Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Friday, 29 January 2016
Friday, 9 January 2015
Annual Report
Welcome to our Annual Report - read about what we've been doing over the last year! Something for everyone - a review of achievements in our seven service areas, and some interesting facts and figures.
Thursday, 23 October 2014
Catch up...
Sorry folks - been really busy this week, and sometimes it gets in the way of blogging! Quick summary of the week so far....
A visit to Oxford for a conference organising committee meeting - still trying to finalise the speaker programme, and balance the budget. I have a very big speaker up my sleeve, which would be a real coup if we could get him. More news if he says yes....
Another meeting in Oxford as I am on the University IT committee as an external rep. Always interesting to see how another university does things, and I hope they find my input useful. Engagement with the academic community was a key part of the the discussion, and they had some good ideas about how to improve it.
In Sheffield I've had some good catch up meetings with colleagues and talked about all manner of things, unfortunately most of them I can't write about :-)
And finally, our latest student newsletter has just gone out, with articles about our new fantastic facilities in The Diamond, and asking for student involvement in designing them.
There's also articles about how to look after files, iTuneU on managed desktops, and the software we provide for students.
We send a monthly email out to all staff and students instead of ad-hoc emails, and if you're interested in what we say, you can find back copies of all of them here.
A visit to Oxford for a conference organising committee meeting - still trying to finalise the speaker programme, and balance the budget. I have a very big speaker up my sleeve, which would be a real coup if we could get him. More news if he says yes....
Another meeting in Oxford as I am on the University IT committee as an external rep. Always interesting to see how another university does things, and I hope they find my input useful. Engagement with the academic community was a key part of the the discussion, and they had some good ideas about how to improve it.
In Sheffield I've had some good catch up meetings with colleagues and talked about all manner of things, unfortunately most of them I can't write about :-)
And finally, our latest student newsletter has just gone out, with articles about our new fantastic facilities in The Diamond, and asking for student involvement in designing them.
There's also articles about how to look after files, iTuneU on managed desktops, and the software we provide for students.
We send a monthly email out to all staff and students instead of ad-hoc emails, and if you're interested in what we say, you can find back copies of all of them here.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Anonymous hack, or do they?
Yesterday I took part in some training for University Incident Managers in how to handle the media if you're in the middle of an incident. I'm one of about 10 people who are trained to handle a University major incident, and although we wouldn't expect to be key spokespeople, we might be expected to give some sort of interview, and there's always the chance we could be "doorstepped".
Although the day was fun, and we had lots of laughs in our small group of 5, it was also very scary, mainly because it was so realistic! It was run by two professional broadcast journalists, and we had to take part in interviews which were recorded and then played back and pulled apart. It didn't help that the "incident" was an IT security one, so I got very special treatment! First up we were given a briefing that there were reports that "Anonymous" had hacked our system and published lots of data - usernames and passwords, sensitive research information, credit card details - anything you could think of that you wouldn't want published. With only a small amount of information we had to do a TV interview where we were asked very probing questions. We all did it and it was then played back and we analysed how we'd all done. As the IT Director, to the opening question 'this is a very worrying situation isn't it?", I answered "Yes, it is a very worrying situation". Of course it would have been for me (in real life I would have been considering whether to resign or not....), but it was completely the wrong answer. I'm pleased to say I recovered eventually. After lots of discussion we did two more interviews - a "down the line" one, where you are in one studio and the interviewer is somewhere else. And a simulated live radio interview on BBC Figve live with a very aggressive presenter which was really tough. My opening question was "are you going to resign?"
Although the day was fun, and we had lots of laughs in our small group of 5, it was also very scary, mainly because it was so realistic! It was run by two professional broadcast journalists, and we had to take part in interviews which were recorded and then played back and pulled apart. It didn't help that the "incident" was an IT security one, so I got very special treatment! First up we were given a briefing that there were reports that "Anonymous" had hacked our system and published lots of data - usernames and passwords, sensitive research information, credit card details - anything you could think of that you wouldn't want published. With only a small amount of information we had to do a TV interview where we were asked very probing questions. We all did it and it was then played back and we analysed how we'd all done. As the IT Director, to the opening question 'this is a very worrying situation isn't it?", I answered "Yes, it is a very worrying situation". Of course it would have been for me (in real life I would have been considering whether to resign or not....), but it was completely the wrong answer. I'm pleased to say I recovered eventually. After lots of discussion we did two more interviews - a "down the line" one, where you are in one studio and the interviewer is somewhere else. And a simulated live radio interview on BBC Figve live with a very aggressive presenter which was really tough. My opening question was "are you going to resign?"
Of course, the scenario eventually played out to reveal that there had been no major security breach, and that what had happened was that a departmental site developed by an academic, outside of our central systems had been compromised. There had been a data breach, but it had been contained and our central systems had remained secure. Totally
fictitious of course...
An excellent day, and I do feel better prepared to face the media. As long as I can remember to slow down, and not say "Absolutely"
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
A good read...
Welcome to the latest version of our Newsletter - MyCiCSNews.
Download it and read about engaging your students with new improved MOLE, Sheffield on iTunesU, supporting research and big data, and the review of our student information system.
