Check-In for In-Person Attendees
2025-05-29 08:30 - 09:00 (America/Chicago) | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Outside Alumni Lounge & Lee Lounge

Check in and then enjoy coffee, tea, water, fresh bakery selections, seasonal fresh fruit, and yogurt.

Welcome & Keynote - Change is The Only Constant
2025-05-29 09:00 - 10:15 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Welcome 9:00-9:15am – IT Professionals Conference co-chairs David Berg and Elizabeth Kraege-Soechting will provide introductory remarks for the conference.
Keynote 9:15-10:15am – Lois Brooks, the outgoing CIO at UW–Madison, will deliver the keynote address.

Keynote Description:
In “Change is the Only Constant,” Lois Brooks explores how transformation in higher education IT requires both resilience and intentional adaptation. Drawing from her 40-year career in technology, Brooks shares insights on understanding institutional resistance and navigating in times of change. This keynote offers a candid look at lessons learned through major transitions—from pandemic-driven pivots to strategic realignments— with emphasis on the human elements that ultimately determine whether initiatives succeed or fail.

Keynote Speaker

Lois Brooks

Opening Remarks (9:00-9:15am)

David Berg
Elizabeth Kraege-Soechting

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AI in Action: Two Anecdotal Experiences
2025-05-29 10:30 - 11:00 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

AI to the rescue! Hear from 2 technologists who, in a pinch, turned to AI for help and were amazed by the solutions it delivered. Discover practical examples of how AI saved the day when traditional approaches fell short.

Presenters

Scott Winger
Julie Zachman

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It is Possible to Take Down Old Websites: How WCER Manages the Website Lifecycle
2025-05-29 10:30 - 11:00 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Lee Lounge/109

Discover how the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) tackled the challenge of outdated project websites. These unmaintained websites opened WCER to risk such as damage to reputation, cybersecurity threats, and accessibility violations. Learn our practical approach to archiving obsolete sites, securing leadership support for new standards, and establishing clear maintenance expectations for all new web projects from day 1.

Presenters

Elizabeth Kraege-Soechting
Pete Boguszewski

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Making Digital Accessibility Work: Practical Strategies that Stick
2025-05-29 10:30 - 11:00 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Room 112

Creating truly accessible digital experiences takes all of us. In this session, you’ll discover how small, practical changes to your daily workflow can make a big difference. Learn how integrating accessibility into your routine can be simple, effective and sustainable—no matter your role.

Presenters

Al Nemec
Mark Whittaker

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Collaborating in Support of RISE
2025-05-29 11:15 - 11:45 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Discover how our university IT community can strengthen the UW–Madison Research Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) program by building bridges between schools, colleges and institutions. We will discuss investments that will further enhance RISE, strategies for scaling to meet its demands, and initiatives our community is undertaking to facilitate research collaborations.

Presenter

Todd Shechter

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Planned Obsolescence: Turning a Technology Fallacy into a Leadership Strategy
2025-05-29 11:15 - 11:45 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Room 112

Planned obsolescence is a long-held belief that technologies are designed to fail to create a lasting need for consumers to buy a new model. Just as naturally as technology falling out of sync with modern needs, it is natural that people move on to other opportunities. Leaders must prepare for that inevitability, creating structures that enable people to seek their next steps without unintentionally creating systems that collapse when they do. This session will discuss practical approaches to collaboration, documentation, delegation, and coaching that keep the work moving forward—regardless of staffing changes, budget challenges, or new leadership priorities.

Presenter

Jay Ray

Materials

Jay’s Blog

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Present Harms and Future Risks: A Case for Responsible AI
2025-05-29 11:15 - 11:45 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Lee Lounge/109

In our session, we will:

Provide an overview of present-day AI capabilities and the risks and harms stemming from their increasingly widespread adoption, and give an approachable introduction to concepts in AI Safety, Ethics, and Security.
Present interactive, live demonstrations recently shown to Congressional Staffers in D.C. at the Center for AI Policy’s Advanced AI Expo. We will demonstrate the security risk of voice models that mimic emotional speech—posing threats to businesses, enabling floods of fake 911 calls, or misleading Congressional representatives through coordinated fake constituent campaigns. We will also show how integrating LLM agents into business workflows can create unique vulnerabilities in multi-agent systems.
Demonstrate how, even at current capability levels, AI systems already pose significant risks relevant to IT professionals.
Outline how AI capabilities have developed over recent years and present arguments for why this rapid pace will continue. We’ll briefly explore the implications for industry and society, including risks associated with frontier and future AI, and provide a high-level overview of mitigation efforts underway.

We will close with a discussion of our work at WAISI, how to get involved in responsible AI, and what this means for IT professionals.

