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Abstracts and speaker profilesVirtualisation in a material world − ICT as a key enabler to a low carbon economy?
Richard Barrington is head of Public Policy for Sun UK and Ireland. He represents Sun on the UK's Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change; the DTI's Information Age Partnership; is a board member of PITCOM, the UK Parliamentary IT Committee and has just been asked to join the UK Government's Business Task force on Sustainable Consumption and Production. Richard has also recently accepted a position on the CBI Environmental Affairs Committee and will be active in setting the organisations strategy on environmental and sustainability issues. He is also an active alumni of the Business and the Environment programme and is an independent trustee of Eduserv.
Prior to joining Sun, Richard spend three years seconded to the Office of the e-Envoy, part of the Cabinet Office, as it's Director for Industry.
Richard has substantial media experience and has recently provided comment on the UK Government's budget announcement with regard to sustainable computing. Richard has also spoken recently at the Westminster eForum as well as Sun Microsystems' Forum for the Future event and SunLIVE 06.
Richard's area of expertise is Sun's sustainable computing strategy and the political issues surrounding this topic.
The good, the bad and the social network Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, and other social sharing tools, like blogs, wikis and media sharing websites, are currently at the forefront of public and media perceptions of developing Internet usage. Social networking tools facilitate a high degree of interactivity between their members as those members act as both suppliers and consumers of content. Educational institutions are now beginning to explore how such tools might be incorporated into various aspects of their teaching, research and administration.
Proponents of such incorporation point to the ability to empower students and create exciting new learning opportunities. They suggest a need to move away from Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) software that can be cumbersome and expensive … structured around courses, timetables, and testing … and driven by the needs of the institution rather than the individual learner. Examples are often cited of innovative teaching projects and exemplars of student generated materials.
Faced with this apparently boundless enthusiasm about the benefits of using social sharing tools in education, and the vistas of educational innovation conjured up by companies seeking to provide a transformation in education that appropriates these technologies for educational advantage, it may appear churlish to point out that there are likely to be some thorny legal, social, administrative and pedagogical issues to negotiate on the way to this notionally rosy future.
Yet educational organisations will need to address those issues. Experience in past educational technology projects suggests, as one might expect, that it’s far better to identify and address possible risks at an early stage, than it is to identify them by means of having to deal with the consequences of their becoming reality. And, in the usual pass the parcel allocation of organisational tasks, where is responsibility for addressing those issues likely to land?
Andrew Charlesworth is Senior Research Fellow in IT and Law and Director of the Centre for IT and Law, in the Law School and Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol. Andrew’s involvement with educational technologies began with the TLTP Law Courseware Consortium (LCC) in 1994 and has continued through a veritable blizzard of education orientated acronyms to the present day. He has undertaken research and consultancy in legal issues arising from a range of subjects including: educational use of the web, institutional archives and repositories, web archiving, ePortfolio and PDP tools, VLEs and MLEs, institutional data sharing, Web 2.0 technologies, and research use of personal digital collections.
Andrew’s most recent work includes a Legal Study (2004-2007) undertaken as part of the JISC MLEs for Lifelong Learning programme, which provided legal research and guidance to JISC projects working on aspects of the implementation of a Lifelong Learner Record (LLR), including developing ePortfolio and PDP tools, and drafting proposed learner information standards and specifications. Deliverables from the Study are available at www.bristol.ac.uk/law/research/centres-themes/law-it/jisc1/index.html
It is a pleasure to welcome UCISA delegates to my home town and to have this opportunity to discuss the distinctive contribution of Scottish universities defined in terms of excellence in learning and teaching; the international standing of our pure and applied research; and the economic, social and cultural contributions we make to Scotland.
The present and future role of IT in learning and teaching and the development of informatics platforms particularly in life sciences research and translational medicine will be explored as examples of current collaborative efforts in Scotland which have wider international significance. The notion of IT departments as valued business partners enabling academic progress and promoting new business processes will also be pursued.
Alan Langlands is the Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Dundee. The University is a world ranking research institute, particularly in life sciences and medicine, and provides a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes. It plays an important role in the economic, social and cultural development of Scotland. Alan is also the Chairman of UK Biobank Ltd, a joint venture company set up by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council to oversee a major genetic epidemiology study.
Alan was the Chief Executive of the National Health Service in England from 1994-2000. He has an international reputation in the development of healthcare policy and as a strategic manager of health services and he has advised in many countries including Russia, the USA, Canada and China. He received a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list (1998) for his services to the NHS and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Alan is a science graduate of the University of Glasgow and was conferred Doctor of the University in October 2001. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick Business School. He has been awarded Honorary Fellowships by the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (Glasgow), the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and the Institute of Actuaries.