There's an article on identity and why it is so strategically important to the University, as well as one on our staff creative media suite. Find out about our new, longer, stronger passwords, and things to do with Google groups.
We tell you about work we've been doing in CiCS looking at providing excellent customer service, and there's a timeline of when all of our projects should hit your desktop.
Good bedtime reading :-)
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Latest myCiCSnews
Also released today is our latest newsletter - myCiCSnews. We only do a couple of these a year as we send out a monthly email to staff and students.
This latest edition includes articles on MySustainablePrint, the Student eFile, the Integrated Comms project, The Process Improvement Unit and our Timetabling Team, as well as many others - a great read. You can download it here.
This latest edition includes articles on MySustainablePrint, the Student eFile, the Integrated Comms project, The Process Improvement Unit and our Timetabling Team, as well as many others - a great read. You can download it here.
Friday, 14 February 2014
Changing Landscapes
Yesterday I gave the opening presentation at the UCISA Changing Landscapes event organised by the Staff Development Group and held here in Sheffield. My job was really to set the scene for the day, and I decided to outline what the "Changing Landscape" was from my perspective as an IT Director, the way these changes are affecting how we deliver services, and the impact on the skills needed by our staff and students.
As usual, I enjoyed giving the presentation, despite staying up late the night before writing it - it doesn't matter how much notice you give me (almost a year in this case), I'll still be finishing it off
right up to actually standing up and talking! Changing Landscapes was perhaps an appropriate title for a conference given the effects of the weather at the moment! The main trends I covered were:
To illustrate consumerisation of IT I like to find some gadgets that are around, or just being developed - a sensor in a babies nappy with tweets you when it needs changing, a football with a sensor inside to tell you how to improve your game, an internet enabled fridge which send recipes depending on what's in it to your internet enabled fridge. These all go to make up the Internet of Things I mentioned the other day, or the Internet of Useless Things as someone referred to it yesterday....
We had some interesting stats on mobile, where the number of students owning tablets or eReaders has gone up from 7% to 29% in one year. We are definitely entering the post PC era, and its expected that tablet sales will outstrip PC sales sometime this year. A recent Gartner prediction is that by 2017 there will be more words typed on glass than on keyboards. And the iPad was only released in April 2010.
I like to showcase a bit of what we're doing here in Sheffield, so I showed how we use social media to interact with staff and students, using our Twitter feed and Facebook pages as examples where our aim is to have a conversation, and not use them merely to give out notifications. And we're looking to engage with innovative videos and infographics. No-one can forget our Save it Like a Hero video (which despite much criticism from within the department has been a huge success with the audience it was aimed at - students), and today we have a Valentine's theme to our tweets and posts - Fall in Love with Safe Computing. Sweet.
The talk was filmed, so I'll post a link when it's up, just in case anyone is interested in watching it.
As usual, I enjoyed giving the presentation, despite staying up late the night before writing it - it doesn't matter how much notice you give me (almost a year in this case), I'll still be finishing it off right up to actually standing up and talking! Changing Landscapes was perhaps an appropriate title for a conference given the effects of the weather at the moment! The main trends I covered were:
- Consumerisation
- Mobility
- Cloud
- Social Media
To illustrate consumerisation of IT I like to find some gadgets that are around, or just being developed - a sensor in a babies nappy with tweets you when it needs changing, a football with a sensor inside to tell you how to improve your game, an internet enabled fridge which send recipes depending on what's in it to your internet enabled fridge. These all go to make up the Internet of Things I mentioned the other day, or the Internet of Useless Things as someone referred to it yesterday....
We had some interesting stats on mobile, where the number of students owning tablets or eReaders has gone up from 7% to 29% in one year. We are definitely entering the post PC era, and its expected that tablet sales will outstrip PC sales sometime this year. A recent Gartner prediction is that by 2017 there will be more words typed on glass than on keyboards. And the iPad was only released in April 2010.
I like to showcase a bit of what we're doing here in Sheffield, so I showed how we use social media to interact with staff and students, using our Twitter feed and Facebook pages as examples where our aim is to have a conversation, and not use them merely to give out notifications. And we're looking to engage with innovative videos and infographics. No-one can forget our Save it Like a Hero video (which despite much criticism from within the department has been a huge success with the audience it was aimed at - students), and today we have a Valentine's theme to our tweets and posts - Fall in Love with Safe Computing. Sweet.
The talk was filmed, so I'll post a link when it's up, just in case anyone is interested in watching it.
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
Funding letter, comms and connected devices
Yesterday morning we had our UEB (University Executive Board) and Heads of Department Forum. Had a regular catch up from the VC (or acting in this case) and it was noted that since the Autumn statement where various things relating to HE were announced, including the lifting of the cap on student recruitment, we had heard - nothing. No letter from BIS to HEFCE signed "love Dave and Vince". But lo and behold, it arrived yesterday afternoon. I spotted it on twitter, were it was live tweeted, 140 characters at a time, by the The Times Higher, who looked as thought they had ripped it up and given it to 3 different journalists who did a stirling job in getting the news out. Nothing really unexpected - the reduction in funding was expected as we finally transition to the new fees regime, although there was a slightly bizarre increase in capital funding. If you're more interested in its length rather than it content, then the best analysis of it together with15 years of grant letter funding, is in this great blog post by @registrarism, or Paul Greatrix from Nottingham University.
