Andy Powell, the head of development at Eduserv Foundation, thought he would just dip a toe into the blogosphere, but fell head over heels for virtual worlds and e-debates
Q Where is your blog?
A http://efoundations.typepad.com It's a joint blog, written by me and my Eduserv colleague Pete Johnston.
Q What's it like?
A The blog's strapline is "metadata, middleware, elearning", which is what we thought we were going to write about when we started blogging. In practice, we also cover Web 2.0, the semantic web, open access, digital libraries, metadata, middleware, e-learning, online identity, virtual worlds and anything else that takes our fancy. It's 99.99% work-related. If we want to write about personal stuff we tend to do so elsewhere.
Q How long have you been blogging?
A We started in September 2006. Since then we have tried to keep up a steady stream of about two postings per week, preferably more. Any less and a blog starts to feel unloved.
Q What started you blogging?
A It's so long ago I don't recall the details but I'm pretty sure there was a certain amount of keeping up with the Joneses about it, coupled with a sense of frustration at the demise of any real debate on mailing lists at the time (partly because the more prolific thinkers and writers were beginning to concentrate on their blogs).
Q Do you comment on other blogs?
A In an ideal world, blogging is part of a conversation with the reader. But it doesn't always work out like that and often it's the more contentious posts that get most comments even though they aren't necessarily the most thought through. Real conversation leads to new thinking and I think an important feature of a good blogger is the ability to admit mistakes or acknowledge when a new position has emerged.
Q How does your organisation benefit from your blog?
A Blogging (and other forms of new media) provides a point of contact between an organisation and its 'customers' that tends to be less formal, less rigid and more peer-to-peer than channels offered by traditional marketing. It enables real debate around products and services that simply wouldn't happen in other ways. The personal level of contact also helps to build up external trust in the organisation.
Q Does it help your career?
A I hope there is a synergistic relationship between the blog, the organisation, our community and me. The blog significantly raises my personal profile, as well as giving me a forum for debate and interaction that no longer seems to exist elsewhere. It's also a useful place to vent frustration and let off steam.
Q Which blogs do you read for fun?
A Sadly, I read a lot of work blogs for fun, but, putting those to one side, I try to catch up on both XKCD http://xkcd.com and PostSecret http://postsecret.blogspot.com as often as I can. I also read a lot of Second Life blogs, of which I'll pick out two from the UK: the Adventures of Yoshikawa adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com and TidalBlog http://tidalblog.blogspot.com which has a more technical focus.
Q Do you have a personal blog?
A My personal blog is, well, personal! I don't write much on it and what I do write is targeted at myself, my family and friends. I do write a Second Life blog, under the pseudonym of my Second Life avatar, Art Fossett, known as ArtsPlace SL http://artfossett.blogspot.com It isn't as popular as the eFoundations blog, but it is well read enough to make it worthwhile continuing to write.
Q Which bloggers do you read and link to?
A Way too many! For libraryrelated discussion, I read Lorcan Dempsey
http://orweblog.oclc.org
Stu Weibel
http://weibel-lines.typepad.com
and the various Talis blogs.
For e-learning, I read Stephen Downes (who doesn't?)
http://www.downes.ca
Grainne Conole
www.e4innovation.com
and Alan Levine
http://cogdogblog.com
In the middleware/identityspace, I read Kim Cameron
www.identityblog.com
David Recordon
http://daveman692.livejournal.com
and Drummond Reed
www.equalsdrummond.name
For general discussion around the web and Web 2.0 in education and the cultural heritage sector, I read Brian Kelly
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com
and Mike Ellis
http://electronicmuseum.org.uk
All of these bloggers provide a great way of staying up to date and offer some challenging viewpoints.
Friday, 29 August 2008
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Grant application limit for Elsevier Foundation programme approaches
Scientific and technical publishers, Elsevier, are reminding scholars that applications for funding from the charitable Elsevier Foundation are due shortly. The deadline to submit by is September 15th.
The Elsevier Foundation comprises of the Innovative Libraries Programme and the New Scholars Programme. Funding will comprise of awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 per year. These will be allocated as one, two, or three year grants.
The Libraries Programme is dedicated to encouraging the growth and access of library resources to researchers, librarians and academics, particularly through developing digital resources and sponsoring collaboration between libraries across the developed and developing world.
The new scholars programme will assist STM academics faced with the challenge of maintaining a scholarly career and providing suitable childcare.
David Ruth, Executive Director, Elsevier Foundation said "The Elsevier Foundation aims to improve the quality of life for people throughout the world by supporting the advancement of and access to scientific, technical and medical knowledge"
Earlier this year, Elsevier announced that it had awarded nearly $600,000 to academics from applications submitted in 2007. A total of 13 institutions won their part of funds from a total of 150 applications received by the organisation.
