Innovex blog on collaboration, social media and cloud computing

I attended the student presentations that Mary Rose discusses. As a technologist I was fascinated by what the students had discovered during their journey. From my experience, among entrepreneurs are groups of technology lovers, but a good many cannot see the benefit to their bottom line, and even see additional risks imposed by collaborative platforms. There is an upfront cost to switching to a new platform (e.g. training) but implementation need not be rapid and new platforms can be brought in gently until staff become comfortable with the new ways of working. Starting simply is key. Once engaged however, the knowledge management benefits very much outweigh the initial switching costs. A clear advantage of collaboration platforms, as Mary highlights, was presented during the recent bad winter weather. Although I could not travel to work, I was able to work from home as productively as I could in my office. In this sense, collaboration platforms are also green technologies as working from home or hosting meetings whilst participants are geographically dispersed is now possible. Technology during the 1990s and the early naughties became far too complicated. Large firms adopted new technologies quite well as they have the resources to buy in consultants, but smaller firms lagged due to a lack of finance, skill and a 'one liner' explaining the benefits more clearly. Heck, you needed to be a computer expert and an entrepreneur at the same time and this is a fairly rare blend of abilities! With cloud technology becoming more widely available the IT world is going to be simplified and less expensive. So, here is my 'one liner': Employ collaborative platforms to raise productivity, manage your people, manage their knowledge, keep IT costs down, find/retain customers better and simplify your operations.

Building novel e-communities

Recently, Lancaster eScience, the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (IEED) and the Northwest Regional Development Agency was awarded JISC funding to develop online communities of business professionals using the Sakai collaborative environment. Called EMBRACE (EManaged Business Relationships and Cohesive Environments), the project builds on the JISC award (CRIB, see blog roll for more detail) and seeks to apply embedded social network functionality that Sakai now contains to develop lasting communicative relations between the public sector (e.g. academic and governmental agencies) and small and medium sized enterprise. The project begins on the 1st of February. EScience would like to take this opportunity to thank collaborators (IEED, Northwest Regional Development Agency) and supporters (Swansea University) for providing the evidence base that led to the successful bid. Without their support new opportunities such as these would not be feasible. I would also like to thank the Sakai development community for providing incentive to developers to keep on producing innovative and new ways of building e-communities. In particular, we would like to thank Steve Swinsburg (Sakai Fellow) for delivery of a new and innovative social networking tool beyond his contractual obligations. I personally would like to thank the development team at Lancaster eScience (Adrian Fish and Dan Robinson) for their sterling work in delivering Sakai to the academic and business communities and supporting the Sakai service provided at Lancaster. For further details of EMBRACE or CRIB please contact me at a.w.robertson@lancaster.ac.uk.

Open knowledge and the role of public funding

I read with interest that Rupert Murdoch intends limiting Google access to its news pages. It shows that Murdoch has no concept of the need for freely moving knowledge to increase human productivity but wishes instead to make a more successful business model for his company. He can do as he wishes however (no matter how much may will disapprove), as the content of his news pages are fully in his control. What if knowledge is created by public funds, should we charge for this? I argue that any research funded by the public purse should be free of intellectual property rights (IPR) as it is a public good paid for by the public. This is called open source knowledge and has a key benefit, anyone can apply it free of charge widening the impact of the generated knowledge. Economists have argued for many years that barriers in market places cause market imbalances that are detrimental to ideal consumption patterns. Usually the imbalance will create unfair pricing. Surely if knowledge produced within a university environment, paid for by tax payers, it must be made freely available to those that want it? I worry about the development of the need for universities to encourage IPR in academic research. Universities are here to expand the body of knowledge and encourage its use in the wider community via a number of channels. Restrict its use via stringent IPR policies and it will be used less. This undoubtedly will reduce the impact academics would hope for in their research and stifle further innovation. It is fair that private organisations that generate knowledge or processes that their IPR be protected. Protection of IPR in this case increases innovation as private investors are made confident that investment is protected underlaw. However, by encouraging universities to be guided into profit making IPR research, the fundamental way that knowledge generates changes. Academics for the most part are not financially orientated but do what they do to maximise the benefit to society. Add a profit motive to this activity and the role becomes one of generating profit on your research and suddenly the knowledge growth model falters. Why am I writing this in a technology blog? The Lancaster Centre for e-Science produces knowledge in the form of software and papers about technology. Every item we produce is governed by open-source attribution lisences. This means that everything we produce is given to the world for free use. This widens our societal impact to the maximum possible by taking away legal and economic cost barriers. This approach does not mean research spin off companies cannot be formed successfully. The academic skill base is huge, and it's one thing creating knowledge and giving it way and then developing it into a business model. It takes skill to do this and this skill needs to be paid for.

