized following...
  • NERDC's Marie Dence and Vicki Kitts solicited input on how to structure and implement peer IT training at UF. They offered various formats, such as lectures, brown-bag lunches, study groups, ad hoc seminars and classes. Then they attempted to get volunteers to organize such groups on various topics. This program would be great for someone with special expertise that they wanted to share. They did mention the possibility of working within DOCE for those who wished monetary reward for contributions. The suggestion perhaps most pertinent to the ICC was for study groups for certification preparation.
  • Marie Dence and CIRCA's Fran McDonell discussed and distributed a handout on the Office of Information Technology (OIT) - IT Staff Services Resources. There were numerous links to support sites. (I will put a link to them once they are posted.) Lots of goods stuff, but much that most will already know.
  • Marie Dence gave a Software Copyright Issues and Awareness talk. See http://pirate.ifas.ufl.edu for policy, guidelines and training materials regarding software. She stressed that we support people should document some effort at educating our users as self-protection. There is a copyright reference page at http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/admin/Copyright.htm, and DMCA is covered at http://pirate.ifas.ufl.edu/update/digital.html and http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html.
  • Kathy Bergsma presented on the new UF IT Security Policy. The links she used are available at http://net-services.ufl.edu/security/peer-training. There is a lot of information about which all ICC'ers should be aware. Spending some time at these sites is highly recommended. There are deadlines already in place for preparing written documentation at the unit (in our case, IFAS) level. I believe written policy and procedure documents must be ready by the end of this year and a written business resumption plan by March of next. There is also unit resource documentation required. Templates for developing these are at http://net-services.ufl.edu/security/peer-training/templates.shtml.
  • Dr. Helal of Computer Science discussed a project in which he is involved that is developing wireless compterized aids to allow the elderly to live at home independently (see http://www.harris.cise.ufl.edu/projects.htm). Matt Grover discussed the UF Wireless Campus Project which is well-documented online. Very cool stuff--something we will all be dealing with before long.