The IT@UofT 2024 conference will offer opportunities to learn and network with staff and faculty from across the tri-campus community.

Please note that the schedule is subject to change.

Registration: Pick up your conference badge

Your conference badge is required to enter the keynote presentation at Convocation Hall and other sessions at Myhal Centre due to increased security and building access restrictions. Please pick up your badge at the registration desk in the Bahen Atrium before heading over to Convocation Hall. The registration desk opens at 7:15 a.m. on May 8.

If you will not be attending the keynote presentation, when you arrive please pick up your badge in the Bahen Atrium at the registration/information desk.

IT@UofT 2024 information desk

If you have questions during the conference, visit the information desk to speak with our volunteers and conference organizers.

May 8

10:15 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Atrium, Bahen Centre for Information Technology

May 9

8 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Atrium, Bahen Centre for Information Technology

Atrium in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology

May 9, 2024

Time

Location

Activity

8 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Atrium, Bahen Centre for Information Technology

Information desk open

8:45 – 8:55 a.m.

Myhal Centre, Lee & Margaret Lau Auditorium

Co-chair remarks:

Omar Malik, Director, Technology Services, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, U of T

8:55 – 9:55 a.m.

Myhal Centre, Lee & Margaret Lau Auditorium

Featured speakers: Lessons learned from a cyber attack: Toronto Public Library’s experience and fireside chat

  • Vickery Bowles, City Librarian, Toronto Public Library
  • Steve Till-Rogers, Director, Digital Strategy & Chief Information Officer, Toronto Public Library
  • Deyves Fonseca, Acting Chief Information Security Officer, U of T

Note: The timing of this session overlaps with the breakout sessions at 9:20 to 10:10 a.m.

9:20 – 10:10 a.m.

Bahen Centre

Breakout sessions: Block 1

Note: The timing of these sessions overlaps with the featured speaker presentation at 8:55 to 9:55 a.m.

Bahen Centre, BA 2179

Personal security in 2024

Speakers:
  • Carl Chan, Manager, Visibility and Infrastructure Security, Information Security
  • Michael Laurentius, Research Information Security Specialist, Information Security

With the rapidly changing security landscape, what can users do to best protect themselves? What are the best practices users should be aware of in 2024, and what tools can they use to help protect themselves? Attend this session to find out.

Bahen Centre, B025

IT at F&S – A collaborative effort serving the community

Speakers:
  • Mezba Mahtab, Team Lead Developer and System Architect, Facilities and Services
  • Jozef Nowogorski, Programmer/Developer
  • Nebojsa Marusic, Manager, Systems, Payroll and Operations Development, Facilities and Services
Facilities & Services (F&S) is one of the largest departments at U of T by number of employees, and the IT team developed several applications in house to support the staff and community of U of T as a whole. The speakers will highlight two important applications: Timekeeper and Contracts Management, and show how team effort, collaboration and best practices led to these two applications.

9:55 – 10:15 a.m.

Bahen Centre, 1st floor, The Cube

Refreshment break

10:15 – 11:05 a.m.

Bahen Centre

Breakout sessions: Block 2

Note: The timing of these sessions overlaps with the featured speaker presentation at 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Bahen Centre, BA 2179

Managing Macs in Intune

Speakers:
  • Vince To, Cilent Support Analyst, EASI
  • HY Luo, Product Delivery Lead, IITS UTM
The speakers will outline Digital Workplace’s current progress in implementing Mac device support in Intune, provide a live demo of the Mac onboarding process and show a few Intune support features.

The session will provide a brief explanation of the current capabilities of macOS support in Intune, and UTM IITS will share their collaboration experience between the two departments, elaborating on their goals for the proof-of-concept and how they achieved it. This will be followed by a live demo of the onboarding process, and if time permits, Q&A with the attendees.

