Does Aaron Wade support the idea of using Google Apps for the fixing of SOLAR, MUGSI and ELM? As External Affairs commissioner, I'm sure he realizes the difficulty of this integration, as well as the amount of lobbying this would surely entail.

Hey Mellye,

The logistics of the merging of the campaign teams are being working out. We need to look at the structures we both and and how they can be integrated with one another.

For example, Aaron's ideas of policy-based lobbying fits in very well with my plans to get a strategic plan for the MSU's operations. If the MSU is lobbying according to set policies that align with the strategic plan it allows for the continuity.

Matt,

From my research it would be the University Affairs and Operations Committee dealing with issues like Google Apps, or the separate point of MUGSI/SOLAR. I'm not sure how you would like Aaron Wade to respond, but I am sure that he is willing an answer your questions.

Hey Kieran,

I was just looking for some clarification on your platform point regarding Saturday midterms. You say that you wish to "make sure that any student who commutes to Mac is not stranded on campus because of GO Transit’s policy of keeping buses off campus on Saturdays.". I was wondering if it is possible for you to actually change the GO transit, or would it be more of a lobbying effort to have GO transit change their scheduling? I'm just not sure if it is possible for an MSU president to alter public transportation scheduling (if you can that would be sweeeeet!! I hate being GO bus-less on Saturdays).

EDIIT: Your timeline for this Saturday Midterm bus situation is stated as "Ideally by first round of Saturday midterms in September", how realistic do you feel this is? I feel it would take longer, however I am not familiar with much of the workings of the MSU.

I also want to point out the fact that I love your ideas on using cloud computing, thats a great step to the future for a school notorious for a terrible relationship with technology(also my brother works for the cloud computing division at Microsoft, and it seems very effective and as you said cost effective).

Also, I was wondering what your stance is on McMaster moving towards a green ecofriendly future. I saw nothing regarding that on the platform you posted on your website. However knowing that you recently merged Aaron Wades platform, will you have the same stance he had on the environment? If you could elaborate on your plans on this issue that would be great.

P.S- nice website

Originally Posted by Matt Wright

Does Aaron Wade support the idea of using Google Apps for the fixing of SOLAR, MUGSI and ELM? As External Affairs commissioner, I'm sure he realizes the difficulty of this integration, as well as the amount of lobbying this would surely entail.

Hey Matt

Since the MSU is already moving towards this type of solution, yes I support it. I believe the main issue that the university and its students may have with this idea has come from using Google Apps and not the cloud computing in general. If a policy did come forward to the SRA this year, I would recommend to not have any brand of software named. This would bind out lobbying efforts and we want the university to use the solution, not a specific product.

I hope this clears my opinions on the matter up.

As for lobbying in general, it's always going to be a long process, with many meetings and discussions. Change won't come overnight; this is why multiyear planning is so crucial to the MSU.

Aaron

Originally Posted by Matt Wright

Does Aaron Wade support the idea of using Google Apps for the fixing of SOLAR, MUGSI and ELM? As External Affairs commissioner, I'm sure he realizes the difficulty of this integration, as well as the amount of lobbying this would surely entail.

Woah

So I'm going to try and briefly(well I said try!) explain how and why Mugsi/SOLAR/ELM cannot be lumped into one big thing and that google apps has nothing to do with any of the three at all! I can also speculate Mr Wright that you are well aware of those facts hence I am confused by your post :S

The cloud computing solution is a potential recommendation for SOLAR & MUGSI. As I explained in detail earlier, bar a $20-25 million upgrade into the IT infrastructure of Mac we cannot directly invest into SOLAR and improve bits and pieces of it(Like Mr Park's platform suggested) and my sources for that have also been detailed before.

We have not mentioned ELM anywhere on our platform and ELM has a long and confusing story behind it's issues that alot people don't know(A clusterbumble between UTS and Blackboard; with BlackBoard coming and leaving at various intervals). For this issue though I feel confident that UTS should be able to solve the faulty coding aspect of it soon enough. The Backend of ELM is much better then Webct so no concerns there.

