The first chick....

After watching our peregrines incubating their 4 eggs for a few weeks, its exciting to see we've got a chick! Hatched sometime overnight, it's been hiding under the adults all day, but I managed to get a picture of it feeding about 4pm this afternoon.

So, that's productivity down for a while then :-)  I love watching them - keep up with them here, and the new camera will make for some great viewings.

But for now, this was filmed early this morning, just after the chick hatched. I think breakfast was being eaten....

George and Mildred are back....

Over the last three years we've been watching a pair of peregrine falcons on St Georges Church Tower nest and rear their young, thanks to a nest built by our colleagues in Estates and Facilities Management and a webcam installed by us. The original webcam gave a really good view of the nest box, but nothing else. So, thanks to some sterling work, again a joint effort between us and colleagues in EFM, a second webcam has been installed, further away so that you can see the nestbox, the perch and the ledge. This involved some delicate work at the top of the tower, including hanging upside down....

Given my fear of heights, not something I would attempt.

The second camera is giving some great views of the birds, and there's often one sitting on the perch, feathers rustling in the wind, looking out for a tasty pigeon.

Today we saw both the male and the female ripping something to shreds on the ledge, so I think we can safely say they're back.

Watch them for the next few months here.

What you looking at?

Nice long weekend away to start the week - camping. And yes, it did rain.

We've been thinking about Business Continuity Planning this week, and what it means to CiCS. Normally as Chair of the University Business Continuity Operations Group I think about what it means to the University, but this time we were thinking much closer to home. For the major systems we provide to the University its something we do as a matter of course, we build resilience, reliability, duplication, mirroring, failover, data storage and back up into almost everything we do. But there's a lot of other services we provide to the University, and other functions involved in keeping us as a department running that we need take another look at.

Yesterday I was at a UCISA Executive meeting where we talked a lot about the changes that are happening to UCISA  including changes to its charitable status and the establishment of a trading company. All very complex and I'm glad there are people on the committee who understand it!  A lot of other topics discussed, including a joint initiative between ourselves and Educause to look at the skills needed for a moden day CIO, and the continuation of our initiative on Action Learning Sets for Deputy and Assistant Directors. We also touched on our relationship with JISC and some of the changes happening there. The JISC funded Summer of Student Innovation, has been a success again with nearly 40 ideas  submitted, and voting on them is still open - get over there and vote for your favourite project.  UCISA are looking at doing something similar for staff which I'm sure will be equally as successful. I was also able to report that planning for the next UCISA Conference is going well, with 4 top class speakers already confirmed, and I'm awaiting responses from others.

In other news, our peregrine falcon chicks continue to grow, and have started to balance precariously on the edge of the nest and flap their wings. They're starting to look a little cuter now they're preending the scraggly down away. They're also rather curious!

The falcons are back

This week we've had a liaison meeting with our colleagues from the Library. Talked about a range of issues including Digital Preservation and identity management, as well as the future of our Virtual Learning Environment. That last one is an interesting question - will large, fairly monolithic software packages continue to dominate the VLE space, or will a variety of solutions exist, loosely connected into an environment for students to access learning materials? We already know that Google apps and YouTube are being used, and there's a number of other services emerging. Will be interesting to see what happens.

I also chaired a Business Continuity Operations Group - this is a group which looks at BC for the whole University and has representation from Professional Services and Faculties. We have a big work programme which we're gradually working through, and a pilot of Business Impact Assessments in departments is coming to a close, and will shortly be rolled out across the University. This will help departments with reviewing their BC plans, and also when updating their risk registers. Many of the actions in our work programme are the result of either reviews of real incidents (a recent fire is a good case in point), or simulated incidents. We hold these at a University level, and also for individual departments or groups of departments. I suspect its getting close to us having an IT simulated one, although we seem to get enough real ones to keep us on our toes. A rather devious ransomware attack is keeping some of us busy at the moment.....

And some good news - we're about to launch our new Creative Media Room for staff. It compliments the great facilities we have already for students, and everyone's welcome to drop in and see it next Friday between 1200 and 1400.

And finally, as its Friday - a picture of one of our Peregrine Falcons,  who've returned to the nesting platform.  Not sure if it's George or Mildred. You can keep a lookout for them here, and follow them on twitter (@peregrines2014), where a motion sensor on the camera should send you a tweet when they land.

