Meeting Minutes

April 27, 2006

SAC Business - Laura Valentine

• This meeting is being recorded. We use this to make notes, and we throw it away afterwards.
• After this meeting, cake and ice cream in the Atrium!
• Departments putting email up on web pages - talked to ISO about this. There's no formal policy against it, but if your department has done this and won't take it down, you can email ISO about it. iso@andrew or abuse@andrew.
• Donner Printer - has anyone seen it? Used it? (Nope.)
  

• Every semester, we do the Cookie Survey.
• Floppy disks are almost gone, and USB drives are way up as a form of storage. In fall we added MyFiles and "Do you use your iPod" and non-AFS network storage. This spring we added "email myself documents", which is HUGE.
• Who uses what cluster - Baker Hall is the most popular cluster. Departmental clusters are in here as well. CFA cluster is the one people don't tend to hang out in.
• Karen - how do you use this? Does it drive anything?
  • Connie - some of the information is really general, but for example, we'll look at this and see, OK, do we need to have floppy drives in the clusters? That kind of thing.
• ? - where are there floppy drives in clusters?
  • Connie - there are very few left. There are no machines older than 4 years, and I think only machines more than 2 years old have floppy drives.
• Chris - So, a lot of people are emailing themselves documents - so what about webmail trouble with attachments?
  • Karen - that's a good point - we need to make sure we address that. We had planned to address the attachment size limit anyway, but that'll be a driver. I can't remember if I gave you details - for right now, we're not adopting an additional client. We'll be encouraging people to adopt one of the other four clients that we already support. We heard from you that you guys are pretty client-agnostic. Staff and faculty are really wedded to a desktop client, so they're probably going to be going to Outlook or Entourage. And we don't have a good multiuser machine solution, so Clusters will have webmail. Some departments may choose to support something else.
    • Chris - what about bboard and mailbox administration?
      • Karen - we're working on it. We found a plugin for squirrelmail that should do it and we're testing it. What we are telling people is that if you need to do this, use Mulberry only for that and transition for everything else. We are also going to reevaluate webmail after the Mulberry phaseout.
        • David - did you look at Thunderbird?
          • Karen - Yes, but we don't have the resources for that now. We'd have to develop what our actual requirements are, and ISO and ISAM have their requirements - it's a lot of work. 

• Student development of portlets
  • Students have been asking for this
  • We are upgrading this summer, and that should allow students to do this - WSRP protocol standard. Email webmaster@andrew.cmu.edu if you have feedback or ideas.
• Intranets/Discipline-specific tab
  • Departments are interested in this
    • Shared calendaring, events, links for their department
  • Esther - this would be really useful, esp. if you have contact with the SAC, grad student happy hour, or events or conferences, and for a specific major, sometimes there are chartered vans
  • Departmental lectures
  • Nathan - some way to merge this with Blackboard, then you could have announcements, assignments, if you had both of those as one source, that would be very useful
    • Claire - like, be able to sign up to a course calendar and have that fed in to your calendar, with events and due dates and so on
• Campus event calendar - has about 200 individual calendars. Has some defaults. Plus, public events calendar. www.cmu.edu/events, no webISO.
  • Trevor - a lot of student orgs & smaller depts. don't update as often as they should. Not sure how to make them more accessible.
    • Alex - if that happens, nag your departments!
• David - do you have stats on portal use by dept? It might be valuable to consider who uses it more and work on adoption there.
• Dept-specific content aside from events?
  • Trevor - knowing when my homework is due!
  • Tamara - links to useful resources. Some professors have links to things that are useful for majors and pooling those together might be really useful.
  • Justin - to-do list. Web-based planner?
• Esther - academic audit - who updates this? I'd like that but it's not updated well.
  • This is departmental, at least on the updating side. We tend to just collate a lot of information, but sometimes people don't update the SOURCE of that information, and that's not something we control.
• David - what kind of advertising or outreach are you doing, besides CSW?
  • Alex - we've done some, but mostly on the staff/faculty side. We've been focusing a lot on the MyAccounts tab, moving MyAndrew over there so that it drives use.
  • Karen - also, our numbers show that students are using it more and more, without us doing anything.
    • Alex - usage has tripled!

Please email webmaster@andrew with any feedback or Portal ideas!

