HDI Higher Education Forum Meets in the Hoosier State

The HDI Higher Education Forum group met this week, July 14-17, 2008 in Bloomington, IN at Indiana University in the Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel & Conference Center. One of the unique things about the HDI Higher Education Forum meetings is that they are hosted on the members' campuses. This HDI Forum group has been together for about 4 years and during this timeframe we have visited 2 to 3 campuses each year. It is an amazing opportunity to see and tour all of these amazing colleges and universities.

The HDI Higher Education Forum is one of our largest HDI Forum groups. Members in this group include the following organizations:

Abilene Christian University

Baylor University

Boise State University

Brigham Young University

Calvin College CIT Dept

Central New Mexico Community College

Colorado Mountain College

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Indiana University

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Marquette University

McGill University

New York University

Saint Joseph's University

Southern Methodist University

Texas Christian University

Texas Tech University

University of Akron

University of California, Davis

University of California, San Francisco

University of Dayton

University of Oklahoma

University of Saskatchewan

University of South Carolina

University of Utah

University of Wyoming

Western Carolina University

During this HDI Higher Education Forum meeting, the group discussed many topics as they associate to the people, processes and technologies within their support organizations. These topics included Team Dynamics, Asset Management and Budget Forecasting using LanDesk, Campus-Wide Back-up Systems, and Project Management within the help desk. We also had a roundtable style open discussion about technology within the support center. During this open discussion, members of this group shared information about their project management tools, Google email, supporting Linux at the Help Desk, supporting Macs due to the ever increasing popularity of the Mac computer, and finally k-Killing-off password reset calls.

This group takes time during each Forum meeting to share their successes with one another through sessions called "Celebrating Successes". During this meeting, several members shared their successes. Some of these success stories included:

• Mark Stinson from the University of California Davis shared his story about the evolution of his support center from a Mom and Pop Help shop to an ITIL-based service desk
• Anne Vail from Western Carolina University shared her story in choosing and implementing new issue tracking software

One of my favorite sessions during this meeting was an experiment that will now become a permanent session during each and every Higher Education Forum meeting. This new session will be called "Solve My Problem". Three Forum members volunteered to describe an issue that they are facing within their environment. Once the issues were described, the group broke-out into smaller teams to brainstorm different solutions to the issues. Then each team presented their solutions to each issue. This was an excellent session that provided real answers to real issues. Each person with the issue is walking away with multiple ways to solve the issue. This is truly the Forums in action!

I will leave you today with some photos from the meeting. Photos below were taken by Bill Vriesema from Calvin College. Thanks Bill!

Thanks for blogging with me!

Leslie Cook, HDI Forum Program Manager

Comments

[MUTSINFIBRINS]

I'm new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.

[Niki Buchen]

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