CISG-PCMG20

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Booking Closed

Primary Sponsor

Date

18 November 2020

19 November 2020

20 November 2020

Book Before

20 November 2020

Virtual event

Online

About the Event

Storming and Performing… In the New Normal?

Since our last conference things have changed, the year 2020 has brought a lot of uncertainty to the sector, both in our institutions and in our relationships with suppliers and partners. Covid-19 has forced us to make hard decisions in short timeframes under severe financial pressure, which have had massive implications for our users. We have made big changes to our business environments and supporting infrastructure and seen a huge move to remote online working for staff. We now face the challenge of Academic Year 2020/2021 and the move to remote teaching delivery and a rapid adoption of blended learning approaches.

Although this last number of months has been exceptionally challenging and busy with work prioritisation, planning and rapid deployments, we need to take time to congratulate ourselves as individuals, institutions and as a sector. You have performed exceptionally well in the face of major challenges and have showed remarkable resilience, agility and speed in delivering the systems and environments that have allowed our institutions to continue to provide quality ‘business as usual’ services that are robust and secure. Well done.

Undoubtedly, we have made compromises to deliver performant systems quickly, but we have shown real innovation and leadership in doing so. We have proved we can work agilely, ‘Storming and Performing’ during Covid-19 we have delivered great benefits for our staff and students, but are DevOps practices becoming the norm in your institution? How are we ensuring data integration, portability and security continue to be part of our strategic approach? What constitutes the “New Normal” way of working in your area? How are remote working models, distributed services, remote and blended learning, cloud provision, agile development with just in time delivery being embedded in your institution? Is change being embraced, or just seen as inevitable? What has been the impact on your Risk and Governance policies?

This year the conference will be online, and we seek to explore the new environments and landscapes that Covid-19 has necessitated, recognising that many of these changes will be here to stay. We want to celebrate the success stories, look at the lessons learned and identify what you would not do again. There have been many challenges to overcome this year and we want you to share your experience and tell the community about your collaborations with suppliers. Our suppliers have been exploring new ways to engage with and support us in these changing times; licensing and business models will need to be adapted to reflect the new modes of delivery, an especially relevant issue in the light of decreasing institutional budgets. Many institutions face stark financial choices and are looking now more than ever to technology to help deliver innovative solutions and value for money. What impact will this new service delivery and working model have on the implementation of your Education, Research, and overall Digital Strategies? Has the rulebook just been torn up in your institution? Has your strategy just been achieved 3 years early? What challenges do you see ahead and what are you doing about them?

We hope you can join us at what promises to be an exciting and informative Virtual Conference from 18th-20th November 2020.

Speakers

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell

President & Vice-Chancellor

The University of Manchester

Professor Robert Allison

Professor Robert Allison

Former Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University

Loughborough University

Matt Youngs

Matt Youngs

President and Director of Loughborough Students’ Union, the partner SU of Loughborough University and Loughborough College

Loughborough University

Cally Beaton

Cally Beaton

Media entrepreneur, broadcaster and performer

head and shoulders shot of John Hemingway

John Hemingway

CIO

Durham University

More Info

John Hemingway was appointed as CIO of Durham University in 2019. At Durham, John has dual responsibility for strategic direction and oversight of digital services, alongside directing the core information services provider and co-ordinating other providers (e.g. Durham has an advanced Computing Group, which manage high performance computing)

Melissa Hankinson

Melissa Hankinson

Deputy Director, Quality and Service Improvement

University of Canberra

More Info

Melissa Hankinson leads the University of Canberra’s Quality and Service Improvement unit, committed to embedding a culture of continuous improvement through training and communities of practice, while also leading transformational improvement projects. She is Deputy Chair of the Asia-Pacific chapter of the Lean in Higher Education Network, and elected professional staff representative on the University of Canberra Council.

ssg19 Peter Cochrane head shot

Peter Cochrane

Innovator, Academic, Consultant

Richard Forrest

Richard Forrest

Vice President of Digital Transformation

Ellucian

More Info

As vice president of digital transformation, Richard Forrest leads the strategy and management of Ellucian’s digital transformation organization and he is responsible for planning, readiness and delivery of Ellucian’s thought leadership, enterprise architecture and services engineering practices. Previously, Richard held leadership roles in product management, business development and presales, leading both engineering and product strategy teams to scale Ellucian’s products for our global markets.

Vicky Gosling

Vicky Gosling

Director of Digital Experience

Falmouth University

More Info

Vicky Gosling maintains standards, drives enhancement and supports innovation and transformation across the areas of digital learning and teaching and pedagogy, business services and data management. Her role is to ensure that the digital experience of Falmouth students, staff and other stakeholders supports best practices in user experience and user interface design. She also manages the digital portfolio of projects/programmes designed to deliver transformation in line with the university's strategies. As a champion of the One Falmouth digital approach, she is responsible for the delivery of centralised and integrated development, support and training across all the university's digital platforms. She joined Falmouth in 2016 from Bournemouth University where she managed a variety of digital transformation projects with a focus on user experience design, business process redesign and business efficiencies.

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James Smith

Chief Information Officer

Middlesex University

person smiling at the camera

Chris Haigh

Assistant Director and Head of PMO

University of Wolverhampton

More Info

Chris is Assistant Director of Digital Services and Head of the Programme Management Office at the University of Wolverhampton. He is primarily responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of IT and digital related projects and programmes.

