There's not many people can make an hour long keynote presentation on copyright both interesting and informative, but Larry Lessig can. To a packed auditorium Professor Lessig spoke passionately about his belief that the copyright laws are wrong. They were put together at a time when it was never envisaged that they would impinge so much on our daily life, and were designed to cope with printed material. Copyright law regulates copies, and with a book you can buy it, sell it, read it, give it to someone, lend it - all of these actions come under the fair use principle and do not involve "making a copy". But, and this is a really big but, technology has changed - enter the net - where every single use of a digital object involves making a copy.
Lessig talked about the ecology of creativity - the concept of different ecologies for different sort of content creators. The business model that Britney Spears operates under for example where she depends on the exclusive rights to distribute her work, is very different to that of a scientist producing an academic journal, or an amateur content creator. The use of our current copyright laws is harmful to the dissemination of knowledge, and his advice to us was - stop it! he even gave us a certificate of entitlement to question the current copyright laws, signed by a Harvard Professor of Law (himself).
He used some interesting examples of where things are not working - the preservation of documentary films for example, where in order to put these onto DVD and make them available requires that the copyright holder of every single snippet of film has to give their approval - this can take years and his fear is that the vast majority of twentieth century documentaries will turn to dust before copyright clearance has been obtained to distribute them in a different medium.
So - how to sort out this problem. There are 3 options. First is change the law which he opined was hopeless (and he should know - he's a lawyer).
Or change the way we operate - he was a founder of creative commons licences where content creators can assign rights of use to their content without the intervention of a lawyer.
Or change fate - learn from our mistakes.
He finished with the fear that in the war on copyright that is being fought, the terrorists are our own children - we are criminalising them. There is no way to stop technology, and our kids may eventually rebel against the laws - which may not be the best outcome.
The talk is on line here at the moment (you need silverlight installed and he starts at about 27 minutes into it) and I would strongly recommend that you watch it - it has been the highlight of the conference for me.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Twitter - The Mile High Debate
The next session was also a debate - on the usefulness (or otherwise) of Twitter. Very well attended sessions - standing room only, and about 40 people in the room actively twittering and others following the debate on line and contributing. We had our own hashtag and tweets were projected on the screen.
It was a real showdown, and began with the theme tune from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly followed by excellent role play from the two presenters. The loud, excitable academic who wanted to use twitter with his students, and the CIO who couldn't see the point, and in fact got annoyed with the audience for not paying attention to what he was saying because they were tweeting. At one point he likened the CIO to an orange cone, preventing staff from falling down potholes!
Very interesting debate, and best followed on Twitter - the hashtag was #edtwitter - and you can see the tweets here. Last time I checked there was 36 pages of them - but it's worth a read - I think you'll get a flavour of the session. And of course, once the role play was over, almost unanimous support for the Twitter, but I suspect it was a self selecting audience!
There's a good video here on the UTA Twitter experiment here if you want to see how Twitter can be used in education.
It was a real showdown, and began with the theme tune from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly followed by excellent role play from the two presenters. The loud, excitable academic who wanted to use twitter with his students, and the CIO who couldn't see the point, and in fact got annoyed with the audience for not paying attention to what he was saying because they were tweeting. At one point he likened the CIO to an orange cone, preventing staff from falling down potholes!
Very interesting debate, and best followed on Twitter - the hashtag was #edtwitter - and you can see the tweets here. Last time I checked there was 36 pages of them - but it's worth a read - I think you'll get a flavour of the session. And of course, once the role play was over, almost unanimous support for the Twitter, but I suspect it was a self selecting audience!
There's a good video here on the UTA Twitter experiment here if you want to see how Twitter can be used in education.
Cloud computing - Hope or Hype?
One of the session types at Educause is "Point/Counterpoint" where two peolpe present opposing sides of a debate. This morning I went to a "Cloud Computing - Hope or Hype" session. I'll summarise the arguments on both sides:
Hope
Hype
Hope
- It's inevitable. It's the way the industry is going. It gives us new economies of scale and cost effectiveness. Commodity services can be provided better and cheaper externally. We can't put our heads in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen.
- Services can be delivered with as good as or better service levels than we can provide. We need to question what is the strategic reason for running an email infrastructure for example.
- We can reduce costs and transfer resources to better serving the strategic needs of the institution.
