Efm Events

Brandt Karstens
Vice President, Architecture Director of Systems
HDR, Inc.

HDR, like many other businesses, works in an increasingly globally distributed, mobile, and collaborative world.  Work processes are shared between offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Korea, India and the Middle East.  Teams are formed for each new project that may span several offices at one time.  Our culture relies on Information Technology’s ability to answer the question: “Can’t we just work together?”.  Of course, there is more to the question than JUST working together.  They need to do it quickly and at a reasonable cost.  Simply adding more and more bandwidth to locations that have a variable number of employees is cost prohibitive.  Plus just adding bandwidth doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

This session will provide a brief overview of WAN Acceleration technology.  We will review the experience of HDR”s implementation of WAN Accelerators.  Finally, we will have an open group discussion of experiences testing, creating business cases and running Acceleration devices.

Dan Jarvis
CIO
Unified Government of Wyandotte County

This session will discuss the 10 commandments that will help you transform your IT organization into an efficient, customer based, do-more-with-less entity.  You will hear the strategy Dan Jarvis has used to streamline the processes with what he terms the 10 Commandments: people, organization, budget, infrastructure, IT governance, disaster recovery, documentation, centralization, e-governance, and marketing. 

This session will share lessons learned and then give everyone an opportunity to share similar experiences for your organization.

Jeff O'Hare
SVP Enterprise IT
West Corporation

West Corporation has experienced tremendous growth over the last half decade--much of it from acquisitions.  These acquisitions brought with them the challenges of many different platforms with a myriad of new maintenance contracts required to maintain its five data centers.  West quickly realized it was time to rethink its maintenance strategy or experience significant increases in IT spend.  The solution to the issue was to develop a management method that consolidated vendors and contracts into one agreement with a single expiration date. The solution enables West to access all contract information, warranty notifications and billing/invoicing through a secure, Web-enabled tool, delivering a truly seamless, single-source enterprise-wide solution.  Jeff O’Hare, SVP Enterprise IT, West Corporation will share the journey his IT organization has taken from their fast-paced acquisition environment and the challenges associated with that to an automated environment that has brought all of their Server Hardware maintenance issues under control.  During this session you will learn how Jeff’s team worked together with a key vendor partner to develop a solution to fit them, the sell of the solution to the business, and the lessons learned in rolling out a solution that has ultimately saved the company $250,000 a year. 

Winnie L. Callahan, Ed.D.
Executive Director
The Peter Kiewit Institute

While you read a lot about the challenges facing IT professionals, none is greater than that of finding talented young people who have a passion for contributing to the profession and helping use new technological advances to create a competitive edge for the companies with whom they work.

There are many reasons, perhaps even valid ones, used to explain the reluctance many young people have today with regard to pursuing fields of IT and Engineering. However, realizing the use of technology is not going to diminish and its applications are only going to expand, how can the United States and specifically the midwest meet these needs? How do you ensure your company has the talent pool needed to take your organization forward?

What are the wins for those entering the profession and how do those of you in IT leadership positions create a place where talent, innovation, knowledge and work ethic collide to build excitement? What if it really isn’t about salary, beaches, mountains and gaming? What if it were as simple as adjusting your monitor?

In this presentation, Winnie Callahan will explore with you the “turn on” and the “turn off” factors associated with recruitment and employee retention. She’ll also address the old axiom, “timing is everything …” and the time for you to begin your engagement with bright minds just may be sooner than you think! This presentation will be engaging, thought provoking and filled with BYTES of wisdom.

Come expecting to contribute!

Jeff Young
Asst. Vice President – Transportation Systems
Union Pacific Railroad Company

This breakout session will share how Union Pacific Railroad Company is using advanced technology to implement one of the nation's largest real time safety critical, control systems.  This system increases national transportation capacity while reducing environmental impacts.  This is accomplished by a highly available distributed architecture.  Jeff Young will share the journey Union Pacific Railroad Company had taken to deploy this new technology and the lessons learned along the way. 

Sharon Welna
Associate Director of Information Systems Compliance and Project Planning
University of Nebraska Medical Center

Ms. Welna will discuss the implementation of mobile devices within the healthcare/academic/research environment.  She will discuss the policies and procedures implemented to secure the information and the lessons learned along the way.  The attendees in this session will obtain a work plan for evaluating the risk of mobile devices and mitigation strategies.

Stephen Held
VP & CIO
Leo A Daly Company

If you own, operate or lease a building then you may have heard of Building Information Modeling.  It is both a product and a process to aid the design, build, and operation of buildings over their 50+ year lifetimes.  During this presentation you will gain an understanding of what this technology means for a building owner/occupant, learn how this will change the next building project you engage in, understand how it will benefit you with current space, and follow the approach LEO A. DALY Company is taking as a leader in the architecture and engineering industry.