Building on Use of Personal Web 2.0 Technologies Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Resources bookmark tag‘ online-information-2009 ’ Twitter: Blog: Twitter tag: #online09 Twitter tag: #online09

2 About The Speaker Brian Kelly: Works at UKOLN – a national centre of expertise in digital information management, located at the University of Bath, UK UK Web Focus: a national Web advisory post Funded by JISC and MLA to support UK’s higher and further education & cultural heritage sectors Involved in the Web since January 1993 Currently active in promoting best practices for Web 2.0

About This Talk Introduction The political and economic context The unmanaged Social Web environment Emerging best practices:  Lightweight policies  Risks and opportunities framework  Risk audit framework 3

4 Beyond the Techies (1) Implications of the “The Edgeless University” report: “The forces now confronting higher education have been called 'a perfect storm’. They are serious challenges. [HEIs] can no longer depend on ever-increasing allocation of funds” “This seminar feels a bit like sitting with a group of record industry executives in 1999”

5 Beyond the Techies(2) A need to consider implications of the “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” report What ‘network as a platform’ / Cloud computing means the institution How Universities should respond How support services can make use of the Social Web

Overhaul of Universities As public funding becomes more scarce, universities will be encouraged to focus on what they do best There will be a consumer revolution for students with each course labelled with key facts … universities have enjoyed a "benign financial climate" in recent years … this high level of public funding cannot continue 6 Or will Conservative plans be more relevant to the sector?

7 Opportunities & Challenges

8 Web2MemeMap, Tim O’Reilly, 2005 Characteristics Of Web 2.0 Network as (my) platform Benefits of scale (Social Web) Clean URIs Remix and mash-ups  Syndication (RSS) Architecture of participation  Blogs & wikis  Social networking, tagging & sharing Trust and openness Characteristics Of Web 2.0 Network as (my) platform Benefits of scale (Social Web) Clean URIs Remix and mash-ups  Syndication (RSS) Architecture of participation  Blogs & wikis  Social networking, tagging & sharing Trust and openness Web 2.0 A Non-technical Perspective on Web 2.0 It’s not just about the technological aspects, it’s about rethinking ownership and use of services and content

9 It’s About The Individual! How do you relate to a world in which the focus of the Social Web is the individual. Challenges posed: ‘It’s my space’ ‘Sustainability Privacy Editorial control Branding … How do you relate to a world in which the focus of the Social Web is the individual. Challenges posed: ‘It’s my space’ ‘Sustainability Privacy Editorial control Branding …

Why Use the Social Web? 10

11 The 1 – 9 – 90 Challenge Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. (Jakob Neilson, Oct 2006) Potential Benefits: Globalisation Cross-fertilisation Unexpected benefits Maximising impact Potential Dangers: Globalisation Mono-culture Unexpected dangers Loss of impact Remember that Social Web services improve as the numbers of users increase

12 A Question “How Can Institutions Develop Innovative and Affordable Tools to Engage Increasingly Sophisticated Audiences” (JISC Digitisation Conf 2007) Some thoughts: In some areas they shouldn’t attempt to compete with market place successes (e.g. Google) If some cases institutions may be indifferent to the service provider (e.g. Microsoft or Google Docs) There are real needs to: Answer the question “Why develop?” Be realistic if development work is funded Be user-focussed (and this isn’t necessarily easy) Be prepared to write off investment if users don’t want what we’ve developed

13 Being Realistic Options in light of the credit crunch: Let’s build up an empire now which will be embarrassing to close down Let’s use issues of ownership, stability, privacy, … to stifle discussion of 3 rd party solutions Let’s explore a blended approach (a 3 rd way?)

