By Van Williams. I am thrilled to be joining our UC Tech community in person to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this conference – UC Tech 2022 – hosted by UC San Diego on August 15-17, 2022. It’s hard to believe that I’ll be meeting many of you for the first time since becoming the Vice President of IT systemwide last September.
The value of a community is determined by the number of members and what they give the community. I believe the UC Tech community is the most valuable one of its kind in higher ed. This not just because of the increasing size of our community but because of what each of you brings to it every day through the impact you make in your jobs, your interactions with colleagues, the insights you share at conferences and online, and the innovations you enable. I have been a proud member of the community since 2018, when I joined UC Santa Cruz and I’ve been amazed at how this incredible UC Tech community has continued to thrive, despite the challenges the world has faced in the last several years.
Founded 40 years ago, in 1982, the UC Tech conference provides a gathering with a rich history, built on “40 years of connections,” the conference theme this year. For many of us, this will be our first in-person meeting since the outbreak of COVID, and I can’t imagine a more fitting event for that first interaction to take place. On the top of my agenda for this conference is meeting with as many of you as possible and hearing your news and unique perspectives. My friends and colleagues from the UC IT Leadership Council (ITLC)*, composed of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from the academic and health campuses and Berkeley Lab will be there as well and are looking forward to meeting you as much as I am.
Including me, we’ve had nine new CIOs (Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, UC Hastings Law, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz) join our community since COVID began. In total, the size of our UC Tech community, as reflected by our UC Tech community on Slack, has doubled to over 16,000 members. We’ve also expanded our geographical footprint with remote work. The number of new people who have joined this community, our hybrid work/conference environment, and the infrequency of in-person events makes this year’s UC Tech Conference one of the most remarkable events in its history! I, for one, can’t wait to be there.
Many thanks in advance to all and, in particular:
- UC San Diego CIO Vince Kellen and the staff at UC San Diego IT Services
- Our sponsors who underwrite UC Tech and keep it affordable for attendees
- All the presenters, volunteers and attendees who will come together in person and virtually to make the UC Tech 2022 Conference a success
About the Conference: The UC Tech Conference fosters an inclusive and collaborative community of IT professionals that continually improves the services that place the University of California system at the forefront of higher education, research, patient care and public service.
Who Attends: The UC Tech Conference welcomes all UC staff and faculty who are associated with or interested in information technology. Topics for presentations cover those targeting IT professionals, but numerous sessions address broader topics, including project management, service delivery, procurement and more. Participants include technical support staff, system administrators, unit directors and managers, librarians, information security experts, service managers and others. The conference welcomes all interested in learning how other campuses address technology opportunities and challenges and in building a network of professional Tech colleagues from the UC system. Online registration is still open. To learn more, please visit the 2022 UC Tech Conference Website.
*The University of California Information Technology Leadership Council (ITLC) is an organization of chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior information technology (IT) leaders from the UC campuses, Office of the President, medical centers, and UC managed national laboratories. To learn more, visit the ITLC landing page.