Report on IT Support Staff Training
April to October 2001

Jane Littlehales

ITSSG Resources

All change her with the introduction of www.itss.ox.ac.uk and the creation of a new web site

• http://www.itssg.ox.ac.uk/calendar/index.shtml - updated as needed. Generally weekly.
• http://www.itssg.ox.ac.uk/training/index.shtml - ITSS only training info

OUCS and University IT Resources

OUCS web site and University IT resources pages have also changed

• http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/training/technical/ - technical training, info on deals with commercial companies
• http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/ - OUCS info for ITSS
• http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxford/ - IT in Oxford, link form University home page
• Clicking on the For IT Support Staff link on the above page goes to http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/

ITSS Seminars

• Trinity 2001 seminars
  • Topics included ergonomic seating, supporting Macs, security issues, OUCS helpdesk changes, TSM clients, e-commerce - technical
• Michaelmas 2001 seminars
  • Topics to include request Tracker, XML to HTML conversions with AxKit, Windows XP, Multimedia, airing and sharing on coping strategies for Michaelmas term
• Hilary 2002
  • Proposed seminars on Cocoon, MySQL, Netware 6, NDS for Netware and NT.

Induction Training

These seem to be going well and to be much appreciated. Times and days have been varied following requests from part time ITSS. Numbers attending have not been affected.

• Monday 4 June, morning
  • 9 attendees
  • Presenters: Jane Littlehales, John Jenkins, Jane Brown, James Dore, Tony Brett
• Wednesday 10 October, morning
  • 9 attendees
  • Presenters: Jane Littlehales, Jane Brown, James Dore, Patrick Green
• Monday 10 December, afternoon
  • Next session

Special Events

• Demonstration of wireless LAN technology by Data Integration was cancelled by them
• Security Week, 16 to 20 July, was a huge success. Info, slides, etc. are at http://www.itssg.ox.ac.uk/training/securityweek2001/index.shtml
• Active Directory Services workshop, 3 to 7 September was also very successful and will be repeated in December. Notes and info at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/windows/active/workshops.html
• Servo want to come and talk to us about storage area networks. Probably November. Awaiting further info.

6th Annual Conference

• Thursday 21 June 2001
• Training annual report presented http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/oxford/groups/itssg/reports/annualreport01.html

The Conference went well but was marred by problems with registration mechanism which caused considerable bad feeling. See the paper written for the Conference debriefing meeting. These issues have now been addressed. ITSSC '02 registration will send confirmatory email with details of what a person has booked for. The web pages will allow registrations to be deleted and changed.

External Courses

Deals for discounts on courses now exist with ITS, Aris Education, SkillSolve and we have good relations with Well House Consultants and First Alternative. As these deals are open to any member of Oxford University and it is in our interest to encourage as many people as possible to use them, the information has been moved from the ITSSG web site to the OUCS training pages at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/training/technical/

A Java course organised for ITSS with Well House Consultants and run at OUCS in April was well attended and appreciated.

Continuing Professional Development

• Running for one year
• Over 20 forms submitted
• Bottles of champagne awarded to Andrew Slater and Bela Tiwari for gaining 1400 points each
• Considerable interest generated
• Needs continuous publicity

Social Events

• Summer BBQ 20 July
  • Poor weather but food cooked just in time before the rain hit. Not possible to play games.
  • Ticket sales fairly low - better to run events where people can just turn up and buy food if they want to?
• Christmas Pub night or similar planned