UW TechConnect
Communities of Practice (CoP) are groups of UW colleagues with similar information technology interests who gather to share common skills, technologies or methodologies. They are made of people with real-life experience who collectively leverage their individual efforts.
Visit the our calendar for upcoming CoP events. Add your CoP event on the event submission page. Learn about existing CoP groups below. Email help@uw.edu to start your new CoP.
| Community | Purpose | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Join AI at the UW | Our purpose is to grow the UW community’s knowledge about Artificial Intelligence (AI), its use cases and efforts regarding implementing this technology. It is open to all students, faculty, staff, and other members of the UW community. We offer training, office hours, consulting, tools, events, and opportunities for collaboration | Damian Gibbs and Jared Reimer |
| Join Accessible Web | AccessibleWeb@U is a community of UW web designers, developers, and other interested individuals who discuss and share ideas on building information technologies that work for all people at the UW. | Nick Rohde |
| Agile Development | Share successes and challenges across teams practicing agile development. | Anne Danahy and Kyle Kingma |
| Business Analysis | Join us to meet others who do similar work to you, share knowledge and learn from others, get ideas on business analysis challenges you face, and learn about business analysis careers. | Diane Andrew |
| Business Relationship Management | The BRM CoP aims to promote Business Relationship Management awareness within UW-IT, and to provide a place for CoP participants to share BRM experiences. | Linda Hornung |
| Coders | The Coders Community of Practice aims to foster a culture of coding excellence through knowledge sharing, skill building, and code review. | Brian High Coding Community Coordinator |
| CoP Leaders Group (New members: join here) |
Our TechConnect communities are loosely coordinated through a leaders group which helps us impart richness across all communities. We gather monthly to discuss measures of success for communities, how to cultivate widely diverse groups, maturity of communities, how to embrace various forms of structure from formal to informal, and a whole range of other topics. | Brent Holterman |
| Computing Directors | Serves as a forum for the communication of strategic information technology issues, with the goal of improving the use of technology in teaching, learning, research and service across the university. (Membership in this group is restricted to specific roles and/or by invitation only). | Martin Criminale, Roland Lai, and Michael Parker |
| Customer Experience | Join us to discuss and share tools and techniques to improve the experience of your customers. | Shane McCartney, El Schofield, Jennifer Connors, and Shea Jacobson |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | We know through experience that including individuals with different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds creates a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better results. This community advocates for a culture of openness and inclusivity within IT across the UW. Our intention is to create a culture wherein individuals’ sense of pride and belonging transcends any role or team. Join us as we explore ways to help our IT community feel included, valued and supported. | DEI Administrators |
| Drupal | Share knowledge and best practices around the Drupal content management system. Participants include site managers, designers, site builders, and developers. | Dan Druliner and Andy Krikawa |
| Embedded Architects | Build a community of technical architects that can share expertise, collaborate in problem solving, and help define and promote the UW’s Enterprise Architecture vision. | Rupert Berk |
| Front-end Technologies | Share knowledge around front-end web development and technologies. Topics include Javascript/CSS/HTML5 coding techniques, Javascript/CSS frameworks, CSS preprocessors, code editors, living style guides, linters and task management build tools. Accessibility, optimization, and responsive design are among the themes. | Frontend@uw.edu |
| IT Student Employment | Share ideas for all things related to employing students in IT roles. Compile a list of any useful templates, best practices, and documentation. Anyone who currently employs or hopes to employ students is welcome to attend. | Theresa Gilbert |
| Microsoft Technology | This Community of Practice exists to collaborate about the implementation and management of Microsoft technologies. | Brian Arkills, Kim Frye, and James Morris ms-tech@uw.edu |
| Mindfulness @ Work | The Mindfulness at Work (M@W) CoP aims to explore how mindfulness practices can have a positive impact on our work. We meet regularly to cultivate our ability to step back, observe with intention, and skillfully navigate the workplace with more awareness and kindness.
Join us as we explore how a regular practice of mindfulness can generate more vibrancy and sense of purpose in our daily work. This CoP is open to the whole University community. |
Janice Fournier and Heidi Stahl |
| Power BI | A place to discuss Microsoft Power BI best practices, ideas, questions and anything else related to Power BI | Zachary Eagle powerbi-cop@uw.edu |
| Project Management | Provide a forum for collaboration with project managers and those working on projects in the UW community. | Alena Ahrens, Jackson Lum, and Dominick Mendoza |
| Shared IT Infrastructure | Join our community of distributed IT professionals looking to discuss common struggles and pain points with an eye toward developing shared infrastructure to address our common challenges. | Kris Shaw , Wilson S. Waldrop and Matt Weatherford |
| SharePoint | Join our Microsoft Team to take part in a community of distributed IT professionals who work with SharePoint and related technologies. We share tips and show examples of the work we do utilizing SharePoint and related technologies. | Join the SharePoint CoP Microsoft Team |
| Security Advocates | Join the Office of the CISO to build relationships that promote a culture of cybersecurity and help manage cybersecurity risks. Attend briefings on cybersecurity issues and participate in forums to share expertise and collaborate on problem solving. We are interested in both the technical and the human-driven aspects of cybersecurity. | Melissa Albin |
| Testing | Allow testers to share techniques, tools, challenges and successes | Bomani Siwatu |
| Tableau Users (new members: join here) | Support the growing UW Tableau community, through Tableau education, troubleshooting assistance, and development and dissemination of best practices. The group meets every month in a semi-structured format with both presentations and free-form discussions. Consultants from Tableau are typically on hand. | Bart Pietrzak |
| UW Salesforce | The Salesforce Community of Practice brings together Salesforce administrators, users, and those interested in learning about Salesforce to discuss how to adopt, customize, and use Salesforce at UW. | Dorothy McKee, and Thomas Mercer |
| Video and Digital Content Creators | The Video and Digital Content Creators group seeks to connect creative video and digital content producers across the University of Washington. Participants can share their work, exchange knowledge and resources and inspire one another. | Cara Podenski |
| User Experience & Design Thinking (new members join here) |
We aim to improve the experience of our systems, services, and development efficiency by focusing on the needs of people using those systems and services. Join us to learn about and user experience design methods and best practices. Together we will discuss and think critically about a range of UX and design thinking topics (e.g. research methods, user-centered design in agile development, interface design, visual design and style). We meet once a quarter, location and time TBD. | William Washington |
| UW Connect Users | A forum for all licensed users of UW Connect to learn about recent and upcoming changes to the tool, share tips and tricks, brainstorm improvements, and help the service team prioritize improvements! | Faizan Hasham, Shea Jacobson |
| Web Council | The University of Washington Web Council’s mission is to set the highest standards and best practices for the UW’s web presence, to foster collaboration and cooperation, and to share resources and expertise in making the UW Internet and intranet indispensable and accessible to all by providing and promoting the best user experience possible. | Jeff Hendrickson and Thom Thorpe uweb@uw.edu |
| WordPress Users Group | WordPress is used many different ways and our members range from content editors to system administrators. We crowdsource solutions, elicit recommendations, and discuss best practice via our email list. Meetings are comprised of presentations and open discussion. All are welcome, so come share your WordPress work us! | Anna Marie Golden, Teri Shelton, Bill Swann, and Brian Vogt |