Apple University Consortium Conference

This year's AUCC was a great success...

Manager, IT & Media Services, Helpdesk Manager and Streaming Media Manager all attended the Apple University Consortium Academic and Developers Conference at Wrest Point in Hobart from 25-28 September 2005. All three were granted AUC scholarships that supported or completely covered travel, accommodation and conference fee costs. Some highlights of the Conference were:

Streaming TV via IP

James and George presented a paper in the Conference’s technical stream giving an update of the Internet Television project they are undertaking (the AUC, through the Apple University Development Fund, started the project off in 2002 with a grant to James of a server and technical assistance: the presentation was a progress report on how the project was going).

There was significant interest in the project from a number of other Universities with representatives at the Conference. Most notably, the Central Queensland University is following up the project to see whether the television received here in Canberra can be viewed, via AARNET’s GrangeNet experimental ip network, in Rockhampton and then out to CQU campuses throughout Queensland, the rest of Australia and even internationally.

Interestingly enough some streams prepared earlier here in Canberra were received well in Hobart on the Conference’s 2Gb link: the same streams often don’t work on broadband connections here in Canberra, so more investigation is required to see where the problems lie.

See the project website for more information. The presentation is also available for download.

Creative Commons

Joichi Ito, who among his other broad interests is on the Board of Creative Commons (http://www.creativecommons.org/) presented one of the keynotes of the Conference. From the Creative Commons website:

Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. We're a nonprofit. All of our tools are free.

With all the discussions around the world recently about copyright, music and movie sharing and the dire warnings of the collapse of the music and movie industries (some might say “hurray!”), it was refreshing to hear of an alternative, creative way of providing access to media materials simply and easily.

Several disciples in the Division, particularly Education, Media and Journalism, may find something of interest in the Creative Commons approach to sharing that will be useful in their professional activities.

Seminar: An online delivery tool

Simon Goldrei is a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney who has written an application called Seminar to broadcast and archive presentations, meetings and lectures simply and effectively using the internet. The application was of particular interest because of its simplicity, and because Simon announced at the Conference that the program would now be available for free as an open source product. For further details see http://www.SydneySeminars.com/.

IT Infrastructure Fund

What DOES the IT Infrastructure Fund cover?

The Division borrows from the University’s IT Infrastructure Fund (the IT Loan) to pay for maintaining and growing the infrastructure used in the Division to support teaching, learning, research and administration. The Fund has financed replacement and new desktop computers, media equipment, printers and photocopiers, commissioning costs, software and so on: all the costs necessary to replace old equipment and grow the resources available.

The Loan is attractive to the Division since the Division only pays back two-thirds of what it borrows: a system established six or seven years ago to help the Divisions replace outdated (and expensive to maintain) infrastructure with up-to-date alternatives.

University administration is now enforcing much stricter limits on what loan funds can be spent on: we are advised that funds can only to be used for capital items such as computers, fax machines, printers, desks, workstations and so on that may or may not be “capitalised” depending on purchase price.

A Financial Services Project Team review of transactions in the IT Loan has shown it is being used for consultancy, repairs and maintenance and licence fees: mostly due to the Division replacing, maintaining and building the Division’s ICT infrastructure.

It would be prudent in future to limit purchases from the IT Loan to that which can be categorised in the University financial system as Equipment & Furniture $5000 & Over or Equipment Expensed - Less than $5000. This leaves about $60,000 of expenditure annually on other items traditionally purchased through the IT Loan that will need to be funded from other sources (with no discount).

Update 7 October 2005: The Division's practice (and it seems the practice of the other Academic Divisions and ICT Services) has always been to fund capital purchases, consultancy, repairs and maintenance and software licence fees (items to do with providing and maintaining our ICT infrastructure in the Division) on the IT Loan. These items have not been questioned in the past nor has any dispute arisen.

The Division's position is that it will continue to use the IT Loan in this way.

Divisional Web Hosting

Centralising of Web services in the University will mean the Division will no longer host websites.

The Division currently hosts a number of websites that are more or less to do with Divisional activities: some examples include the Inflect magazine, the University of Canberra Centre for Writing [website removed], and The People’s Voice [website removed].

With the transition of the Division’s web presence to a central server, the Division will no longer be in a position to host these additional services. It is proposed to cease hosting these web services in December 2006: where possible the Technical Services Unit will contact those responsible for the various sites and ask them to make alternative arrangements for the hosting if the sites are still required. UCOnline should accept hosting of most of the sites that relate to current UC activities.

Schools, Centres, and other units with Websites currently hosted on the comedu server will be moved over to the central server over the next year or so: the comedu server won’t be decommissioned until all the services are either transferred or closed down (no longer required or moved elsewhere).

Accommodation

The Technical Services Unit IT staff have moved.

With the new appointments in the Technical Services Unit, more accommodation needed to be found to house them. More appropriate accommodation for existing staff was also required, so the growth in number has spurred us on to reorganise current arrangements.

The Help Desk team are in the process of moving to the new comedu helpdesk area. More TSU staff will move into the area as the ICT project winds down later this year, and as the space can be properly fitted out for their occupation.

Student printing in labs

Monitoring of printing in labs will be undertaken to manage costs.

Now that some of the Division’s facilities are more available for students, printing to printers in a number of labs needs to be reconsidered. Currently in a number of students labs printers are available to service in-class printing needs free from the normal student printing charges. Now that the students who use the spaces can access them while the buildings are open, they now also have access to free printing here as well, contrary to University policy that says all students should be charged the same for printing across the campus.

Should the printing remain free, where experience has shown students become aware of the facility fairly quickly and printer use (and Divisional costs) increase dramatically, or should printing be charged for in these facilities?