Committee meeting - July 6, 2017

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee
July 18, 2017

Present: 

Colin Bell (acting Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Steven Bourque, Erick Engelke, Robyn Landers, Andrew McAlorum, Keith McGowan, Omar Nafees, Paul Miskovsky, Adam Savage

Regrets:

Bruce Campbell (Chair), Andrea Chappell, Don Duff-McCracken, Dave Kibble, Jason Testart

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of June 22, 2017 [5 min.]
  3. Scientific Software licensing (Erick Engelke) [20 min.]
  4. Other Business [5 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, July 20, 2017, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Chair’s Remarks (Colin Bell for Bruce Campbell)

  • Colin will be acting CIO until July 21st. 

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Scientific Software Licensing (Erick Engelke)

Erick Engelke presented on a program he developed to add value to FlexLM. Topics included:

  • FlexLM
  • FlexLM shortcomings
  • Monitoring MatLab
  • GuardLM features
  • Current use
  • Special instructions
  • Next steps

Other Business

RFP for switch replacement

  • An RFP went out at the beginning of June for Cisco equipment, was awarded to Long View Systems; Bruce Campbell and Ian Orchard distributed a memo to campus detailing this project.
    • More communication will come regarding this project in the near future.

Roundtable Reporting

Arts (Keith McGowan)

  • Bill Baer will be joining the Arts Computing Office as the new Director on July 17th.

Library (Adam Savage)

  • Going through renovations in the library which will include 2 network closets; will be contacting the network team in IST before construction commences.

Applied Health Sciences (Trevor Bain)

  • Renovations are continuing in our areas.
  • Will have a power outage happening on July 22 as part of the PAC/SLC expansion; working with Plant Ops and Network Services in advance of this.
  • The kinesiology department has had the use of an 85” Surface Hub from Microsoft for the last month; will be giving a demo on how they plan to use this technology in teaching on Wednesday, July 12; more details to be sent to committee.

Client Services, IST (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Joe Kwan, new manager of web development and will begin on August 8.
  • First phase of the migration to MySQL has gone smoothly; pilot sites and the select number of high traffic/profile sites have been moved to a dedicated database structure.
    • More communication to come before we move additional sites.
  • Reminder that Qualtrics is available; an announcement will come in the next few weeks following some migrations the vendor needs to complete.
  • Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) compliance project:
    • In 2021 we will be required to be AA compliant with regards to the AODA; have been working with Joyce Barlow from the AccessAbility office and will focus on assessing where we are at in IST.
  • Have done Portal Hackathons in the past which has resulted in some very interesting apps but the challenge has been integrating them into our system and making it sustainable.
    • Looking to develop an app store model where people can create/add apps to the store for others to download.
    • Will look to have Pavol Chvala attend a future meeting to discuss in more detail.

Computer Science (Omar Nafees)

  • A highly ranked researcher has been recruited to join the University of Waterloo from Stanford. Hoping to acquire a specific WatIAM ID: ali@uwaterloo.ca (which is currently available).
    • Members agree to allow the use of the above WatIAM ID.

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • As of July 1 we are using RT in addition to ST; several open tickets on ST that need to be closed before we can stop using it.
  • The latest information is that the power outage in MC later this summer will only be for one day.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on July 20, 2017 at 1:30pm, in EC2 1021.