Today I was at the Professional Service Executive, where as well as the HEFCE letter and our planning priorities, we had a presentation on our new internal communications strategy - One University. Lots of exciting stuff in it. Reclaiming email as a useful tool rather than for sending information no-one is interested is only a small part of it but one which I'm sure will be welcomed!
Rest of the day has been spent writing a presentation for later in the week, and in doing so I came
across this site:
It's the Wolfram connected devices project whose goal is to provide a definitive, curated, source of systematic knowledge about connected devices. Quite an undertaking!
Today I was at the Professional Service Executive, where as well as the HEFCE letter and our planning priorities, we had a presentation on our new internal communications strategy - One University. Lots of exciting stuff in it. Reclaiming email as a useful tool rather than for sending information no-one is interested is only a small part of it but one which I'm sure will be welcomed!
Rest of the day has been spent writing a presentation for later in the week, and in doing so I came
across this site:
It's the Wolfram connected devices project whose goal is to provide a definitive, curated, source of systematic knowledge about connected devices. Quite an undertaking!
Tuesday, 21 January 2014
Collaboration and communication
Yesterday I got together with colleagues from 3 Universities who, like us, are reviewing their student systems. All of us coming from a different starting point, and all at different stages of our projects, but a lot to learn from each other. We'll be keeping in touch during our projects, sharing information, letting our project teams network with teach other, and jointly getting a feel from suppliers about their products, roadmaps and capabilities.
Later in the day I talked to the rest of the exec team about planning for next year, and had a very productive meeting about a review of our Process Improvement Unit which we need to do over the next few weeks to secure its continued funding.
Today was one of those days where my diary was full of end to end meetings - some requiring teleportation to get from opposite ends of the campus in no time.
One of them was looking at our new portal and how we keep developing it. Most of our discussion was about how we improve the way we target communication to staff and students who actually need or want the information, rather than blanket staff and student emails. We want to reduce the amount of emails, and use our portal to both push messages and allow customers to pull the ones they're interested in. Hopefully it will benefit the senders and receivers of information if we get it right.
Later in the day I talked to the rest of the exec team about planning for next year, and had a very productive meeting about a review of our Process Improvement Unit which we need to do over the next few weeks to secure its continued funding.
Today was one of those days where my diary was full of end to end meetings - some requiring teleportation to get from opposite ends of the campus in no time.
One of them was looking at our new portal and how we keep developing it. Most of our discussion was about how we improve the way we target communication to staff and students who actually need or want the information, rather than blanket staff and student emails. We want to reduce the amount of emails, and use our portal to both push messages and allow customers to pull the ones they're interested in. Hopefully it will benefit the senders and receivers of information if we get it right.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Back to work
Back at work this week after an amazing holiday in Jamaica - not normally away at this time of year, but last year we got hit by Hurricane Sandy, and they offered us a free holiday to make up for it. It would have been rude to say no.
Interesting to watch business continuity plans swing into operation on our way out - we were at Gatwick when they suffered a power cut which brought their computer systems down. People with loud hailers appeared telling people what gate to go to, all tickets were checked manually, and although we were lucky and got on the plane, just after the cut, our bags weren't so lucky. Each one taken out of the container by the side of the plane and manually checked against a list. three and a half hours later, we took off. Interesting to see how a complex organisation can cope without its systems, but so much slower.
Some good news to get back to as for the third year running Sheffield's topped the list in the student barometer for student satisfaction for IT Support - I'll post more detail when I have it, but well done everyone.
Spent most of this week catching up, and also gave a telephone interview to a journalist about the changing role of the CIO as technology changes. I always out the phone down after these and think "what did I say?" Well, I hope it makes an interesting read when it comes out. It's always fun seeing how journalists interpret what you say.
Here's the result of the last one I did. Bears some resemblance to what I remember saying :-)
Other things this week include a catch up with our finance manager about our budget, and some discussions about the data issues around a research proposal.
It was also Senate - our academic governing body - where we had some really interesting debate around changes to our curriculum structure. Also about the environment we're in at the moment - there's constant change, there's no HE Bill so we're being ruled by a series of ministerial statements, and the "GoveEffect"is affecting everything about our admissions. And our Vice Chancellor quoted Russell Brand when talking about immigration!
So, as it's Halloween, here's a scary fact to finish on from our comms team - our students print 5.6m pages a year.
Interesting to watch business continuity plans swing into operation on our way out - we were at Gatwick when they suffered a power cut which brought their computer systems down. People with loud hailers appeared telling people what gate to go to, all tickets were checked manually, and although we were lucky and got on the plane, just after the cut, our bags weren't so lucky. Each one taken out of the container by the side of the plane and manually checked against a list. three and a half hours later, we took off. Interesting to see how a complex organisation can cope without its systems, but so much slower.
