Overdue Ideas

Reflections on the JISC Conference 2008

Yesterday I was in Birmingham for the JISC Conference - you can read about individual sessions in the other blog posts I've done but I wanted to post some general reflections on the event.

Firstly, it's worth acknowledging the effort that had gone into the online side of the event. There was a 'social network' for the event at http://jisc08.crowdvine.com, tags to be used on blog posts, photos and microblogs had been advertised in advance, and you could join the event on Facebook. Lorcan Dempsey referred to this kind of activity as 'the amplified conference' (also some interesting posts by Brian Kelly and Matt Jukes - the latter being involved in the organisation of this JISC conference)

What this added to the day is hard to say. The 'crowdvine' tool meant that I had a list of people I wanted to meet, and I used the 'personal schedule' tool during the day to know where I was meant to be. I met two of the people on my list (out of six I'd listed), which I guess is a start.

The use of the tags jiscconference08 and jisc08 means that you can view a large amount of material relating to the conference via Google as well as via 'Onetag' in a number of guises:

• Slideshow
• RSS
• Colour coded

Searches on Flickr, Twemes, Hashtags and other services for the tags will find stuff, but Onetag is an attempt to bring most of the relevant material together.

As well as this, the keynotes were streamed live via the Ustream service and can still be viewed now.

This definitely captures the event, and gives it an online presence well beyond the boundaries of the one day conference. Also, via Twitter, I was able to find out how to get wi-fi access (and I wasn't the only one), as Matt Jukes was following all this background buzz, and responding to questions - which was great.

However, I did have a couple of problems:

Firstly, there is a an issue with information overload though - during the opening keynote I was trying to follow the 'twittering' as well as blogging the event, and in the end it was too much - I had to turn off my twitter tracking on my mobile.

The second issue I have I think is related to the event more generally, rather than just the online side of it, so I'll come back to this in a minute.

So - what about the event overall? I think the opening keynote by David Puttnam was well delivered and contained some challenges that are worth thinking about. My experience of the parallel sessions was that they were trying to squeeze huge amounts into far too short a time - leading to both overruns (cutting into time to network in the breaks) and also leaving me wishing some topics could be explored in more depth.

Overall I think there is a lack of 'space' to discuss the issues covered by the conference. JISC activities are so many and varied, one day to cover everything leaves the impression of rushing through things, without ever leaving time to catch your breath and debate the issues. I felt that perhaps spreading the conference over two days might help - giving a better balance of work and social interaction, and leading to more thoughtful discussion of the issues on hand. I also think that the sessions need to be seen as the seeds for debate - some achieve this, but some fall short. Coming back to the online presence - although there is lots of online information, there seems to be a lack of online debate around the issues linked to the conference (I mean via the conference channels, not in general).

So - for next year, what do I think (if anyone is listening!):

• Use the online tools again, but think about whether there are ways of taking the debate online
• Reduce the number of sessions and increase the amount of time available (possibly the Edinburgh venue will lead to more people staying overnight - can this be exploited?)
• Run sessions that provoke debate, and find space for the debate to flourish

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JISC Conference 2008 Closing Remarks

Some closing remarks from Malcolm Reid. Over the next year JISC is to focus on:

• Continued provision of services (JANET etc.)
• Better integration across advisory services
• Repositories - especially research data, and especially small team laboratory based research; also learning resources
• More shared services
• Green computing

Next year's conference is in Edinburgh on Tuesday 24th March...

 

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JISC 2008 Closing Keynote - Angela Beesley

The closing keynote of the JISC Conference is being given by Angela Beesley who is a co-founder of 'Wikia' - the commercial arm of Wikimedia, and is currently chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board.

Angela is outlining what Wikimedia and Wikipedia is - I don't think I need to repeat this here. Now she is talking about 'Wikiversity' - which is a place students can go to explore their learning goals, having collections of pages dedicated to learning, and teachers can create and share lesson plans, and it also links to another project Wikibooks. As with Wikipedia, these wikis are openly editable.

Angela says that you can't always trust all the information on wikipedia - but you can trust the process, which leads to corrections, and tends towards accurate information. She's just shown a slide where the Wikipedia entry on JISC is flagged as 'written like an advertisement'. This seems fine to me, but I was interested to read an article in the Guardian last week about the process of editing - what is clear is that it is very difficult to keep up with all the changes that are happening (need to put in link here).

Angela just comparing the size of Wikipedia to Libraries - 1.7 billion words in Wikipedia, whereas the contents of Libraries worldwide estimated in the trillions.

