TECHTalks
Information sharing for and from technical employees across UC San Diego and Health and anyone who is interested the latest tech news and information.
You're invited to the TECHTalk information series!
What is a TECHTalk?
TECHTalks is our version of TEDTalks, where members of the technical community present current projects, programs, apps or tools of interest to the community. Unlike TEDTalks, sessions may also be AMAs or panel discussions. No matter the format, there is always time for your questions.
TECHTalks are held online the third Wednesday of each month from 11:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. Join any TECHTalk with this Zoom meeting.
Topics and speakers for 2023 along with recordings of past meetings can be found below.
Questions, Requests and Speakers Welcome!
We are available to answer your questions or take requests for topics you'd like to hear more about. Maybe there is a topic you'd like to share with the community. Let us know!
Email tech-feedback@ucsd.edu.
Add the 2023 TECHTalk Meeting Series to Your Calendar
Download this .ics file then:
2023 TECHTalks
January 18: Enterprise Project Updates and Looking Ahead
The first TECHTalk of 2023 featured updates from projects, including work-in-progress and what to look for in 2023.
Topics and Speakers:
Enterprise Identity Management (EIM) Project
Mona Zarei, EIM Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance at IT Services
Chuck Davis, Director of QA Release Management
Student Information System (SIS) Project
Sara Danford, Student Information System (SIS) Change Lead
The LastPass Breach and Cybersecurity
Dalton Brown, Director of Security Operations
- Presentation slide decks:
- EIM Project
- Quality Assurance at IT Services
- Student Information System
- The LastPass Breach and Cybersecurity
- Chat file
February 15: Dalton Brown, IT Security Topics
Meet the new IT Services Director of Security Operations Dalton Brown to continue January's conversation around security and work in progress in the Office of Information Assurance.
March 15: Academic Technology Services, Discover UC San Diego Project
Katherine Collins, Dan Suchy, and Adam Tilghman from Academic Technology Services discuss the behind-the-scenes of Discover UC San Diego, an innovative new initiative to offer the first three courses in all UC San Diego majors to public high school students, for credit and at zero cost to the learner. This is a close collaboration between IT Services, the Division of Extended Studies (Extension) and the Teaching + Learning Commons.
They also discuss the deep partnerships and shared IT goals, including a dive into the technology infrastructure and a walkthrough of the student course experience.
April 19: Tech Meetup, Dirty Birds on Campus
April was a time for eating wings and catching up with colleagues in tech. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend the Dirty Birds meetup! It was great to see your faces.
It was agreed that more of this kind of acivity is needed, so stay tuned!
Let us know what you think about in-person meetups or TECHTalks in general, tech-feedback@ucsd.edu.
May 24: UC San Diego Data: Latest on Storage, Development & Integration
Sarah Parnell from IT Services Business Intelligence along with Nathalie Gholmieh and John Gunvaldson from Data & Integration Services talk about data at UC San Diego.
- Activity Hubs overview, updates on data integration at UC San Diego
- Solutions for blending local data with Activity Hubs, what developers need to know
- Activity Hubs fields, views and data currently available to developers
- What's up next for data
Useful Links:
- Request data access, integrations and more information at busintel@ucsd.edu
- Business Intelligence & Analytics Team Services
- Analytics Community of Practice
- Analytics Community of Practice Day recorded talks
- Activity Hub Data Release Process
- Adding Data to Activity Hubs, Cognos or Tableau
- Getting Data Out of Activity Hubs
- Request Access to UCSD Collab (Confluence) to View Information Above
June 21: Meeting Canceled
This month's meeting has been canceled. We'll be back at 11:30 a.m. on August 16.
Add the 2023 TECHTalk series to your calendar. Download this .ics file then open in your calendar app.
July 19: UC Tech 2023. No TECHTalk
The July TECHTalk is canceled for UC Tech 2023 at UC Berkeley.
In-person or online, find more about registration, session talks and times at uctech.berkeley.edu.
We'll see you again in August!
