Laura Bloom, External Administrative Staff 1, Solidus Technical Solutions
Dan DiPrima, Network Administrator, Division 3, Air & Missile Defense Technology
Matthew Ellis, Team Lead, Division 3 IT, IT Special Technology & Development
Justin LaCroix, Business Systems Analysis, Division 3, Air & Missile Defense Technology
Steven Schoeffler, Systems Administrator, Cyber Systems & Operations Group
Tom Schultz, Project Manager, Division 3 IT, Air & Missile Defense Technology
Kevin Van Steensel, Systems Administrator, Group 109, Systems & Analysis
Kevin Zablonski,IT Infrastructure Team Lead, Division 3, Air & Missile Defense Technology
Presented by Eric Evans, Director, Lincoln Laboratory:
"The final Unsung Hero Award of 2014 goes to the 8 resourceful members of the Virtual Teleconference Development Support Team who stepped into a crisis situation at Lincoln Lab and triumphed.
It all started in early 2013 when the federal government mandated extreme cutbacks in conference travel. It looked like annual events that have been a long and important tradition at Lincoln Lab might have to be canceled.
An ad hoc team of Lincoln Lab staff—the Virtual Teleconference Development Support Team—organized to address the crisis. The team members quickly set out to work with the planners of each of the upcoming conferences to adapt the virtual conference approach to their specific needs. They contacted remote sites and participants, identified external connectivity options, determined which networks to use, and implemented internal audio/video connectivity. And as the team members learned, designed, and implemented solutions, they also developed a roadmap for future events.
The team put in long hours on top of their day jobs, connecting to as many as 34 remote sites and as many as 600 remote participants per conference. As a result of the team’s heroic efforts, every one of the virtual conferences was a marked success—providing late-breaking technical information to hundreds of participants while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses."