There was a terrific turnout and a very actively involved audience made up of over 40 representatives from the 8 Australian Universities that are current users of InPlace. Chaired by Dominic Eyre (La Trobe Health) and Ian Trend (Deakin Education), the conference moved at a fast pace and adhered to a busy agenda defined by representatives of the User Group prior to the conference. The User Group began with introductions, updates on the status of implementations from all of the universities in attendance, and networking of ideas and experiences.
Quantum IT and Susie Tocker (Deakin University Education) then introduced several new features of InPlace which have been released in the last 6 months and demonstrated in scenarios with Susie providing a case study on how Deakin University Education will use the system enhancements of matching a student to the entire list of available agencies and sending student-specific requests.
Quantum IT then presented the development roadmap and the direction we are taking with the development of new functionality and opened up the floor to questions. This was followed by a lively discussion on new product feature proposals and individual universities’ and disciplines’ preferences for product enhancements.
That night everyone enjoyed dinner at Esposito’s in Carlton.
The second day was made up of sessions run by representatives from the hosts and it began with a collaborative prioritisation of future developments.
The next two sessions were Function Break out groups, the first was run by Dominic Eyre from La Trobe University (Faculty of Health) groups included Change and Training, Project Management, Business Analysts, Placement Coordinators & Governance.
The second break out session was discipline-focused and run by Karen Leemon (Deakin University Nursing) for representatives from the various disciplines in attendance. Each session assisted in finding and leveraging efficiencies from one another and sharing experiences.
After lunch a Panel Discussion on Rolling out to new disciplines chaired by Ian Smith (La Trobe University) covered topics of ‘How do you deal with Change Management? How do you cope with data conversion? And How do you deal with Legacy data? The panel was both entertaining and informative as representatives from 4 universities discussed their experiences, approach and thoughts on best practices.
Finally, the user group discussed matters to provide more cohesion between everyone and found the host for the next user group in six months’ time – Monash University.
In conclusion, it was a fantastic two days and great to have all our Australian clients together to see them troubleshoot, assist each other, share ideas and leverage experiences and lessons learnt along the journey. Many participants observed what a positive and enthusiastic atmosphere there was throughout the event.