August 16: Sara Danford & Jonathan Whitman, Student Information System
SIS project team members Sara Danford and Jonathan Whitman discuss project progress, report remediation, the future state of data access and integrations, continuity planning and plans for one student system shared with the Division of Extended Studies.
Whether you are in an area directly affected by the new SIS systems, have questions about the project or are just interested in hearing more, you should check out this presentation!
Useful Links:
September 20: Alex Wu, Application Development Environment
- Today's Application Development Environment
- Other options for an Application Development Environment
- What he learned with Google Cloud Workstations
October 18: James Dotson, Active Directory Tier 0
What is Tier 0? This month's TECHTalk centers around the Microsoft administration tiers model for permission separation within AD. IT Services Manager of Active Directory Engineering James Dotson discusses UC San Diego's implementation of the first and most privileged of administrative tiers - Tier 0.
- Presentation slide deck (coming soon!)
November 15: Nick Marangella & Edward Wade: Intro to AWS Automation & AWS Security
Join Nick Marangella, Principal Enterprise Cloud Engineer in Enterprise Architecture & Infrastructure, and Edward Wade, Senior IT Security Analyst in the Office of Information Assurance, for two talks:
- AWS Security Tools presented by Nick and Ed
- Introduction to AWS Automation Using Python with Nick Marangella
These talks cover:
- Setting up the AWS SDK for Python (boto3)
- Authenticating with AWS
- Creating a client for an AWS service
- Amazon GuardDuty and AWS CloudTrail
- Nutanix Security Central
At the end of the presentation they also demonstrate some quick automation tasks.
December 20: Something Good is In the Works. Stay tuned!!
The final TECHTalk of 2023 is holding for confirmation, but details will be posted right here. Stay tuned!!
No registration needed, just login to Zoom!
Date: Wednesday, December 13 or 20
Time: 11:30 to 12:20
Location: Zoom Meeting
Add the 2023 TECHTalk series to your calendar. Download this .ics file then open in your calendar app.
Past TECHTalks: 2022
Find meeting recordings, presentation slides and more from past meetings.
January 19: Mike Corn and IT Security
CISO Mike Corn hosted the January TECHTalk, where he took a poll of audience topics of interest, gave an overview of Office of Information Assurance services and projects, then opened the floor for an IT security Q&A.
More From This Session
- Presentation slide deck
- IT Security Topics of Interest poll results
- Post-Session survey results
- Note that survey results for the Preferred Meeting Time came in at:
- 10 for 11:30 to 12:20 p.m.
- 10 for 12 to 12:50 p.m.
- 11 for 12:30 to 1:20 p.m. or "Any of the above"
- 1 for "None of the above"
- Note that survey results for the Preferred Meeting Time came in at:
February 16: Sarah Parnell, What is a Community of Practice?
Sarah Parnell, Manager of Analytics Communities of Practice in the IT Services Office of Business Intelligence and Activity Hubs, spoke at the February meeting on Communities of Practice. Watch the session recording to learn what a Community of Practice is, where to find some of the current communities at UC San Diego, and how you can start a community of your own.
UC Tech 2022 Chair Miguel Rodriguez also provided an update on preparations for this year’s UC-wide technical conference.
More From This Session
- Community of Practice Presentation slide deck
- Post-Session survey results
March 16: Enterprise Identity Management (EIM) Project Update
In March, Members of the Enterprise Identity Management (EIM) project team reviewed how identity is managed at the university today and what it will look like in the future. The team from the EIM project, part of the Enterprise Systems Renewal (ESR) program, covered project deliverables, solutions and timelines, followed by an audience Q&A.
EIM project panel members:
- David Hutches, Enterprise Architect, IT Services and EIM
- Mona Zarei, IT Architect, IT Services and EIM Solution Architect
- Kate Balderston: Business Division Change Manager, Jacobs School of Engineering and EIM Process Lead
- Jason Andrews, Change Practitioner, IT Services and EIM
More From This Session
- Presentation slide deck
- Zoom poll results
- Post-Session survey results
April 20: James Seddon, What's Up with the Voice and Data Networks?!