- Cloud services give the user what they want with better features. They're agile services, able to respond quickly to changes in user demand and deploy changes quickly.
Hype
- It's not inevitable. And if is is we should be looking at why, not when. It's just a way of cutting costs. Service levels can't be guaranteed - Gmail does go down.
- There are security and privacy risks with not knowing where your data is being stored. The vendors aren't mature enough yet to deal with these issues.
- How can we say it reduces costs when we don't know what our costs are, and anyway, putting services into the cloud is only putting cots into other areas of the institution such as legal or procurement sections.
- Vendor lock-in is a problem. What happens if the pricing structure changes or the vendor doesn't meet the SLA, or goes out of business?
Good to Great
Opening keynote this morning was by Jim Collins, author of the best selling book Good to Great. It was in a huge auditorium - there's about 8000 delegates here I think - and like all American conferences, started at 8am! Very well attended, and a good start to the conference - he's an excellent speaker.
He talked about what it meant to be great, as opposed to good, and why some enterprises became great whilst others were only good, or fell into decline. Although his research for the Good to Great book was based on businesses, much of what he found and talked about can easily be applied to our sector. His premise is that greatness is not a function of circumstance - it's a function of conscious choice and discipline.
There are apparently 5 stages of decline:
1 Hubris born of success - the arrogance that goes with thinking you're great (and the moment you think you're great, you're not). A good leader has humility, and a good CIO in his opinion could lead the whole institution. The power map in a University is very diffuse - he likened academic staff to a thousand points of no - and so leadership is very different to in an organisation where the power all lies with the CEO. We have to architect the conditions for the right decisions to be taken as if concentrated power existed.
2 The undisciplined pursuit of more - organisations that introduce too much innovation, too much development, too much complexity, will fail. That's where discipline comes in - concentrate on what the core values are.
3 Denial of risk and peril - you have to confront the brutal facts. It's only by confronting them that you will overcome them, and you have to share them with your staff, and be realistic. He illustrated this with the Stockdale Paradox, which you can read about here. Another good soundbite which I will take away is that if you were in a room where everyone was asked to put their troubles on a table in the middle, you'd take yours back.
4 Grasping for salvation - when things are falling down around you, don't come up with another good idea to get us out of this fix. Be disciplined enough to go back to core values. Disciplined people taking disciplined decisions are what's needed. There is no quick fix - most overnight success stories have been many years in the making! Everyone has a to do list - what we should have is a stop doing list.
5 Capitulation to irrelevance or death. Lesson - don't get there!
Lots of good stuff about preserving core values and core purpose, consistency, and discipline. Build pockets of greatness - it doesn't matter whether you're a CEO or the manager of a small team - build a pocket of greatness. Then he gave us 10 things to go away and do, in order to build this pocket:
Carry out a diagnostic of your team to see whether you're good or great- he has a handy tool on his web site for doing this!
Be disciplined about your team - look at getting the right people round you
Build a personal Board of Directors
Get young people in your face - surround yourself with them. They're the ones with the ideas
Build white space into your day for thinking with no gadgets, phones, emails etc
Look at your questions to statements ratio - you need more questions - good leaders know what the right questions to be asking are
Stop doing things
Suspend titles in your team and have everyone articulate their responsibilities
Take away the blow water line risks, ie those that if they happen will sink your business
Set a BHAG!
He talked about what it meant to be great, as opposed to good, and why some enterprises became great whilst others were only good, or fell into decline. Although his research for the Good to Great book was based on businesses, much of what he found and talked about can easily be applied to our sector. His premise is that greatness is not a function of circumstance - it's a function of conscious choice and discipline.
There are apparently 5 stages of decline:
1 Hubris born of success - the arrogance that goes with thinking you're great (and the moment you think you're great, you're not). A good leader has humility, and a good CIO in his opinion could lead the whole institution. The power map in a University is very diffuse - he likened academic staff to a thousand points of no - and so leadership is very different to in an organisation where the power all lies with the CEO. We have to architect the conditions for the right decisions to be taken as if concentrated power existed.
2 The undisciplined pursuit of more - organisations that introduce too much innovation, too much development, too much complexity, will fail. That's where discipline comes in - concentrate on what the core values are.
