Campus LISA 2019

Campus LISA rallies to innovate.

Campus LISA, UC San Diego’s summer tech conference, was recently held on June 26, and had the UC San Diego tech crowd buzzing. This year’s event saw over 500 attendees from 100 different departments, programs and units. This one-day conference featured engaging talks on emerging technologies and useful how-to sessions by both UC San Diego technology staff and invited guests.  

As Shannon Prior, Campus LISA Committee Chair, put it, “Campus LISA is a day designed to bring together the entire campus IT community to have a much larger conversation about technology at the university. It’s as much about presenting novel ideas as generating a renewed spirit of innovation within the community, and continually pushing the envelope of what’s possible through collaboration. And as our attendees saw firsthand, it came together beautifully.” 

With four diverse tracks from sysadmin and developer to services, culture and vendor talks, Campus LISA covered a wide breadth of topics. Attendees sat in on discussions about managing protected data in the cloud, privacy issues, the One Card, WIPS, and Canvas, all the way to creating cultural change within the campus community to improve our potential for innovation.  

Tom Andriola, UC Vice President and System Chief Information Officer, who gave one of this year’s keynote speeches, spoke eloquently about how every person in the IT community, no matter their position, makes a valuable contribution to our mission... that it is important to give every employee the opportunity to innovate because that’s where system improvements and breakthroughs come from. 

Following the event, Tom spoke about the event itself, saying, “Every year I enjoy my participation at Campus LISA. It embodies the values of the UC IT community of leveraging talent, sharing knowledge and bringing out the best in every person. The IT community across UC San Diego sets the standard for reaching across organizational boundaries to be collaborative and inclusive in how technology positively impacts the university’s mission.” 

Attendees were also eager to experience the conference and learn how the university is evolving from a technology standpoint.  

“As a first-time attendee, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the event. I particularly liked the presentation by James Seddon. I’ve been able to apply some of his suggestions to improve low energy/high stress periods during the work day. Also, the vendors added a lot of fun to the down time between activities,” – Trisha Maas, Writer/Editor, Workplace Technology Services.  

“I always enjoy this annual event because it gives us the chance to stop and take a breather to learn about what others are doing and come away with a new skill or two. I love the feeling of ending the day motivated and inspired. More than that, I caught up with a few former colleagues, and also met new people at my lunch table. The happy hour event at Bella Vista was also a wonderful opportunity to meet and chat with others from across campus. 

“As for the sessions:  I enjoyed hearing Kevin Chou talk about the massive ongoing ESR project. I was also really impressed by EdTech’s work setting up the StudioU, a self-service video studio. My favorite session was, of course, James Seddon’s talk – it was a fun and witty presentation, but it also really spoke to me. I was inspired by the concept of the “Cult of Done” and how to better manage my time while dealing with a constantly changing and growing set of tasks. I’ll definitely be putting some of his suggestions into practice.” – Karen Fisher, Web Content Management Services.  

And even presenters found Campus LISA a rewarding event.  

“This was the first time I presented a talk at Campus LISA and despite my nerves, I’m really glad that I did.  It has prompted conversations with my colleagues that have been really good. The best part of Campus LISA, for me, is always the contacts, discussions, reconnections and new connections made on the periphery of the talks, which themselves are worth the time.” – James Seddon, Enterprise Network Operations Manager.  

Until next year!