Innovation and ideas

Yesterday I was at a workshop run by JISC as part of their Co-Design programme, which involves a number of stakeholders working in partnership with JISC to agree on priorities and projects for innovation funding.


Our job yesterday was to come up with ideas - a very well run day, and a lot of good ideas came out of it. We started with challenges that we thought technology could solve, grouped them into themes, and then spent some time working on them in groups, refining and defining them.  In the end we had to produce elevator pitches for each, and pitch to the rest of the group - we came up with about 15 challenges, with defined outcomes and benefits - which finally we voted on. JISC will now work on them and come up with some suggested projects to take forward. The main themes in the groups I was involved in were around Digital Literacy and the Student Experience

Digital Literacy is vital for all staff. Academics need to feel comfortable with new technologies and the best pedagogic way to use them in their teaching. Professional support staff need to know how to use technologies to make processes and procedures more efficient, and all staff need to feel part of the community and conversation which takes place on social media. There's a wide range of digital literacy out there, with different skill levels, and there is a lot of work to do to ensure that everyone has the skills they need.

The student experience is important for so many reasons - for student satisfaction, for league tables such as those based on the NSS, to make students feel connected with the University. We need a digital environment that is fit for the 21st century which covers the whole student lifecycle from enquiry to graduation and employment. this is a huge project which could take in many things, including some of the issues around identity which I posted about after Tuesdays meeting.
Quite intense hard work,  but the view made up for it!

Today I was in Oxford for the Organising Committee of the UCISA Conference. UCISA14 only finished a couple of weeks ago, and we're already planning UCISA15 - and I'm now Chair of the group. The feedback from delegates which we got today confirms that is was very successful, and many said it was one of the best. So, we've got to follow it next year in Edinburgh.  No pressure there!

UCISA14 part 2

You may have noticed a distinct lack of blogposts from UCISA last week - truth is, I was either too busy, too enthralled, or sitting on the stage chairing sessions - to take notes and post. So here's a summary of what I got from each sessions, as well as links to some of the talks which were recorded. This year we made a real effort to "up the game" of the conference, bringing in outside speakers and moving away from technology and towards leadership.

Clay Shirky is a very well respected american writer, educator and consultant on the social and economic effects of internet technologies - I've heard him speak a couple of times, and there are some excellent talks on the TED website of his.  Clay flew in to give his talk, and it was extremely thought provoking. He talked about IT becoming the central function in the HE enterpise as it already embedded in the way we live. IT is not just being asked to do more, but different things, and we may have to lead change without buy in from our senior managers.
Watch the talk - you'll enjoy it.


Simon Fanshawe is a writer, broadcaster, stand up comedian, founder of Stonewall and describes himself as a Provocateur with a Purpose. He's been working with us here in Sheffield on our equality objectives, and dos a lot of work with organisations on why diversity matters, and how it produces better performing teams. It was an entertaining talk - getting your lovers knickers off in the first few
minutes - but full of really good content. My take home moment, possibly of the conference was - "don't appoint the best person for the job". In fact, never appoint the best person for the job. Appoint the best person for the team. Some interesting HR issues around this one, especially with job specs etc.
Again, the talk was recorded and its well worth a watch.

Vorsprung durcht Technik was the unusual title of a talk given by our own Heidi Fraser-Krauss,

Director of IT Services at York University, and Professor Thomas Krauss, Professor of Photonics at York University. Think it was the first married couple double act we've had at UCISA, and I was hoping that we didn't witness another conscious uncoupling. Luckily we didn't, but we did see a great role play of an IT director trying to deal with a very excited research professor. Anyone who has to deal with academics should watch this!


The final talk on Thursday was from Professor Sue Black, Computer Scientist, founder of the campaign to save Bletchley Park, recently voted Inspirational Woman of the year, and a champion for women in computing. She gave a potted life history, from leaving school and 16, through being a watch here. One of my favourite bits was about her campaign to save Bletchley Park, where Stephen Fry retweeted one of her tweets really showing the power of social media.
single mum of three children, to getting back into education and becoming an academic. Truly inspiring. She's recently formed Savvify, a social enterprise which is currently running techmums - a programme to get mums to be more tech savvy. Another great talk which you can watch here.

Thursday night was the conference dinner, where I had the honour of sitting with John Lloyd who was our after dinner speaker. John was the producer of Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI to name
just a few. Fascinating chatting to him about possibly bringing Spitting Image back - can you imagine Boris's puppet? he gave a great afterdinner talk - so funny, and quoting some great bits from the meaning of Lif, which he co wrote with Douglas Adams. Of course, there was the obligatory selfie.....



