On October 21, more than 250 IT professionals gathered, both virtually and in-person, for the 2024 Higher Education NetComm Workshop in San Antonio.
The free workshop for higher education networking professionals, now in its second year, was co-organized by Ryan Turner, ITS Director of Networking and the Operations Center. Turner also served with other panelists to discuss Wi-Fi vendor selection.
The workshop featured speakers from 10 colleges and universities on topics including smart lighting, fabric technologies, zero trust network access and Internet Protocol version 6.
More than 50 people attended in-person. The event was hosted by the University of Texas San Antonio.
Feedback was ‘100% positive’
In-person and virtual attendees represented “institutions across the U.S. and even places around the globe” with collective endowments of more than $350 billion, Turner said.
“Despite the workshop lasting the entire day, we had virtually no drop-off in engagement,” he said. “We had over 60 responses to our post-conference survey which were 100% positive with many saying it was the best thing they have attended. Based on the results, we plan on having the conference next year in Nashvile.”
Extreme Networks sponsored the event. “We were just so impressed to see such collaboration that is happening in there, and we’re just happy to be a part of that,” said Dane Felicien, Senior National Sales Manager at Extreme Networks.
Workshop is part of a larger community
This was the second year Turner co-organized the one-day conference for higher education networking professionals. Both years, Turner has scheduled the workshop the day before the annual EDUCAUSE conference, making it easy for EDUCAUSE attendees to attend both events. The NetComm venue was less than a mile away from the EDUCAUSE conference.
The EDUCAUSE conference is a major event for higher ed IT professionals — the 2024 conference drew 7,500 attendees.
The workshop is not directly affiliated with EDUCAUSE and runs independently, but the workshop leverages EDUCAUSE Community Groups to organize and advertise the event. EDUCAUSE describes Community Groups as “online communities where higher education professionals learn from and network with each other around shared topics and interests.”
The NetComm Workshop drew interest from several Community Groups, including Communications Infrastructure and Applications, Network Management and Wireless Local Area Networking.
UNC-Chapel Hill is an organizational member of EDUCAUSE, meaning that all UNC students, faculty and staff are eligible for individual membership. Members can participate in community groups, conferences and learning opportunities.