Last Session

There have been a lot of big topic sessions this week - big data, research, collaborations, consortiums.

Beautiful outdoor presentation

Being outdoors helps if the material is dry.

NYSCIO 2013

Well Fed

CIOs are not great at PowerPoint

One thing I have learned at this conference is that CIOs put WAY too much on their slides. It's brutal.

Early Morning - fantastic discussions

It is 8:00 am and we are talking about collaboration. 

Dennis is at the NYSCIO Conference

Wrap up - things I forgot to share with you

• So, lets get it out right up front - there are some pictures and stories you will never see or hear about.  Period.

• Blogging can be done on a mobile device. You do not have to lug your laptop with you when traveling. I used my iPhone during the day to capture photos, videos, quotes and ideas. I felt the iPhone was an easy and unobtrusive way to take pictures and video. Using the free Blogger app, I could quickly upload a picture and text to create a post. To add a video to the blog, I had to use the Blogsy app for iPads. Blogsy was highly recommended by many app reviewers ($4.99). So, in the evening, I would take out the iPad to create the posts that included a video. (I did not want to carry the iPad around during the day.)

• If quickly realized I needed to find the balance between gathering information and actually being present at the conference. I could have spent a lot more time editing the pictures and the video - I decided to not edit them. Also, there were a few times when I was so absorbed in my phone posting a comment, that it was dangerous. At one point, someone grabbed my arm and jerked me out of the way of a huge pillar I was about to smack into. Another time I stumbled onto a down escalator without realizing it. I was just following the crowd as I was checking a video I just took. Thanks to my friends who were chaperoning me, I came home in one piece.

• I could not believe all the Jenzabar groupies. I was in the mist of 1600 people, who all LOVED Jenzabar and looked forward to the convention every year. Many people went out of their way to introduce themselves and find out about where I was from. When I would say "Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh, NY", almost everyone would come back with... "oh, yeah, I know Dave MacLean, Sharon Mankiewicz, or Donna Adams". MSMC is well know and respected at JAM by many Jenzabar executives and a slew of college. I was proud to be part of the MSMC Group at JAM 2013.

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But wait, one more day

Ok, I am tired. It is Saturday morning and I should be home working in my garden. JAM is holding sessions today until noon. I noticed the dining room for breakfast was half full. (My new Jenzabar friends said a record of 1600 people attended this year.) Just two more sessions and we can get out to the pool for a little sunshine (and humidity) before our flight to Stewart.

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Finally Friday

Interesting info from sessions we attended:

• In a future Jenzabar release, they are adding text messaging as one of the options that can be sent from the Notepad. (Currently, we can create letters, emails, and labels from Notepad.)
• Infomaker has a Tree-view option that generates a report that you can drill-down and see the detail if you want. I am going to play with this when I get back to the office and hold a training session on it

Sharon and Barbara hosted a session about managing and controlling data across campus offices. They had a lively, successful session with many attendees relating to the material. They made a lot of connections to other colleges, many who said they wanted to contact them in the future or visit our campus.

BTW: they could not connect at the start of the session. They had to call in the IT guy. "Oh nooooo, what did you do? This is really bad."

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Tight security at JAM

Barbara had to get past two sales reps to get to the free pens.

And Dave was being watched because of the extra large backpack he was carrying.  What in the world could be in there?

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Thursday Recap

We need these at MSMC:

Look out Vanna White

On another note, Donna Adams gave back to back presentations to a packed rooms.  One session was about automating the graduation process with online application forms. The other was about creating rules for non-course pre-reqs.  Dave MacLean hosted a successful advanced session on creating dashboards. Dave and Donna actually have groupies - they are Jenzabar rock stars - really!

        Interesting quotes heard in the halls...

                "It was real crab cake because it had a shell in it."

                "A Jerry Garcia tie?"

                "You have a s@&!-load of space in your head"

                 "I don't know about you, but I am done for the day"

                 "My ideas are perfect until I share them with someone."

                 "I really wasn't looking for you"

       And my favorite:

                 " I need a drink and the potty.  Tell her to blog about that!"

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A few new things we found out about

The iTap app was recommended to me from a Jenzabar guy. According to him, it is the best app that allows access your office or home desktop/laptop from an iPad.  He is on the road three week every month, and says iTap is best.  

Lake Forest College showcased an online approval process for new course proposals. Their method will work for any type of document that needs a series of approvals. Sharon and Donna are all over it.  You'll hear about it when they get back. 

Jenzabar Social will be announced in June. (Subscription price not announced.) Basically, it connects Facebook and Jenzabar. It offers secure   Facebook pages that can be customized to a target audience (accepted student, deposit paid, alumni, student just looking, etc.)

Is today Thursday? Where should I be?

The Registrar from a college in Virginia recognized Donna from a past convention and joined us for breakfast. 

Astra staff are looking forward to coming to MSMC in June to train is on the new Astra. 

The NY rep wanted to give us a sales pitch on a document management system. He said he speaks to Brian Moore at least once a year. 

Time to "network"

Finally time to meet attendees from other colleges.  Jenzabar hosted a gathering with great food and beverages:

But within a half hour, it began to pour:

Yuck!  A ruined event:

Captain Jim Lovell, legend and Apollo 13 commander

Jim Lovell was a keynote speaker at JAM.  He told the story of his role in Apollo13, spoke of the importance of teamwork and solving problems quickly.  Talking about having a bad day...

Ok, so this is Tom Hanks:

This is really Walter Cronkite:

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Who is James A. Lovell?...

...and why is he speaking at JAM?  I'll keep you posted. 

Jam!

Every year Jenzabar staff run a few sessions of "Notepad Unleashed".  They cover the functionality and capabilities of notepad.  We always get a few new ideas to bring back to MSMC from this session.  

This year Jenzabar has quite a few sessions on their e-Learning module. E-learning is their answer to a learning management system. (Like MSMC's eClass/Moodle.)  They made major updates to their e-Learning module and are showing it off this year. We are going to catch a few different sessions related to e-Learning,so we will keep you posted. 

Blogging from mobile devices

This post is being created and sent from my phone. I am using the Blogger App. I can access photos on my phone or take a picture right from the Blogger App as I write the blog post. 

JAM is just days away.

JAM is where the Jenzabar community comes together to solve issues, develop powerful new ideas, and plan for the future.  We are excited to learn new strategies and connect with colleagues. 

This year, Sharon Mankiewicz and Barbara Winchell are hosting a session on the Financial Aid module: "Diving into Data".   Donna Adams is presenting two sessions titled "Do you RBU" and "Graduation". Dave MacLean is presenting an intermediate/advanced session about building dashboards for reporting.  Sharon, Donna and Dave present interesting topics at JAM just about every year. 

We have already mapped out the sessions we each will attend that address best practices and ideas for all of the  Jenzabar modules we use at MSMC. We are trying to cover as many sessions and topics as possible.

We will keep you posted as we find interesting information, tools, and solutions during our conference.