Inaugural North Dakota IT Symposium : Agenda

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Inaugural North Dakota IT Symposium

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2011 North Dakota

7:30 am	Attendee Check-In; Grand Breakfast Buffet Served: Seasonal Fresh Fruit, Bakery Muffins and Assorted Sweet Rolls, Country Fried Potatoes with peppers and onions, Scrambled Eggs, Link Sausage, Bacon, French Toast , Assorted Fruit Juices, Coffee, Tea, & Milk
8:20 am	Welcome Message
8:30 am	IT’s Role in Building a Sustainable Company
Grand Ballroom	Tracy Koenig VP IT & CIO Ulteig Engineers, Inc. Learn what role IT plays in building a sustainable company. Hear how Ulteig’s IT department has taken a lead role in living our vision ‘To create sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally sound communities’.
9:45 am	WAN Optimization Through Data Compression Technology
Salon B	Sponsored by High Point Networks Doug Remboldt Vice President – Technical Services National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) Discuss how one organization accelerated WAN throughput without increasing physical bandwidth. We will discuss throughput increases and communication cost reductions. We will also discuss options to increase application performance and availability across the WAN.
9:45 am	Vendor Strategies, Saving Capital through Negotiations
Salon C	Pete Lambertz Director of Information Technology Cetero Research Saving IT capital is always a good thing since acquisition and maintenance costs are generally the largest portion of the IT budget. This session will build ethical strategies and professional tactics for improving your negotiating position. Whether you are making a one-time purchase, building a relationship or want to make sure you are getting the most from your long term partner, the current economic times can put you in the best negotiating position, provided you are prepared. Mr. Lambertz will take you through his experiences and real world examples to show you how to leverage capital through constructive negotiation.
11:00 am	Alter the Way You Do Business through Server and Storage Virtualization
Salon B	Sponsored by High Plains Technology Patrick Walker Network Administrator Titan Machinery This session will demonstrate the way virtualization can improve your data center. It will show you how you can change your environment faster. It will discuss the way you think about your server hardware. It will show you how at Titan Machinery with our rapid and constantly changing map for growth, virtualization was the only make sense of our IT needs.
11:00 am	The Business and IT Case for Linux in the Enterprise
Salon C	Marc L. Windahl VP of IT Scheels How to do more with small staff and deliver world class systems: Economic and business demands require IT to do more with less. This places significant pressure on IT in small and medium enterprises to deliver stable solutions with tight budgets for both implementation and support. Linux and open source are paradigm breakers; they offer high hopes but also high risks. How can small and medium IT departments leverage the hopes and benefits while lowering the risks to help them deliver solutions on time and on budget? How can we support those solutions with small staffs? How do we build a strategic plan to integrate linux into the enterprise and sell that to senior mangement? Share experiences and concerns as we discuss how to deliver more with less.
11:45 am	Hot Lunch Buffet Served: Roasted Garlic Herb Breast of Chicken, Four Peppercorn Roasted Loin of Pork, Tuscan Red Skin Mashed Potatoes, Buttered Sweet Corn, Rainbow Rotini Pasta Salad, Warm Rolls, Coffee, Tea & Milk
12:45 pm	Coping With the Rapid Pace of Change
Grand Ballroom	Scott Erkonen VP of IS Home Federal Scott Erkonen is a well known IT professional in the Sioux Falls area, and is the Vice President of Information Systems for Home Federal Bank. Join Scott as he discusses coping with the challenges that surround us every day as we deal with the “only constant”, change. Scott will be discussing his background and experiences with rapid project and infrastructure implementation, including multiple 6 to 12 month projects accomplished in 1 to 3 months each. Also, Scott will be covering lessons learned from the business, technology, and human aspects. This session will include an open dialogue section, for the exchange of questions or experiences from the attendees.
1:45 pm	Data Center Strategies for the 21 st Century
Salon B	Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Randy Snyder Chief Architect Lifetouch Most IT organizations are faced with increased demands for Data Center Facilities due to every increasing processing and data storage requirements. Adding equipment to meet these requirements often results in significant issues, such as power and cooling constraints or a shortage of physical floor space. The capital required to resolve these issues can be significant. Randy Snyder will outline the approach used at Lifetouch to define and select a Data Center strategy to address these issues. By implementing a combination of owned facilities and colocation facilities along with leveraging managed services in addition to internal resources, Lifetouch has been able to meet it’s growing IT infrastructure requirements while also optimizing its use of available capital.
1:45 pm	Optimize Operational Efficiency Utilizing Task Tracking Tools
Salon C	Jeremy Neuharth Applications Manager State Bank & Trust In our fast-paced work environment, where there is a high demand on our teams to get more done faster, we at State Bank & Trust are achieving efficiency by requiring additional individual effort. Through standardization and centralization of communication, tasking, and prioritization, everyone stays on the same page and uses less time and resources achieving desired results. This session will focus on how to utilize task tracking tools within your teams in order to optimize operational efficiency.
2:45 pm	Challenges and Benefits in Upgrading Ethernet Services
Salon B	Sponsored by Dakota Carrier Networks Michael Toy SVP IT/Corporate Operations First International Bank & Trust This session will focus on the benefits and challenges First International Bank & Trust faced when upgrading its network to Ethernet services. The discussion will cover pre-conversion challenges to building the infrastructure to improve current business processes and allowing for future strategic technological and business initiatives.
2:45 pm	Communicating Across the Globe with Unified Communications
Salon C	Sponsored by Marco Tim Larson Infrastructure Manager Landis+Gyr Tim will share how Landis+Gyr’s employees around the globe are using VoIP and Microsoft Office Communications for presence, instant messaging, and desktop collaboration worldwide. He’ll cover: How they use OCS to get the functionalities of a phone system and presence capabilities in one user interface. How they use presence to tell if someone is available and then contact them with a click using instant messaging, a phone call, or a video conference. Why the company is strategically replacing some of their desk phones with OCS as their primary communications platform. How OCS saves them hardware, software, and licensing costs for their teleworkers.
3:45 pm	CIO Panel Presentation
Grand Ballroom	Join these industry leaders in an interactive discussion and hear what issues are facing today's CIO's and learn how they are resolving them. This panel discussion provides a rare opportunity to hear first hand whats on the mind of these local executives.
	Teresa Buth Senior Vice President State Bank and Trust	Greg Thrall SVP of Operations & IT Border States
	Mike Gratz AVP, Information Services Noridian Mutual Insurance Company	Ron Gronneberg Chief Information Officer City of Fargo
4:30 pm	Closing Remarks & Cocktail Reception
Grand Ballroom	Enjoy this complimentary cocktail reception featuring an open bar, hors d’oeuvres and conversation. Make this an important element of your attendance to the IT Symposium. The ability to network and collaborate with your peers in an open and no-hype environment will prove to provide long lasting value to your key business initiatives moving forward.

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Agenda

Wednesday May 13, 2009

Courtyard Marriott, Moorhead

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Inaugural North Dakota IT Symposium

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