Being a technology manager at a university isn’t an easy task. You don’t always get to choose which technology is installed on the campus. Even when you do choose, you don’t always get professors that are willing to adopt the technology. Space is a concern, regulations are a concern, bandwidth is a concern… and no matter what technology ends up being installed, the technology manager is in charge of making sure it works.
Those are some of the sentiments that were passed around at the first in a series of Higher Education Technology Summits put on by a group of AV manufacturers: FSR, Inc., Biamp Systems, Utelogy Corp., and SpinetiX. The event brought together a number of technology managers in the New England area to discuss trends and products in the Higher Education space. Stories were shared, gripes were discussed, frustrations were vented and lessons were learned. Ultimately, the summit was a great success because it allowed technology managers to network with one another and some of the manufacturers whose products they use.
The summit consisted of a series of presentations and training on the manfuacturers’ products and overall trends that the products fall into, and culminated in a panel discussion with a group of technology managers from MIT, UMass Lowell and Brandeis University.
First Biamp Systems demoed its powerful huddle/meeting room collaboration platform, Devio. Devio is a small hardware product that connects laptops or dedicated computers in a meeting room to the rest of your collaboration technology such as displays, speakers, web cameras, and more. Its beamforming microphone has three 120-degree zones for full 360-degree coverage. The microphone tracks and mixes conversations so that no matter where a participant is in the room, Devio keeps intelligibility consistent. An auto-setup feature sets acoustic echo cancellation and gain control to give the room the best audio possible, and only has to be updated after a firmware update or if the furniture in the room is reconfigured. A display can be connected via HDMI, or two displays via USB, and anything with a USB connection can be plugged into Devio. Speakerphones can even be plugged in via a headset jack. Devio works with Skype, GoToMeeting, WebEx and Hangouts, and can be centrally managed via SNMP or the Devio SAU. As you connect more devices, Devio turns into an affordable collaboration system for your meeting space.
Next came SpinetiX to discuss its complete Digital Signage solution. It’s an extremely customizable content management software that content management to become administrative. It’s completely scalable, HMP300 or HMP350 units can be built out to serve hundreds of displays. Licenses are a one-time fee per user, regardless of the amount of displays. If you only have one display, the DiVA by SpinetiX serves as a web interface piece of hardware for single end-point displays. Easy playlist and playout, built-in templates, apps, and widgets give users thousands of ways to customize their digital signage. The user interface is extremely user friendly. A demo was given, it’s all drag and drop and importing files from your computer easily. RSS feeds can be brought in without trouble, it’s compatible with Word, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, and more, and if a piece of content doesn’t work with the system it can be automatically transcoded into something that first. You can publish wherever and whenever you want, and a date and time simulator lets you see what the screen will look like at any moment in the future.
After a break for lunch, FSR discussed the issue of space in the classroom. There isn’t much of it, so technology managers need to make their own. FSR offers first its Connectrac wiring – low profile, no tripping hazard, no coring required. It also offers storage units from wall boxes to ceiling boxes as large as 2-feet by 2-feet, and can even be used with hard deck ceilings. FSR went on to discuss some of the challenges of outfitting historical buildings, including regulations necessary for these projects. FSR stressed the need to keep the integrity of the building intact while treating updates as a new piece of history in the building’s timeline. The advice boiled down to repairing instead of replacing, understanding the building to be a timeline, improving the building with the understanding it will be changed again, and understanding that safety takes precedent over historical value. It noted projects at Thompson Hall at UNH, Brattle House at Harvard, and the Research Vault at Georgia State University.
Next up Utelogy spoke about its Enterprise solutions for software-defined AV. The Utelogy Enterprise AV control, management, and services platform delivers flexibility, self-sufficiency, and future-proof technology in a scalable platform. U-Control offers a user-friendly, multi-language ready interface with rich functionality and interactive feedback. U-Server can host and provision all your rooms in your own virtual server environment. U-Manage supports your entire deployment with asset tracking, room status, user reports and more. U-Help is an instant video help desk that provides remote support and diagnostics. Together, the system is a powerful platform.
Finally, we got to listen to a panel discussion of three technology managers: Elaine Mello of MIT, Michael Lucas of UMass Lowell, and Tim O’Neil of Brandeis University. The conversation centered around campus technology like active learning, collaborative spaces, classroom technology standardization, experience-based learning opportunities, and lecture capture that ultimately fed into distance learning. The panelists gave some horror stories about the worst technology blunders they’ve been forced to deal with, as well as the worst rooms they’ve needed to outfit. In addition, they spoke about how they’ve implemented lecture capture and standardization into their classrooms, and how they navigate Registrar scheduling, different technologies for different departments, and professors that don’t want to adopt new tech. The other managers in the room joined in to ask questions and share stories, and it turned into a true discussion about what technology managers at universities face on a day-to-day and semester-to-semester basis.
The Higher Education Technology Summit was successful not only because it introduced new technology to the managers that attended. It brought them together so that they could speak to one another. Helping to build a community and connect peers, the Higher Education Technology Summit proved a valuable event for those in attendance. I spoke with many that said they plan to stay in touch with one another for advice and insight in the future. As I mentioned, it’s not easy being a technology manager in universities. But it’s a bit easier with support, and the Higher Education Technology Summit has supported those that attended.
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