OIT Tech Summit invites new tech ideas from Central Michigan University students, faculty, staff

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Central Michigan University students will soon have center stage to voice what technology they would like to see implemented at CMU.

CMU’s Office of Information Technology is hosting a day-long technology summit on March 16. CMU’s faculty and guest speakers will give presentations on the technology of CMU and how it can be used to reach its full potential.

Kimberly Vogel, coordinator of software licensing, said her involvement will mostly come after the event’s conclusion. The steering committee for the event has been diversified, with students, faculty and administrative staff all contributing. Vogel said this was to keep the summit relevant to all attendees.

“We don’t want it be something that just OIT put together, we really want it to be ideas that came from the various groups,” she said. “This would hopefully ensure that the sessions have something for everyone.”

Kole Taylor, technical writer for OIT, is steering the project, which was last held in 2008. Taylor said its tracts will be more spaced out, making it flexible for those with busy schedules to attend.

“We’re trying to make it so that it would be really easy to drop in any time,” he said. “That way a student can drop in between classes.”

East Grand Rapids senior Kyle Nystrom said he hopes the new format will allow him to fit it into a busy schedule — an effect of double majoring in business and information systems.

“It’s beneficial to have that type of showcase for that kind of event,” Nystrom said. “Especially when you have it for students who have such a tight schedule.”

Taylor said in the past a summit was a smaller-scale project that was primarily geared towards faculty and staff. This year they hope to attract a large student attendance.

“We wanted to take a couple weeks to take input from everybody on campus so we can present them something that they really want to see,” Taylor said. “Within IT, this is the largest scale of something like this we’ve ever done. ”

Taylor said for the first time ever OIT implemented a software tool called IdeaScale. It allows people only from CMU to log on and submit ideas, similar to a blog site, and it has been well received, he said.

“In the first 15 minutes, we quadrupled the number of votes on a specific topic,” he said. “We’re piloting it for this and we’d like to use it for the future.”

To submit ideas for the summit, point your browser to ideas.cmich.edu.