3 Denial of risk and peril - you have to confront the brutal facts. It's only by confronting them that you will overcome them, and you have to share them with your staff, and be realistic. He illustrated this with the Stockdale Paradox, which you can read about here. Another good soundbite which I will take away is that if you were in a room where everyone was asked to put their troubles on a table in the middle, you'd take yours back.
4 Grasping for salvation - when things are falling down around you, don't come up with another good idea to get us out of this fix. Be disciplined enough to go back to core values. Disciplined people taking disciplined decisions are what's needed. There is no quick fix - most overnight success stories have been many years in the making! Everyone has a to do list - what we should have is a stop doing list.
5 Capitulation to irrelevance or death. Lesson - don't get there!
Lots of good stuff about preserving core values and core purpose, consistency, and discipline. Build pockets of greatness - it doesn't matter whether you're a CEO or the manager of a small team - build a pocket of greatness. Then he gave us 10 things to go away and do, in order to build this pocket:
Carry out a diagnostic of your team to see whether you're good or great- he has a handy tool on his web site for doing this!
Be disciplined about your team - look at getting the right people round you
Build a personal Board of Directors
Get young people in your face - surround yourself with them. They're the ones with the ideas
Build white space into your day for thinking with no gadgets, phones, emails etc
Look at your questions to statements ratio - you need more questions - good leaders know what the right questions to be asking are
Stop doing things
Suspend titles in your team and have everyone articulate their responsibilities
Take away the blow water line risks, ie those that if they happen will sink your business
Set a BHAG!
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Google roadmap and marching bands
Went to the Google Customer Advisory Board this morning - a session where Google told us about their road map, and got feedback from their customers. Mainly US Universities there, and we will need to work with Google to get something similar in the UK.Very interesting session - they have 6.3million active users of Google Apps for Education which is rising daily - growth is currently in th US, but there's a very recent increase in the UK - the result of many Universities going with Google this September. Gmail is the dominant product, and Google are seeking to address this my marketing their other apps such as Google docs more. We had a discussion on the implications of moving staff to Google apps - some US Universities have done it - but there are still concerns about privacy and security. Interestingly the LAPD have recently decided to implement it - if they have the security issues sorted then I would have thought it can't be too difficult for the rest of us!
So - what are Google planning over the next couple of years? Lots, as you might expect - the following I picked ut as being interesting to us:
- Lots of integration - between apps and with other partners
- Google groups - user administered groups for sharing and collaborating
- Mobile Google - developed mainly for Google Android phones obviously!
- Document preview in Gmail
- Real time collaboration (mainly in Wave)
- Voice and video conferencing
- Intelligent meeting scheduling in Google calendar (very interesting for us as we would need this if we are to move staff to this)
- Improvements to the docs application - they aim to make this the only product you need. Lots of new functionality being developed especially around formatting.
- Improvement in performance of spreadsheets
- Intelligent workflow in the docs applications
- Co authoring collaborative functionality in docs with version control
After the roadmap presentation we had a demonstration of Google Wave by the team who had developed it who had been flown in from Sydney. I've had a play with it and was unsure of what tto do with it, but they demonstrated collaborating on a document and made it look so easy, and so useful! We will have to have another look at it I think.
I know I shouldn't still be surprised at this - but there were 14 laptops on the table - and 12 of them were Macs!
I've also spent a couple of hours in the exhibition talking to vendors - not quite as big as in previous years as I suppose the recession has had an effect, but still useful, and they still dream up new ways to get you to their stall! This year there's mini golf and basketball competitions - I got a hole in one on the mini golf and am in the running to win a Wii. Bizarrely there's also a marching band going round!
Monday, 2 November 2009
Rocky Mountain High
Had a day off today before the conference starts in earnest and a group of us hired cars and drove into the Rocky Mountains. The weather was amazing - bright sunshine, clear skies, and snow. We went for a walk and climbed to over 7000 feet - walking through snow but w
earing only light clothes because of the sun. the air was very thin and we were soon out of breath - but it was worth it for the views. We were also lucky enough to call at the Stanley Hotel - Stephen King's inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. When Stanley Kubrick made it into a film he used a different hotel for the filming which didn't go down too well with Stephen King who commissioned a TV version which was filmed here. I'm a great fan of the book (but not the film) and bought a REDRUM mug.After the walk we drove up to over 9000 feet
which is where the air feels very thin, and we got out of breath just walking up the road to take photos. On the way back down we saw a group of male Elk. Obviously we had to stop to take pictures and managed to get quite close to them, without even wondering if they were dangerous. It was interesting though that the Americans stayed in their car to take pictures - only the Brits got out and walked up to them.!
