As a staff member, what technical groups should I consider joining on campus?

Here is some information about some technical groups staff members at UCLA might want to attend, join, or at least monitor.

• Apple OSXForum — Mac OS X Forum for University Admins – http://lists.stat.ucla.edu/mailman/listinfo/osxforum

• BruinTech shares information among technologists around campus. http://www.bruintech.ucla.edu/
  Add yourself to the BruinTech listserv

• Campus Media Producers – https://groups.google.com/a/lists.ucla.edu/d/forum/cmp
  The UCLA Campus Media Producers group meets regularly to share and discuss tips and techniques for creating high quality media primarily for onine and hybrid instruction. We use this forum to coordinate montly meetings and to ask questions and disseminate information.

• Campus Web Publishers – http://cwp.ucla.edu
  The UCLA Campus Web Publishers (CWP) is a forum for people publishing websites on campus where people can come to learn/share/explore new and existing technologies and ideas. Members have technical backgrounds, others come from the publications side and many are jacks-of-all-trades. Meetings are held every few months where presentations and discussions are given from Design Fundamentals to Content Management Systems and everything in between. CWP is also a great place to share projects that you’ve been working on. Past project presentations have included the UCLA KnowledgeBase and BruinCast. Meets irregularly to give demos and talk about web technology and issues. Listserv signup – https://groups.google.com/a/lists.ucla.edu/forum/#!forum/cwp-l.
  • sign up for listserv
  • check out website
  • send interesting questions to listserv
  • suggest topics for meetings

• CCLE – Common Collaborative and Learning Environment Technical Community
  UCLA is starting to work toward a common, opt-in platform for both course websites and collaborative websites. The CCLE Technical Community consists of those interested in working together to build and test this vision.
  • http://www.oit.ucla.edu/ccle/
  • https://ccle.ucla.edu
  • https://moodle2.sscnet.ucla.edu

• Course Management Consortium – Being replaced by CCLE. But the site is still useful for documentation of shared datasources among other things. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/classweb/consortium/
  • check out website and meeting notes on blog

• Digital Signage Consortium – This is a group for those who currently have or are planning to install digital signage in their units. The group shares information about hardware and software solutions, and is also looking into developing a “digital signage content repository” where anyone can upload the content they would like to share with the campus, and owners of digital signage can pull relevant content from the repository to fill their signs.
  • contact Michelle Chen (mchen@oit.ucla.edu) to join
  • add yourself to the CCLE collaboration site

• Help Desk Consortium – http://www.hdc.ucla.edu
  This is a group for help desk staff that promotes IT collaboration at UCLA. Members share expertise, develop best practices, establish cooperation, and more!

• Instructional Support Story Swap – This group facilitates the sharing of tools, tips and techniques centered around instructional technology and design.
  • contact Caroline Kong (caroline@ssc.ucla.edu)
  • add yourself to the CCLE collaboration site

• Instructional Technology Forum – This is a group for those who support
  course management systems and other instructional technology applications
  here at UCLA. This is less about the programming and more about policies,
  user support techniques, faculty outreach, training, common problems, and
  interesting solutions. It should be forum for talking about instructional
  technology at UCLA. http://itf.ucla.edu/ (part public, part private, email franks@ssc.ucla.edu for password)
  • sign up for listserv
  • check out website (not a lot there)
  • look for what you might want to add to wiki
  • attend or host Brown Bags on topics that interest you
  • suggest something you might want to demo

• Los Angeles SQL Server Professionals Group – This is a group for IT professional developers and database administrators in the greater Los Angeles area who enjoy learning about SQL Server and all of its related technologies. Join us at UCLA Anderson School of Management on the 3rd Thursday of the odd months at 6:30 PM for food, drinks and networking followed by a presentation on a current SQL Server topic. Our meeting is from 7:00PM – 9:00PM. To find out more, visit our website at http://www.sql.la. We are an official affiliate of PASS (The Professional Association for SQL Server). The meetings are free and everyone is welcome. Hope to see you there.

• Plone Users Group is a development and community support group for those using the Plone Content Management System. http://plone.oid.ucla.edu/
  • add yourself to listserv, which is UC-wide.

• Ruby on Rails resources
  • UCLA Rails Mailing List
  • L.A. Ruby Meetup

• Security Administrators
  • UCLA Security Admins Wiki
  • UCLA Security Admins Listserv

• Social Media Group
  This group exists so that as a community we can network, share best practices/strategies, and explore ways to make our efforts more effective at UCLA. We hope that you will use this group as a resource on campus and take advantage of the experience and knowledge of that our diverse group of members has offer. Listserv signup – https://groups.google.com/a/lists.ucla.edu/forum/#!forum/socialmedia.

• UCLA Java User Group
  Java technology is widely deployed at UCLA. The UCLA Java User Group brings together the campus Java community to share experiences and promote best practices for the effective use of Java technology. It does so through meetings, presentations by experts from on and off campus, open-environment “code on the lawn” sessions and more. Faculty, students and staff are all welcome and encouraged to actively participate. Whatever the venue, members can expect their technical boundaries to be pushed and their knowledge of the Java language expanded, and to be challenged to create and innovate. 2012-2013 will see a renewed effort to revive this group and obtain support through Oracle for future meeting resources. More info: Christian Bryant: christian.bryant@ucla.edu
  • UCLA JUG List [ https://groups.google.com/a/lists.ucla.edu/forum/#!forum/uclajug ]

• UCLA Programmers Exchange
  We are looking for a quick and easy way to spur coordination and sharing among UCLA programmers. So far we’ve had two parties, built a public/private (UCLA IP-only) website with wiki for
  programmers on campus to share their notes, set up a campus CVS and a self-registration Programmers Directory. We would like to sponsor meetings or focus groups on different topics. http://programmers.ucla.edu/
  • sign up for listserv
  • check out website
  • add notes to wiki, feel free to create whole new sections on things that interest you
  • add yourself and your interests to Programmers Directory
  • send interesting questions to listserv
  • suggest topics for focus groups

• UC IT Blog
  Check out the UC IT Blog, from Tom Andriola’s (UC CIO) Office: http://cio.ucop.edu/
  Subscribe to receive updates via email when new content is posted: http://cio.ucop.edu/subscribe/

Please add groups that haven’t been mentioned.