Professional Development Seminars

Professional Development Seminars are extended sessions structured around a specific topic. The format of these sessions provide for longer and more thorough learning experiences than the program sessions. The PDS sessions are scheduled for Saturday, June 26th. You may register for these sessions while completing your conference registration.

The Malware and Teambuilding sessions in the afternoon are continuations of their respective morning session. These sessions have been created to be stand-alone during the morning. If you want to continue in more depth in the afternoon, the option to enroll will only appear once you have selected the morning session.

Assessment

Presenter: Kevin Guidry, Indiana University
Time: Morning or Afternoon (Sign up for one session)
Cost: $65
Minimum Attendees: 10 per session
Attendee Limit: 50

How do we know that our programs are effective, our processes are efficient, and our staff performing well? In short, how do we know that we’re doing a good job? We perform assessment: we creatively collect, systematically analyze, and intentionally act on data. In this session, we will explore how our colleagues in academic and student affairs perform assessment and how we can apply that to our work in student IT support. We will explore available sources of data, ways to collect new data, and techniques to examine data and act on the results. In part of this session, we will specifically focus on constructing and administrating valid, reliable surveys.

Windows Technical Fundamentals for Understanding and Cleaning Malware

Presenter: Brandon Enright, University of California at San Diego
Time: This is a two-part PDS session, the first half in the morning, and a continuation, not a repeat, in the afternoon. Attendance at the second half is not required, but attendance at the morning session is a prerequisite for the afternoon session.
Cost: $75 for each session.
Minimum Attendees: 10
Attendee Limit: 12

Face it, even on a good day Microsoft Windows is complicated. Add to this complication a sophisticated rootkit and even the best of us rapidly get lost. Malware often changes Windows in unrecommended, unsupported, and downright unexpected ways. Whether you remove malware by hand or have to fix up Windows after some tools have removed the infection, understanding what is broken and how everything fits together is half the battle.
This PDS will tackle the malware problem in two parts. First, we will build up a deeper understanding of how Windows works including:

  • Understanding services and drivers and the difference between them
  • The difference between kernel mode and usermode and the role of each
  • Just what svchost.exe, winlogon.exe, services.exe, etc are and what they do
  • Processes, threads, remote threads, libraries, etc
  • Kernel/W32 API/inline hooks and jumps used by rootkits

Once we’ve built up the fundamentals needed to understand how malware interacts with Windows we’ll look at ways of identifying, removing, and fixing up after malware. This will include:

  • Using Windows permissions against malware
  • Handling malware that abuses the Windows “autorun” feature to spread on USB flash drives
  • Identifying and removing most rootkits
  • Fixing up Windows services after modification from malware
  • Fixing the most common breakage done by malware
  • Identifying when to give up/cut losses and just reinstall Windows

This PDS is mostly hands-on and will be working in a VMWare environment. A lot of the information covered will be registry intensive and will make heavy use of Sysinternals tools like Process Explorer, Autoruns, etc.  Although this PDS covers the same general material as the 2009 session, the content and VMs will be created new for 2010.

Brandon Enright enjoys dabbling in network security and is currently employed at UC San Diego where he spends some of his time with operational security and the rest with malware, botnet and spam research.

Seeing Yourself as a Presenter: High Tech Tools to Improve your Low Tech Self

Cancelled

This session has been cancelled due to an insufficient number of registrants. Those who did register will be contacted soon to discuss options.

Teambuilding Through Experience-Based Learning

Presenter: Anneliese Tipps and Scott Chreist, Adventura Consulting
Time: This is a two-part PDS session, the first half in the morning, and a continuation, not a repeat, in the afternoon. Attendance at the second half is not required, but attendance at the morning session is a prerequisite for the afternoon session.
Cost: $60 for each session.
Minimum Attendees: Morning = 10, Afternoon = 4
Attendee Limit: 24

Morning Session:
This session is designed to present attendees with an introduction to the world of experience-based learning as a methodology for team formation, leadership development, and as a bonding agent for newly forming relationships.

  • What is EBL/EBTD
  • Reflection as processing
  • Hands-on learning (activities)
  • The art of facilitation
  • How to use it (basic)

Afternoon Session:
This session is designed as an extension to session 1. In it, we will present a series of activities that demonstrate sequencing, reflective debriefing, and highlight facilitation style.

  • Sequencing
  • More activities
  • Reflective Debriefing
  • Planning and Facilitation style

We propose to present attendees with a notebook with basic information, space for note taking, and a small starter kit for leading activities.

Scott Chreist is President and founder of Adventura Consulting. Scott has been providing experience-based training and development programs since 1990, serving the fields of corporate training and development, wilderness adventure, and education.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology and Experiential Education from the University of New Hampshire. His creative insight and talent have taken him around the world, delivering innovative programs and designing dynamic workshops for many progressive organizations: T-Mobile, Uniland, Microsoft, Boeing, Google, Nike, and many others. Currently his work specializes in corporate Experience-based Training and Development (EBTD). He also consults on executive development, experiential program design, challenge course technology, and facilitator development.

As a facilitator, his emphasis is on human development, creating self-management practices for individuals, and designing and delivering leadership development programs. Using an experiential base to support his work with clients Scott puts an emphasis on raising individual awareness and eliciting personal accountability for resolving issues and driving towards results.

Video Fundamentals

Presenter: Kevin Dixey, Western Washington University
Time: Afternoon
Cost: $60
Minimum Attendees: 10
Attendee Limit: 20

Video has become part of the fabric of our daily lives. With the proliferation of video equipped hand held devices ranging from cell phones to MP3 players you would be hard pressed to not to find at least one video camera on some device that you have either in your home or in your pocket. On campus we have see the demand for video increase dramatically in the past year. This workshop will introduce you to the fundamentals of how video works in a digital environment, help you understand the terminology and show you how you can leverage digital video technologies and put them to work for you. In addition, you’ll get some hands-on experience doing basic digital video editing in one of our video capable labs.

Kevin Dixey came to use computers after trading his worn out 1980 Honda Civic for an equally worn out original Macintosh. He has a degree in Theatre and a Masters in Environmental Education with which he hopes to rule the world with an ecologically sound and culturally sensitive iron fist. In the interim he is content with teaching technology to the students, faculty and staff at Western Washington University, for which he receives a meager income and the occasional box of cookies from grateful students.