The annual UCISA Support Services Group (SSG) conference took place at the Queens Hotel in Leeds on the 3-5th July with the theme ‘Back to the Future of IT’.
The conference was attended by staff and students from UK Universities and Colleges who presented and discussed the changing technological landscape, what technologies will be popular in Higher Education and how we adapt our services and support to meet these challenges. Several relevant suppliers (e.g. SDI, Happy Signals, Lenovo) were also in attendance and as ever with these events there was the opportunity to network and share best practice with colleagues from other institutions.
Some of the more interesting sessions included:
- Driving Change in disability employment, awareness, design principles and inclusion.
Hector Minto (Microsoft Accessibility Evangelist)
Summary – Inclusion driving innovation and Windows key combinations you didn’t know about.
- How we saved 2,297 hours/year without upsetting anyone.
Jake Dovey / James Lloyd (University of Southampton)
Summary – Lean principles, removing waste and request automation (e.g. shared mailbox access).
Chris Dixon (Head of IT Partnering and Innovation, Lancaster University)
Summary – Lancaster Universities rapid development of an Alexa skill for answering student queries.
- People, Truth, AI an auto-immunity
Peter Cochrane (Professor of Sentient Systems, University of Suffolk, former CTO at BT)
Summary – The great war – mis-information, challenges and how we combat it .
- Customer Driven IT Service Desk
Sami Kallio (Happy Signals)
Summary – Measuring the Employee Experience to drive Customer Service strategy.
Sessions from the conference can be found at https://ucisa.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/catalogs/ssg19
You can find more about UCISA SSG at https://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/ssg
If you would like to find out more about the event or discuss any improvement ideas the presented content may suggest then please contact Ian Bowman.