Who’s the Daddy? Approximately 1 in 6 of the adult population suffers infertility and seeks medical help in order to have children. Often the treatment is relatively simple, but in some cases couples need to use assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF. There are now over 12,000 children born each year through IVF and associated treatments and almost 2% of all UK births each year are now conceived this way. One of the key concerns in providing IVF treatment is making sure that the sperm sample provided by the male partner is mixed with the eggs from his partner once they have been removed from her body. Mixing the wrong sperm with the wrong eggs means that any child born will not be genetically related to one of the parents. Moreover, should the wrong embryo ever be transferred back into the female partner, and a baby be born, it would not be genetically related to either of the couple that brought it up. To date, most IVF units worldwide have used a variety of (manual) systems to make sure these mix-ups don’t happen, but following a high profile case in the UK where a mixed race baby was born to a Caucasian couple (following a sperm mix up) there has been increased interest in finding a technological solution to this issues. Two systems are currently available commercially using either bar-coding technology or RFID tags to reduce the risk of laboratory mix ups happening in IVF.
Allan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Sheffield and is also Head of Andrology for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. Part of his day to day job involves directing the Andrology Service overseeing diagnostic semen analysis and the sperm banking facility and providing advice to the IVF Unit. His research interest includes many aspects of male fertility and he has published over 50 papers and book chapters. He is an accomplished lecturer and broadcaster and is regularly asked to comment on TV and radio news about current topics in infertility and human reproduction. He has been involved in the production of several recent TV programmes including The Lab Rats (BBC Three, Feb 2004), The Truth About Food (BBC 2, Feb 2007), Make me a Baby (BBC Three, June/July 2007) and has provided script advice to programmes such as Holby City (BBC One) and Footballers’ Wives (ITV). He is about to start work on an exciting science drama series for Channel Four to be broadcast in 2009.
Identity: the final frontier In this talk, we will cast a curious eye over the issue of identity in the digital age.
As the technology for information processing (and more importantly information transfer) has become almost ubiquitous, it has opened up plenty of questions about how we deal with the information that people generate, and accumulate, throughout their lives.
We begin by asking some fairly basic questions: Who are you? How do you identify yourself? Who holds information about you? We also take in a tour of the plethora of technologies which are designed to help us assert out identity (e.g. biometrics, ID Cards etc). In addition, we ask whether the recent changes in technology help or hinder us in our goal of managing our personal information securely. The news of the loss of two disks in late 2007 demonstrated the inherent difficulty in managing large volumes of data in a large scale and widespread information environment.
There are benefits and drawbacks to every technology and, in this talk, we hope to highlight the issues we need to consider if we are to manage our most personal of information sensibly in an increasingly data hungry society.
Dr Geraint Price BSc (London), PhD (Cantab) obtained his BSc in Computer Science from Royal Holloway University of London in 1994 and his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1999. His PhD dissertation analysed the interaction between computer security and fault tolerance. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Research Associate within the University of Cambridge, working on projects related to denial of service attacks in networks. In November 2001, he joined the Information Security Group (ISG) as a Research Assistant to work on a project funded by PricewaterhouseCoopers on the future of Public Key Infrastructures. From late 2002 to mid 2004 he worked on a research project funded by the PKI Club at Royal Holloway. In September 2004, Geraint was appointed as Lecturer in Information Security. He lectures on the MSc in Information Security, delivering a module on Security Technologies. He has recently been appointed as Director of Teaching for the MSc, and is responsible for chairing the curriculum committee. His research interests include Public Key Infrastructures, identity management, denial of service attacks and resilient security.
A shared research data service for the UK: is it possible? There is much talk about the data deluge in the world of information, and nowhere is this more likely to swamp universities than in the context of research data.
While JISC has had considerable success in building an e-infrastructure in which research data transactions can take place, there remains an intractable problem of data management at the level of the HE institution itself.
IT directors and librarians are becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of a consistent national approach to the management of research data. Research Councils have similar concerns about the mass of data produced as a result of their funding, and only a few of them have well managed data archives in place.
Under the HEFCE shared services funding programme announced last summer, Russell Group IT directors and librarians, supported by UCISA and SCONUL, submitted a bid for a major feasibility study to investigate the possibility of a UK-wide approach to the management of research data.
At £200k, the bid was well above the upper limit of £75k in the HEFCE call, and yet it was successful. JISC have added a grant of £35k and RUGIT and RLUK (the new title for CURL) have each contributed £10k, making a total project fund of £255k.
The feasibility study will address the need not just for storage capacity but also for active management of the creation, selection, ingestion, storage, retrieval and preservation of research data – the data lifecycle – now recognised as a complex process requiring an integrated approach.
This presentation will give a progress report on the project so far and explain how the UCISA community can help to promote and advocate within their own institutions the vision of the UK Research Data Service (UKRDS).
Jean Sykes has been Librarian and Director of IT Services at the LSE since January 1998. The Library is the largest social science library in the world and is well known to researchers for its outstanding collections.
In recent years, Jean has been an active member of JISC’s Committee for Content Services which manages an increasing portfolio of electronic datasets and services for higher and further education institutions in the UK, and she chairs the JISC Advisory Group which oversees a £22 million digitisation programme. She was also a member of the JISC Core Middleware Advisory Board, leading developments towards a single sign-on identity management system, and she chaired the JISC funded Identity Project which has just come to an end.