• We had a lot of questions about how the Linux clusters were being used. We went out and found out how they were being used.
• Andrew Linux machines took up about 25% of cluster seats, and we were getting requests for Windows & Mac seats for teaching. So we needed to find out:
  • how were students using the Linux clusters
  • how were faculty expecting students to use the Linux clusters
  • what classes were requiring you to use the Linux clusters
  • could another arrangement work?
• Most of the feedback was that another arrangement would not be great for you.
• The survey got leaked - very high response.
  • Some classes required use
  • High commitment from student body
• We followed up and interviewed faculty that students told us required Linux use
  • a common thread was the collaborative nature of the space - professors wanting students to work together
  • TA space - TAs should be reserving space, but haven't been, so we didn't know about that use.
• Some assignments are fine using other methods, but some give problems - high resource utilization.
• 15-212 will have more students next semester. So whatever resources there are, they are going to be used more.
• The problem is: we still needed to increase Windows space to meet the demand for classes.
  • We had to compromise. We don't have enough space to maintain Linux at the level it is currently and increase Windows machines.
  • We're committed to Linux for this upcoming year, and will be upgrading the Linux machines.
  • We need to make sure that the Linux spaces are well-maintained.
• Bad news:
  • 5201 and 5203 will become Windows clusters. That space will be converted to a classroom.
    • David - you're going to be fighting LOTS of people.
  • Morewood will be converted to Windows
  • West Wing Linux machines were rarely used and will be converted.
• Good news:
  • 5205 and 5207 will be upgraded.
  • The Linux machines in Hunt will be upgraded. Those machines haven't been used, and are in an area that the Library has deemed collaborative space.
    • We are going to need to advertise that this exists.
• The number one mandate of the Clusters is as teaching space. We have only a finite amount of space and have to fulfill our mandate.
• We know this isn't ideal, but with our limited resources it's the best we can come up with.
• We are looking at other ideas, too - vmware, etc. I know THAT isn't ideal, either, but if that was an option, would it help?
  • Matt - well, it'd be better than nothing.
  • Karen - as you can guess, we are not entirely thrilled with this situation ourselves.
• David M - I know that there's a very committed group who use 5201 and 5203, and I would suggest if possible, to switch them - those are really core, and if you could take out everything else, but leave those. Have you considered using 5205 and 5207 as the teaching space?
  • David B - There's a wall in the way
  • Pomona - it's not just the wall - they have different back walls, and weird corners - there's hardly any right angles.
• Pomona - What can we do to make these committed people be committed to 5205 and 5207.
  • Matthew - Make it bigger. It's really small, and often completely full.
• Connie - or what can we do to make them go to Hunt basement? That's a huge space.
  • [Several students]: Move SCS!
  • David M - The thing is, a lot of people live in these clusters, 24-7, and Hunt closes. [Lots of agreement.] Midnight, one am, four, five am -- I feel like, if you take these Clusters away, it will hurt SCS. I really feel that, even though I don't use them myself.
  • Pomona - would upgrading the machines help?
    • David M - it's not the machines.
• Connie - so what is it about 01 and 03 that makes them so attractive?
  • David M - the space and format - it's easy to come in, come out. It was popular even before the cslounge went away.
  • Matthew - it's arranged well for social interaction
  • Claire - right, it's got these islands in the middle.
  • 5205/07 are claustrophobic
• Connie - is there anything we could do to make the Hunt space, or 05 and 07, attractive? I think we pretty much HAVE to make 01 and 03 into a teaching space. We are running out of room to teach on campus. So what can we do to make these spaces more social and better for this collaborative work? Is there a better seating arrangement? Are there perks we can add to the room?
  • David M - Can you break down the wall between 05 and 07.
    • It feels like a horrible death trap in there! [Lots of agreement.]
    • Pomona - we did look into making 05 and 07 one classroom, and the reason we didn't is that taking the wall down didn't gain us any machines, and there were dead spots which made it useless for teaching. But...that's not a load-bearing wall. So we COULD knock it down. We won't gain any machines that way, though.
      • Karen - but if you gain space for collaborating, that might make it better.
      • Pomona - one of the things we've heard about 05 is TAs were using it for office hours, and if we take out the wall, they might lose that.
        • Matthew - I've done office hours in 03.
        • David B - I think it's random - even if they are scheduled for one room, people know they are there and will find them, and a lot of it is organic and impromptu.
        • Pomona - 01 and 03 used to be one room. The wall between them is not load-bearing either.
        • David B - so, more open is better?
          • Yes [lots of agreement].