Some good news to get back to as for the third year running Sheffield's topped the list in the student barometer for student satisfaction for IT Support - I'll post more detail when I have it, but well done everyone.
Spent most of this week catching up, and also gave a telephone interview to a journalist about the changing role of the CIO as technology changes. I always out the phone down after these and think "what did I say?" Well, I hope it makes an interesting read when it comes out. It's always fun seeing how journalists interpret what you say.Here's the result of the last one I did. Bears some resemblance to what I remember saying :-)
Other things this week include a catch up with our finance manager about our budget, and some discussions about the data issues around a research proposal.
It was also Senate - our academic governing body - where we had some really interesting debate around changes to our curriculum structure. Also about the environment we're in at the moment - there's constant change, there's no HE Bill so we're being ruled by a series of ministerial statements, and the "GoveEffect"is affecting everything about our admissions. And our Vice Chancellor quoted Russell Brand when talking about immigration!
So, as it's Halloween, here's a scary fact to finish on from our comms team - our students print 5.6m pages a year.
Thursday, 5 September 2013
Plain English
I posted yesterday about the Design Principles adopted by the GDS. Well, I've also been shown the content principles, and in particular a list of banned words if you want to write in plain English. Here's a few - see how many you regularly use in web pages or other comms - it's quite scary - I'm very guilty.....
agenda (unless it is for a meeting)
advancing
collaborate (use ‘working with’)
combating
commit/pledge (we need to be more specific – we’re either doing something or we’re not)
deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like ‘improvements’ or ‘priorities’)
deploy (unless it is military or software)
dialogue (we speak to people)
disincentivise (and incentivise)
drive (you can only drive vehicles; not schemes or people)
drive out (unless it is cattle)
empower
facilitate (instead, say something specific about how you are helping)
foster (unless it is children)
going forward (unlikely we are giving travel directions)
impact (as a verb)
in order to (superfluous – don’t use it)
key (unless it unlocks something. A subject/thing isn’t ‘key’ – it’s probably ‘important’)
land (as a verb. Only use if you are talking about aircraft)
leverage (unless in the financial sense)
one-stop shop (we're not a retail outlet)
overarching
progress (as a verb – what are you actually doing?)
promote (unless you are talking about an ad campaign or some other marketing promotion)t
slimming down (processes don’t diet – we are probably removing x amount of paperwork, etc)
streamline
strengthening (unless it’s strengthening bridges or other structures)
tackling (unless it is rugby, football or some other sport)
transforming (what are you actually doing to change it?)
utilise
agenda (unless it is for a meeting)
advancing
collaborate (use ‘working with’)
combating
commit/pledge (we need to be more specific – we’re either doing something or we’re not)
deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like ‘improvements’ or ‘priorities’)
deploy (unless it is military or software)
dialogue (we speak to people)
disincentivise (and incentivise)
drive (you can only drive vehicles; not schemes or people)
drive out (unless it is cattle)
empower
facilitate (instead, say something specific about how you are helping)
foster (unless it is children)
going forward (unlikely we are giving travel directions)
impact (as a verb)
in order to (superfluous – don’t use it)
key (unless it unlocks something. A subject/thing isn’t ‘key’ – it’s probably ‘important’)
land (as a verb. Only use if you are talking about aircraft)
leverage (unless in the financial sense)
one-stop shop (we're not a retail outlet)
overarching
progress (as a verb – what are you actually doing?)
promote (unless you are talking about an ad campaign or some other marketing promotion)t
slimming down (processes don’t diet – we are probably removing x amount of paperwork, etc)
streamline
strengthening (unless it’s strengthening bridges or other structures)
tackling (unless it is rugby, football or some other sport)
transforming (what are you actually doing to change it?)
utilise
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Annual Report
Time to review the past academic year, take stock of what we've achieved and produce our Annual Report. You can read it here (optimised for tablets), or download a copy as a pdf here. Each year we try and find something new to include, and this year there's a lot more facts and figures, which I hope you all find interesting.
Thanks to the Comms team for pulling it together and to the Service Managers for the content - as always I'm happy to receive any comments on it.
Monday, 1 July 2013
Working together
One of the most important aspects to delivering good services is collaboration and teamwork - we couldn't do our jobs without it. It's not just teamwork within CiCS, but
across all of the departments we work with. Most of the time
everything works well, but very occasionally relationships breakdown,
different cultures collide or communication fails. So, you have to keep
working at it, and we've got some great initiatives being implemented or
piloted. The Sheffield Leader programme is management development which brings cohorts of staff together from across the institution. In some of the levels staff work on projects together and I'm really pleased that one of the projects which included a member of our staff has received funding from the Leadership Foundation - there's a great article about it here, as well of some great pictures of Janine. The project has been looking at how academic and professional service staff can understand each other better.Carrying on with that idea, we've been piloting a work shadowing scheme with 10 staff from CiCS and the Faculty of Arts shadowing each other. Today we had a "Meet the Department" session which brought together a mixture of staff from the Faculty of Arts and CiCS. We did a few presentations - starting with an introduction to the department and who we are, where we are and what we do, followed by a great session on "The Hidden World of Infrastructure". A difficult subject to get across to non technical people, but important that the complexity of what we do is understood. Some great fact and figures - we have about 43,000 devices connected to our wired network, and in the last year we've had 100,000 unique wireless devices connect. That's at least 2 per registered user. The extent of our server virtualisation is quite impressive - 7 years ago we had 100 physical servers, each running a service. Now we have 800 services running on 10 physical servers. Soon that will be reduced to 2. It was brought home to me when I went on one of our lunchtime tours of the data centre, (which proved very popular), as I'm not normally allowed down there (I have an urge to fiddle with things....) and I saw all of the empty racks!