Members from IT Services Network and Voice Operations hosted the April TECHTalk with the latest in campus wireless and voice and an audience Q&A. Watch the recording below to hear about the current status, related projects, and future plans.
Speakers from IT Services Network and Voice Operations:
- James Seddon, Associate Director, Network and Voice Operations, IT Services
- James Madden, Network Architect, IT Services
- Veronica Garcia, Enterprise Telephony Supervisor, IT Services
More From This Session
- Presentation slide deck
- Post-Session survey results
May 18: (CANCELED)
To add TECHTalks to your calendar, download this .ics file then open it in Outlook or, in Google Calendar settings, import the file to your calendar.
June 15: Community Open Mic
The June “Open Mic” TECHTalk featured 7 of your peers talking about their work in progress and tech-related topics in short, 5-minute presentations.
Speakers:- Miguel Rodriguez, IT Business Systems Analyst: UC Tech 2022 Chair will update us on the conference, registration, and volunteering
- Carolyn Ellis, IT Policy Analyst: Women in Tech at UC San Diego
- Allison Flick, Dev Ops Engineer: “Grab and Go Chromebooks” program at the Library
- Ashish Pandit, IT Architect: IT Services Integration Platform Toolkit
- Louis Zelus, App Programmer: Deduping data and overview of our implementation
- David Soleno, IT Architect: Function as a Service (FaaS) and Containerization
- Elaine Fleming, IT Communications & Outreach: IT Community Survey
- Q&A and audience topics
More From This Session
July 20: Paul Jamason & Ryan Rose, Converting Technical Debt
The July TECHTalk featuring Paul Jamason and Ryan Rose from the IT Services Academic Technology Innovation team is about technical debt and how their team has managed to tackle and modernize the problem by looking toward the future. July's community emcee is Erin Kilburn, IT Services Project Management Office Director.
More From This Session
August: UC Tech 2022 - No TECHTalk
TECHTalks took a break in August for the annual, UC-wide UC Tech conference.
Visit uctech.ucsd.edu for conference information and recordings of 2022 sessions.
Get ready for UCTech 2023, to be held July 17-19, 2023 at Berkeley!
September 21: Galen Davis, Media Storage and Delivery for Departments and Staff
Galen Davis, Senior Education Technology Specialist in IT Services Academic Technical Services, talks about the Kaltura media storage service used at UC San Diego in conjunction with the Canvas learning management system to store and deliver academic course content.
Kaltura, which offers unlimited media storage, channel creation, unlisted links, media editing, automated transcription, is also available to non-instructors. UC San Diego's enterprise license is available at no cost for individual or department use.
From This Session
October 19: Nathalie Gholmieh, Ashish Pandit, John Gunvaldson, Rollout of Integration Platform as a Service
IT Services' Director of Integration Services Nathalie Gholmieh, IT Architect Ashish Pandit and Integration Engineer John Gunvaldson talked in October about Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS), a next generation integration platform that can support streaming, batch, APIs, events, and similar services.
More From This Session
- iPaaS presentation slide deck
- iPaaS-related meeting groups:
(Request access to view on Confluence) - Discussion and information:
- Post-session survey results
November 16: Valerie Polichar, Paths to Promotion at UC San Diego
Long-time manager and Sr. Director of Academic Technology Services Valerie Polichar presents her view of:
- Promotion and job changes
- How reclassification works
- What's within your ability to control/influence
- Practical tips to advance your university career
Technical and non-tech employees who are interested in pursuing a career at UC San Diego will take something away from this TECHTalk.
More From This Session
- Paths to Promotion at UCSD presentation slide deck
- Chat text from this presentation
- Career Connection at UCSD
- Individual Development Plans
- Mentoring program
- CareerTracks for IT
December 1: CANCELED - Tech Meetup!!!
About the Meetup
This event has, unfortunately, been canceled. We did hear your interest in an in-person event, and we'll be rescheduling this event in 2023.
Contact tech-feedback@ucsd.edu with any questions.