Google Apps though is our potential innovative solution for MUSS which you didn't mention. It has been used at various universities in USA much more prestigious and even bigger then McMaster. Here: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/customers.html What applies to SOLAR applies to MUSS as well: We cannot directly target it directly because of the backend work involved that will skyrocket the costs.

I would like to say that none of the above is guaranteed; but it is creative thinking for solutions that have very LOW capital costs(Something McMaster lacks) until we get that 15-25$ million investment from Mac in the near future.

Let me know if you have any more "confusions" about our platform!

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Woah

So I'm going to try and briefly(well I said try!) explain how and why Mugsi/SOLAR/ELM cannot be lumped into one big thing and that google apps has nothing to do with any of the three at all! I can also speculate Mr Wright that you are well aware of those facts hence I am confused by your post :S

The cloud computing solution is a potential recommendation for SOLAR & MUGSI. As I explained in detail earlier, bar a $20-25 million upgrade into the IT infrastructure of Mac we cannot directly invest into SOLAR and improve bits and pieces of it(Like Mr Park's platform suggested) and my sources for that have also been detailed before.

We have not mentioned ELM anywhere on our platform and ELM has a long and confusing story behind it's issues that alot people don't know(A clusterbumble between UTS and Blackboard; with BlackBoard coming and leaving at various intervals). For this issue though I feel confident that UTS should be able to solve the faulty coding aspect of it soon enough. The Backend of ELM is much better then Webct so no concerns there.

Google Apps though is our potential innovative solution for MUSS which you didn't mention. It has been used at various universities in USA much more prestigious and even bigger then McMaster. Here: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/customers.html What applies to SOLAR applies to MUSS as well: We cannot directly target it directly because of the backend work involved that will skyrocket the costs.

I would like to say that none of the above is guaranteed; but it is creative thinking for solutions that have very LOW capital costs(Something McMaster lacks) until we get that 15-25$ million investment from Mac in the near future.

Let me know if you have any more "confusions" about our platform!

Perhaps Matt Wright is referring to the notion that using Google Apps for MUSS would free up the servers currently used by that system for use with SOLAR/MUGSI as seen here in Kieran's platform.

[quote]This also allows for a temporary alleviation of stress on the MUGSI/SOLAR system, as server space can be reallocated from MUSS email, to serve augment the MUGSI/SOLAR servers.[/quote

]That said, people keep bringing up the cost of fixing the major issues with MUGSI/SOLAR and dismissing the idea as too expensive and offering solutions to fix other problems that may or may not actually help with the MUGSI/SOLAR issue. Why not instead think of ways to raise funds, or make plans to lobby the correct bodies who would be in charge of fixing MUGSI/SOLAR. I think dismissing the idea as simply too expensive and continuing to ignore it is the wrong way to go about things. The problems with MUGSI/SOLAR are a huge greivence of McMaster University, and a problem that effects every student, not just certain subgroups of students, which makes it especially important. The issues aren't dissmissble just b/c they'd be expensive to fix. Kirean is running on a platform that stresses the importance of the quality of our education and institution and this issue is one of the issues impeding the quality of education. Not nearly as many people complain about MUSS as they do about MUGSI/SOLAR so to go about fixing the lesser issue and writing off the larger issue and not doing anything about it seems like a weak point in his platform. Working towards figuring out or funding a solution to the issues surrounding MUGSI/SOLAR for me would be a better course of action than addressing other issues and putting this one to the side for now. If its always written off as "too expensive" its never going to get fixed.

ETA: I just read his point about cloud computing, was this newly added to the site, I don't remember seeing it when I originally read about his stance on MUGSI/SOLAR. Glad to see he at least offers a potential solution instead of my above complaint about people pushing the issue aside and writing it off as "too expensive."