Presenters

Lanya Yu
William Anderson
Kaushal Dasika
Alka Lakadia
Viktoria Sakman

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Empowering Expert Authors with the KnowledgeBase API
2025-05-29 12:00 - 12:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Room 112

Discover how the Office of Human Resources (OHR) used the KnowledgeBase API to streamline collaboration among multidisciplinary subject matter experts, empowering them to rapidly publish instructions for the transition from HRS to Workday.

Presenter

Jonathan Dedering

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Unlocking Potential: Streamlining Processes with Low Code Solutions
2025-05-29 12:00 - 12:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Lee Lounge/109

The Low Code Solutions (LCS) team helps schools, colleges, and divisions modernize processes by creating custom applications–using your own IT staff or our dedicated developers. Discover how your area can leverage this fully-supported service, including integrations with PersonAPI, FinanceAPI and various Data Warehouses to pull in the data you need for powerful apps and workflows.

Presenters

Jeanne Hains
Joel Herron

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Countdown to Workday: Hot topics and a Peek of What's to Come
2025-05-29 12:00 - 12:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

With Workday implementation on the horizon, join us for hot topics of interest to the IT community, followed by open Q&A. Get information on Ancillary Systems resources, professional development opportunities, the data and reporting landscape, future state support models and more.

Presenters

Sabrina Messer

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Lunch
2025-05-29 12:30 - 13:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Enjoy a catered lunch and conversation with fellow IT Professionals.
For those attending in person, vegetarian and non-vegetarian options will be equally available.

From the Notebook to the Cluster
2025-05-29 13:30 - 14:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Room 112

This session demonstrates how to move your R analysis to the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC). Follow a workflow that simplifies the job application submission process by automating key steps. See how R can package your analysis into containers, work with UW–Madison GitLab’s registry, generate necessary files automatically, and transfer your data between your computer and CHTC’s high-performance computing environment.
You can find the presentation materials in the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/erwinlares/single-submit

Presenter

Erwin Lares

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Meet IT Connects
2025-05-29 13:30 - 14:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Learn about the many groups in IT Connects. Each group will give a flash talk and then there will be an opportunity to learn more about individual groups and talk with current members.

Presenter

Elizabeth Kraege-Soechting

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Note: Only the first half of this session was recorded.

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Flash Talks
2025-05-29 13:30 - 14:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Lee Lounge/109

This hour features 4 short presentations:

Practical takeaways from Kent Beck’s “Tidy First” book for improving your work: An homage to Kent Beck’s book Tidy First? and what I took from reading it and trying to apply its guidance in my work. Tidyings as refactoring but smaller. How to be less annoying to your colleagues. Thoughtful tradeoffs in when to tidy how much. The value of deferring expenses meets the value of future options. How to think about how much of software development is maintenance and what that means for our work.
How Library Search efficiently delivers results from millions of records: An overview of Library Search infrastructure and how it works to deliver results from millions of records.
Using LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebooks to enhance research collaboration and data security: The flashtalk highlights how LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) streamline research workflows, support interdisciplinary collaboration, and safeguard data integrity. RCI aims to facilitate smoother and more efficient research endeavors at UW–Madison.
Applying social work principles to enterprise service management for better customer interactions and process mapping: I will discuss how my background and training in social work has helped me in IT and enterprise service management design at SMPH. In particular, I will focus on how I use the person-in-environment theory of social work practice and therapy interview techniques as customer journey and process mapping tools.

Presenters

Andrew Petro
David Lee
Mary Murphy
Lindsay Bolan

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Note: Only the last half of this session was recorded, we apologize for the incovenience

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Collaborating and Planning for AI Across the Universities of Wisconsin
2025-05-29 14:45 - 15:15 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Join representatives from UW-Milwaukee, UW–Madison and UW-Stout as we share our unique approaches to AI implementation on our campuses. Discover real-world techniques to engage with faculty and staff as they use AI. We’ll touch on ChatGPT integration, AI literacy initiatives, Microsoft Copilot pilots, and faculty research. Look beyond the here and now and learn how these institutions are planning for an AI-enhanced future across the Universities of Wisconsin.

Presenter

Todd Shechter
Beth Schaefer
Suzanne Traxler

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Meet the Wisconsin Cyber Response Team
2025-05-29 14:45 - 15:15 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Room 112

Learn about CRT’s Wisconsin public sector outreach, networking, training, intel and other opportunities that CRT provides to its members. Here from UW–Madison employees who are current CRT members and the benefit it’s brought to their teams.

Presenters

Jamie Glass
Eric Franco

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Networking / Virtual Networking
2025-05-29 14:45 - 15:15 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Lee Lounge/109

Join conference attendees in making connections through guided activities.
OR…
Join other virtual conference attendees in making connections through guided activities in zoom break-out rooms.

Presenters

Philip Doll (In-Person)
Megan O’Rourke (Virtual)

This session was not recorded.