Dazed and confused

Spent this afternoon in Equality and Diversity Board where we spent the first hour having a very interesting discussion about one of the University KPIs which is concerned with raising the number of female Professors. One of the most interesting discussion was why there is such a marked difference between the percentage of female academic professors, and the percentage of female professorial equivalent staff in the professional services which is much higher.  Is it the pressure of research and the metrics used in promotions, or different practices we have, or  the large pool we have for applicants? One of the biggest problems we have, and it will take a long time to solve, is the pool of female applicants in some disciplines - there just aren't enough women taking science subjects at school. Personally I can't understand it - science is brilliant and was my favourite subject, so what's changed? The way it's taught these days which just doesn't inspire people? I was so inspired by my sciecne teachers at school - especially Biology. I used to take roadkill into school - anything dead I found by the side of the road  - and  skin it and cure the skin, then boil the rest to extract the bones, and wire them together to make a skeleton. My favourite was a stoat skin that I used to wear in my beanie hat. Hmmm, maybe it was just me that was weird....

This might be my last peregrine picture for this year as one of them flew the nest this morning. Landed on a ledge of the church, where it looked a little dazed and confused at what it had done....

 

Processes, PSE and Peregrines

Service Strategy Board yesterday and first up was an update from our Process Improvement Unit (PIU) which was set up almost a year ago. A number of big projects have been undertaken, and some impressive improvements made to processes. Changing the way we deal with paying casual workers for example has led to work taking a day a month to an hour a month in some departments. There's a number of new projects on the way, and these are prioritised on the basis of the ease of the project, its likelihood of success, and its importance to the institution (bearing in mind the institution’s KPI’s).  The unit is also embarking on more training, both in using LEAN techniques, and awareness raising of what it means to be involved in a process improvement event. The latter is especially important for managers who need to be aware of what they and their staff are committing to.

Other key issues coming up from the service managers included MOOCs, technology-enhanced feedback, changes to research infrastructure, the new portal, exiting from our collaboration environment uSpace, and improvements to our network infrastructure. We are about to launch an open day mobile app, we're looking at mobile SAP apps, and piloting printing from mobiles, so lots of mobile developments. We're also looking at improving our service management reporting to include actions arising from incident reviews. A full agenda, and a productive meeting.

This afternoon we had a meeting of the Professional Service Executive - the Directors of all of the professional services. This also started with an update from PIU, and an interesting discussion which touched on the importance of system development in some areas of process improvement and how we prioritise this alongside our other work. We also discussed the planning process, our risk register and the University's new HR strategy currently being developed. We also got an update on the work of our Development, Alumni Relations and Events office. It's about friend raising as much as fund raising, showcasing what we do and building our reputation. Of course, fund raising is vitally important, both in supporting our students and in supporting our research.

Also today  -  important news - two of the peregrine chicks managed to exercise their wings enough to get to the top of the nest platform. They'll be flying in a couple of days I think!

There's a little story about them and a few more pictures over at the other blog.

Incidents and teenage birds

This morning I chaired a review of the major incident we had last Friday.  Something we always do - it's important to uncover what happened, and learn from any mistakes that have been made, look at what we can do better, and what worked well. In this particular case there are quire a few lessons to learn, around a number of aspects including our communication channels, incident procedures and change management processes.  We were piloting a new internal chat system, HipChat, when the incident happened, so it got a good test and it looks as though it will prove very useful.

We also had an Exec meeting where we looked at how we cover for the University Business Continuity Manager, (who is based in CiCS) if she is unavailable during an incident. As an Incident Manager I'm already trained in the major incident plan, and our three Assistant Directors are about to be so they they can also provide help and advice.

Finally tonight I went to a talk about the Peregrine falcons who are nesting on a platform on St George's Church and have hatched three chicks. The chair of the Sheffield Bird Study group gave a fascinating insight into these beautiful birds and their history. I hadn't realised how nearly wiped out they'd been by gamekeepers and pesticides, with only 385 pairs in the UK in 1961. Then we heard from our EFM department who had built and installed the platform - when originally constructed it had been on the opposite side of the church, due to concerns from the council about damage to the listed building, but after 20 months no bird had been near it. After permission had been gained to move it to its current position in 2011, the falcons landed on it straight away, and have been there on and off since. We also heard about the webcam, which was installed by EFM and we now look after the streaming. It's had over 280,000 hits from over 100 different countries. When the birds have flown, the platform will come down ( wouldn't like to go anywhere near it - it's disgusting at the moment), and be remade by AMRC from a composite material, and we'll also be looking at developing the webcam (s) for next year.