eRecruitment
Well, I've arrived in Denver - the mile high city, and although 12 inches of snow fell last week, it's remarkably sunny at the moment. Still snow on the mountains though which are visible at the bottom of every street. Will post some pictures when I'm feeling a bit less zombie like due to the 7 hour time difference,
I was thinking about back home earlier, as today sees a major system go live - our eRecruitment system. Part of our SAP deployment, it's been developed by the HR department and CiCS working in partnership, and it's the first SAP system we've deployed without significant consultancy - so well done to all of the team.
The eRecruitment system has made huge improvements to our current processes - for example it's really streamlined the approval processes for vacant and new posts. What used to take several weeks can now be done in a matter of days, or even hours. Our record as a pilot department is 48 hours from inputting the details to having the post cleared for advertising. The applicants also get a much improved experience.
We've been running it live with pilot departments (including us) for some months and this has enabled us to respond effectively to user feedback, and provide a significantly better system for the main go-live.
Sorry not to be around for the final deployment but well done everyone and thanks.
I was thinking about back home earlier, as today sees a major system go live - our eRecruitment system. Part of our SAP deployment, it's been developed by the HR department and CiCS working in partnership, and it's the first SAP system we've deployed without significant consultancy - so well done to all of the team.
The eRecruitment system has made huge improvements to our current processes - for example it's really streamlined the approval processes for vacant and new posts. What used to take several weeks can now be done in a matter of days, or even hours. Our record as a pilot department is 48 hours from inputting the details to having the post cleared for advertising. The applicants also get a much improved experience.
We've been running it live with pilot departments (including us) for some months and this has enabled us to respond effectively to user feedback, and provide a significantly better system for the main go-live.
Sorry not to be around for the final deployment but well done everyone and thanks.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Meetings galore, and off to the snow
Last blog post before I set off for EDUCAUSE 2009 which this year is in Denver. I've been before at this time of year and it's been very autumnal, nice warm days and coolish nights. This year could be different - several inches of snow have fallen in the last few days and it's well below freezing. May have to revise my packing.
The last few days have been a series of meetings - Human Resource Management Committee where we looked at the results of the recent Voluntary Severance Scheme and the HR strategy for the next 5 years, and a meeting between the Executive Team and our Section Heads to look at how we will improve internal communications and what changes we might be making to cope with fewer staff.
I've been on a group reviewing the marketing function within the University and we met earlier today to approve our final report. Our swine flu management team met this morning - we're fairly confident we have plans in place to deal with an outbreak if it comes - at the moment it's as if we're playing a waiting game!
Finally, this week I've been to 10 leaving dos - most of them for staff within CiCS, but some from other departments - today was the last day for staff to go under our recent voluntary severance scheme. I'd just like to reiterate my thanks to everyone who's gone on to do different things, or in some cases to relish in doing nothing, and wish them all the best for the future. The University will be a very different place without you all.
The last few days have been a series of meetings - Human Resource Management Committee where we looked at the results of the recent Voluntary Severance Scheme and the HR strategy for the next 5 years, and a meeting between the Executive Team and our Section Heads to look at how we will improve internal communications and what changes we might be making to cope with fewer staff.
I've been on a group reviewing the marketing function within the University and we met earlier today to approve our final report. Our swine flu management team met this morning - we're fairly confident we have plans in place to deal with an outbreak if it comes - at the moment it's as if we're playing a waiting game!
Finally, this week I've been to 10 leaving dos - most of them for staff within CiCS, but some from other departments - today was the last day for staff to go under our recent voluntary severance scheme. I'd just like to reiterate my thanks to everyone who's gone on to do different things, or in some cases to relish in doing nothing, and wish them all the best for the future. The University will be a very different place without you all.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Jazz chickens and coughing giraffes...