2025 IT Recognition Awards Presentation
2025-05-29 15:30 - 16:30 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Join us as we honor our outstanding colleagues who have made significant contributions to the UW–Madison IT community. The 2025 IT Recognition Awards celebrate the dedication, innovation, and achievements of our talented IT professionals across 7 categories:

Community Engagement
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Lifetime Achievement
Rising Star
Team Achievement
Transformational Achievement
Unsung Hero

Take this opportunity to recognize and applaud your colleagues who go above and beyond in their roles, strengthening our IT community and shaping the future of technology at the university.
Reception to follow for in-person attendees.

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Reception/Unstructured Networking
2025-05-29 16:30 - 17:00 | Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., Madison, WI, 53706, United States
Alumni Lounge

Unstructured networking and light refreshments:

Assorted cookies
Veggie and dip platter
Cheese and crackers platter
Water

This event is open to all attendees, regardless of whether they have registered virtually or in person.

Lessons Learnt from Upgrading a Legacy IICS Secure Agent
2025-05-30 09:00 - 09:30
Join us for a deep dive on how a team of engineers, system users and a third-party vendor successfully navigated upgrading an Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS) secure agent, prompted by an outage that occurred in early March. The server and its Secure Agent had not been upgraded for several years, leading to challenges and compatibility issues during the process. Learn how these teams came together to ensure a successful upgrade.

Presenters

Mehrnaz Ahmadi Joobaneh
Becky Wheeler

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Using Vibe Programing with AI to Transform Black and White Data into Visual Dashboards
2025-05-30 09:00 - 09:30
Get the inside scoop on how we use AI chat, and agents to build code for calculations, analysis, and transformations to format dashboards.

Presenters

Dexter Fierro
John D Graham

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Redesigning Without Disruption: Transforming UW–Madison's KnowledgeBase Editor
2025-05-30 09:00 - 09:30
Discover how we modernized the document creation and editing interface at the heart of the widely used KnowledgeBase (KB) application. Learn our approach to balancing technical constraints with significant user experience improvements while ensuring seamless transitions for campus users. This session reveals the careful and thoughtful planning that guided our successful update of this popular campus tool.

Presenters

Leah Scheide
Weizhong Wang

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Unlock Your Creative Thinking
2025-05-30 09:40 - 10:40
Join the Zoom Event

Join us to learn from A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech about overcoming mental blocks to utilize creative thinking skills in your daily worklife.

Presenter

David Berg

What’s “Unconference” And Do We Need One Here?
2025-05-30 09:40 - 10:40
Join the Zoom Event

Get an introduction to the concept of an “unconference” and learn about the philosophies and practices used to create an “unconference” experience driven entirely by attendees and the topics you want to discuss. Help brainstorm ways to bring this event format to our very own campus to enhance engagement throughout our IT community.

Presenters

Tomomi Imamura
Tom Jordan

Take the Next Step in Your Career with UW-Women in IT
2025-05-30 09:40 - 22:40
Discover the varied paths your career can take, whether it’s growing into leadership, exploring new roles, taking a step back or simply finding work-life balance. Hear real stories from colleagues in IT who set different courses to navigate these waters.

Presenters

Amanda Thornton
Jamie Gutkowski
Elizabeth Simcock
Kim Channpraseut
Kelsey Harrington

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Getting Started with Gitlab CI, Gitlab Runners and Ansible
2025-05-30 10:50 - 11:50
Join us in taking your first steps toward using Gitlab CI pipelines, as demonstrated with Gitlab runners and how our team uses Ansible.

Presenter

Phil Jochimsen

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Continuing the Conversation: IT Support Symposium Virtual Meet-Up
2025-05-30 10:50 - 11:50
Did you attend the IT Support Symposium on April 16th? Were you unable to attend this year? We are hosting a virtual session for folks who attended as well as folks who didn’t to connect and talk about the event. We’ll share a review of the event and spend time meeting new people or reconnecting with people who met at the event.

Presenter

Ella Tschopik
Sarah Lien

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Improving Your Skills as a Technology Instructor
2025-05-30 10:50 - 11:50
So you’ve got the tech skills down, but now you need to help others learn it too? This session is for you! We’ll explore practical tips and tricks to make your training sessions and presentations shine. We’ll also crowd-source successful strategies to empower you to become a more confident and effective presenter.

Presenter

Cliff Cunningham

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Object Storage (S3): Reduce Cost and Enable New Ways to Use Data
2025-05-30 12:50 - 13:50
The university generates data of all sizes, from a few megabytes to hundreds of terabytes. And let’s face it, storing all that data can be costly. In this virtual session, we’ll introduce Object Storage (S3), a campus-hosted data storage service offering lower-cost storage to departments and permanent staff, and no-cost storage for eligible researchers. Discover how this service can significantly reduce storage costs and enable new ways to use and distribute data. You’ll participate in a live demonstration of this service using a free file browser application, Cyberduck, and the Python library, Boto3.

Presenters

Casey Schacher
Kevin Kettner
Rushabh Vora

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