Other talks included one on shared service development which explained the collaborative way we run projects and develop new services, and one on incident management and business continuity. Two important messages to come out of this one- Don't Panic and Call Control, and Don't let your pants cause a power cut. Finally we had a presentation how we support learning and teaching technologies - everything from providing and managing 1700 open access PCs, helping to run the Information commons, providing AV services, lecture capture facilities, supporting the VLE and providing creative media facilities for students. During the day we had opportunities for staff to network, and overall it was a very good event, and we hope to do it again, either to other specific faculties or as an open event.
Monday, 8 April 2013
Medicine, comms, waste and value!
Today was our departmental meeting - didn't start well as the coffee didn't arrive in time, and at 9.30am that's important! However, things soon got a lot better, and we had a great presentation from our PVC for Medicine, Dentistry and Health on the challenges facing a faculty so closely interlinked with the NHS. We also heard a lot about their strengths - in particular ScHARR - our centre for health related research which does much of the research into public health that you'll see reported in the national media. A very good overview of one of our most complex faculties.
We also had a presentation from our comms manager about how to find out what's happening in CiCS. We have our own Google site - Just for CiCS where we gather together everything that people should need to know. The news is collected in two main sections - About Work and About People - as we include social news as well as work related.
The news can be updated within minutes of a member of the comms team hearing about something, and we have a comms flow which includes automated tweets and facebook updates:
So, news is spread round the department first via J4C, then if it is relevant to the rest of the University to our news blog, and then if it's relevant to students, to our Facebook page. Finally, every month we send an email newsletter out to all staff and students which is a digest of the most relevant news for them.
I'm sure we don't get it right in all cases, but we'd be interested to have feedback and any suggestions for improvements.
Finally we had an overview from the Process Improvement Unit of two things that are very important to them and to all of us - Waste, which we need to get rid of, and Value, which we need to add!
We also had a presentation from our comms manager about how to find out what's happening in CiCS. We have our own Google site - Just for CiCS where we gather together everything that people should need to know. The news is collected in two main sections - About Work and About People - as we include social news as well as work related.
The news can be updated within minutes of a member of the comms team hearing about something, and we have a comms flow which includes automated tweets and facebook updates:
I'm sure we don't get it right in all cases, but we'd be interested to have feedback and any suggestions for improvements.
Finally we had an overview from the Process Improvement Unit of two things that are very important to them and to all of us - Waste, which we need to get rid of, and Value, which we need to add!
Friday, 15 February 2013
Unified comms and staff survey
This morning we had a demonstration of a technology which could integrate our voice platform (telephones!) with Google apps. We need to upgrade our voicemail very soon, and this sort of technology might be an appropriate way to do it.
If implemented, we would be able to receive voicemail though our gmail inbox, ether as an MP3 file to listen to, or transcribed as a message. As the systems are integrated, when the message is accessed via mail, it is recorded as being read on the phone. Emails can also be sent to the phone, and listened to there. Faxes can be sent and recived as PDFs in a browser - I was surprised to learn that faxes are still in use - so we could use this sort of technology to replace them.
Presence awareness is included, using integration with Google calendar, and a lot of voice features including voice access to applications, one click dialling, soft-phone support and call following to different locations, devices and numbers. All very exciting. Lots to think about before we decide what to implement, but I can see great benefits in this sort of technology.
This afternoon we had a meeting with the company who carried out our recent staff satisfaction survey. We had some feedback and discussion about the actual survey - its length, the questions asked and the response rate, and also looked at the responses, both the satisfaction ratings and the verbatim comments. We're starting to share and discuss the data in the department, and will be putting together an action plan to address the issues raised. What is always frustrating is an issue which is annoying or frustrating for our customers which is mainly outside of our control. Issues with browser compatibility from some of our vendors for example.
The verbatim comments are always useful, often giving us an insight into why people answered as they did. Some of them are however a little obtuse. I am struggling to understand one about this blog which described it as an inappropriate use of hard-raised charitable donations to the medical school. Given that it is hosted by Google for free, written in Blogger which is free, and the date-stamps for the last 10 entries show that 9 of them were written after 5pm, and the vast majority late in the evening in my own time, I'd love to know how they got to that conclusion. Perhaps I should ask for a donation towards it... :-)
Have a nice weekend folks.
If implemented, we would be able to receive voicemail though our gmail inbox, ether as an MP3 file to listen to, or transcribed as a message. As the systems are integrated, when the message is accessed via mail, it is recorded as being read on the phone. Emails can also be sent to the phone, and listened to there. Faxes can be sent and recived as PDFs in a browser - I was surprised to learn that faxes are still in use - so we could use this sort of technology to replace them.