Bahen Centre, BA 1200

The EASI UXPD team: Designing for teamwork

Speakers:
  • Laura Klamot, Senior User Experience Designer, EASI
  • Amanda Silva Werkhaizer, Manager, User Experience & Process Design, EASI
EASI’s User Experience & Process Design (UXPD) team aims to create usable, useful experiences for staff, faculty and students through the applications that we support. Their team has been growing rapidly, and as a result they’ve been redesigning their internal processes to make collaboration and teamwork easier. Join this session to learn about how this journey is going, and to learn a little about UX along the way!

Bahen Centre, B025

Unlocking efficiency: Maximizing productivity through AI prompt engineering

Speaker: Sean Despres, Virtualization and Storage Specialist, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions

Unlock the transformative potential of AI through prompt engineering. Join this session for an exploration into the art of crafting prompts for large language models (LLMs). Learn how to achieve optimal outcomes efficiently and accurately while mitigating biases.

In this session, we’ll delve into the significance of prompt engineering and its real-world applications. Gain practical insights into various techniques and methodologies, equipping you to harness the full power of AI-driven innovations in your workflows at U of T.

Bahen Centre, BA 2145

Understanding U of T procedures, standards and guidelines

Speaker: Joe Bate, Architecture Manager, Information Security

In this session, Joe will present on the following topics:

  • What are the U of T procedures, standards and guidelines?
  • Where do I find them?
  • How do I use and understand them?
  • How do they apply to me?

10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

Myhal Centre, Lee & Margaret Lau Auditorium

Featured speaker: Our threats, your risks

Terry Tschirhart, Toronto Region Cyber Unit, Strategic Partnership & Outreach, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Note: The timing of this session overlaps with the breakout sessions at 10:15 to 11:05 a.m. and 11:10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

11:05 – 11:10 a.m.

Bahen Centre

Break

11:10 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Bahen Centre and Myhal Centre

Breakout sessions: Block 3

Note: The timing of these sessions overlaps with the featured speaker presentation at 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Bahen Centre, BA 2159

Modernizing awards for auto matching

Speakers:
  • Mariaveronica Sayewich, Assistant Manager, Information Systems – Financial Aid, Awards and Student Accounts
  • Christine Concannon, Assistant Registrar Student Financial Systems
  • Sandeep Akkinapelli, Senior Developer and Database Analyst
The University’s Registrar’s Office has embarked on a project to leverage existing technologies to improve award management and adjudication. Join the speakers as they discuss their conceptualization to reinvent how award conditions, or criteria, is captured in Award Explorer to build a foundation for better reporting, facilitate auto matching of awards and standardize award record management into the future.

As part of the presentation, the speakers will walk you through the steps of how they are working to update the award record criteria, to move away from the free text narrative conditions that are difficult to report on or match with potential students, towards more discrete data points.

Bahen Centre, BA 2145

Data classification – Why it matters

Speakers:
  • Sue McGlashan, Research Information Security Lead, Information Security
  • Kalyani Khati, Associate Director, Information Security Strategic Initiatives, Information Security
  • Jeffrey Waldman, Manager, Institutional Data Governance
  • Kelly Carmichael, FIPP Coordinator, Governing Council
This session is a panel discussion including people from divisions, administrative units and Information Security. The panel will discuss data classification and why data classification matters for their unit. It will also offer some practical tips.

Bahen Centre, BA 2179

Ollama for LLM deployment in the ITS Private Cloud

Speaker: Orlando Ramirez Martinez, Enterprise Virtualization & Storage Specialist, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions

Ollama, a user-friendly app, democratizes AI in U of T’s ITS Private Cloud by simplifying large language model (LLM) deployment. Orlando will showcase ease of use, pre-configured VMs (virtual machines) with vGPU, Ubuntu Pro and NVIDIA licensing. Ollama offers a library of pre-built models, adjustable temperature, CLI (command line interface) or API (applied programming interface) access, and RAG (retrieval augmented generation) tailoring. This presentation highlights the “Better Together” theme by demonstrating collaborative tools and open-source technologies for academic excellence and research advancements.

Myhal Centre, MY 330

The magic of unconferences: Helping order and value emerge from chaos

Speaker: Peter St. Onge, Security Services Manager, Information Security

Note: This session is the only session in Myhal Centre during this block.