Recap, recordings, feedback & more! 2026 IT Professionals Conference
This year marked a decade of connection at the 10th annual UW–Madison IT Professionals Conference! To celebrate, IT professionals from across UW-Madison and beyond gathered for a two-day hybrid event. The conference featured a packed lineup of virtual sessions alongside an in-person day at Morgridge Hall. The anniversary flair was on full display this year, complete with commemorative buttons, custom activity booklets, and a prop-filled selfie station that threw it back to 2016.
Session recordings
Conference registrants — did you miss a session? Want to revisit a favorite? You have early access to session recordings on our Zoom Events page. You can also check our YouTube channel in a few weeks for professionally captioned recordings. (We’ll post another article when the captioned recordings are ready for viewing).
How’d we do? Complete our survey
Thank you to everyone who attended last week’s conference!
- How did it go for you? Complete our survey to share what went well and where we can improve
- Your input will help us plan future conferences
- Survey closes Fri, June 12
Keynote highlights
This year’s hybrid conference featured a keynote by computer science Professor Patrick McDaniel, titled “Ideas run the world. IT powers the journey.”
In his address, Patrick shared valuable insights on:
- How AI positively impacts and disrupts society, industries, economies, technology and more.
- Risks and consequences of using AI, including reconnaissance, intellectual property theft and privacy vulnerabilities
- Issues with AI models, such as bias, fairness and understandability
- How AI will impact the broader IT industry, and the major impacts it will have on our campus
- The importance of IT staff staying active and informed on AI, and being thoughtful as we continue working with this technology
“There are some decisions which are so important that we cannot defer our responsibility as humans to AI, even because it’s an icky problem, or it’s a hard decision, that if you make the wrong one has real consequences. There’s something about the human experience; there are things that we have to own.”
Learning, connecting & celebrating
We had over 35 sessions this year on a wide array of topics, including (but certainly not limited to):
- Using AI to plan events and build tutors
- A panel discussion about navigating change
- Qualities and characteristics of good leadership
- Creating accessible KB documents and web interfaces
- Project management for messy people
- IT Federation
- Cross-campus collaboration to create the new UW Theme 2.0
Attendees participated in unique conference offerings as well, such as the inaugural Unconference event, and had time to network with mentors, mentees, and friends. We also celebrated our colleagues with the presentation of the IT Recognition Awards.
IT Connects has been one of my favorite parts of being at the university. It reminds us of all the skilled people who work behind the scenes to make things function. It’s always about the people.I loved seeing people connecting and reconnecting, seeing people present on things they were passionate about, and seeing all the help people were willing to give to support the conference.”
I loved seeing people connecting and reconnecting, seeing people present on things they were passionate about, and seeing all the help people were willing to give to support the conference.”
A look at this year’s attendees
This year’s event attracted IT professionals from over 25 different schools, colleges, divisions and administrative units. Participants represented units of all sizes, including the Division of Information Technology, School of Medicine and Public Health, College of Letters & Science, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communication. Colleagues from the Universities of Wisconsin also participated in this year’s program. A total of 470 people registered for the event, and 405 actively participated, achieving an impressive 86% turnout rate. Of these 405 participants, 127 joined in a hybrid format, while 278 connected virtually.
A sincere thank you
We’d like to thank the over 30 individuals who helped plan this year’s conference. From program logistics and budget management to speaker support and A/V troubleshooting — you each played a large part in implementing another exceptional event. It was a great opportunity to bring the IT community together and to connect, learn, grow and celebrate with one another.