Presence awareness is included, using integration with Google calendar, and a lot of voice features including voice access to applications, one click dialling, soft-phone support and call following to different locations, devices and numbers. All very exciting. Lots to think about before we decide what to implement, but I can see great benefits in this sort of technology.
This afternoon we had a meeting with the company who carried out our recent staff satisfaction survey. We had some feedback and discussion about the actual survey - its length, the questions asked and the response rate, and also looked at the responses, both the satisfaction ratings and the verbatim comments. We're starting to share and discuss the data in the department, and will be putting together an action plan to address the issues raised. What is always frustrating is an issue which is annoying or frustrating for our customers which is mainly outside of our control. Issues with browser compatibility from some of our vendors for example.
The verbatim comments are always useful, often giving us an insight into why people answered as they did. Some of them are however a little obtuse. I am struggling to understand one about this blog which described it as an inappropriate use of hard-raised charitable donations to the medical school. Given that it is hosted by Google for free, written in Blogger which is free, and the date-stamps for the last 10 entries show that 9 of them were written after 5pm, and the vast majority late in the evening in my own time, I'd love to know how they got to that conclusion. Perhaps I should ask for a donation towards it... :-)
Have a nice weekend folks.
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Hashtags and silliness
Business Continuity Operations Group this morning (BCOG), where most of the business arose out of the recent exercise we carried out. We're particularly focusing now on getting departments to carry out Business Impact Assessments, and write their BC plans to fit in with them. Also some procedures we need to clarify - we spent some time discussing how to evacuate a building when there isn't a fire, so you cant use the fire alarms. An interesting one. Run round with a loud hailer shouting "GET OUT" was one suggestion. At the end of BCOG we always go round the table and note down Incidents and Near-Misses. This can cover everything from a power outage in the student residences, to bad weather, to a serious student illness, to systems related incidents.
We were pleased to report that this morning we'd had a "near miss", (not a good description), and not an incident. Tuesday night we had a serious hardware failure on one of our filers. Failover to the other one worked perfectly, but as we were then vunerable and running at risk we decided we had to repair it asap. Parts were brought up by the engineer yesterday afternoon, and taking into account what exams were being held and when, and availability of staff, an emergency CAB yesterday decided to do the work early this morning. We thought it was low risk - but obviously very high impact - if the filers didn't come back properly we would lose many systems. However, we decided the risk was higher after the engineer told us that they'd only done this twice before, and it had failed both times. Cue the taking down of our VLE, increased resistance on the web site, more people around, an earlier start time and ---- a hashtag!!
I woke up early, and with myiPhone under the bedcovers followed the progress of #fixthefiler (sorry to everyone else who'd got up at unearthly hours to come in). We're very lucky that nearly everyone involved tweets, so I got a running commentary, and all the banter that goes with it. There was some debate about the value of a hashtag, and we felt it definitely increases the team spirit - as well as keeping the people who follow us amused. Our official twitter feed tweeted regular updates, and everything went swimmingly well, apart from a mysterious orange light which appeared on one of the filers. But, the VLE and other things we'd taken down as a precaution were brought back, and the team had done a great job. But, there was more to come. In order that they could keep an eye on the mysterious orange light, a webcam was pointed at the server, and a new hashtag was born - #filercam. For most of the day, some of us have had a screen open showing a filer with a small orange light on it. Quite hypnotic, but also very silly. Social media is now an integrated part of our communications, and is so valuable, but its good that it can also be a bit silly at time. We all need a bit of fun in our lives.
We were pleased to report that this morning we'd had a "near miss", (not a good description), and not an incident. Tuesday night we had a serious hardware failure on one of our filers. Failover to the other one worked perfectly, but as we were then vunerable and running at risk we decided we had to repair it asap. Parts were brought up by the engineer yesterday afternoon, and taking into account what exams were being held and when, and availability of staff, an emergency CAB yesterday decided to do the work early this morning. We thought it was low risk - but obviously very high impact - if the filers didn't come back properly we would lose many systems. However, we decided the risk was higher after the engineer told us that they'd only done this twice before, and it had failed both times. Cue the taking down of our VLE, increased resistance on the web site, more people around, an earlier start time and ---- a hashtag!!
I woke up early, and with myiPhone under the bedcovers followed the progress of #fixthefiler (sorry to everyone else who'd got up at unearthly hours to come in). We're very lucky that nearly everyone involved tweets, so I got a running commentary, and all the banter that goes with it. There was some debate about the value of a hashtag, and we felt it definitely increases the team spirit - as well as keeping the people who follow us amused. Our official twitter feed tweeted regular updates, and everything went swimmingly well, apart from a mysterious orange light which appeared on one of the filers. But, the VLE and other things we'd taken down as a precaution were brought back, and the team had done a great job. But, there was more to come. In order that they could keep an eye on the mysterious orange light, a webcam was pointed at the server, and a new hashtag was born - #filercam. For most of the day, some of us have had a screen open showing a filer with a small orange light on it. Quite hypnotic, but also very silly. Social media is now an integrated part of our communications, and is so valuable, but its good that it can also be a bit silly at time. We all need a bit of fun in our lives.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Just for CiCS
One of the issues that comes up a lot in any large, complex organisation is communication. Here in CiCS we have over 220 staff in 6 different locations, and it can be a difficult to get it right - not least because people have very different needs, both in what they want to see, and how they want to see it. One person's information overload is another's information desert. Some people want everything to come to them in an email, some see email as a distraction or an old fashioned way of communicating, others have really taken to social media. We try to make information available as widely as we can, and there a number of good sources to go to - but that's not to say we can't improve.