Angela says that if Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia, Wikia is the rest of the library.

Wikia allows more depth in specific areas - e.g. the WoW Wiki has 55,000 articles about World of Warcraft.

Wikia brings in more collaborative tools, as well as providing Integration with 3rd party applications and information.

Wikia Search - new this year, which is an attempt to apply a wiki model to search. This was launched earlier this year with some fanfare, but not exactly critical acclaim. Angela acknowledges if you use it at the moment, you won't get very good results.

Angela covering how to go about setting up a wiki:

Socialtext, Confluence, Google Wiki, Wikia, PBwiki etc.

We've got a Confluence installation at Imperial College, and the Library has been using it for a number of things, including documentation, collaborative working and document sharing, and we are currently considering using it to start creating a specification for a 'next generation' search product for our library collections. One of the issues with the Confluence wiki is that you have to have an Imperial login to use it, so it is not easy to collaborate with users from outside the institution. What we haven't got is a 'community' aspect to it - the wikis are inward facing for the library, and access is limited to library staff, or even specific staff within the library. In some areas this is because the information could be confidential, but we should give some thought as to how we might exploit it more in a community type way.

Overall, the talk was basically an introduction to wikis - OK, but not that inspiring. A question that came up at the end was about what should lecturers say to their students about using Wikipedia - and Angela was clear that we should ensure that students understood the nature of Wikipedia, and the information on there, and to use it appropriately (i.e. don't trust it without verifying the information) - this is interesting as it is very much the 'Information Literacy' approach to information (not just Wikipedia).

Angela blogs at wikiangela.com/blog

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eReSS and the Future of VREs

Chris Awre - VRE and eReSS

eReSS is the 'eResearch Specifications and Standards' which is an observatory type project that set out to capture the use of standards in the JISC VRE Programme, and advising projects on standards usage.

There is a eReSS wiki (introduction to this at http://www.hull.ac.uk/esig/eress_wiki_intro.html, but seems to be down at the moment)

The project covers Technical standards, Community standards, and looks at open/closed standards, and the issues around using various standards.

The Future of VREs

(just missed who the speaker was - possibly Mark Baker?)

VREs offer:

• Customised user interfaces
• Focussed entry point
• Personalised services
• Role based security
• access to information and services, hiding the underlying complexity
• Provides a supported working environment
• use for finding, sharing and disseminating information
• Facilitates collaboration across institutional boundaries

There are now a wide variety of portals - both on the open web (iGoogle, Twine, etc.) and institutional frameworks (e.g. Sakai)

The VRE provides a web-based portal where seientists/engineers can login and access various tools

If using a portal framework, potentially applications and services have to be ported to the system

If not using a formal Portal Framework, then more or less all the infrastructure, services and utilities need to be designed and implemented from scratch

Many attempts to embed web based applications into portals is that they end up forking software to put them in a 'portlet'.

'Bridges' are a way around this - bridges allow you to consume a normal web application - in the VERA project they have developed the Recycle Bridge (vera.rdg.ac.uk/software) allowing them to bring in web applications into a portal.

I have to admit I don't really understand the approach the speaker is advocating. I find the idea that researchers want a a 'supported working environment' interesting - the speaker suggests that researchers want to buy into a 'supported' suite (however, do they care who supports it?), and I have to admit as we see the changes in thinking around VLEs/PLEs I would have thought a more personal approach would be where VREs are going to - researchers want to define their own environment, and what is needed is that you can plug insitutional tools , services or information sources into this environment (easily!).

Finally the speaker suggests that web based environments are only a stepping stone, and eventually these will be replaced by desktop based environments (essentially getting rid of the web 'one-stop shop')

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David de Roure - VRE

OK, I now know the chair of the session isn't David, as he is speaking now.

He starts by saying that the VRE is the web. He is going to describe his view of 'the new e-science':

| View | Upload your own

The new e-science is:

• Everyday researchers doing the everyday research
• A data-centric perspective, like researchers
• Collaborative and participatory
• Benefiting from the scale of digital science activity to support science
• Increasingly open
• Better not Perfect
• Empowering researchers
• About pervasive computing

Essentially a lot of this is about the idea of researcher-centric activity - if they have access to the right tools they will build what they need.

