Analysis Meeting

2008-02-01 -- Held the meeting among consultants and team members / manager.  Board notes are attached to this page. 

Laptop Loaner Program

People

Ryan Flanagan (ryanf@mit.edu) principally involved, supported by John Guy (jtguy@mit.edu) and soon to be Tommy Smith. 

Funding / Sponsorship

Phil Long (longpd@mit.edu) and Vijay Kumar (vkumar@mit.edu), once of IS&T Academic Computing, now of OEIT, are indirect "sponsors" of the program.  Jim cane (sp? email?) of OEIT is going to become more involved, according to Ryan.

Demand Generation

1. Courses 1.00 and 1.167 (I believe) are the main clients of the program.  25 to 40 PCs per course.  Demand is stable from year to year.  A certain number of students in these classes use their own equipment.  Others take the loaned laptop and use it instead of their own.  Some course software is PC-only and many students went the Mac route .  (Parallels may make this dual-platform problem much more manageable; the jury is out.)

2. Phil Long and Vijay are channels for ad-hoc requests for small classes, academic conferences, etc.  These are short-term demands for up to 10 PCs. 

3. Additional events occur during IAP and there are Summer Institutes. 

In general, once people know the loaner pool exists, they pursue the opportunity with a certain avidity.

Products

1. Inventory was said to be about 75 PCs; most or 3+ years old; considerable wear-and-tear -- the students really beat on the machines.

Processes and Artifacts

1. the laptop-request@mit.edu mailing list is a channel for request generation.  The membership of that list is currently bmurphy, longpd, ryanf, vkumar, and LIST: acis-projects
ACIS-projects@mit.edu is a redirection to acis-projects@help.mit.edu, which is an RT feeder list.