Sessions 2026

Speakers: Jordan Barnartt

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:The migration to UW's new vulnerability management platform, Tenable, brings with it an opportunity to reflect on the successes and faults of the tooling and processes used up to this point, and a chance to restore our vulnerability management capabilities from the ground up. We will explore the lessons SOC has learned about what vulnerability management is, and what it means to do it well. Take a deep dive into the tooling and automation supporting UW's updated vulnerability management process, discover what capabilities are coming next, and learn how you can ensure your systems are secure (and your inbox remains free of emails from us)!

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Speaker: Tyler Struyk

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description: Search is changing as people increasingly ask AI and search engines for answers instead of browsing traditional results. Learn how to structure and write your content so AI-powered search tools are more likely to understand, surface, and use it when answering users’ questions.

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Speakers: Pavol Chvala

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
AI solutions create the most value when they are grounded in real institutional problems, designed around human workflows, and supported by responsible guardrails. This talk will share how we approach AI solution development: starting with the problem, assessing whether AI is appropriate, designing for human oversight, and moving from prototype to measurable value.
Using examples such as Admission Information Form review, transcript review, and IT ticket answering, the session will highlight practical lessons about building AI tools that improve consistency, reduce manual effort, support decision-making, and respect privacy, accountability, and institutional trust.
 

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Speaker: Andrew Paling

Duration: 20 Minutes

Description:

At WatSPEED, we have begun to roll out the WatSPEED Platform Experience. In 2024, I presented at WatITIS regarding our implementation of Destiny One, a modern ecommerce capable registration and course/student management system. Since then, we have made several advancements to the system, optimizing and creating automations and reports to provide efficiencies. A lot of those efficiencies were created because we entered a fiscal environment where we needed to start doing more with less.

In this spirit, we have been rolling out the WatSPEED Platform Experience (WSPX). This initiative seeks to create a hub for non-credit (and some credit) programs across the University. Non-credit programs have been struggling for years and disjointed in silos throughout the University. Last year, WatSPEED began this initiative to help solve this University wide problem where departments had no effective and cohesive system to register and manage their students, host their courses and provide access, and do this all with a limited budget and limited personnel. 

This initiative is not to generate additional revenue for WatSPEED, but to provide a service to the rest of the University that is greatly needed at cost. To date, we have 3 MOU’s signed and have begun implementation with those 3 units. 

As the University landscape has changed, we believe that we need to take the initiative to centralize similar processes and provide a path forward to help each other achieve our goals in a much smoother manner. In this presentation, I’d like to shed light on the mission of achieving this together and focusing on reducing silos, as well as to inform more folks about the WSPX as it may be something beneficial to other units at the University to consider if they have similar registration, LMS, and student management needs that are fulfilled by a system like WatSPEED’s.

Speakers: Joe Kwan

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:The web has certainly never stood still, but right now it is evolving as fast as it ever has before. With consumer adoption of AI as a new search and discovery method, how users find information and consume content is meaningfully changing for the first time since the iPhone was released. AI is also transforming how we design, build, and run websites and content operations. What does this all mean as we look one, two, or five years down the road? Will AI agents continue to answer questions that users would previously find themselves on our websites? Will we continue to be caught between rebuilding for an agent-first web and reshaping how the web itself is built? Join us for a candid discussion about how this era of the web is affecting what our websites look like today and what they may look like in 2030.
 

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Speakers: Sergey Bobkin

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description: There have been changes in the Fabric data platform that includes Power BI. We'd like to talk about new features, new best practices, and how the platform supports modern data reporting and analytics. The user experience has been enhanced for users looking to use more advanced tooling such as Python Notebook, and enhancements have been made throughout the platform. However, there are now several ways to accomplish a goal, and not always a clear path on how and what impacts your choices will have.
 

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Speakers: Aleksandar Malinovic

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:

Modern software development often treats security requirements, threat modeling, vulnerability analysis, and security testing as separate activities. This fragmentation makes it difficult for development teams to systematically translate security requirements into measurable and repeatable security tests.

This presentation introduces a practical Security Testing Framework that integrates three widely adopted security models: the CIA Triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability), Microsoft’s STRIDE threat modeling methodology, and the OWASP Top 10 application security risks. The framework provides a structured methodology for transforming security requirements into threat models, mapping threats to common vulnerability classes, and deriving concrete security test cases suitable for manual and automated testing.

A live demonstration will show how developers can begin with functional and security requirements, classify them according to the CIA model, identify relevant threats using STRIDE, map those threats to OWASP Top 10 categories, and automatically generate a security testing checklist. The resulting tests can then be executed using common security testing tools such as OWASP ZAP alongside custom automated tests.

The goal is to provide software engineers with a repeatable methodology that integrates security into the software development lifecycle while improving traceability between requirements, threats, vulnerabilities, and security testing activities.
 