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Liz Lyon - VRE futures

Four themes, with examples:

Citizen Science

Galaxy Zoo an example of collaboration - with other scientists and the public

Collective Intelligence

• Many Eyes
• Nature Precedings
• Tigr Rice Genome Annotation
• Open Wetware

We need tools to help us leverage Collective Intelligence as part of the VRE toolset

Data-centric science

http://chemtools.chem.soton.ac.uk/projects/blog/blogs.php/blog_id/24

http://www.signaling-gateway.org/

NNSA has announced 5 new centres of Excellence focusing on predictive Science

• Content is infrastructure e.g. protein data bank
• Today: primary data, images, text
• Tomorrow: digests, simulations, models
• Today: discovery to delivery
• Tomorrow: mine and model, simulate and synthesis
• Today: Statistics
• Tomorrow: Predictive Science

Mixed reality environments

E.g. The (virtual) London Polyclinic - joint project between National Physical Laboratory and Imperial College

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Virtual Research Environments - into the future

After a good lunch (food was ok, and got to meet a few of the people on my 'want to meet' list, and an interesting conversation with Meredith Quinn from Ithaka following on from the SCA session), the first session of the afternoon is on Virtual Research Environments.

The first phase of the 'Virtual Research Environment' (VRE) was inspired by the Virtual Learning Environment work - with an idea that the VRE would be a bit like a VLE, but with perhaps slight variations in the tools etc.

However, what they found was this wasn't the case (actually, I'd say that it turned out that VLEs were not what was originally envisaged, and what are currently provided in the packaged VLEs). The speaker (who didn't introduce himself, but possibly David de Roure?) says that the VRE is the virtual environment in which a researcher works - sounds like a circular definition, but I understand what he means - there isn't a strict definition, it centres around the tools that a researcher makes use of. And of course, this is the argument behind 'Personal Learning Environments' (PLEs) - that this centres on the tools a learner uses in the pursuit of education - but this has been difficult to realise from an institutional perspective.

Now the speaker is saying that there is a stack of infrastructure/standards/tools etc. that we can agree on some common elements (e.g. TCP/IP, http, ftp), but the question is how far up the stack we can go. The other extreme is those who think that research is so varied, you need a custom approach to each element.

However, there is clearly a middle ground (which probably most people inhabit) which says that there are some common elements which can be delivered as part of a 'VRE', and this is what the VRE program is going to look at.

First up, Liz Lyon from UKOLN is going to look at the future of VREs

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SCA - the BBC and Ithaka

BBC

The speaker from the BBC (Simon Delafond I think) is talking about some BBC initiatives - starting with Memory Share which tried to capture the experiences of people at a specific moment in time (http://www.bbc.co.uk/memoryshare/).

The BBC is now working on a new project with the SCA called 'CenturyShare' which from what I understood is meant to synthesise content from a vareity of providers - but the talk was so brief I almost missed it!

Ithaka

Itaka is a US (New York) based organisation, which is briefed to promote innovative uses of information technology to advance higher education worldwide. They do this via

• Strategic services, acting as a incubator for projects
• Research
• Shared administrative services for affiliate organizations

Overall, trying to play a similar role to that played by Venture Capitalists in the for-profit sector.

Ithaka observes that many scholarly digital project keep returning to funding agencies for additional grants to support core operations, but this limits the funds available to support new initiatives, so Ithaka wanted to address the question:

How can digital scholarly projects develop sustainability plans that will allow them to thrive over time?

Ithaka has published a paper on this, available at http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/10/report-sustainability-and-revenue-models-for-online-academic-resources/ - which they would very much appreciate comments on.

This is very interesting, as it is a common criticism of JISC that the projects its funds never lead to concrete developments or services, and it is something that needs looking at - all too often a project leads to a report, and possible some interesting outcomes, but often this is as far as it goes.

Ithaka believes that we need to:

Engage in rapid cycles of innovation - including business model innovation

For example, the Guardian (guardian.co.uk). Mentioning the difference between the main Guardian office, and the 'Guardian Professional' (http://www.guardianprofessional.co.uk/) offices which reflect the difference in culture and approach. A key point is that Guardian Professional was tasked with setting up projects, but with a clear idea that some projects would be axed - and had clear criteria for axing projects. This allowed them to be ahead of the curve.

Seek economies of scale

The example of Time Inc.

Time Inc. decided that with a handful of flagship titles they would not allow magazines to have their own platform/space on the web. Time Inc. believes this has allowed them to capture more audience share, with a single strategy.

This is a big challenge to the academic sector

Understand your unique value to the user

The example of the Economist.com

Libraries are much more likely to say 'we have this great special collection we'd like to digitise', rather than ask their 'customers' what they want and follow this - don't tend to do market research.