"Our great winners are recognised for their efforts enabling talented individuals from diverse backgrounds to develop successful careers, maximising the benefit to science and society" said Ruth.
The Elsevier Foundation comprises of the Innovative Libraries Programme and the New Scholars Programme. Funding will comprise of awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 per year. These will be allocated as one, two, or three year grants.
The Libraries Programme is dedicated to encouraging the growth and access of library resources to researchers, librarians and academics, particularly through developing digital resources and sponsoring collaboration between libraries across the developed and developing world.
The new scholars programme will assist STM academics faced with the challenge of maintaining a scholarly career and providing suitable childcare.
David Ruth, Executive Director, Elsevier Foundation said "The Elsevier Foundation aims to improve the quality of life for people throughout the world by supporting the advancement of and access to scientific, technical and medical knowledge"
Earlier this year, Elsevier announced that it had awarded nearly $600,000 to academics from applications submitted in 2007. A total of 13 institutions won their part of funds from a total of 150 applications received by the organisation.
"Our great winners are recognised for their efforts enabling talented individuals from diverse backgrounds to develop successful careers, maximising the benefit to science and society" said Ruth.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
TES and social networking
Interesting new research has emerged from an unlikely source around the use of enterprise social networking. The Times Education Supplement's publisher TSL Education released new research from a larger study snappily titled The Digital Staffroom: How Social Networking and resource sharing are transforming teaching, showing that online collaboration could save 14.3 million teaching hours a year by 2012.
The survey of 5000 teachers found that TESconnect, a newish social network and resource sharing platform for teachers, has benefited the community by allowing teachers to come together and share their lesson plans. Seems quite trivial, but to put it in perspective, the research said TESconnect users save an average of 31 minutes in preparation time a lesson by downloading existing resources.
Of course, the lessons learnt here - if you pardon the pun - can be applied outside the teaching sphere to most organisations. Marti Harris of Gartner told me the pharmaceutical industry is big on this kind of thing, as a way for professionals in this field to share information and so on. What's so useful about social networking platforms when applied to the enterprise space is that they provide a formal enough structure for knowledge management and the sharing of ideas, but are flexible and loosely structured enough that members don't feel restricted in any way.
As she mentioned, this kind of collaboration could be done by email or in a content management type way, but to do it via a social network is much more natural and likely therefore to encourage better results. And this is true whether it's being used internally within an organisation, in a customer-facing way, or cross-organisationally, as with the TES example.
Of course some organisations will fear letting their employees loose on something that is not yet fully proven in the enterprise space. Security concerns and privacy issues are real and must be addressed before you'll want to embark on a project similar to TESconnect. It's a fascinating area of growth though and is likely to take off in particular as a new generation of graduates enter the workforce, who have grown up using Facebook et al. Harris boldly predicted that elements of social software will become part of our desktop productivity suite before long - it will be interesting to see if she's right.
The survey of 5000 teachers found that TESconnect, a newish social network and resource sharing platform for teachers, has benefited the community by allowing teachers to come together and share their lesson plans. Seems quite trivial, but to put it in perspective, the research said TESconnect users save an average of 31 minutes in preparation time a lesson by downloading existing resources.
Of course, the lessons learnt here - if you pardon the pun - can be applied outside the teaching sphere to most organisations. Marti Harris of Gartner told me the pharmaceutical industry is big on this kind of thing, as a way for professionals in this field to share information and so on. What's so useful about social networking platforms when applied to the enterprise space is that they provide a formal enough structure for knowledge management and the sharing of ideas, but are flexible and loosely structured enough that members don't feel restricted in any way.
As she mentioned, this kind of collaboration could be done by email or in a content management type way, but to do it via a social network is much more natural and likely therefore to encourage better results. And this is true whether it's being used internally within an organisation, in a customer-facing way, or cross-organisationally, as with the TES example.
Of course some organisations will fear letting their employees loose on something that is not yet fully proven in the enterprise space. Security concerns and privacy issues are real and must be addressed before you'll want to embark on a project similar to TESconnect. It's a fascinating area of growth though and is likely to take off in particular as a new generation of graduates enter the workforce, who have grown up using Facebook et al. Harris boldly predicted that elements of social software will become part of our desktop productivity suite before long - it will be interesting to see if she's right.
Friday, 22 August 2008
Criminal data loss
On the 25 June 2008, the Cabinet Office decreed that all government departments would have to encrypt important information held on discs, USB sticks or laptops in its wide ranging review of security practices. This conclusion could be either seen as a sensible approach to managing the vast data government holds or, less charitably, a statement of the obvious.