The chicks started off cute - now they look like teenagers - fairly dirty, messy, slightly gawky. I'm sure they'll be cute again when they've grown up - which apparently will only take a few more days. They're definitely getting interested in the outside world now, and see what I mean about the nest?

Various meetings and Peregrines

On a train, on way to Oxford for the second time in a few days. Last Friday I was at the first organising meeting for the next UCISA Management conference. The last one has only just finished, and we're staring again. Trying to think of appropriate themes, and good speakers. We had some excellent ones this year so it will be a hard act to follow. Today I'm on my way to Oxford University where I am an external adviser on their IT Committee. They have a very different governance model to us, and have some major projects on the go so it will be interesting to see how I can contribute.

Yesterday I seemed to be in back to back meetings all day. These included a catch up on our Equality Objectives project, particularly looking at diversity issues in our student population, followed by the closure of the first phase of our Incident Contacts project which has been very successful. Also had our first SRDS (Staff Review and Development Scheme) planning meeting for this year, and a catch up with colleagues about our new University Digital Strategy.

Open in the background on my mac all day is the live stream for our Peregrine Falcons, George and Mildred, who are incubating their 4 eggs. They're due to hatch in the next 2 to 3 days, so there should be a flurry of activity, and I suspect some gruesome feeding and disemboweling of pigeons! We're handling the live stream ourselves now after some initial teething problems with the initial supplier, and it seems to be holding up really well.




Mildred didn't seem to like the grey paint, so pecked it off!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

An Easter Egg

Sorry for not many posts this week - not a lot to write about. A lot of catching up with people, preparing presentations I'm giving in the next few weeks, and traveling to Scotland (see previous post).

However, three exciting things have happened which are definitely worth mentioning:

It's been confirmed that the New Engineering Building will go ahead on the site of the Jessop Hospital as the Secretary of State is not calling the decision to demolish the Edwardian block in - see more detail about the building here. It's great news for us, because as well as engineering laboratories for students there will be pooled teaching space including lecture theatres and seminar rooms, and a considerable amount of student led learning spaces which we are provisionally calling ICE - Information Commons East. Given its proximity to our Arts and Humanities departments including languages and music, we are intending to create some interesting and state of the art creative media facilities for students in it.

Here's a video of what it will be like - it's going to be stunning!



Next, for the second year running, students have given IT Support a 96% satisfaction rating in the student barometer survey - this is the highest score not only in the Russell group, but in the UK. Well done everyone!

Any finally - Mildred has laid an egg! Our peregrine Falcons have so far produced one egg but more are expected - you can read all about them here on the Sheffield Bird Study group's blog. I sort of get the feeling they don't like us calling them George and Mildred, but I do....  Mildred has spent a lot of time on the egg keeping it warm which given the current temperature I'm not surprised at, and they've also been seen a lot ripping pigeons to pieces on the nest.  Here's some pictures.

Have a nice Easter everyone  - especially our SAPBasis guys who are doing a major upgrade instead of eating easter eggs. Or maybe as well as.

Talks, web apps and birds.

The talks from UCISA last week are all now available to view here.  I would particularly recommend the last four - Idea Street, Digital by Default, the view from the BBC, and Mark Ormrod.
All excellent.

Since I got back from the conference there's been a lot of catching up to do, emails and face to face meetings with a number of colleagues. Today we had an interesting demo from Jadu on a couple of their products. The first, WeeJot is a platform for developing mobile web apps, and looked simple enough for me to use.  The app studio had a number of templates for pulling in content from various sources including RSS feeds, maps, social media, web pages etc.  I might apply  for a developer account and have a go - which would be a first :-)

The second product was their search and portal engine, Rupa, which amongst other things is a presentation layer for the Google search appliance.
Of course these were just preliminary looks, and we shall have to see how they fit with our mobile and search strategies and discuss further, but I was impressed with the presentation of both.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of our Peregrine Falcons, taken just a couple of minutes ago.

George and Mildred

About three years ago a pair of Peregrine Falcons were spotted flying around the tower of St Georges Church on our campus. In 2010 a nesting platform was erected, and last year they nested and had two chicks. You can see some pictures of them here.

Now our EFM department have put a web cam up so that we can get a glimpse of George and Mabel. At the moment it is only a glimpse as they are not there a lot - presumably they are out catching pigeons. But soon they will be nesting, and we should get some good views. Of the nest, any eggs and chicks, and I'm told, gruesome pictures of pigeons being devoured.

Here's a picture I took yesterday evening of Mildred on one of her quick visits.