That said, I agree about ELM. That's an entirely different issue that is currently being worked on. The problems with it are known and at least as far as I know they are trying to be worked out while the issues with other systems continue to be seemingly ignored (by the administration, not the candidates for clarification).

Stefanie,

The MUSS/SOLAR point was something that was developed during the course of the week, but still needs holes to be poked in it!

But yeah, Kieran has some potential ideas. Cloud computing stuff is being adopted by some Universities in the states, and UBC had recently commissioned a report on it which talked about the benefits.

Originally Posted by Scrub

Hey Kieran,

I was just looking for some clarification on your platform point regarding Saturday midterms. You say that you wish to "make sure that any student who commutes to Mac is not stranded on campus because of GO Transit’s policy of keeping buses off campus on Saturdays.". I was wondering if it is possible for you to actually change the GO transit, or would it be more of a lobbying effort to have GO transit change their scheduling? I'm just not sure if it is possible for an MSU president to alter public transportation scheduling (if you can that would be sweeeeet!! I hate being GO bus-less on Saturdays).

EDIIT: Your timeline for this Saturday Midterm bus situation is stated as "Ideally by first round of Saturday midterms in September", how realistic do you feel this is? I feel it would take longer, however I am not familiar with much of the workings of the MSU.

I also want to point out the fact that I love your ideas on using cloud computing, thats a great step to the future for a school notorious for a terrible relationship with technology(also my brother works for the cloud computing division at Microsoft, and it seems very effective and as you said cost effective).

Also, I was wondering what your stance is on McMaster moving towards a green ecofriendly future. I saw nothing regarding that on the platform you posted on your website. However knowing that you recently merged Aaron Wades platform, will you have the same stance he had on the environment? If you could elaborate on your plans on this issue that would be great.

P.S- nice website

Hey Arjun,

Thanks for your question! I guess I should have been more clear about how I plan to follow through with this. You are right that it is a matter of lobbying GO transit, but the great thing is that the MSU does have some leverage in it's relationship with them.

Compass, an MSU service, actually sells GO transit tickets, we can use that service to demonstrate the need for them to have buses on campus on Saturday. If GO Transit realizes that they will have no trouble selling tickets for these extra buses, it will be easier to convince them to make the change.

Furthermore, instituting these changes is not that much of an inconvenience for GO Transit, as they already have buses running from Hamilton on Saturdays. It is a simple matter of adding a little detour into McMaster before the buses head to their destination.

As for my plans for being eco-friendly, I am still in the process of working with Aaron to learn more about his plans for making Mac more environmentally sustainable. My belief is that Mac should be inherently green, as opposed to working it into certain specific points. If you look at my campaign, we have avoided trying to implement points that would increase the carbon footprint of Mac, including trying to move to more energy-efficient computer hardware.

If Kieran is speaking at the debate, who just answered that question for him?

spooky!

Originally Posted by kalkerton

If you look at my campaign, we have avoided trying to implement points that would increase the carbon footprint of Mac, including trying to move to more energy-efficient computer hardware.

Im sure that was a typo haha, I hope. Thank you for your answer, and yeah thats spooky how that was posted during the debate, hopefully it was Keiran. However in my opinion it doesnt seem like enough is being done to be more eco-friendly within your campaign.There needs to be a more substantial effort from the President of the MSU as the environment is probably one of the biggest issues not only on campus but globally. Hopefully with Aaron Wade's platform you can improve upon that. Also if you could clarify if the time-line you established for the Saturday buses idea is realistic, due to the fact you are dealing with an outside party (GO Transit). Thank you.

Originally Posted by sew12

Perhaps Matt Wright is referring to the notion that using Google Apps for MUSS would free up the servers currently used by that system for use with SOLAR/MUGSI as seen here in Kieran's platform.

I believe that is inaccurate from the talks I had with the CIO of UTS. We cannot free up space from MUSS to augment other aspects. Its not as simple as that.

