IT Partners Program

The Sixth Annual IT Partners All-Day conference was held on campus on Thursday, May 31, 2007. Our keynote speaker was Michail Bletsas, who discussed One Laptop Per Child. The draft schedule is available (last updated 2007-05-21).

The 12/5/06 luncheon on Mobile Devices at MIT was well-attended. Andrew Yu, IS&T's Mobile Devices Platform Coordinator, has made his presentation available. (pdf)

IT Partners is pleased to announce a repository for community-gathered information, the IT Partners wiki. A wiki is a site where community members can create share knowledge easily and freely. Other community members can edit or update the repository.

The Fifth Annual IT Partners All-Day Conference was held June 1, 2006.
Keynote speaker: Tim Berners-Lee from the World Wide Web Consortium.

Conferences are open only to active IT Partners members. To become a member, see our application form.

Many MIT community members already put in extraordinary amounts of time and energy to help their fellow community members use information technology effectively. These efforts range from the quite informal (the helpful tip passed from one employee to the person at the next computer) to the planned and "high-profile" (the concerted efforts of dozens of people to install hundreds of "network drops" and set up computers for whole departments). All of these "support providers" are powered by a strong desire: to help community members use computers and related technology effectively in getting their jobs done.

What had been missing was a common context in which all these support providers ("local experts", "departmental support gurus", and even the "once-in-a-while helpers") can pool their knowledge, increase their skills, and leverage the vast resources available at MIT for supporting information technology.

The IT Partners program is designed to address this need, by providing support for the support providers themselves, so that they can learn more, help others work better, and find their own activities more rewarding.

The IT Partners program provides strategic coordination, extensive support, and ongoing training opportunities for self-selecting MIT community members who provide local computing expertise (whether formal or informal) for MIT faculty, staff, and students. The program promotes information sharing, coordinates problem resolution, and allows for the effective leveraging of community resources through coordinated, cooperative, and voluntary efforts.

IT Partners are MIT community members who share a commitment to serve:

• the goals of the Institute
• the IT needs of some subset of the MIT community, small or large (coworkers in an office, a course, a whole department, etc.)
• the mission of the IT Partners program

While IT Partners can come from any level of the Institute and bring unique IT skills, all IT Partners share a common goal: to enhance their own skills and knowledge to better enable them to help other community members use information technology.

List of current members [for members only - requires MIT web certificates]

Information Services & Technology (and other campus computing groups) provide a variety of services to help the the MIT community at large better use information technology. Training opportunities, computer publications, electronic information, phone-based consulting, and a variety of other services abound and are available to everyone (see the IS&T Help Page for a starting point).

Local support providers, however, have special needs -- they need more technical information, and they need more organizational support to get their work done. They could also benefit from a closer working relationship with their peers. To support these and other needs, the IT Partners program provides a variety of benefits especially for its participants, including the following:

• Special Training/Events Exclusively for IT Partners. To help IT Partners continue to expand their skills as technology changes, the program offers special classes, presentations, and conferences especially for IT Partners. The conferences are typically offered each semester and cover current issues of importance for IT support providers. (These events are offered in addition to the various information sessions, vendor demonstrations, etc., that IS offers for the MIT community at large.)

• Free or discounted Seats in Regular IS&T Computer Training Classes (as available). If a fee-based IS&T Computer Training class still has available spaces after the "Register By" date, IT Partners will be offered space in the class at a discounted rate or for free. (Of course, many classes do fill up: to be guaranteed a seat in a class, you should register in advance and pay the course fee.)

• Special Relationships with IS&T consulting groups. Certain IT Partners (i.e., those who have been identified as "contact points" for their department by the IT Partners administrators) are given special priority by the consultants on the IS&T Computing Help Desk. In addition, the IS&T Departmental Information Technology Resource (DITR) team will work closely with IT Partners to help with large-scale projects.

• Private Mailing List. IT Partners have their own private mailing list, through which they can share their vast experience. Information about upcoming training opportunities, registration guidelines, events, as well as notices of upgrades, viruses, security information, and other things that might interest IT Partners are regularly sent out to the list.

• Administrative Help. Do you want to run your own special session? Need assistance getting something through the MIT red tape? Interested in coordinating site licenses or bulk purchases? The IT Partners administrative staff works with IT Partners to help leverage Institute resources to help them succeed. To contact the IT Partners administrative team, send email to itpartners-administrator@mit.edu.

These are only some of the benefits exclusively available to IT Partners.

If you'd like to join the dynamic IT Partners team and enjoy the benefits of membership, please take the time to complete our IT Partners Program Application.

If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions about the IT Partners program, please feel free to contact the administrator for the program:

Helen Rose, Coordinator
IT Partners Program
E19-439
(617) 258-0325
hrose@mit.edu (or itpartners-administrator@mit.edu)

Thank you for your interest in the program.