Friday morning strarted with Simon Mingay from Gartner talking about Service Porfolios. I've heard Simon to do this talk before, and blogged about it - excellent talk as alwyas, but not recorded.

Next up was Dave Coplin from Microsoft talking about the Future World of Work - excellent presenter and thought provoking talk about how our working lives and environments might look in the future. Also what skills our students and children might need to succeed. He's written a book - Business Reimagined - which is free to download for the kindle edition.A good soundbite from this - its not emails fault we get too many emails. It's ours for not using it properly. Do watch the talk if you get chance - there's lots of really good stuff in it.


Final two talks of the day weren't recorded so you can't watch them - first was from Linda Davidson, now a Global CIO but started life as an actress (you might remember her as Mary the Punk from Eastenders) who had some fascinatng insights into leadership:

She started with a great video predicting what technology might look like from the 1960s - love the bit about the husband paying!



Finally, we closed the conference with a talk from Alex Hunter who was responsible for getting Virgin America off the ground and then became head of Virgin Online talking about how to engage with customers, how to build a relationship with them, how to create a fantastic use experience with the wow factor. Couldn't record this, but there's a number of clips on YouTube of him speaking if you want to look him up, and his website has one of his good examples of customer service and how he fell in love with Pact Coffee.

Though I say it myself, it was one of the best UCISA conferences, and the difficult part starts now - how do we follow it next year?

Influential leadership

Well, after the fairground last night, I must admit I've felt better. I blame the arm wrestling and trying to ring the bell with the hammer

This morning we kicked off with Paul Gentle from the Leadership Foundation talking about Engaging Stakeholders with Courage. Started with a very lively discussion on our tables about who are our most difficult stakeholders to deal with! Given that most of the Sheffield contingent were sitting together, there was a fair amount of consensus. Won't give away what we came up with :-)

We spent the session discussing why some stakeholders present certain challenges, fear often playing a part. Also looked at what skills and behaviours are needed by good leaders to successfully engage stakeholders:
Challenger role. Being prepared to challenge the prevailing culture with a clear vision of what a new culture might be like.
Influencing role. Understanding relational aspect of how people work together. Understand what drives individual and how they can contribute
Balancer recognise that conflict can sometimes be a positive force, can act ina mediating role
Questioners can think about operating beyond the tired and tested. Use questions to get insights into th complexity o situations and use user ions to get to innovative solutions
Learners use everything as a learning opportunity. Can surface issues of failure and learn from them.

Very good interactive session with lots of discussion on our tables interspersed

Second speaker was Colin Gautrey talking about Influential Leadership.
Leadership is about outcomes, about getting things done. You need a goal, and the help and support of others. Need a big vision, not just short term. Mark of great leadership is how you get people to go the extra mile.
Need to create time to make progress against the big goal. Managing the short term and the long term is a challenge.

Develop a clear focus. What are you trying to achieve?
Identify important stakeholders, who are the most powerful people who can influence outcome, in a positive or negative way
Analyse what your relationship is with stakeholders and how it needs to change
Plan your strategy of engagement
Engage with stakeholders
Maintain that engagement. Has to be repeated and regular.

Stakeholder mapping needs to take into account your relationship with them. Has to included trust.
Nice quadrant to map stakeholders onto. Not a good picture, but relationship is on x axis, agreement on y axis, and players clockwise from bottom left are enemy, player, advocate, critic



Do a political analysis on your stakeholders.
Power, what makes them influential
Agenda, where are they going
Connections, who do they know
Performance, are they succeeding
Values, what's important to them
Behaviour, how do they do things
History, where have they come from

All of above are key in understanding and then influencing stakeholders.

Influencing strategy
Concentrate on impact
Advocates are top priority, they are already on side
Critics make great opponents
Ignore your enemies. Low levels of trust, and they disagree with you. Engaging with enemies is hard work. Understand their position and the threat they might pose to you and come up with strategy. Neutralise any damage they might cause.
Remember the indirect routes

Five rules of ethical influence
Always help people to make balanced and informed decisions
Ensure pitches include drawbacks as well as benefits
Be clear and open about your own interests
Aim for people wanting to do what you want them to do
Never mislead people into doing something that you know will harm them.

Be politically active. Get out into the organisation and understand people.
Influential leadership is not a solo activity.
Rational persuasion at best gains compliance.
Most effective tactic is inspirational appeal. Communicating with people's values. Can only do this if you know the other person.