That said, people keep bringing up the cost of fixing the major issues with MUGSI/SOLAR and dismissing the idea as too expensive and offering solutions to fix other problems that may or may not actually help with the MUGSI/SOLAR issue. Why not instead think of ways to raise funds, or make plans to lobby the correct bodies who would be in charge of fixing MUGSI/SOLAR. I think dismissing the idea as simply too expensive and continuing to ignore it is the wrong way to go about things.

Well the previous post is my personal & very unique opinion on it as a SRA member who has been researching this issue for 6 months and more importantly have been in weekly direct contact with the most authoritative sources on campus about this issue. I think while myself and Kieran(In the detailed discussions I have had with him on this issue) agree that MUGSI is a massive issue, but because of our research we are also aware of the fact that the administration is suffering from a $40-50 Million estimated/speculated budget deficit and that capital spending won't be easy to come by, that doesn't mean he or whoever is the MSU president next year lobby won't lobby for that investment and to be honest the registrars office DO recognize this concern and they have told me that this is a major priority for them. I asked Richard Levin(head of registrars office) whether we can try and get outside sponsorship(Like we do for Buildings) but he disagreed that anyone from outside would be willing to invest into Mac Infrastructure. Whether we can lobby some money from "Campaign from McMaster's" potential 400 Mil I guess time will tell!

Hence Kieran realizing that has suggested potential innovative ideas like Cloud computing that do need research and he will not start lobbying about it until there is an adhoc committee that goes into it in detail. The main thing however being that it is comparitively highly capital unintensive and therefore financially viable, its just the logistical and security issues that need more research.

I apologize though if I am misconstruing your previous post, you were saying something then you added a ETA so I am confused right now :S Sorry!

You're not miscontrusing, when I originally wrote it I hadn't viewed Kieran's updated platform on his site. When I originally read his point about SOLAR/MUGSI I felt it was weak. It has since been updated with clarification and he has further clarified at the debate his position, now I understand better that he is not simply writing off the idea as being too expensive. That was unclear before in his support for Google Apps and platform point on the MUGSI/SOLAR issue.

huzaifa, I took that quote about reallocating the MUSS server for use with MUGSI/SOLAR directly from Kieran's platform. I was just pointing out that that may be what Matt was referring to earlier. If that is inaccurrate or not possible you should clarify this with Kieran and update his page b/c he has that idea as part of his stance on MUGSI/SOLAR/MUSS.

For the record after the debate I have solidified my decision for my Top 2 candidates on the preferential ballot. I haven't decided who I will put first yet but I feel Kieran or Ash would be best for the job, and I see that Kieran feels the same as he said he would vote Ash as #2 on his preferential ballot.

Originally Posted by sew12

huzaifa, I took that quote about reallocating the MUSS server for use with MUGSI/SOLAR directly from Kieran's platform. I was just pointing out that that may be what Matt was referring to earlier. If that is inaccurrate or not possible you should clarify this with Kieran and update his page b/c he has that idea as part of his stance on MUGSI/SOLAR/MUSS.

I am aware of that! The thing is that IF we want to use Bandwidth/resources from MUSS to be reallocated to MUGSI/SOLAR we need to completely replace it with Googe Apps Suite, we can't go half and half and try and integrate both into MUSS(Which was the impression I got at admin they might be open too,long story). We would love to have that and there has been precedent of universities doing that, but I'm not sure whether a more conservative McMaster university admin will go for it; but that conservatism seems enigmatic of McMaster as a community in my opinion. On one hand we pride on being an innovative research based institution and on the other hand we are not that big fan's of administrative change. Same with MSU, we are one of the very few Ontario Universities not to have online voting for MSU elections! :(

Originally Posted by Matt Wright

If Kieran is speaking at the debate, who just answered that question for him?

Hey Matt,

Thanks for bringing that up! The response that was posted during the debate was something I was typing right before I had to go, and didn't have time to post. I think it's important that I personally respond to any questions/criticism on my campaign, and I will be more careful in the future about who's clicking the send button. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention.

Kieran