The 2020 UNC CAUSE Conference has officially wrapped! We hope that you all enjoyed this year’s conference sessions and getting to interact with your UNC System peers.  We missed seeing each of you in person but loved the opportunity to still share, learn, and grow together!

Please fill out the 2020 UNC CAUSE Conference Survey to provide feedback regarding all aspects of this year’s virtual conference. Don’t forget to visit Sched to give presenter feedback on individual sessions as well!

Missed a session or want to review one? Recordings are available to all registrants through the end of 2020 through each session’s Video Stream. Registration will remain open for anyone who wants to be added to Sched to view the recordings. Encourage your peers to take advantage of this free professional development! The final week’s recordings and session transcripts will be added by the end of October.

If you want to stay connected, Slack is available year-round for SIG conversations and other collaborations! The Discord server will also stay up for those who enjoy connecting through games.

Thank You!

We are so thankful to all of our attendees, speakers, vendors, SIG chairs, and the 2020 Planning Committee for making UNC CAUSE a success.  We look forward to next year and are hopeful to see you all in Charlotte, NC in 2021!

We are in our 3rd and final week of 2020 UNC CAUSE! Now is your last chance to register and connect with nearly 1,000 IT colleagues across the UNC System who have registered for the conference! Check the Schedule to see this week’s sessions.

Recordings Now Available

Recordings of the first two weeks are now available! Sign in to Sched, select your session, and click the “Video Stream” button to play the recording. Transcripts will be available by the end of this month.

Connect with Colleagues

UNC CAUSE wouldn’t be complete without a game night. Come relax with your peers for some lighthearted entertainment at our informal game night on Wednesday 10/21 from 7 – 11 PM ET. Connect with fellow gamers on the UNC CAUSE Social hangout on Discord!

Don’t forget about connecting on Slack to expand on session topics and to participate in the Social Hour each conference day at 4 PM ET!

We wanted to provide clarification that gaining access to the Zoom links within Sched requires two things:

1. That a user has individually registered for the 2020 UNC CAUSE Conference here: https://2020.unccause.org/registration
2. That a user received an invite to the event through Sched.  This invite is sent AFTER registration at the link above and we will manually initiate as necessary. 

If you have registered for the conference and have received your Sched invitation:

1. Click on the “Video Stream” button in each session and register for each session you’d like to attend
2. You will be immediately presented with the Zoom link and session details, you also will receive an email with the details.

2020 UNC CAUSE is about to begin! We’ll start with our Keynote at 10AM ET on October 6th. Remember the conference will be held through Zoom this year over a 3-week period from October 6-22. You must log in to Sched and then register for each Zoom session you wish to attend (look for “Video Stream“). To help you get familiar with the virtual format, watch this quick Welcome Video featuring Zach Phillips, this year’s event Co-Chair:

Visit the FAQs if you have any questions about joining sessions, finding out what SIG or unconference means, presenter information, and more!

Connect with IT Colleagues at UNC CAUSE

We may not be in person this year but there are plenty of ways to connect! Join us at these designated times each conference day:

• Special Interest Groups (SIGs) at 11AM or 1PM ET (see Schedule)
• Unconference sessions at 3PM ET — Suggest a topic and continue to check the Schedule as topics are added! (login required)
• Visit Social Happy Hour on Slack (#2020-conference) at 4PM ET! We’ll post fun topics each conference day, and you can continue the excitement by chatting with conference attendees!

See all the ways to connect this year. We can’t wait to see you all!

Tag us on Twitter! #UNCCAUSE2020

2020 UNC CAUSE begins in two weeks! Don’t forget the conference is held virtually this year from October 6th – 22nd. Here are details on conference logistics!

You will currently see a “LIMITED” notification next to each session on the Schedule, which uses the Sched platform. This is to securely limit Zoom links to conference registrants only. We will invite new registrants to Sched by noon each weekday.

Here are all the steps that must happen for you to access the full 2020 UNC CAUSE Schedule on Sched and join sessions over Zoom:

1. Register for 2020 UNC CAUSE
2. Wait to receive the Sched invitation email (sent by 12PM ET each weekday)
3. Once invited to Sched, sign up or log in to your existing Sched account on the Schedule (must use conference registration email)
4. After logging in to Sched, select a session and click on “Video Stream” to register for the Zoom session. You must register for each Zoom session you’d like to attend.

If you have any issues accessing Sched or Zoom after following these four steps, please reach out to us at conference@unccause.org.

We’re pleased to present this year’s conference schedule!

As a reminder, in lieu of our traditional 3-day in-person event, we will be hosting UNC CAUSE as a series of virtual events over a three-week span beginning October 6th and running until October 22nd.