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Speakers: James McCarthy

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
In this session, we will discuss how Copilot Studio was used to build a custom grading agent as part of a Tier 1 GenAI Teaching Enablement Fellowship Project. The presentation highlights ETIS's role in supporting an initiative that uses AI to supplement TA feedback and grading activities. Attendees will learn how Copilot Studio, Power Automate, SharePoint, and a little bit of Python were integrated into an end-to-end solution, along with key lessons learned for those interested in developing their own agents. The session will also share initial results from the project.
 

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Speaker: John Morton

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
SHARCNET and the Alliance are far more than just traditional HPC. I will present all the additional free services available to researchers, students and university staff.
 

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Speakers: Scott Anderson

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:

The educational technologies (EdTech) ecosystem has become complex and unsustainable with rising costs and support demands and a fragmented decision-making and funding model. The fragmentation degrades the student experience and results in cybersecurity, privacy, and accessibility compliance risks, as well as duplication, increased cost and support demands, and inequitable access to technology. The intent of this project is to address current decision-making and funding challenges that create fragmentation and inefficiencies, while developing an improved strategy to holistically and efficiently manage and support EdTech. With a university commitment to address duplication of (EdTech) and the current financial climate, difficult EdTech decisions may be required.

At present, EdTech is a combination of technologies that are funded: 

• Centrally through the Provost’s enterprise software budget; and 
• Through the faculty or department for specific programs or use cases; and 
• By individual instructors; and 
• By students, if required for a course and not otherwise funded. 

This model is no longer sustainable. Not only is it problematic from a cost and support perspective, but it is also harmful to the student learning experience. The current model is out of alignment with the University’s Digital Learning Strategy commitments towards consistency of learning environments and ensuring adequate student access to educational technologies.

Participants will learn about the EdTech 2.0 project and why changes are being made, information collected through consultations, and proposed solutions to ensure a unified framework is in place to make informed decisions with an understanding of impacts to the student and instructor experience.
 

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Speaker: Andriana Vanezi

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
The "human element" is the most volatile and unforeseeable component of protecting an organization from cybersecurity threats.  It is also, arguably, the most important.  Information Security Services (ISS) is working to build a cyber-aware culture through Cyber Awareness Month and year-round outreach.
 
In a university environment, building awareness is particularly challenging because there is no single audience. Students, staff, researchers, faculty, alumni, and retirees all have different priorities, risks, and ways of engaging with information.  We'll explore how our cyber awareness initiatives are tailored to different campus communities, and the lessons we've learned about what makes for successful engagement.  
 
Finally, we'll look ahead to the next stage of awareness programming: establishing meaningful baseline metrics, measuring engagement and cybersecurity behaviours over time, and using that data to continually refine our approach. The session will conclude with an open discussion, giving attendees an opportunity to share feedback, ideas, and experiences.
 

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Speaker: Jenny Hirst

Duration: 20 Minutes

Description:
This presentation will explore how Google Analytics 4 (GA4) metrics can be used to develop key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluating the Libraries' website redesign.  It will highlight key measures of user behaviour, engagement, and navigation, and how these metrics will help assess website performance, identify areas for improvement, and support data-informed decisions through a series of dashboards in Google Data Studio (formally known as Looker Studio). 
 

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Speaker: Edward Chrzanowski

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
Bildung - reaching ones potential.  I know I’m waxing philosophical, but can one apply Humbolt's philosophy of Education to AI?
 

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Speaker: Edward Chrzanowski

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
AI is transforming work (and producing a whole lot of “slop” along the way). We’ll explore how to separate real innovation from hype, decode the latest waves of agentic copilot marketing speak, and speculate about the futures where robots may (or may not) take over our jobs… and our sanity.

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Speakers: Jim Wallace

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description: 

When I started building Chickadee (chickadee.uwaterloo.ca), I just wanted a better way to grade code-based assignments for HLTH 230: Introduction to Health Informatics. What I got was a crash course in standing up infrastructure on campus and firsthand experience in LLM-assisted development. Chickadee was built from scratch with an LLM coding partner, on an unconventional stack (server-side Swift with Vapor): JupyterLite notebooks that run and grade directly in the browser, grades wired back to LEARN, everything staying online during deadline spikes. Chickadee's development is also the story of everything I couldn't have done alone — navigating SSO integration, the PIA process, Policy 46 data classification, and security review, with a lot of patient guidance from IST along the way.  
 

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Speaker: Stefanie MacKinnon & Ryan Doyle

Duration: 45 Minutes

Description:
The WLU's Web-to-Print Software Project quickly turned from investigation to implementation as the outdated software's contract was ending soon and there was an opportunity for extensive savings with the new software.  The new software has many features including being user friendly, admin friendly, potential for numerous portals, and growth in the software.  
 

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The WatITis conference is held as a hybrid event on December 9, 2026. In-person sessions will be held in the Science Teaching Complex (STC).

* indicates a session will not be recorded.