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Evaluating TEL

Part of the UCISA conference is always dedicated to hearing case studies from colleagues at other universities who share their experiences with us. I went to one this afternoon from a colleague, Sarah Horrigan who worked with us in Sheffield until last year. It was about evaluating institutional Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) practice at her new institution.

The basic question was, how do you know what good practice looks like? You can ask people, look at your system, or do both.You can run reports from your VLE, but do they tell you whether technology is enhancing learning?

We need digitally literate staff and students to really have TEL. Digital literacy defines those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.
At her new University they had what they called threshold standards for using the VLE ( eg every course must have ....). Sarah looked at the threshold standards, combined with the digital literacy definition and came up with a rubric for module evaluation. Then a selection of modules were audited. The results were not surprising to those of us who work in HE, and I suspect would be replicated in many institutions.

They discovered lots of tumbleweed moments! Lots of modules set up on the VLE, with no content.
There was also lots of stuff in VLE, powerpoints, module handbook etc. But no interaction, no communication.
They had a threshold standard that said the folder structure in VLE should match scheme of work. But lots of modules didn't have scheme of work. Setting up standards to fail. There was no prioritisation of standards
and where the standard was prescriptive, (eg put on handbook on line), there was more compliance, but where the standard was vague, there was more exemplary practice.
They also found gaps in digital literacy and particularly there was very little skills support.

So, what are the recommendations?
Talk to academic community. Find out what's important to them.
Replace the threshold standards. Look more at a framework of enhancement.
Facilitate via design of the system. Build the boring stuff into the VLE
Develop digital practice skills. Have a training menu, let staff picks what they want and deliver itto them, where they are.
Repeat the processes to deepen understanding. Don't assume what people are doing, they probably aren't!

Sarah finished with a nice quote: "Direction is more important then speed. We are so busy looking at speedometers that we forget the milestone. ". Keep going in a positive direction. That's more important than how fast you get there.

In the same vein of sharing case studies, the last session was a poster one, where twenty or so case studies are shared via a poster with the authors on hand to answer questions. Quite a buzz around the posters this evening, and it gave us another opportunity to talk to suppliers.







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UCISA 2014 Kicks Off

I'm in Brighton on a lovely sunny day for the UCISA conference, with a view of a very sad pier from the hotel.

Started the day by briefing the exhibitors on how to get the most out of the conference, and then spent some time going round talking to various of our suppliers, and some exhibitors who hope to be!

Conference proper kicked off with a welcome from the Vice Chancellor of Brighton University, and then the opening keynote from Gerry Pennell, currently IT Director at the University of Manchester, but previously he was CIO for the London Olympics. I've heard him talk a couple of times, and always find it fascinating to hear what went on to prepare for such a big event.

Started with a great video of the what the Olympics was about, amazing quality and it brought a tear to my eyes!

Olympic delivery authority, delivered the infrastructure, venues etc and were publicly funded.
LOCOG actually ran the games, he worked for them. Privately funded, £3.2bn. Technology budget was about 25% of this.
Some special factors which made this job different to any other IT Director post:
Fixed deadline.
High profile and expectations
Only one shot
Life cycle of the organising committee, it had never delivered an Olympics before!
Process development and engineering lead times are longer than other parts of organisation.
Key clients/users arrive late

Scope of technology:
Enterprise systems and IT, accounting, HR etc.
Applications specific to games, tracking arrivals, VIPs etc
Large telecoms and data network
Specific venue technology, scoreboards, music technology
Internet operations
Results technology, most mission critical

Starts at field of play with sporting performance.
Specialised instrumentation measures the performance
In venue have results technology, which looks whether timings were world records etc, database of performances etc. Quickly can flash this on to scoreboard
Pump information to broadcasters
Send information to commentators


Everything gets sent to Central repository system. Coordinators with athletes biographies, weather, everything else.
Then to web sites via data feed, press agencies etc.
All glued together!

Most of software brand new for London.
Massive systems integration job. 56 different pieces of software.
20 different suppliers
110,000 different prices of technical equipment rolled out, often at last minute, for example, Wimbledon finished 3 weeks before Olympics
5500 km of cabling
60% of load came from mobile.
Andy Murray final was highest load, were providing real time delivery of results and public were checking on a point by point basis. Servers got hotter than planned!

Fantastic talk and insight into what went not, including lots of insider information about things that went wrong, cybersecurity and how challenges were met.





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