UC Tech
Keynote the last day of UC Tech was focused on improving faculty interactions with tech, and understanding why faculty tend to behave the way they do: they have limited time in a day, and have to prioritize. How to improve the structure of the university ("institutional design") to more naturally fit faculty needs and drive more faculty engagement was very much the theme, as well as a focus on keeping translators around: those who understand faculty needs as well as simultaneously understanding IT and infrastructure.
After the keynote, was time to squeeze in a few last sessions. Both the UC Riverside Library as well as the UCSF Information Commons talked about how they deliver research computing resources and support to their faculty, much like what we do at UCLA SSCERT, and was good to hear about their efforts. UCSF IC-FAC (Information Commons on the Facility for Advanced Computing) in particular seemed like a hybrid of UCLA OARC and UCLA High Compliance Environment (HCE) in terms of capability, but with UCSF's relatively small size it was a bit less clear on how much compute they actually offered. The most clear lesson was to involve infrastructure into this sort of planning early and continuously, as not only baking infrastructure constraints/considerations into the user experience is important, but keeping those teams part of the process throughout, makes for a better experience for everyone.
Squeezed in a formal tour of campus over lunch, which gave a much better sense of scale and history. UC Merced still feels smaller than Cal State San Bernardino (CSUSB) to me, even if CSUSB is the closest analog in my experience, but learning the history and growth made things feel more complete. Hopefully they can continue growing at a good clip, because hopefully in another ten years they will feel much more developed and cohesive, with random patches of dirt still in view. And then perhaps not, given some of the environmental constraints we learned on areas surrounding some edges of the campus.
Final event was passing the buck and the vendor raffle; the latter was a bit odd as some vendors had already left (not many flights out of Merced Regional Airport (MCE)...) so UCM staff did much of the actual raffle. UC Irvine has a new CIO, Elizabeth Clark, and she accepted UCI's position as host of the next UC Tech before this year's conference wrapped up.
The afternoon drive back was punctuate by a few stops on the way that made it pretty lengthy. First was the Merced Courthouse Museum before I'd even left Merced. Some fun history there of Merced and the surrounding area, including a beautiful old map of California. Second stop was in Kerman to see Scott, who has a crazy vintage soda collection among his other memorabilia at his office. Third and final stop was at Cracker Barrel in Bakersfield. Not quite sure why I was craving Cracker Barrel, other than it'd been a few years? Their portions are less crazy than before, but the food is still super affordable, and the kitsch remains strong.