The University Drama Studio is a jewel of the University estate - but many staff have never been in it. Last night its profile was enhanced as a comedy giant - a certain Mr Eddie Izzard - performed his sell out show Stripped there.Eddie was a student at the University in the early 80s but "opted out" of his degree course after one year. However, he stayed around Sheffield and spent a lot of time in the Drama Studio and established the Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts. He is well remembered by the current theatre manager. As part of his current tour Eddie was appearing at the Sheffield Arena, and we were delighted when we were approached by his management who told us that Eddie would like to do a late night gig at the Drama Studio - apparently in his many performances there he had never sold it out, but was fairly certain he could do now!
And of course he was right. On Sunday I saw him at the Arena perform in front of 11,000 people on a huge stage with 3 video screen, an enormous set and 5 trucks parked up outside.
What a difference it was to see him last night perform to 218 people. It was fantastic to see one of his trucks parked outside all lit up, and a searchlight lighting up the sky - I'm fairly certain that the first time that's happened at the Drama Studio. Inside the Studio looked fantastic.
I was involved in some of the hosting of the University guests to the event (including John Prescott) and was lucky enough to meet Eddie in his dressing room. He is a lovely bloke - very chatty and ordinary (in the nicest possible way - not at all prima donna-ish). As some of you know I have a thing about meeting him!
I'd like to thanks the team who worked so hard on this very demanding event - the Drama Studio isn't used to this sort of thing - it was handled extremely professionally, and I'm thinking we should now try to get on the Arena tour list!
Oh, and you had to be there to understand the title of this post! Cough (tiger).
PS - sorry about the quality of the photos - all taken on my iPhone. We hopefully have some professional ones on their way and I will post them as soon as we have them - hope these give you a feel for it though!
Monday, 26 October 2009
CampusM launch
Sorry for lack of posts - been away for a few days. Back today with a trip to London to the Apple HQ above their store on Regent St for the launch of CampusM. I've blogged about this mobile app before, and I was presenting a case study on our experience of the implementation so far. There were representatives there from oMbiel, the company who are developing the application who gave an overview of the product and some future developments.
I've been asked a lot of questions about this, including why did we decide to implement CampusM, why didn't we do it ourselves as webapps, how much effort did it take on our part, and what issues have we had. These were all things I covered in today's talk, so in summary.....
Why - well it fits with our strategy of delivering services in a way that suits the user, rather than one that suits us. Our last survey showed that about 15% of students had smart phones, and that number is steadily rising, so we will be getting information to students in a way that is familiar to them. Because it's based on Service Orientated Architecture and open standards it enables us to reuse functionality. We've had a student portal since 2003 and some of the development work has been reused in CampusM, and we will also be able to use the functionality in CampusM to plug back into our student portal. The other major factor is one of resources - we just haven't got the development resource to do this ourselves - we have too much else on. oMbiel are specialists in this sort of work, having a history of being systems integrators and are much better placed to do it. One other factor - it was a low risk project. At relatively little cost, we didn't tell anyone we were doing it until we had a working system, if it had all failed, nothing else was riding on it.
Why didn't we develop it ourselves as web apps is partly answered above - we could have done, but we just don't have the resource. This was done in a matter of weeks - it would have taken us much longer. Plus, we now have an application that has everything in one menu - pulling in information from many different sources but it is seamless to the user and they don't have to go to lots of different web apps to get it. The application makes a lot of use of location services, and its integration with other apps on the iPhone such as Google maps is something that would have taken us more than a few weeks to do. In addition, oMbiel are doing all the work in optimising it for viewing on different types of phone with different operating systems and browsers. It's a pragmatic approach - I'm into rapid development and deployment at the moment, and if someone can do it quicker than we can we should let them do it.
In terms of effort on our part - very little. We supplied the expertise on where the data was held and database views. We had a project manager at both ends, and ours liaised with different data owners and handled testing and rollout issues. oMbiel did almost everything else.
As for issues - there's not been many. A certain initial cynicism of whether this would work, decisions on what functionality to deliver initially and what not to, some difficulties with testing because we needed live student data (solved by getting a group of students to pilot it for us).
So, we now have a working application which should be available from the iTunes store in about 4 weeks, and we're using that time to get more data into it. By the end of the year it will be available on many more smart
phones.
The location based features are for me the most impressive. Take something simple like PC availability - we can show students where PCs are free on a campus map or on Google maps, or they can locate the nearest free PC to where they happen to be. We're going to add more things like printers, value loaders etc to it. Just imagine the potential - someone suggested free car parking spaces! If only we had the data we could do it.