If it were a statement of the obvious, it wasn't quite obvious enough. Data handing procedures in government: final report doesn't seem to have been read, or understood, or acted upon by the Cabinet Office's colleagues at the Home Office or by suppliers to the Home Office. Less than two months after the tome hit the streets, the UK government is once again mopping up after at another hugely embarrassing loss of data.
Back in February I wrote on this blog. Data loss has become a running story over the last few months. Not so much is the question "Has there been a data breach?" more a case of "Who now?"
And that "Who now?" question keeps being repeated. It is hard to think of a government department which hasn't mislaid data. There is something of a routine to all this: government department confesses to the latest cock up. This is followed by emerging of embarrassing details. Opposition politicians express their outrage, experts express their opinions and inquires are set in train. And then another data loss comes to light (repeat above).
In this latest example, my thought processes go like this: so at one stage the data on 84,000 criminals was encrypted, that's good. And then it was decoded, well OK maybe that was necessary so the data could be used. Then the decoded data was put on a memory stick. At this point I want to shout: "What did you do that for?"
The Times reported this morning that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was furious. Who can blame her? The BBC reported that PA Consulting has searched its premises and looked at CCTV recordings in an attempt to recover the missing memory stick. If the security guys and gals at PA start by questioning everyone who has a pocket, wallet, handbag or briefcase that should narrow it down. Unbelievable (again).
If it were a statement of the obvious, it wasn't quite obvious enough. Data handing procedures in government: final report doesn't seem to have been read, or understood, or acted upon by the Cabinet Office's colleagues at the Home Office or by suppliers to the Home Office. Less than two months after the tome hit the streets, the UK government is once again mopping up after at another hugely embarrassing loss of data.
Back in February I wrote on this blog. Data loss has become a running story over the last few months. Not so much is the question "Has there been a data breach?" more a case of "Who now?"
And that "Who now?" question keeps being repeated. It is hard to think of a government department which hasn't mislaid data. There is something of a routine to all this: government department confesses to the latest cock up. This is followed by emerging of embarrassing details. Opposition politicians express their outrage, experts express their opinions and inquires are set in train. And then another data loss comes to light (repeat above).
In this latest example, my thought processes go like this: so at one stage the data on 84,000 criminals was encrypted, that's good. And then it was decoded, well OK maybe that was necessary so the data could be used. Then the decoded data was put on a memory stick. At this point I want to shout: "What did you do that for?"
The Times reported this morning that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was furious. Who can blame her? The BBC reported that PA Consulting has searched its premises and looked at CCTV recordings in an attempt to recover the missing memory stick. If the security guys and gals at PA start by questioning everyone who has a pocket, wallet, handbag or briefcase that should narrow it down. Unbelievable (again).
Thursday, 21 August 2008
How well is Open Access material cited?
In recent weeks the preliminary results from a study carried out at Cornell University has shown that while research made freely available online by its author is accessed more, the Open Access material is not actually cited in greater numbers.
In case you didn't see this first time around, the study (Author-choice open access publishing in the biological and medical literature ) of 11 scientific and medical journals examined 11,000 articles published through the open access model. The abstract says (in part) it wanted to "analyse the positive and significant open access effects".
The findings have received some criticism not least because the study still has a number of years left to run. OA proponent, Peter Suber highlights some of these criticisms about the study's initial results here.
The next issue of IWR will examine the issues surrounding the findings a bit further. Tracey Caldwell has been busy speaking to both sides of the debate, including one of the study's authors Phil Davis. In the Scholarly Kitchen site this week, Davis said that he hoped readers didn't think he was "advocating against an author-choice program', going on to say 'scientists should understand that open access may not buy them more citations". The whole post is here.
In case you didn't see this first time around, the study (Author-choice open access publishing in the biological and medical literature ) of 11 scientific and medical journals examined 11,000 articles published through the open access model. The abstract says (in part) it wanted to "analyse the positive and significant open access effects".
The findings have received some criticism not least because the study still has a number of years left to run. OA proponent, Peter Suber highlights some of these criticisms about the study's initial results here.
The next issue of IWR will examine the issues surrounding the findings a bit further. Tracey Caldwell has been busy speaking to both sides of the debate, including one of the study's authors Phil Davis. In the Scholarly Kitchen site this week, Davis said that he hoped readers didn't think he was "advocating against an author-choice program', going on to say 'scientists should understand that open access may not buy them more citations". The whole post is here.
Monday, 18 August 2008
Is Web 3.0 coming?