You’ll notice that Sched lists capacity for each session as “limited.” This is because registration will be required for each session in order to allow UNC CAUSE coordinators to share Zoom links securely and privately.

Links to the Zoom sessions for each conference event will be posted on the schedule through the Sched platform. All currently registered attendees will be invited to Sched in order to gain access to the Sched event details complete with Zoom registration links. More information will be sent out asap regarding accessing Zoom sessions and conference logistics. If you have not already done so, please register for the conference so that you can receive all the upcoming information.

We wanted to provide more details of our revised UNC CAUSE virtual format planned for this fall. In lieu of our traditional, 3-day in-person event, we will be hosting UNC CAUSE as a series of virtual events over a three-week span beginning October 6^th and running until October 22^nd.

We chose this format in response to what we were hearing from each of the UNC System schools, combined with the modified working realities many are facing coming into the fall semester.

Conference Dates

The conference will be live on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of each week with a consistent schedule of events.

• Week 1: October 6-8
• Week 2: October 13-15
• Week 3: October 20-22

Why this approach?

We know many of you who plan to attend will be juggling work and personal responsibilities. Instead of someone potentially missing the entire conference due to one busy work week, we decided to extend the conference window. We also don’t feel that the density of events we typically see at the in-person conference will work well in an online format.

By stretching the event over three weeks, we hope more people can participate and find time to attend sessions on topics they enjoy, while engaging in community events with peers across the system. Users will have plenty of time over the three-week conference to join in, and we specifically wanted to avoid the fatigue that can come from a dense video conference schedule.

Delivery Format and Sessions

To bring the conference online, we will use a combination of standard Zoom video meetings and Zoom Webinar sessions. After thorough discussion, this seemed the most familiar option in use across the UNC System, and we have plenty of volunteers with administration experience.

For our user-led presentation sessions, we will be keeping our traditional 45-minute session format. We will also provide full-length slots for Special Interest Group meetings, UnConference sessions for emergent topic discussion, and vendor presentation slots to help provide a full conference experience.

Registration & Schedule

As a reminder, the costs to attend the 2020 UNC CAUSE Conference are being handled at the university level this year, and nearly every UNC System school has paid thus far.

Though this year’s event is virtual we are still asking that attendees register individually! We need this information to help us focus on topics of interest and will use registration emails to share the Zoom session links. Please complete the registration process today!

Those who submitted presentation proposals will be contacted soon with further details from our proposal team, and a full schedule of events will be published shortly!

Thanks for everyone’s feedback and support through this transition, and we look forward to seeing everyone in October!

With the ongoing changes and virtual format, this year’s conference team and UNC CAUSE Board members have been evaluating how to best handle registration and fees for 2020 UNC CAUSE.

Given that this is a challenging time for all, we have elected to change to a one-time, per-institution registration fee to provide more manageable costs and to make it easier for people to attend the virtual conference.  

We are still asking that individual attendees to register!
Though this year’s event is virtual we need registration information to help us focus on topics of interest and will use registration emails to share the Zoom session links. Please complete the registration process today!

NEW 2020 UNC CAUSE Rates

• $500 Rate – Campuses with > 10,000 students
• $100 Rate – Campuses with < 10,000 students 

Click here to go to the Registration Page for more information about how to proceed and where to follow up on any questions.

Proposal Extension

We understand that concerns over COVID-19 and an in-person conference may have kept people away from submitting this year, so we are providing one final extension for proposals.  Proposals can now be submitted until July 31st! We hope that the change to a virtual format has made this decision easier for many of you, and we look forward to additional submissions.

After reviewing the current submissions, we are highly interested in presentations around the topics of:

• Innovation
• Customer Support & Engagement
• Leadership & Professional Development

If you feel you may have an interesting presentation that you would be willing to share with your peers across the UNC System, we strongly encourage you to apply today!

Conference Update

Due to the continuing circumstances around statewide travel policies and in response to Fall semester plans released by many of the UNC System schools, the conference planning team has made the decision to move the 2020 UNC CAUSE conference to a virtual format.

We are still in the early stages of the transition and we are exploring options to maximize the value of the conference through remote delivery. Pending some additional feedback from stakeholders, we plan to have details out soon regarding format and availability.

Presenters Wanted!

For those interested in presenting, we are utilizing the existing submission platform for submissions in a virtual format. Now that we are formally switching to remote delivery, we want to encourage anyone who may have held off submitting a presentation due to concerns over an in-person conference to sign up for a virtual presenter spot.

The conference is expected to return to its regular in-person format for 2021, and we hope to share more information about this soon. We want to thank everyone who has provided feedback and support for this decision and the conference planning team is excited to host the first ever virtual UNC CAUSE!