So - what next? Well, we will be oMbiel are developing an application targeted at staff,
and we know from our limited testing with staff that they're very keen on having something similar, especially for the directory features. They're also looking at a version for visitors to campus such as on open days where I can imagine the location based features such as campus maps will be very useful. there's also talk of a version for prospective students and alumni - we'll have to take a decision on how far we want to go!
I've been asked a lot of questions about this, including why did we decide to implement CampusM, why didn't we do it ourselves as webapps, how much effort did it take on our part, and what issues have we had. These were all things I covered in today's talk, so in summary.....
Why - well it fits with our strategy of delivering services in a way that suits the user, rather than one that suits us. Our last survey showed that about 15% of students had smart phones, and that number is steadily rising, so we will be getting information to students in a way that is familiar to them. Because it's based on Service Orientated Architecture and open standards it enables us to reuse functionality. We've had a student portal since 2003 and some of the development work has been reused in CampusM, and we will also be able to use the functionality in CampusM to plug back into our student portal. The other major factor is one of resources - we just haven't got the development resource to do this ourselves - we have too much else on. oMbiel are specialists in this sort of work, having a history of being systems integrators and are much better placed to do it. One other factor - it was a low risk project. At relatively little cost, we didn't tell anyone we were doing it until we had a working system, if it had all failed, nothing else was riding on it.
Why didn't we develop it ourselves as web apps is partly answered above - we could have done, but we just don't have the resource. This was done in a matter of weeks - it would have taken us much longer. Plus, we now have an application that has everything in one menu - pulling in information from many different sources but it is seamless to the user and they don't have to go to lots of different web apps to get it. The application makes a lot of use of location services, and its integration with other apps on the iPhone such as Google maps is something that would have taken us more than a few weeks to do. In addition, oMbiel are doing all the work in optimising it for viewing on different types of phone with different operating systems and browsers. It's a pragmatic approach - I'm into rapid development and deployment at the moment, and if someone can do it quicker than we can we should let them do it.
In terms of effort on our part - very little. We supplied the expertise on where the data was held and database views. We had a project manager at both ends, and ours liaised with different data owners and handled testing and rollout issues. oMbiel did almost everything else.
As for issues - there's not been many. A certain initial cynicism of whether this would work, decisions on what functionality to deliver initially and what not to, some difficulties with testing because we needed live student data (solved by getting a group of students to pilot it for us).
So, we now have a working application which should be available from the iTunes store in about 4 weeks, and we're using that time to get more data into it. By the end of the year it will be available on many more smart
phones.The location based features are for me the most impressive. Take something simple like PC availability - we can show students where PCs are free on a campus map or on Google maps, or they can locate the nearest free PC to where they happen to be. We're going to add more things like printers, value loaders etc to it. Just imagine the potential - someone suggested free car parking spaces! If only we had the data we could do it.
So - what next? Well, we will be oMbiel are developing an application targeted at staff,
and we know from our limited testing with staff that they're very keen on having something similar, especially for the directory features. They're also looking at a version for visitors to campus such as on open days where I can imagine the location based features such as campus maps will be very useful. there's also talk of a version for prospective students and alumni - we'll have to take a decision on how far we want to go!
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Zombies, Sushi and Dreams
Had an interesting journey yesterday afternoon at the External Affairs and Knowledge Management Committee. We went from discussing Zombies, through talking about dreams, to enterprising students selling Sushi, and finished with a session on caring for at-risk elderly people. Let me explain how....
Every year Sheffield has a Fright Night around Halloween - an extremely successful event attracting over 30,000 people into the City Centre. The University is one of the sponsors and our very own Professor Vanessa helps with the entertainment, including providing Sheffield students to dress up as Zombies and mingle with the crowd.
Then we went on to talk about some research we have commissioned to find out more about the perception of the University in the City, and a campaign we're launching in a few weeks to raise our profile. There's an excellent film clip about Dreams which we'll be showing in cinemas and around the City and we got a sneak preview - don't want to say more and give the game away but it's excellent.