The problem with writing about technology is that in most cases the vendors we talk to, the products we cover and the trends we predict are quite a long way from reality. Not that organisations today won't eventually catch up, but only a handful of first-movers will actually be reading our pieces and seriously thinking about investing in product x.
I've covered the semantic web in quite a lot of detail before, but it's always been at a very hypothetical level - difficult to get past concepts and cement it in reality. Well, according to John Davies, head of next generation web research at BT, that is about to change. The last 12 to 18 months has seen a flurry of activity among firms as they try to apply semantic web technology to solve business problems and improve efficiency, make more money and so on.
Now the RDF and OWL ontology languages have been firmly established by industry body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) we could be on the cusp of seeing real world applications of the technology. Yahoo for example recently announced its support for the semantic web with a new project called Search Monkey. The search giant will be asking web site providers to make available more structured data so that the firm can present it in a less random way. According to Davies in trials search enhanced by this technology recorded a 15 per cent increase in relevancy. It could be the boost Yahoo needs to challenge the mighty Google, which has so far stayed pretty quiet about semantic web standards, although you can be sure that this won't remain the case for very long.
Organisations can also use the technology internally to great effect, for example in intranets - it could boost knowledge management initiatives by enabling people to reach the information they need quickly. It could also help in information integration projects across multiple siloed databases, said Davies.
The great and good from the semantic web community will come together in Vienna for the European Semantic Technology Conference. It will be interesting to find out exactly how much of the audience is composed of business leaders and how many are academics - it could give us a telling insight into exactly how far we are from widespread use of the technology.
I've covered the semantic web in quite a lot of detail before, but it's always been at a very hypothetical level - difficult to get past concepts and cement it in reality. Well, according to John Davies, head of next generation web research at BT, that is about to change. The last 12 to 18 months has seen a flurry of activity among firms as they try to apply semantic web technology to solve business problems and improve efficiency, make more money and so on.
Now the RDF and OWL ontology languages have been firmly established by industry body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) we could be on the cusp of seeing real world applications of the technology. Yahoo for example recently announced its support for the semantic web with a new project called Search Monkey. The search giant will be asking web site providers to make available more structured data so that the firm can present it in a less random way. According to Davies in trials search enhanced by this technology recorded a 15 per cent increase in relevancy. It could be the boost Yahoo needs to challenge the mighty Google, which has so far stayed pretty quiet about semantic web standards, although you can be sure that this won't remain the case for very long.
Organisations can also use the technology internally to great effect, for example in intranets - it could boost knowledge management initiatives by enabling people to reach the information they need quickly. It could also help in information integration projects across multiple siloed databases, said Davies.
The great and good from the semantic web community will come together in Vienna for the European Semantic Technology Conference. It will be interesting to find out exactly how much of the audience is composed of business leaders and how many are academics - it could give us a telling insight into exactly how far we are from widespread use of the technology.
Sunday, 17 August 2008
A question of timing
Two conversations this week set me thinking about company information.The first discussion was with a finance director whose company had just posted some semi-decent results. The results partly covered the time before the credit crunch really started to bite. He was moaning slightly because the City had discounted the decent figures (and so the share price) his company had produced. The City analysts- despite his assurances to the contrary - were worried what the credit crunch was going to do to the company's performance for the next set of figures. When there is so much general gloom around we can all get enveloped in the fog of despond.
A day or two later another conversation about information, this time with some professional information providers. Company information in the UK relies heavily on statutorily posted data which is then taken, sliced, diced and generally analysed in whatever way you want. This is a highly sophisticated, quality-driven and established business model in the UK and is one of those generally unsung activities that underpins a successful modern knowledge-based economy. However even the information providers were worrying, not about the quality of the data which they had to work with, but with its timeliness. In a fast changing environment which we have witnessed recently, commercial conditions are highly volatile. The problem is how do we cope with this volatility? The idea of quarterly reporting as practiced by global corporations for most companies is complete overkill. On the other hand basing decisions on financials that are months if not years old, on the off-chance that they are still relevant today could be a dangerous game.
A day or two later another conversation about information, this time with some professional information providers. Company information in the UK relies heavily on statutorily posted data which is then taken, sliced, diced and generally analysed in whatever way you want. This is a highly sophisticated, quality-driven and established business model in the UK and is one of those generally unsung activities that underpins a successful modern knowledge-based economy. However even the information providers were worrying, not about the quality of the data which they had to work with, but with its timeliness. In a fast changing environment which we have witnessed recently, commercial conditions are highly volatile. The problem is how do we cope with this volatility? The idea of quarterly reporting as practiced by global corporations for most companies is complete overkill. On the other hand basing decisions on financials that are months if not years old, on the off-chance that they are still relevant today could be a dangerous game.
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