There also has to be an element of proactivity - people have to go and find things, not wait for it to be just given to them - this is a University after all :-) Nothing winds me up more than someone saying "I didn't know about that", when I've written a blog post about it, or "nobody told me", when there's been something in Just for CiCS. Just for CiCS is our internal Google site, set up for the department, which has a lead story, and then various posts about work and about people. The work stories are updated frequently, sometimes daily, and the people ones every month, when we also produce a paper version of the site for those people without easy access to computers. It's an excellent source of news about the department - and I always find out things I didn't know before.
I hope this blog provides an update of the things I do and am thinking about, and the Learning Technologies one is excellent. There's also the monthly email to all staff and students in the University.
But, as I said earlier, there will always be things that we can improve, and the last staff survey indicated that some staff didn't always know how or why decisions had been taken, or felt fully engaged with the department's direction. So, we're meeting in the next few days to look at putting together a staff engagement strategy and implementation programme to improve that.
Finally, I have heard the odd comment along the lines of 'I'm too busy to read that", or I've got too much to do in my job to find out about that". That always makes me think about Stephen Covey and his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. His 7th is "Sharpen the Saw". This is based on the analogy of a woodcutter who is sawing for several days straight and is becoming less and less productive. The process of cutting dulls the blade, and when someone suggests that he stops to sharpen the saw, he says 'I can't I'm too busy sawing...." We all need to take a break and sharpen our saws occasionally.
Friday, 21 December 2012
Keep Calm and Call Control
A week of catch up meetings and Christmas lunches, including the infamous CiCS Christmas party. Photos will be posted as soon as I've decided where to host them!
Today we gave our customers some Christmas reading and published our newsletter, which you can download here.
The article on our new major incident plan caused some amusement, and a rather good mock up what a poster advertising it might look like was soon mocked up by one of our twitter readers (thanks James...). Lots of good articles in there including ones on our new desktop, migration to our new VLE, information security, research computing and using Google Apps in teaching. We produce this about twice a year, and an email one every month. You can see all of our back copies here.
So, that's it for a couple of weeks. Have a very Happy Christmas and may you all have health, peace and happiness in the New Year. See you in 2013.
Today we gave our customers some Christmas reading and published our newsletter, which you can download here.
So, that's it for a couple of weeks. Have a very Happy Christmas and may you all have health, peace and happiness in the New Year. See you in 2013.
Friday, 29 June 2012
Annual Report and Newsletter
Here's the Currents version on my iPad, I think it looks great:
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Culture Communication and Change
I'm at Networkshop at the moment, having just given a talk on moving to the cloud, will post about that later.
I'm currently in the closing session delivered by the University of Cambridge on Culture, Communication and Change.
They have carried out an 8 month project looking at the impact of Communication and Information Technology on people.
Today for the first time, young people are entering the world of work from HE having always used computers and the Internet.
Also, those entering retirement have access to low cost computers and high speed internet. Both groups are demanding new things from their environment, but how is our culture changing?
There are concerns and speculation in the press and science on the impact of technology on our ability to think and socialise. A common phrase, is "technology is melting our brains".
The impact of technology on how we live our lives, at home and work, young and old, can only be measured by thorough research. Also, had to be done quickly to react to press speculation.
So, they set out to get a better understanding of the role that communications technology plays in modern life, and also to look at technology use at an international level. Had teams working on the study in the UK, US, China and Australia. Interesting that they used an engineering team to do what was essentially a social science project.
They carried out interviews with experts and thought leaders and a literature review, before doing interviews and diary studies with families as well as a wider on-line survey.
So, what did they find?
Face to face communication is favoured most, and in the UK more than in other countries. 65%.
China prefers IM more than any other country, but largely due to pricing structure.
Children are big users of social networks, but they use them as part of a whole range of methods, using whatever's appropriate for the time. They concluded that communication skills were enhanced, not depressed.
Generally people do not feel overwhelmed by technology.
36% of adults and 43% of young people take steps to consciously moderate their technology use
Technology facilitates many different kinds of communication
4 in 5 people in the UK feel in control of their use of technology
60% people feel they spend too much time using communications technology
1 in 3 people has felt significantly overwhelmed by communications technology which is negatively correlate with life satisfaction
Using technology in an unmoderated way can disrupt family life (eg using mobile phone at meal time)
Lovely quote from one of the teenagers interviewed when she realised how much time spent she spent using technology "it's the Blackberry's fault though"
These are the recommendations they came up,with, lifted from the report executive summary :
Be aware
Before you can make any changes, you need to understand how you and your family are using technology. Many families who took part in the research were surprised and at times dismayed by their technology habits. Keeping a log of your family's use of technology will help you identify good and bad habits and also changes you may want to make.