The Pilot was a Success … Following a very successful pilot project the JANET Collaborate prototype site will shortly be retired. … This retirement has come about as a result of difficulties in maintaining the prototype beyond its intended lifetime. We are now looking at how to add the functionality into the JANET service portfolio in order to provide an improved feature set based on the requirements gathered in the pilot. We understand that some fans of the prototype site may be disappointed by this news. We apologise for this and at the same time thank all the users of the prototype for their strong, enthusiastic support during the pilot. 14

Managed External Services We’re seeing greater take-up of in the cloud 15 Cloud computing - Hope or Hype?, From A Distance blog, 4 Nov 2009, Chris Sexton Discussions about managed cloud services now mainstream

Unmanaged External Services My UK Web Focus blog, hosted on Wordpress.com 16

Unmanaged External Services IT Service director blogs on 3 rd party service! 17 And allows unmoderated 3 rd party content to be published

Use of Cloud Services Use of services in the cloud: We are committed professionals We want to support innovation We can demonstrate best practices 18 Policies

Experience at Croydon Council illustrates the need for lightweight and flexible policies 19 Lightweight Policies Mosman Council provides an example of a lightweight policy for Twitter Policies

Risks and IWMW 2006 Risk assessment approach initially developed for IWMW Risk Management

Risks and IWMW 2006 Summary of the risks 21 Risk Management

Risks and IWMW 2006 There are also risks in doing nothing 22 Risk Management

23 Biases Subjective factors Towards a Framework “Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services”, Museums & the Web 2009 conference Intended Purpose Benefits (various stakeholders Risks (various stakeholders Missed Opps. (various stakeholders Costs (various stakeholders Sharing experiences Learning from successes & failures Tackling biases … Application to existing services Application to in-house development … Risk Management

An Audit Framework Scenario Social Web services fail Institutional content is lost Funders demand action How to respond? Replicate functionality of 3 rd party services? / ban use of 3 rd party services? Ignore concerns An audit framework to ensure awareness of risks, to inform planning 24 Risk Management

Bottom-Up or Top-Down? Bottom-up: Individual auditing of personal uses of Social Web services Knowledge of what is being used Help to instill awareness of risks Top-down: Buck stops here Organisation likely to have legal responsibility 25 Risk Management

Bottom-Up And Top-Down Institutional requirement: All departments to report on use of Social Web to support institutional objectives Departmental implementation: Audit framework and collation of responses Development of action plans Inform institutional responses Individual actions: How individuals make use of Social Web Clarification of ownership, identification of risks and description of risk management plans 26 Risk Management

Memo From The VC From: VC, University of Poppleton To: Heads of academic departments and services Subject: Departmental Audit: Use of Cloud Services Following the THE article on the loss of teaching and research resources following the collapse of Faceblock service all departments are required to complete the following self-assessment audit form on: Use of third party services Risk assessment of viability of services Risk assessment of other potential risks Disaster recovery plans 27

Example: Audit Tools and purpose: Slideshare: Enhance awareness of presentations and allow embedding Delicious: Bookmarking of resources, which can be embedded elsewhere and resources shared UK Web Focus blog: Dissemination and user engagement YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: Videos of talks which can be embedded elsewhere 28 Risk Management

Example: Risk Assessment Probability of loss of service: Slideshare: Mature service; market leader Delicious: Mature service; market leader UK Web Focus blog: Mature service; market leader YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: (a) Market leader, but known to be making losses (b) No longer accepts new videos (c) Newish service 29 Risk Management

Example: Risk Management Plans if service withdrawn: Slideshare: Master copy held locally Delicious: Copy resources (Diigo) UK Web Focus blog: Backup help locally YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: Masters held locally 30 Risk Management

Example: User Education Plans to minimise user inconvenience if service withdrawn: Slideshare: Location of master included in metadata and embedded in content Delicious: None UK Web Focus blog: Blog will provide information on migration. RSS will be redirected. YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: Location of master included in metadata 31 Risk Management

The future is exciting - but institutions will need to develop risk management plans for their use of the Web 2.0 environment Conclusions Acknowledgments to Michael Edson for the Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person post / comic strip