The Economist found that Economist readers regarded as reading the magazine as a ritual - something that they did each week in a period of time. This is interesting, as it reflects the way I read the Guardian - although it's available online, I have a ritual with the paper - which order I read, when I read, and at the weekend, this is a household ritual as well as an individual one.

Implement layered revenue

All the media organisations that Ithaka spoke to have layered revenue streams (including the examples above) - there wasn't enough time to say more about this.

Question

Q: Is the SCA trying to create a 'cathedral' rather than a 'bazaar' (using the terminology from Eric Raymond's seminal essay)

A: SCA is focussed on delivering results in a short timescale - the Ithaka report being an example. The questionner came back suggesting SCA needs to engage more with the way users actually work - they don't care about IPR etc., they just use content as they want. The SCA responded that they are working on two levels - both engaging with the practitioners and at the strategic policy (governmental) level.

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SCA - Naomi Korn

There is more 'stuff' available to us as content users than ever before. Alongside this, everyone is a content creator and publisher as well as a content user.

So, its never been easier to access and reuse content, but IPR and licensing are central to the creation, shareing a delivery of content - and this is ever present. The growth of the individual as creator and publisher democratises IPR and licensing issues, as they become relevant to everyone.

IPR law sees content divided into:

• Sound 
• Music 
• Broadcasts 
• Film 
• Photographs 
• Other artistic works 
• Text 
• Typographical arrangements

All of these types of content have different laws or parts of the law that apply, and many pieces of content will have layers of rights that apply. It is incredibly difficult to understand what rights apply.

The law tries to strike a balance between use and protecting creators rights. But, it does not address the issue of 'orphan works' and doesn't keep up with the latest technoloy developments - e.g. Web 2.0. Ultimately, the law restricts the flow of content.

Not only does the law restrict usage, but also there are different policies in different organisations, institutions and even different policies applied by individuals in specific organisations or institutions. Different terminology is used or the same terminology to mean different things.

Guidance can be complicated or inappropriate, staff often don't understand copyright issues, and see it as something for 'lawyers' - but we all need to engage - for example academic staff signing away rights to publishers.

We are now seeing some common solutions, with International developments and standards appearing:

• Open Access Licensing initiatives 
• Protocols on access to research data: Science Commons 
• Orphan works: EU work e.g. Digital Libraries i2010 
• and more...

The SCA is a starting point rather than anything else.

I wish there was more time for the bits of this presentation - there were clearly areas Naomi could have spoken about in more detail usefully.

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Strategic Content Alliance

Following a brief break, during which I got my Wi-Fi access sorted (I should have done this first thing, but got chatting to someone instead).

I'm attending a session on the Strategic Content Alliance with speakers from Ithaka, the BBC and also Naomi Korn, who is a IPR consultant.

Stuart Dempster is opening the session introducing the Strategic Content Alliance, the rationale of which is 'seamless access', which they see as fundamental to lifelong learning. Reflecting on the stages of lifelong learning - pre-school, school, university, workplace, leisure etc.

There are a wide variety of access agreements, linked to different content, different organisations and different geographical areas. The SCA is developing the 'UK Content Framework' due to be delivered in spring 2009, providing a single point to find information about access to content.

There are two tiers of membership to the SCA - the first tier requires payment, and allows you to sit on the board etc. The second tier is 'aligned organisations' which requires the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding - missed what this brings as benefit though!

Stuart has just mentioned the SCA blog, which is at http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/

The SCA aims to build on a 'common information environment' underpinned by a framework of principles and good practices. Empasis on real world exemplars that are economically viable.

In the UK SCA has identified a nmber of change agents:

• Common licensing platforms 
• Common Middleware 
• Digital Repositories 
• Mass Digitisation 
• Devolved administrations 
• Service convergence 
• UK Government policy reviews - e.g. SCA made a joint submission to the UK IPO consultation 
• Funding

The SCA will deliver the UK e-Content Framework comprising:

• E-Content Policy and Procedures 
• E-Content 'Service Convergence' modelling 
• E-Content Exchange (interoperability) model development 
• E-Content Audit and Register 
• E-Content Audience analysis and modelling 
• E-Content Support and Embedding 
• Business Models and sustainability strategies 
• E-Content Advocacy Dissemination and Policy Development 
• E-Content Standards and Good Practices

It's early days I guess for the SCA, and difficult to know how much of what comes out will be really useful. However, I think the joint submission to the Gower's Review (http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/files/2008/04/sca_gowers_joint_dec.doc) is a sign that this initiative will have some concrete benefits.

 

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