Today was a day of policies and procedures. All day.
My first session was on the new security monitors that the state has put in place on all of our networks. We were even given a district-by-district printout of bandwidth usage. Ironically, it was the security monitor that had prevented anyone in our district from accessing web pages for the past two days until we rebooted it this morning. The information was good, but had been presented in other sessions.
I visited the vendors for a bit between sessions and made the same observation I did last year. At a state-wide conference like this we have already established most of our vendor relationships. This was just a time to walk through and say hello. One thing, however, was different. I guess times are desperate – I had several vendors recognize me and literally chase me down the aisle trying to get me to look at their new products.
Having escaped the gauntlet of vendors, I went to the next session on enforcing your district’s acceptable use policy. The presenter was a computer forensics specialist with Lightspeed Technologies. Basically his presentation consisted of one horror story after another of users that had abused the systems and the liabilities that districts suffered as a result. I know he was also trying to sell his product, but he provided some food for thought. Our AUP is now over ten years old, and except for a couple of updates, is really outdated. One of our upcoming projects will be to re-write ours.
We wrapped up the day with a technology leaders roundtable. A capacity crowd of my counterparts from around the state gathered to hear about our state’s new student information system. By 2010 we will be on the new system. I’m right now trying to figure out how to break the news to our principals and administrators.
The evening was more relaxing that last night’s bash at the Hard Rock Cafe. Our tech crew had a nice, relaxed dinner at Greg Norman’s Australian Grill. After which I came back to the hotel and just crashed.