Enterprising students were up next. We've just launched USE - a service to help students with enterprising ideas, setting up their own business, getting work experience etc. An excellent service, and one that's very relevant as we aim to improve the employability of our graduates in the current financial climate. One of our success stories in this area is Will Christophers who began a few years ago selling Japanese food form a small handcart on the University concourse. Now he's the founder of WillYaki Ltd - a thriving Japanese food retailer and supplier.
Finally, something that is becoming more relevant to us all, a presentation on an innovative piece of research with practical applications in the care of elderly people from Professor Ian Philp. Easy-Care is a set of assessment tools to help health care practioners assess the needs of elderly and at risk people, developed out of a research project here in Sheffield and now in use internationally.
It was the first of this new committee's meetings I've been able to attend and it surprisingly enjoyable - I wish all meetings could be as interesting!
Every year Sheffield has a Fright Night around Halloween - an extremely successful event attracting over 30,000 people into the City Centre. The University is one of the sponsors and our very own Professor Vanessa helps with the entertainment, including providing Sheffield students to dress up as Zombies and mingle with the crowd.
Then we went on to talk about some research we have commissioned to find out more about the perception of the University in the City, and a campaign we're launching in a few weeks to raise our profile. There's an excellent film clip about Dreams which we'll be showing in cinemas and around the City and we got a sneak preview - don't want to say more and give the game away but it's excellent.
Enterprising students were up next. We've just launched USE - a service to help students with enterprising ideas, setting up their own business, getting work experience etc. An excellent service, and one that's very relevant as we aim to improve the employability of our graduates in the current financial climate. One of our success stories in this area is Will Christophers who began a few years ago selling Japanese food form a small handcart on the University concourse. Now he's the founder of WillYaki Ltd - a thriving Japanese food retailer and supplier.
Finally, something that is becoming more relevant to us all, a presentation on an innovative piece of research with practical applications in the care of elderly people from Professor Ian Philp. Easy-Care is a set of assessment tools to help health care practioners assess the needs of elderly and at risk people, developed out of a research project here in Sheffield and now in use internationally.
It was the first of this new committee's meetings I've been able to attend and it surprisingly enjoyable - I wish all meetings could be as interesting!
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
The thorny issue of internal communication
As part of our programme of staff development we've introduced a Management Development programme which we're cascading down the department, based on the premise that many people find themselves managers of staff often as a result of regrading or job changes, and yet have had little training. And those of us who've had staff management responsibilities for longer than we care to remember know that running an entire IT infrastructure is a piece of cake compared to dealing with staffing issues! Over the summer our "middle managers" - sorry, can't think of a better name for them - had 3 full days of tailored training, and as part of that they were to report back to their managers ( Section Heads) on issues. This they have done, and I had an interesting hour this morning going through some of the issues raised (as I couldn't be at the original feedback session).
One of the issues we discussed at length was communication and how that can be improved - always an issue in any large organisation and one that seems so difficult to get right, especially as we all prefer different styles and ways of communicating. We touched on how best to use technology especially Web 2.0 stuff - one of the things that came up which I find fascinating is the overlap between work and non work and how that is managed. I try and keep this blog work related (although it was pointed out to me this morning that the occasional morris dancer does crop up in it). That can be difficult, and there are lots of things I'd like to write about which aren't to do with work, so I have another blog set up and ready to go which would be a more personal one. I say set up and ready to go - it's been there 2 years and I've never posted anything in it. Worried that I think I wouldn't have the time to keep it going maybe? And to a certain extent it's been overtaken by Twitter. I have a very different rule for Twitter than for this blog, and it does combine work and social posts. I'm just as likely to tell you what I'm eating or what music I'm listening to, or how cold I am in my tent, than what I'm doing at work. That's what I like about Twitter, and why I try and follow people who do the same - I like knowing about people generally, and build up a much better picture of them if aspects of their life other than work are included. It's an interesting topic, and one which I'm sure we'll return to.
So, we had lots of positive discussion about tools such as blogs and twitter and how they could be used in the department. It was pointed out that after 2 years and usually very positive feedback, I'm still the only senior management person in the department using a blog to communicate. Perhaps that will change now we have our own blogging environment uSpace. To try and address the issue of information flow we have just set up a new area in uSpace where we are going to experiment with a communal executive blog to record our meetings and decisions taken, and we're hoping that all of our teams will do the same. It will be an interesting experiment.
