Slate Summit 2024 Reflection
Another summit in the books and as with any year, the event gave me a lot to chew on, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to release all my thoughts here.
Let’s start with some of my real-time notes at the opening ceremony:
Alexander introduces his good friend, Mark McGrath
That’s all well and good, but can you please just tell me if you’re going to build out course articulation in Slate? I’m more of a New Radicals guy anyways
I’m just being cheeky. I appreciated that Mark McGrath seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself and taking in all the energy. I am not too young to remember Sugar Ray competing with the most popular bands on TRL. They were just as big as anyone so as far as I know, we were in the presence of a living legend.
Universal Snapshots (and other auditing tools)
Big applause from the crowd for this one. To be honest, it’s more likely that I find that it was ME who broke something, so I’m not really loving the fact that people will be able to explicitly see this.
Just kidding, this is big for quality control
Locale-Aware Time Zones
Amazing! Only took them 10 years to figure out.
Again, I’m just being cheeky. I’m grateful for this add and I’m sure there were plenty of reasons why this couldn’t happen before–Technolutions please don’t blacklist me.
Event Spaces
I don’t think my school is in a place to use this but I actually think this is really cool. I planned a wedding last year and the venue that we booked gave us a custom excel spreadsheet so you’d be surprised at the lack of tools for this kind of thing.
Microsoft 365/Google Calendar Schedule Integration
This one is pretty big for me. One barrier for our student success team in Slate is not having a robust enough integration with their outlook calendars. They’ve always wanted to use scheduler, but it did not outweigh their trepidation for having to work out of multiple systems. With this, we can really start moving forward in having advising sessions booked through Slate.
Integration Center
For a long time, doing import/exports in Slate felt like a ‘hacky’ solution so it’s cool that Technolutions is embracing this concept and building a framework around it. I found it interesting that they emphasized how seamless it will be to move data from one instance to another. To me that signals an expectation that institutions should opt-in to buy multiple instances. I actually have some thoughts on this that I’ll include down below.
Slate AI
Some notable uneasy shuffling in seats as Alexander demos the replicable voice AI.
Obviously, a hot button topic across all industries. My general thought is that it makes total sense to use AI to lower the technological barrier for Slate users to work with their students. Features such as query building through a text prompt, knowledge base companion, and AI insights are all very welcome adds. My hope is that these AI tools free up enough bandwidth for schools to focus on improving the student in-person experience. Much more can be said about this but we’ll just have to wait and see…
And the rest… Universal Copy/Paste, Entity Rules, SFTP Explorer Updates, Translation Code Editor
Hell yeah.
On Shared Instances
I attended a couple of sessions that touched on the use of student success in Slate, most notably the ones hosted by the teams over at Eastern Kentucky and UMASS Dartmouth. They were both excellent and provided a complete overview on how student data can move throughout the funnel in Slate and other campus systems. Talking with a few colleagues and hearing the questions that came up, it seems the biggest debate schools are facing now is whether they want to stretch their current resources to expand the use of their admissions instance to include student success or spend the funds to purchase a separate one.
The general consensus that I’ve observed is that if your school has the means to buy a separate instance, then go buy a separate instance. It’s hard to argue against that, mainly for the following reasons:
- It makes the most sense in terms of data integrity
- Each department usually has vastly different business processes
- Proper separation of responsibilities
However, my current role is based around the idea of working in a shared instance so I thought I’ll share a few thoughts on my experience.
As far as I can tell, there is no unique operational benefit in working in a shared instance. Any custom work that needs to be done will have to be done no matter what database it lives in. If anything, you open yourself up to more vulnerabilities if you don’t properly utilize permissions and realms. So why not push for a separate instance?
It’s actually sort of a banal, non-technical reason:
I like working in a shared instance because it forces stakeholders to sit in the same room and collaborate.
Not only do the respective staff have to think about their own process in Slate, they have to also think about how their process can potentially affect another department’s process. It can feel like a bottleneck at times, but I think these types of conversations are important to make for a better student experience. I’ve had experiences where a campus was so siloed that it actually hindered the ability to assist a student. I’ll give an example:
- Student cannot register for courses because the registrar’s system is telling them there is a financial hold
- Student goes to student accounts to resolve the hold, except they are told that it’s actually a financial aid hold
- Student goes to financial aid and it turns out they are waiting for a high school transcript for verification purposes and is recommended to contact their high school (instead of the admissions office) for a copy
This is the type of friction I am aiming to eliminate by getting everyone on the same page. I am aware that this isn’t really a systems problem as much as it is a communication problem, but Slate’s flexibility gives us the vehicle to remove those walls between departments and cultivate a true culture of collaboration. I think it’s cool that I can go to our marketing team and bounce off ideas on embedding portals within a website or that graduate and undergraduate can talk to each other on how they handle particular cases. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t credit my colleagues who already had well established processes before I came in. They could’ve made my job difficult by sticking to their own guns but they were all willing to break and rebuild when necessary. Our instance is better because of it.
I guess I’m not really trying to argue one side over the other when it comes to shared vs. multiple instances. I just wanted to encourage you to look beyond the technical benefits and really assess what it means to benefit your staff and more importantly, your students.
Note: I did not attend the sessions on shared instances so if anyone who went or presented wants to chime in, please feel free!
(My) Road Ahead
I’ve worked fully in Slate for about 5 years now but this is really the first year where I’ve felt the most comfortable in my own personal skill set. That’s just to say that the way I absorbed information this year is different than I have at previous summits. In the past I would see a cool idea and then my mind would float to all the reasons why I couldn’t implement it, whether it was the lack of know-how or my lack of confidence of being able to sell that idea to stakeholders. Now, I listen to a presentation and I think of all the different ways I can fit it into my own institution’s framework. It’s a great place to be professionally and I’m walking away this year with a more focused mindset and a clear vision of how I want to move forward.
I know I missed out on meeting a lot more of you due to the busy schedule but I promise I will see you all next year in VEGAS.
