Blogging from CAMP
I'm in Arizona this week, attending a conference on Identity and Access Management presented by CAMP - the Campus Architectural Middleware Project. Here are some random things that have been said or some of my random thoughts from the sessions:
"Bar codes on students are really handy."
A question was asked about what the rationale for giving applicants to a University an identity at the University, before they are accepted. It was suggested this was for a sense of community, and another person spoke up and said "branding." The reply was, "We don't brand students anymore. We stopped doing that 20 years ago." There were also several "yee-haws" yelled.
The lunch was good, although the chocolate cake had pretty much melted under its heavy frosting in the sun. I really enjoyed the white bean and chicken salad.
Speaking of food, the "Snack Shack" has an unlimited supply of Jelly Belly jellybeans. This is bad, bad news for me.
I don't know that I'd ever be able to live in Arizona. Something about the spectre of water shortages and droughts just does not make me feel at home...
Lots of standing up and sitting down at the introduction session today at 1pm MST. I almost felt like I was in Church for a second there....
I really don't know enough about Georgetown's IdM infrastructure. He's asking all these questions about what campuses have impletmented, and I don't know the answers.
It was suggested that the people who work on the IdM projects at the Universities should be very visible, and should get out in the community to talk with their constituents to see what is needed in a new IdM solution. I completely agree. Unfortunately, from the discussion here (and in my general experience), most universities IdM groups are so small that they are pretty much overtaken with their daily work or with work that somehow gets shoved into the IdM category though it doesn't fit, that they do not have time to actively involve the university community.
Someone mentioned using your IdM structure to automatically generate and update listserve membership based on roles. Wonder if that is something we could implement?
Another thing brought up was having yearly third-party audits of information security. I'll have to become more familiar with whether we are doing that or not.
One of the presenters just referred to people who do not completely understand all the technology involved in securing services as "semi-professional IT people." I don't like the classification, but think I would certainly fall into that term. I don't fully understand all of the technology involved, mainly due to lack of training or schooling in it.
Oh, I got word that my hockey team, the Wolves, won on Tuesday night without me in net. That's good.
When I go to Internet2 and educause conferences, it just amazes me how different the educational community is in terms of business practices than the corporate world. Oftentimes I wonder how anything is accomplished.
And that's all folks...