CAUSE 2016 Follow-up & Conference Survey

Thank You!

Thank you so much for joining us last week for UNC CAUSE 2016! We hope you enjoyed the event and were able to learn new things and meet some new people.

As you know CAUSE is an annual event and the team for next year is already making plans. In order to help us make sure we’re doing things right we really need your feedback on this year’s event. As an added incentive, this year we’re giving away one free registration to UNC CAUSE 2017 for someone who completes the conference survey!

Reminders

  • If you’re looking for presentations you should be able to find them (if available) by visiting the session page linked from the Schedule. And if you’re someone who presented, it’s not too late to share slides. Please add them to the session by logging into Sched and using the “Speaker Tools” link.
  • We also need feedback on the sessions. If you haven’t already done so please take a moment to evaluate the sessions you attended. You can do this by using the “Feedback Survey” button on the session page.
  • It’s never too late to start a SIG! The SIG Toolkit and request form are online at https://unccause.org/sigs/ . Start your community today and request your SIG resources.
  • We had a few personal items left behind. If you lost something during the conference, please send email to terrelldf@appstate.edu.

That’s it for this year. Thanks again to all our speakers, vendors and attendees. Don’t forget to complete the conference survey!

We hope to see you next year at UNC CAUSE 2017, October 2-4, 2017 in Wilmington, NC!

Our Amazing CAUSE 2016 Team

We have thanked a lot of people this week but none are more deserving than the team of folks who helped bring you this event. All the CAUSE “staff” are volunteers who have other full-time jobs, so the success of this event represents lots of effort from lots of great people. Thank you so much to the whole team!

Mike Vysocka, Social Chair
Jason Maners, Program Chair and SIG Ambassador
Brian DeConinck, Program Team, Unconference
Stephen Swart, Proposal Review Team & Event Volunteer
Terri Cook, Proposal Review Team
Claudette Fuller, Proposal Review Team
Bill Gibson, Proposal Review Team
Lamar Battle, Proposal Review Team
Tom Dorgan, Proposal Review Team
Ginny Sconiers, Proposal Review Team & Event Volunteer
Cynthia Bowers, Proposal Review Team
Beverly Vagnerini, Proposal Review Team
Louise Flinn, Publications Chair
Martin Moore, Vendor Chair
Harry Nicholos, Vendor Chair
Wayne Fee, Vendor Chair
Brent Zimmer, Networking Chair
Brandon Moore, Networking Chair
David Dunn, Networking Team
Rick Crowe, Networking Team
T.C. Powers, Networking Team
Nick Pantelidis, Networking Team
Patrick Clark, Networking Team
Billy Long, Networking Team
Greg James, Networking Team
Susan West, Event Volunteer
Matthew Long, Event Volunteer
Leslie Dare, Event Volunteer
Josh Weaver, Co-chair
Jen McFarland, Co-chair

Thursday Updates

Welcome to Day 2 of UNC CAUSE 2016! We hope the conference has started well for all of you and you are already learning new things, meeting new people, and building relationships with like-minded individuals. Please remember to complete the session feedback survey for each session you attend. Your feedback allows us to continue to improve UNC CAUSE each year.

Unconference

We had numerous folks sign up for unconference sessions. All of these will be held in the unconference room and have been updated on the online schedule and we’ve included the list below.

8:30am – Staff and Faculty (Re)Training – “Fill in the cracks”
10:30am – Shibboleth 3 and Dealing with Multi-SSO
11:30am – IT Accessibility
1:45pm – Managing Apple Devices Without Touching Them
4:15pm – Project Management

Schedule Updates

As mentioned yesterday, due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Andrew, there have been several presentations that have been cancelled, resulting in items shifting around. Please check the online schedule for the most up-to-date schedule of sessions.

Thursday Evening Social

Tonight’s evening social will be held at the Millenium Center beginning at 6:00pm. Please join us for dinner, drinks, music, and dancing! All made possible by our generous vendors.

Thank our Vendors, Get Coffee!

As mentioned yesterday, please take time to visit our vendors, learn more about what they have to offer your campus and say thanks for their support of this year’s conference. Coffee and water are available in the vendor room all day and all breaks will be held in South Main Hall as well.

If you have any questions, please stop by the registration table or contact us via social media or online. Remember to use the hashtag #unccause to tag your posts in social media!

Welcome to UNC CAUSE 2016!

We’re here. The moment’s arrived. It’s time for CAUSE 2016, folks!

A few items worth mentioning as we kick things off…

  • Registration opens Wednesday at 10:00 am in the foyer (upper level) outside the Vendor room (South Main Hall). Enter via the entrance across the street from Embassy Suites.
  • The Opening Session begins at 1:30 pm in the North Main Hall. The Vendor Area will open at 12 noon on Wednesday.
  • As a reminder, the theme this year is More than a conference and we’re focused on connecting users with special interest groups (SIGs) that they’ll want to continue to be a part of all year long. Be sure to look through the SIGs on the schedule and find one or two you might like to be a part of!
  • Please remember to complete the feedback survey for the sessions and events you attend. You can do this via the online schedule. We appreciate your feedback!
  • Session slides (if available) will be posted in the online schedule. Remind your presenters to share!
  • We’re excited about our evening events and hope to see you there. We’ll be in the Vendor room in Benton Wednesday evening starting at 5:30pm for appetizers and drinks. And join us at 6pm Thursday night for More than a Thursday Night Social at the Millennium Center!
  • As an FYI, meals included with UNC CAUSE registration include: breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Thursday, October 6; breakfast on Friday, October 7. Lunch and dinner are NOT provided on Wednesday, October 5.