Sakai 3 is coming...social media and embedded tools

As we become accustomed to the new ways of social media, software must evolve that captures its vibrancy. Students, staff and clients expect this of software providers and the organisations that operate it. Sakai e-research and e-learning software is presently in version 2. Next year comes Sakai 3 (see http://sakaiproject.org/) which heralds a new way of thinking in the way we attach ourselves as individuals to secure online environments. Firstly, existing tool boxes (Moodle, Sakai 2) compartmentalize the tools. Social media, such as Facebook, have shown the value of embedding tools into styled web pages; although applications are limited and information security is weak.

Sakai 3 already manages site security very well (as did its predecessor, version 2) and implementing new social media ways of working is going to be a big hit. It will change the way we manage online relationships with our colleagues, students and clients for sure.

In Sakai 2, each tool sits separately with the worksite you use. So, as a user you may want to encourage your research or teaching group to vote on an important matter of the day either by sending an Announcement or engaging communication via Forums. To complete the vote, however, the user must navigate away from the communication point (e.g. forum) to select the vote tool and then make the vote. Sakai 3 overcomes this limitation and allows users to embed different tools into, say forums, much like a photo in the text document. No technical skill will be needed (e.g. html) but will be drag and drop in operation. What this means is that less clicks are required to navigate around the site simplifying the user engagement process. This new way of working also opens the door to better knowledge management practice. When a vote is cast in Sakai 3, the result would also appear in the forum itself, meaning that knowledge on complete array of activites will be available in one place and be searchable.

Over the coming months the Lancaster Center for e-Science will be installing Sakai 3 as a demonstrator for all existing and new Sakai users to take a look at. In the mean time, if you are interested in learning more about Sakai 3 go to Go to http://sakaiproject.org/future-directions.

US Universities making software for themselves

I mentioned in earlier blogs the ability of universities to manage their own software environments, from administration of services to full software development. This may seem like pie in the sky to most commentators but the reality is quite different. We are aware of open source content management systems and learning environments (e.g.Joomla, Sakai); but what about software than assists on the operational side of things? Check out this web site for a project with solid Ivy League backing http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/06/kuali. Big university names working together to build university software solutions that are open source and therefore adaptable to individual universities. This is an excellent concept and something universities around the world should benefit from in the future.

Lancaster Centre for e-Science now on Twitter

Follow the Lancaster Centre for e-Science on Twitter. You can find us at http://twitter.com/Lancs_eScience.

The Lancaster Centre for e-Science is working with the Northwest Regional Development Agency LEAD project that aims to provide leadership training to owners of small businesses in the region. The LEAD programme has been very successful (see http://www.businesslinknw.co.uk/Beagoodleader/LEAD/Pages/default.aspx) and was originally conceived by the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (IEED) at Lancaster University Management School to provide owners an opportunity to meet other business owners in a mix of seminar and online interactions. Research on past participants on the programme indicates that those which participate are likely to increase sales turnover by approximately 15%; participants also highlight this additional growth is significantly influenced by their learnings during LEAD . Over the coming 3 years the programme, across 15 institutions in the region, will impact around 1250 business owners hopefully yielding sizable increases in north west economic growth.

The question to pose at this stage is how can we keep busy business people online once their LEAD programmes complete? It would be incredibly useful to have a large, easily accessible group of business people. For instance, at the beginning of the recession information on the impact of the recession at the small business level was scarce. Typically, knowledge of impacts has to wait until the dust settles and aggregate statistics come out of the Office of National Statistics. If we engage with business people electronically, in a trust based environment it could provide us real-time information on events. The Sakai portal technology we produce and provide as a service has capabilities as a e-community building device. It contains the usual tools, probably the most popular are forums. e-Facilitators (people that maintain electronic communication) are able to develop trust in in their LEAD communities allowing them to ask fairly confidential information to delegates. Responses to trusted e-facilitators are usually rapid and from multiple sources. Responses form very useful qualitative insights into problems. Additionally to forums, delegates are highly likely to response to online surveys that can be posted via the portal. For instance, we gather survey data from delegates as part of the evaluation of the programme; we have no problem getting to 100% response rates which is incredibly high. The evidence does suggest a high value should be placed in developing and maintaining groups of business owners online.