Tag Archives: workshop

Gartner Blockchain Analyst Briefing Recap

This latest event in the IT Extended Education Technology Series featured an analyst briefing from Gartner’s higher education blockchain expert. Covering core concepts, use cases, and disruptive power for universities, the presentation examined this emerging technology from a top-down leadership perspective, outlining practical benefits alongside the risks and challenges. We anonymously surveyed the briefing attendees for feedback.

A Quality Presentation
Gartner Blockchain Briefing attendee satisfaction surveyOf the surveyed participants, 93.8% marked the overall quality of the event as Good, Very Good, or Excellent. Some of the respondents provided actionable feedback. One wrote, “I would love to have the a copy of the slide deck. It was extremely informative.” We contacted Gartner that day to get a copy of their deck and forwarded it out to all attendees by the next day. The presenter herself received high marks, as all respondents marked the quality of the presentation as Good, Very Good, or Excellent. “Terri [the presenter] went to details when needed/asked. Very professional. I learned new use cases for Higher Ed.”

One area we can do better is making sure the presentation fits the technical skill level of the room. Only 66% of respondents marked the relevance of the material as Very Good or Excellent with the remaining 34% marking Good. While some commented that the presentation jumped in without enough foundation, others said that it wasn’t advanced enough.

Adding Value
Gartner Blockchain Briefing value add survey question resultsRespondents valued how the presentation supplemented existing or academic knowledge of Blockchain, with 93.8% of them saying they valued it Highly, Very Highly, or Exceptionally Highly. One commented, “I’m starving for this kind of material. Very important to helping us think forward.” Exploring these kinds of cutting-edge technologies and evaluating how they could be applied to our campus is a core goal of these workshops. After the presentation, 66.6% of surveyed participants said they would support future university blockchain initiatives. Though the question was left up to interpretation, respondents were still excited about the possibility of bringing blockchain to campus, with one participant saying, “Easing processes and access to information? Heck yeah.”

Moving Forward
Interest in future IT Extended Education Technology Series events surveyThe best barometer for success, however, is the likelihood of participants to attend another similar briefing, workshop, or presentation in the future. When asked if they’d come to another IT Extended Education Technology Series event again, 94% said yes. The most requested topic for a future event was Artificial Intelligence, with 60% of those responding choosing AI. Other popular responses were Cloud Service and Cybersecurity.

Potential future workshop topics

 

Watch your inbox for information on upcoming IT Extended Education Technology Series events as we look to bring more industry experts and enterprise-grade tools to San Jose State University.

Thank you,
Bob Lim

Google Cloud Platform Workshop

In a first among the CSU system, Google partnered with the SJSU IT Division to host a workshop on some cutting-edge cloud technologies: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Decision Learning, and Data Engineering. Close to 500 Spartans (including students, faculty, researchers, and staff) signed up to attend the January 8-11 event in Clark Hall, though we could only fit 50 into a packed room. The workshop brought one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech giants to campus and augmented academic knowledge with hands-on opportunities from a field expert, delivering on IT’s promise to bring enterprise-grade academic technology advancement to SJSU.

In a follow-up survey, 100% of respondents rated the workshop as Very Good or Excellent and 100% said they would attend a future workshop hosted by IT.  “The content of the workshop is very informational and advanced in the cloud platform field. The hands-on labs are interactive exercises those make me understand the concepts well and be involved in the learning process,” said one.

When asked valuable the session was in supplementing academic knowledge, 90% of the responders rated the workshop Very Good or Excellent. SJSU IT looks to roll this success forward into future events. Participants in the workshop expressed interest in a number of other topics for possible future workshops, with Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain leading the way followed by Cybersecurity and Virtual Machines.

Google’s instructor remarked that the attendees at SJSU were some of the quickest, most engaged he’s worked with. The feeling was mutual, with one attendee stating, “The instructor was very knowledgeable with what he teaches and gives very good presentations. He was very helpful with the labs.”

While many of participants were SJSU students, there were plenty of researchers, faculty, and staff, all gaining practice and experience with enterprise-level tools to carry into the classroom or implement within the university’s IT and research infrastructures. “Overall the topics covered on GCP was exceptional. SJSU is currently exploring the implementation of cloud-based BI and Predictive analytics strategy. The timing of these workshops is just perfect and they allow the technical team to perform comparisons and benchmark for the ideal solution that is beneficial to SJSU,” said Ravi Pisupati, a Senior Analyst & Project Manager with SJSU.

Thank you to everybody involved in making this event a success. It certainly didn’t go unnoticed, as one attendee commented, “The room had a speedy WIFI connection and wonderful setup screens. Thanks for organizing everything so well for us. Their effort and hard work made the intensive experience much easier.” I could agree more and want to specifically thank Joseph Chou and Willie Simon for their work on this event.

Best Regards,
Bob Lim