For more information on parking at the Benton Convention, visit http://www.twincityquarter.com/assets/map-downtown-parking.pdf. If you have any questions, contact CAUSE Planning Team at 828-773-1952.

Thanks so much to our Vendors for their outstanding sponsorship; be sure to visit them while you’re here. We also need to thank all our speakers and presenters – we couldn’t do this without you!

Introducing SIGs and the SIG Toolkit

It’s CAUSE week! With just 42 hours until the Vendor Room opens and the conference gets rolling, we’d like to share some information about SIGs, the SIGs that will be represented in Winston-Salem, and how to start a new SIG.

What’s a SIG?

SIG is short for Special Interest Group. These groups are comprised of individuals from UNC CAUSE member institutions that share a common interest around a topic or technology that is prevalent across institutions. Organizing around that interest, SIGs offer us an opportunity to:

  • foster cross institutional relationships
  • provide communication avenues for common topics or technology
  • provide continuity and opportunities for collaboration during the year
  • provide more timely opportunities for working groups
  • provide opportunities for knowledge sharing

Each SIG is what its members make of it—whether that’s a robust problem-solving group that holds marathon code-writing sessions, or just a resource for asking and answering questions when you need a few tips.

You can learn more about SIGs at unccause.org/sigs.

More Than a Conference

Our theme this year is “More than a conference,” because the conversation doesn’t have to stop when you leave the Benton Convention Center on Friday. The UNC CAUSE organization is excited to offer SIGs support and funding for stand-alone events dedicated to your SIG’s area of interest, plus:

  • a website in the UNC CAUSE WordPress multi-site environment
  • use of common Google tools (email, groups, calendars, etc.) through the UNC CAUSE Google Apps instance
  • access to the UNC CAUSE MailChimp account for broadcast emails
  • use of sched.org event planning tools through the UNC CAUSE account
  • use of UNC CAUSE-owned resources (projectors, easels, lanyards, etc.)
  • access to conference planning services from the Conference and Camp Services group at Appalachian State University

SIGs at UNC CAUSE 2016

This year, we have nine SIGs holding kickoff sessions in Winston-Salem, organizing around the following topics:

As in BOF sessions in previous years, your SIG session is an opportunity to have a free-form conversation about your subject area. But this year, each SIG session has one or more facilitators who have agreed to lead a conversation about formally organizing your group into a recognized SIG.

Starting a New SIG

If you’ve got an area of interest that you know others in the UNC system share, you can start your own SIG! We’ve assembled some resources to help you get started:

Conference co-chair Jen McFarland and conference program chair/official “SIG Ambassador” Jason Maners will be leading a 20-minute lightning session Friday morning to introduce these resources, answer questions, and help you get started building your SIG.

We look forward to seeing you in Winston-Salem! Happy conference week!

More than a Thursday night social!

Pencil us in for Thursday! We’re holding our “More than a Thursday Night Social” at the Millennium Center, starting at 6pm. We’ll have an awesome dinner (including a tower of Krispy Kreme donuts on the dessert bar!), drinks, and a DJ that’ll keep you dancing until they push us out the door. All that and another chance to get to know the IT crowd from across the UNC system. We’ll see you there and don’t forget to bring your dancing shoes!

The Millennium Center is a short walk (0.1 mile) away from the Benton Convention Center, at the corner of West 5th and Trade Street NW.

More than a networking event

CAUSE is right around the corner! You know how this year’s theme is “More than a Conference?” Well, our Wednesday night social is “More than a Networking Event.” Join us in the vendor room between 5:30pm and 6:30pm for drinks, passed appetizers, and a chance to catch up with new and familiar faces from across the UNC system. It’s more than just networking– it’s fun!

Program News

Our call for proposals wrapped up last week (July 25th) and we’re happy to report we had a lot of interest — we received more than 100 proposals for this year’s event!

The CAUSE 2016 Program Committee is already hard at work reviewing the submissions. Our goal is to select the proposals and set the schedule, hopefully in the next week. Once we notify the speakers and get responses from the bulk of them we’ll release the schedule. Our goal for that announcement is Monday, August 15th.

Thanks very much to all of you who have submitted proposals this year! We couldn’t do this without you and we’re so excited about the range of topics for this year. Check back with us in a few weeks and start picking your favorite sessions!

Registration is open!

Good news, everyone! Just in time for the end of the fiscal year – registration for UNC CAUSE 2016 is now open!

Register

 

Don’t forget, the Call for Proposals is also out there so get those presentation ideas flowing. More information about Winston-Salem and the hotel options will be available shortly.

Vendor registration is now open as well!   Vendor Registration

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you in October!