Community

UC Berkeley is a huge place.  Even when it comes to all the things going on related to technology, the sheer number of different groups and amount of activity can be overwhelming.  This page is a quick reference offered from the Office of the CTO to help you make connections and engage with our community.

Official Staff Organizations

The campus technology website offers a pretty comprehensive list of IT-related staff organizationsWe recap a selection of the more active groups here, and offer some additional notes on them to help you connect.

The IT Managers Forum: This group is active, but not listed on the main technology website (as of March 2019, ITMF does not appear to have a website).  For more information please contact Pierre Chew or Marlita Kahn.  ITMF is a welcoming community of current and aspiring managers (and welcomes anyone else who is interested). They have an ITMF Google Group.

The Agile User Group: This is an engaged group focusing on Agile at Berkeley. They host regular Agile brown bag lunches (see their site for details) that are open to everyone and cover specific topics related to agile management. They also have an active email list to join to be notified about the topic, time and place. 

The Business Process Analysis Working Group (BPAWG): This group is a University of California, Berkeley community of practice, and offers a forum for the discussion of business process analysis and associated methods, tools, and strategies. It is open to campus community members.

The Campus Infrastructure Architecture Team (CIAT): CIAT is a formal standing subcommittee of the IT Architecture and Infrastructure Committee that provides cross-technical review of strategic policies, procedures, infrastructure and services for the development of secure and robust architecture that will be implemented by IT Leadership Group (ITLG) units. In addition to this more formal charge, the committee has evolved into an engaged, welcoming community of UC Berkeley's DevOps and infrastructure-focused technologists. It is open to campus community members who work on technology infrastructure or who have an interest in the subject.

The IT Community Council (ITC): The ITC is a group of departmental IT leaders representing academic and administrative units across the UC Berkeley campus. Sponsored by the Associate Vice Chancellor for IT and Chief Information Officer (CIO), the ITC serves as an advisory council addressing campus-wide technology issues. Its mission is to foster communication and collaboration between departmental and campus IT service providers. The group meets monthly throughout the year.

Micronet: Micronet is a voluntary organization for IT professionals at UC Berkeley and others who are involved with or interested in campus computing support. It is a campus "community of practice" for IT people, and has a seat on the Council of Staff Organizations. Micronet has been in existence for over 25 years. It has a very active email list and monthly meetings, open to the campus community.

Berkeley One IT: "One IT" is at once a slogan, a program and a movement.  Begun in 2013 with the recognition that IT staff across campus are really "all in this together", One IT hosts events that are open not only to IT staff, but to anyone (Faculty, students, staff in other job functions) who want to get together in the support of making UC Berkeley more effective through the use of information technology.

The Research IT Reading Group: The RIT Reading Group is an active group that has met biweekly since April 2013 to discuss topics touching support of research at UC Berkeley. Topics typically include campus researchers describing and discussing their computational and data-intensive research practices and needs; evaluation of new research methods, technologies, and campus services as candidates for support based on fit to Berkeley researchers’ needs and feasibility; and avenues for collaboration among research support organizations, on campus and nationally, aimed at reaching and assisting a broader community of UC Berkeley domains and researchers.  Check out their website to sign up for the email list to obtain readings and notifications of topics.

The User-Centered Design Group: This group is a vibrant community of practitioners dedicated to improving the usefulness, usability, and user experience of campus projects by teaching, training and providing expertise about user-centered design. The group is open to anyone on campus with an interest in learning about UCD.

Webnet: Webnet is a voluntary organization open to any affiliate of UC Berkeley interested in discussing World-Wide Web related issues on topics like managing websites, writing content for the Web or developing web applications. They meet monthly between October and June.

Meetups and Public Groups

The UC Berkeley Cloud Computing Meetup: The UCB Cloud Computing Meetup is envisioned as an inclusive, engaged community under the large tent of "cloud computing @ UC Berkeley".  The meetup's themes and topics span research computing, educational technology,  enterprise and administrative computing.  Open to the public, this community will span multiple themes/tracks or communities of specific practices - and should provide an opportunity to make connnections both within the University and with the practitioners and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. If you want to participate please contact UC Berkeley CTO Bill Allison (email cto@berkeley.edu), Jason Christopher (Research IT) or Anthony Suen (Division of Data Sciences), or reach out to us via the meetup.com's website messaging).