And finally on communication, something that makes me cross is people who don't make an effort to find our what's going on, but sit back and expect the information to be spoon fed to them. We are a University after all and a certain amount of proactivity is expected. Despite all of the technology we have at our disposal, nothing beats getting up off your chair, walking into someone's office and actually talking to them face to face!
One of the issues we discussed at length was communication and how that can be improved - always an issue in any large organisation and one that seems so difficult to get right, especially as we all prefer different styles and ways of communicating. We touched on how best to use technology especially Web 2.0 stuff - one of the things that came up which I find fascinating is the overlap between work and non work and how that is managed. I try and keep this blog work related (although it was pointed out to me this morning that the occasional morris dancer does crop up in it). That can be difficult, and there are lots of things I'd like to write about which aren't to do with work, so I have another blog set up and ready to go which would be a more personal one. I say set up and ready to go - it's been there 2 years and I've never posted anything in it. Worried that I think I wouldn't have the time to keep it going maybe? And to a certain extent it's been overtaken by Twitter. I have a very different rule for Twitter than for this blog, and it does combine work and social posts. I'm just as likely to tell you what I'm eating or what music I'm listening to, or how cold I am in my tent, than what I'm doing at work. That's what I like about Twitter, and why I try and follow people who do the same - I like knowing about people generally, and build up a much better picture of them if aspects of their life other than work are included. It's an interesting topic, and one which I'm sure we'll return to.
So, we had lots of positive discussion about tools such as blogs and twitter and how they could be used in the department. It was pointed out that after 2 years and usually very positive feedback, I'm still the only senior management person in the department using a blog to communicate. Perhaps that will change now we have our own blogging environment uSpace. To try and address the issue of information flow we have just set up a new area in uSpace where we are going to experiment with a communal executive blog to record our meetings and decisions taken, and we're hoping that all of our teams will do the same. It will be an interesting experiment.
And finally on communication, something that makes me cross is people who don't make an effort to find our what's going on, but sit back and expect the information to be spoon fed to them. We are a University after all and a certain amount of proactivity is expected. Despite all of the technology we have at our disposal, nothing beats getting up off your chair, walking into someone's office and actually talking to them face to face!
Monday, 12 October 2009
We don't provide the systems anymore.....
Departmental meeting today - about 160 of the department got together first thing this morning, and we were very lucky to have a visit from our Vice Chancellor. He spoke about a number of issues affecting the University at the moment including the financial climate, the effect a change of government might have, the possibility of changes to student fees and consequent changes to the funding mechanisms. As a University we're in a much better financial position now as we've saved a lot of staff costs over the past few weeks, but there are still challenging times ahead. He also (very kindly and with no prompting from me) told the staff what a good job he thought they were doing and how much our services are respected and appreciated. Excellent start to the day.
We also had presentations on CampusM (blogged about last week), and the use of Web 2.0 technologies. We're pushing the latter a bit at the moment because we're already starting to see the effects of the changing attitudes to using technologies that we don't supply. So for example, we've just launched a major collaborative space with blogs, wikis, discussion boards etc, and one of our research groups has just launched their own based on a piece of free open source software. What do we do? Ours is secure, authenticated, backed up, supported etc. There's doesn't link to any of our systems, and probably isn't as secure. How do we broach it with them? Should we?
We also looked at students' use of technology and how easy it is for them to create content using relatively simple tools, like this video which won a recent MMUBS Podcast Competition:
Of course another great example is the IC Girls video, filmed surreptitiously in the IC and edited in someone's bedroom on iMovie - a great piece of film!
We also had presentations on CampusM (blogged about last week), and the use of Web 2.0 technologies. We're pushing the latter a bit at the moment because we're already starting to see the effects of the changing attitudes to using technologies that we don't supply. So for example, we've just launched a major collaborative space with blogs, wikis, discussion boards etc, and one of our research groups has just launched their own based on a piece of free open source software. What do we do? Ours is secure, authenticated, backed up, supported etc. There's doesn't link to any of our systems, and probably isn't as secure. How do we broach it with them? Should we?
We also looked at students' use of technology and how easy it is for them to create content using relatively simple tools, like this video which won a recent MMUBS Podcast Competition:
Of course another great example is the IC Girls video, filmed surreptitiously in the IC and edited in someone's bedroom on iMovie - a great piece of film!
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