Location, location, location
Think about where technology is located in the home. Parents often complained that their children abandoned family time to go on the computer or video game console in their room. Similarly, children reported feeling that they lost out on parents' attention when they were 'quickly' checking up on work in the home office. Keeping computers and consoles in a central location will allow your family to share what they are doing online, or at least all be in the same place while using technology.
Have rules
Set some boundaries about how, when and where technology is used. Our research showed that rules around technology usage reduced anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed. The rules are up to you: try removing technology from the dinner table, organise a family games evening either with or without technology, use parental controls to manage use of social networks or the time spent on the family computer, or agree limits on the number of text messages sent in a day. Just remember, whatever rules are introduced, it's important to talk them through and agree them as a family - and parents sometimes need just as many rules as children!
Education
Be a good example: teach and demonstrate the importance of balance and safety in the way technology is used. It's important for parents to set good examples, so think about your own behaviour. For example, avoid checking your smart phone unnecessarily when with your family. It's easy for children to pick up bad habits from you. In addition, children are using technology at an increasingly early age and teaching safe and responsible use is vital from the outset, it's important to make sure your children are taking the right steps to keep themselves safe.
Find your Balance
Don't be concerned by overly positive or negative hype about communications technology. Every family and individual uses technology differently. We hope that this advice helps you find a healthy balance for you so that you have control of technology and are making the most of all forms of communication whether it's by phone, email, social media or face-to-face.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I'm currently in the closing session delivered by the University of Cambridge on Culture, Communication and Change.
They have carried out an 8 month project looking at the impact of Communication and Information Technology on people.
Today for the first time, young people are entering the world of work from HE having always used computers and the Internet.
Also, those entering retirement have access to low cost computers and high speed internet. Both groups are demanding new things from their environment, but how is our culture changing?
There are concerns and speculation in the press and science on the impact of technology on our ability to think and socialise. A common phrase, is "technology is melting our brains".
The impact of technology on how we live our lives, at home and work, young and old, can only be measured by thorough research. Also, had to be done quickly to react to press speculation.
So, they set out to get a better understanding of the role that communications technology plays in modern life, and also to look at technology use at an international level. Had teams working on the study in the UK, US, China and Australia. Interesting that they used an engineering team to do what was essentially a social science project.
They carried out interviews with experts and thought leaders and a literature review, before doing interviews and diary studies with families as well as a wider on-line survey.
So, what did they find?
Face to face communication is favoured most, and in the UK more than in other countries. 65%.
China prefers IM more than any other country, but largely due to pricing structure.
Children are big users of social networks, but they use them as part of a whole range of methods, using whatever's appropriate for the time. They concluded that communication skills were enhanced, not depressed.
Generally people do not feel overwhelmed by technology.
36% of adults and 43% of young people take steps to consciously moderate their technology use
Technology facilitates many different kinds of communication
4 in 5 people in the UK feel in control of their use of technology
60% people feel they spend too much time using communications technology
1 in 3 people has felt significantly overwhelmed by communications technology which is negatively correlate with life satisfaction
Using technology in an unmoderated way can disrupt family life (eg using mobile phone at meal time)
Lovely quote from one of the teenagers interviewed when she realised how much time spent she spent using technology "it's the Blackberry's fault though"
These are the recommendations they came up,with, lifted from the report executive summary :
Be aware
Before you can make any changes, you need to understand how you and your family are using technology. Many families who took part in the research were surprised and at times dismayed by their technology habits. Keeping a log of your family's use of technology will help you identify good and bad habits and also changes you may want to make.
Location, location, location
Think about where technology is located in the home. Parents often complained that their children abandoned family time to go on the computer or video game console in their room. Similarly, children reported feeling that they lost out on parents' attention when they were 'quickly' checking up on work in the home office. Keeping computers and consoles in a central location will allow your family to share what they are doing online, or at least all be in the same place while using technology.
Have rules
Set some boundaries about how, when and where technology is used. Our research showed that rules around technology usage reduced anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed. The rules are up to you: try removing technology from the dinner table, organise a family games evening either with or without technology, use parental controls to manage use of social networks or the time spent on the family computer, or agree limits on the number of text messages sent in a day. Just remember, whatever rules are introduced, it's important to talk them through and agree them as a family - and parents sometimes need just as many rules as children!
Education
Be a good example: teach and demonstrate the importance of balance and safety in the way technology is used. It's important for parents to set good examples, so think about your own behaviour. For example, avoid checking your smart phone unnecessarily when with your family. It's easy for children to pick up bad habits from you. In addition, children are using technology at an increasingly early age and teaching safe and responsible use is vital from the outset, it's important to make sure your children are taking the right steps to keep themselves safe.
Find your Balance
Don't be concerned by overly positive or negative hype about communications technology. Every family and individual uses technology differently. We hope that this advice helps you find a healthy balance for you so that you have control of technology and are making the most of all forms of communication whether it's by phone, email, social media or face-to-face.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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