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Conference History

The original idea for WatITis was borrowed from the University of Toronto’s TechKnowFile conference. While attending CANHEIT (Canadian Higher Education IT Conference), Martin Timmerman and Ian Howard went to the TechKnowFile session that described the success of their collaborative conference. Upon returning, Martin and Ian began to discuss this idea and realized that this same idea could be applied at UW. We too have a highly distributed IT infrastructure and could benefit from such a conference.

Spearheaded by Ian, in the spring of 2003 a small group drafted a proposal for a similar conference here at Waterloo. That proposal was presented to the acting Associate Provost of Computing, Alan George, who endorsed the proposal. Thereafter, this small group quickly expanded and a planning committee was formed. Members from many IT areas of campus were sought and the committee grew.

Like the U of T conference, the premise was to encourage collaboration. For the first year the committee decided that a one day conference would be easy to plan. This one day format has proven to be successful and continues for this the 6th conference.

Thanks to the Associate Provost who provided the funding for the conference, the planning committee divided into two groups: the Programming Committee and the Logistics Committee. Ian Howard and Martin Timmerman were appointed Co-directors. Ian took the lead in the conference programming and Martin was charged with logistics.

For the first year, it was decided that an open call for papers/topics would not be possible given the time constraints of the conference. This meant that coordinators needed to be pro-active and had to make a lot of telephone calls to solicit papers. Time was constrained because it was the desire of the planning committee to hold the conference before the end of 2003, so that a conference could again be held in 2004.

RCH, a facility containing e-classrooms with capacities large enough to accommodate our 150+ attendees, was chosen for the conference. Having the conference in the short break after classes end and before exams begin allowed us exclusive use of the entire 3rd floor of Rod Coutts Hall.

The success of 2003 and a survey result supported holding the conference annually. Since Ian Howard had left for opportunities in Mali, Bob Hicks and Vic Neglia organized a committee to plan the 2004 conference which proved to be just as successful as the first, if not more so.

This success has continued through 2005, 2006 and 2007. For 2008, Jim Bell and Lawrence Folland have taken over as co-directors for the conference, keeping the organization and format similar to the previous five years. Attendance of the conference has steadily increased. Last year the keynote was in the Physics amphitheatre, this year the keynote will be in RCH 101.

The 2008 WatITis conference will be held Tuesday, December 2, in Rod Coutts Hall (RCH). Registration is free and includes lunch.