A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Responding To Change And Institutional Challenges: What if Web 2.0 Really Changes Everything? Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK UKOLN is supported by: Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, blogs, SMS, video chat, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using , instant messaging, blogs, SMS, video chat, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. This work is licensed under a Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Tag for session: ‘ cetis-2007-conference-institutional-challenges ’

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 2 The Scenario For this session imagine: You’re a small organisation with few developers (and they tend to leave) You’re a developer and you want to do interesting development You’re a user, and you want to make use of technologies without being told by the IT Services crowd what you should do You’re a member of the Senior Management Team – and budget cuts are looming How can Web 2.0 be used to support these scenarios? Note after coffee you will explore the issues from a developer’s perspective

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 3 What If Web 2.0 Changes Everything? What you may expect: What If Web 2.0 Changes Everything? Web 2.0 is about: RSS, syndication Blogs Wikis Cool interfaces – Ajax Trusting your users Yaddy, yaddy yada Haven’t CETIS conference attendees being doing this for a long time? You know all this stuff!

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 4 What If Web 2.0 Really Changes Everything? An alternative perspective: What If Web 2.0 Really Changes Everything? Web 2.0 is also about: The network as the platform Google, Yahoo, etc. as application providers New business models (not just funded by the taxpayer or subscription services) The wisdom of crowds ‘Embracing constraints’ and ‘good enough’ solutions Would we welcome this or feel threatened?

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 5 When Two Tribes Go To War Recent (10 Nov 2007) post by Niall Schlater (OU) on concerns over the reliability of Slideshare …..and response by Tony Hirst (OU) on concerns over the reliability of OU Intranet!

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 6 When Two Tribes Go To War Similar disagreements are taking place at Leeds University. Why bother, asks Nigel Bruce, from the IT Services department? Lots of reasons, responds Melissa Highton, Staff Development in a talk at next week’s “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks” workshop.

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 7 Exploring These Tensions Aims of today’s session is to explore these tensions: Why the diversity? How do we respond? Is there a single answer or do we need to embrace the diversity? Let’s explore the view of the keen Web 2.0ers

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 8 The Real IE Martin Poulter, ILRT on Technologies For Resource Sharing: Embeddability Services which can be embedded provide benefits for all Wikipedia generates more traffic than HE Academy – so let’s be Wikipedia editors Let’s use 3 rd party wikis … Note see Intute blog post about response to my recent talk The challenges Managing the risks Branding? Who cares (really?) The challenges Managing the risks Branding? Who cares (really?) See

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 9 Revisiting The IE (nee DNER) We had the early visions for the JISC DNER, developed by Andy Powell I subsequently developed my view for how the DNER might develop: Applications on the Web e.g. bookmarking (del.icio.us!) and word processing tools (Writely!)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 10 Web 2.0 As A DNER Development The DNER got a lot right: Networked services Lightweight standards Importance of RSS Trust (in the funded institutions) What we missed, which Web 2.0 is providing: Commercial providers of services New business models (we were Old Labour) Lightweight development User-generated content (we thought it would be the professionals) Trust – in the individuals The power of the network – services which get better as more people use them

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 11 Why We Should All Use Web 2.0 What we used to think: We’re in HE, and we have IT Services to provide our IT needs (though we moan about them) JISC builds on this to provide additional services What we (should) now realise: JISC & institutional services aren’t appropriate for:  Our family photos, our music, …  Use by our friends and families  For social networking We need our personal risk management strategies (for our family digital heirlooms) Institutions may feel a need to ensure students familiarise themselves with such services Academics are likely to make use of such services in any case

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 12 Can’t We Just Do it In-house? Surely all we need to do is: Use Ajax to enhance our user interfaces Provide the popular (and increasingly expected) ‘favourite’, ‘comment’, ‘message; … social networking features within our own services and managed environments We can then avoid the spam, porn, misuse, … But: Have we got the mindset, the development processes, …? Can we expect to compete with the global providers - remember home-grown operating systems? What about the rule?

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 13 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 There are dangers associated with going down this route, with developing alternative approaches and doing nothing Globalisation talk

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 14 Why I’m A Fan of Slideshare Slideshare: Easy to upload slides Can be embedded in Web pages Statistics provided More importantly: Annotation facility Slides can be ‘favourited’ I can see my fans, and the other slides they like Amazon style “readers who bought this book also liked these” Would this level of popularity be possible on an institutional or even national repository? Globalisation talk

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 15 Open Development Truly open development helps deliver sustainable open source applications, such as Apache (Ross Gardler, JISC OSS Watch) Open development can also help provide enhance quality of ideas and provide sustainable content, communities, … Readers & contributors to UK Web Focus blog come from all over globe

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 16 Is It Risky? Scenario What happens if a third party provider goes out of business? londoninmaps/exhibition.html londoninmaps/exhibition.html Application Elsewhere What will happen to our life savings if our bank goes out of business? Do we keep our money under the mattress? And note recent Guardian headline “Secret List of Universities Facing Collapse” There’s a need for risk assessment, risk management, etc. But this also applies when you are developing software, procuring development work, etc. Globalisation talk

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 17 Some facts People are going to talk about you… … down the pub, in the local post office or on a social networking site or blog… they’ll still talk… they still say the same things… The boundaries are blurred; it’s common to mix business/study with pleasure Students don’t come into Uni and leave their personal lives at home… … but neither do staff!!! Slides from talk on “Put Yourself Out There” by Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services, Edge Hill University at UKOLN workshop on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks” on 26 Nov 2007.

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 18 Regardless of any institutional policy our students and staff will use social networking sites Image courtesy of Wanderer and Wonderer on Flickr

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 19 Living In A Blended World We’ve been through changing times before: Demise of mainframeGrowth of PCs Demise of Computer Board Growth of Google Need to engage: The stuff that just works Supporting distributed team working Need to understand: The stuff that users use, place they go (e.g. Facebook, Slideshare, …) Need to embed (it’s not surrender): Enhancing quality of 3 rd party services Content in Wikipedia Just do it

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 20 Conclusions Times have changed The simplicity of the past won’t return We need to  Reflect on our past (successes and failures)  Understand what makes successful services  Engage with success  Identify our (possibly new) roles If we do this, we can continue to thrive

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 21 Discussion Things to think about: Is this a realistic vision? Is this what people are thinking? What are the problems? Can the problems be managed? … D

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 22 My Thoughts Challenges Legal issues Sustainability SLAs with students Expectations Refuseniks In-house tensions, arguments Service limitations Multiple IDs Change control No strategic vision

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 23 Questions Any questions?