Ian Anderson

Ian Anderson

Enterprise Architect

Ellucian

More Info

Ian has spent 35 years working in the global Higher Education (HE) Sector. Starting his career at Coventry University in Finance and then Business Analyst roles, he was one of the founders of the EA Community of Practice under UCISA, to which he was appointed Chair in 2015. Ian envisaged and led the creation of a UK Capability Model that is today used in many universities around the globe. Ian currently works for Ellucian, where he assists higher education institutions to align strategic and operational goals, and to assess and improve user experiences through enterprise architecture.

Jessica Roberts

Jessica Roberts

Head of Test and Transition

King’s College London

More Info

Jessica Roberts is Head of Test and Transition at King's College London (KCL). Her tenure at KCL, which began in June 2016 with a modest team of three, has been marked by a remarkable transformation journey within the organization's test department. Jessica has been instrumental in driving change, particularly in her role overseeing testing, transition, and non-production environment management, playing a pivotal role in enabling KCL's digital transformation initiatives to succeed.

Under Jessica's leadership, her team has expanded to approximately 20 full-time engineers in test, transition and non-production environment management (NPEM). Jessica is currently leading the charge in adapting existing KCL test and transition processes to align with Scaled Agile principles, ensuring that KCL can effectively support delivery at pace at a larger scale. Furthermore, she's overseeing the implementation of test automation at scale across critical business applications, a crucial step in improving efficiency and effectiveness in KCL's testing procedures.

Mark Saunders

Mark Sanders

IT Programme Manager, Exeter IT Covid-19 Response and Enhance

University of Exeter

Richard young

Richard Young

Assistant Director, Solution Development

Queen Mary University of London

More Info

Richard Young works in the IT Services Department at Queen Mary University of London, as Assistant Director of Solution Development and Technology Enhanced Learning. He works closely with academic colleagues and students across Queen Mary to improve teaching, learning and assessment through technology, as well as with administration teams to help them improve their efficiency, effectiveness and service delivery.

Adrian Cooper

Adrian Cooper

Business Solutions Architect and Field CTO for UK Public Sector

NetApp

More Info

Adrian Cooper is Business Solutions Architect and Field CTO for UK Public Sector for NetApp. In this role, he is responsible for developing technical relationships with customers and partners across the public sector to support them in their digital journeys and to get the most out of their data. Adrian has worked in the IT industry for more than 30 years, with the last 8 years spent at NetApp in Senior management roles in Solutions Engineering. Prior to that, he held Director-level roles at Memorex Telex, EDS Global Field Services, a&o and Simplexo.

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Mark Hopwood

Assistant Director, Research Operations

University College London

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Mark has been Assistant Director, Research Operations in Research Services at UCL since February 2018 having worked in the HEI research funding management sector for 23 years.

Lokesh Bhatia

Lokesh Bhatia

IT Consultant

Loughborough University

More Info

Lokesh is a freelance IT consultant with over 16 years’ experience and having spent the last 10 years in the HE sector in areas of Student Records, Curriculum Management and Timetabling. Lokesh has built all the CMIS interfaces as well as the online and mobile timetable applications at Loughborough University.

Mike Earl

Mike Earl

Timetable Manager

Loughborough University

More Info

Mike has 20 years’ experience of academic timetabling in both FE and HE institutions. As Timetable Manager at Loughborough University, Mike is the senior strategic lead of the Timetabling team and has achieved a consistent top 10 ranking for timetabling in the National Student Survey (NSS) over 10 years.

Event Schedule

Day One: Wednesday

10:00

Welcome

Gareth McAleese, Head of Corporate Applications, Ulster University
10:05

Small things that make big differences: the response to Covid-19 through the eyes of students

Professor Robert Allison, Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University
10:35

Change Management – Is It Time to Trust?

Chris Haigh, Senior Project Manager, University of Wolverhampton
10:55

COVID-19:The Digital L&T Revolution at Falmouth University

Vicky Gosling, Falmouth University 
11:15

Using rich data from Worktribe to inform strategic decision making at UCL

Mark Hopwood, Assistant Director, Research Operations, University College London
12:00

Close

Day Two: Thursday

14:00

What I learnt from Covid-19

John Hemingway, CIO, Durham University
14:30

How three universities rapidly accelerated their cloud adoption in the face of the changing landscape caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Mark Saunders, IT Programme Manager, Exeter IT covid-19 Response and Enhance at University of Exeter; Jessica Roberts, Head of Transition and QA at King’s College London and Richard Young, Assistant Director, Solution Development at Queen Mary University of London 
15:00

Universities in the new environment

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, Russell Group Chair
15:30

How to secure your data and save money in your journey to cloud

Adrian Cooper, CTO NetApp public sector UK
16:00

Close

Day Three: Friday

10:00

Quantum Computing Promise & Reality - Demystifying a world of the weird and unexpected

Peter Cochrane
10:30

Delivering an agile, virtual-enabled, timetable for the new normal and beyond

Mike Earl, Timetabling Manager and Lokesh Bhatia, Loughborough University
10:50

Jigsaw Puzzles, Digital Transformation Strategy and Enterprise Architecture

Ian Anderson, Enterprise Architect and Richard Forrest, VP Digital Transformation, Ellucian
11:10

Living in “interesting times” – responding to Covid-19 at Birkbeck

James Smith, Director of IT, Birkbeck, University of London
11:30

Stand up, stand out (even if you're on mute)

Cally Beaton

Other Sponsors