Jean is particularly interested in exploiting new technologies to enhance information services to users, and sees cooperation between librarians and IT directors as extremely important in this context. She is chair of NEREUS, a consortium of 20 major economics research libraries in nine European countries which, with the help of a 1 million euro grant from the EC, is building an open archive repository of 50,000 economics articles called Economists Online.
Jean is a member of the UK Research Reserve (UKRR) Advisory Board which is overseeing Phase 1 of the HEFCE funded initiative to build a shared service for storage and retention of, and access to, low use print journals based on an alliance between the British Library and HE libraries. She sees the newly funded UKRDS feasibility study project (for a UK Research Data Service) as a potential digital counterpart to the UKRR. Where the UKRR is looking after the future of print research in journals, the UKRDS, if deemed feasible, would provide a shared service for managing digital research data for reuse by researchers now and in the future.
21st Century Futures −Red Monkey domination Our environment has changed rapidly, from a predictable 2-Dimensional (2D) Channel into an unpredictable 3-Dimensional (3D) Ocean. And this change came far too quickly for many managers and organisations. Most were unprepared and became suddenly confronted with a very innovative and ever changing market. This environment offers no mercy, and chances of survival are slim for those that don’t adapt to this new reality.
Jef Staes’ lecture does not only highlight the different drama’s organisations have to face in the 21st century but also offers a comprehensive framework for successful change management. In order to survive, organisations will need to embrace the world of conflicts. Continuous improvement will have to make way for a challenging innovation process. A new breed of project managers must be able to transform confrontational ideas (Red Monkeys) into successful new processes, products and services. Mastering the game of Red Monkey® Politics and Red Monkey® Innovation Management will characterise the new 3D Project Manager.
Red Monkeys have to dominate your organisation. They have to find friendly biotopes where they can grow and organically evolve. Jef’s keynote will familiarise you with the many metaphors that illustrate the necessity to adapt to the new 3D environment.
Jef Staes is a leading authority in Belgium on learning processes and Innovative organisations. With 20 years of experience in dealing with learning and innovation, he currently assists organisations and companies in their quest to find a comprehensive answer and approach to the changing dynamics of today’s market.
Based on a professional career as software engineer, training manager and corporate learning officer, he now focuses on the urgent need for culture change and the role of human resources management in learning and innovative organisations.
“How does it come that organisations don’t learn and innovate fast enough?”
Jef Staes offers an answer to this question. As a business speaker he not only awakens companies, but also presents them with a unique concept to guide them through the necessary changes. Change processes in the field of management and learning, should always aim to dramatically increasing the flexibility and the power to innovate of workers, teams and organisations.
His Engine of Innovation® concept was first brought to paper in a Dutch book The re-exam of a management generation in 1999. His latest book My Organisation is a Jungle (May 2008) further explores the dramatic difficulties Innovation faces in most organisations today. Through the use of rich metaphors and exciting parallels, he engages you in the story of the Red Monkey.
Jef Staes has given hundreds of lectures on culture innovation bringing a variety of different perspectives to this subject and this for a very diverse audience (conferences, education, in-company, associations...). He was a speaker at different international conferences such as HumanTech (Kiev, 2005), Online Educa (Berlin ‘02, ‘05 & ‘06) and Front End of Innovation Conference (Munich 2007). He is also a visiting lecturer at the most renown management schools in Belgium (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, UAMS University Antwerp Management School and EHSAL).
His most important project is the Engine of Innovation® Consortium. This growing network consists of several companies and organisations from various sectors. Together they share information and best practices. But, most importantly, they initiate shared change projects guided by the Jef’s Engine of Innovation® concept. The N3 JANET Gateway: start of a strategic solution for NHS-HE Connectivity? “Just hang on a minute while I go to the other office and log on to my NHS computer”. This is something that still might be heard from a member of NHS clinical staff who is also involved with education and research at a university school of medicine, dentistry, nursing or other profession allied to medicine. Similar issues exist for university students being taught on placement within the NHS or those involved in collaborative health research.
In November 2008 an early adopter gateway was installed between the new NHS broadband network in England and Scotland, N3, and the UK education and research network, JANET. This is in place for one year to evaluate how such a facility can be used bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure that appropriate NHS information governance is maintained. This will inform the case to be made for the best way forward after this year.
The project will be described in terms of:
Malcolm Teague is NHS-HE Coordinator working at JANET(UK). The post is joint funded by JISC and the NHS as an act of practical collaboration instigated by the NHS-HE Forum, an informal but powerful group created in 2001 by Prof Roland Rosner at UCL. Malcolm is on secondment from Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust where he was Director of Information between 1994 and 2000, following various posts in NHS IT and statistics during 12 years at what was then the South Western Regional Health Authority in Bristol. His first taste of the interest and joys of working in education and research was as IT Services Manager during the initial years of the setting up of the Peninsula Medical School in Devon and Cornwall. This was a very exciting and rewarding time and it was a privilege to be involved in creating something new, working with helpful partners. It also gave the background for some of the challenges faced in his current role that has the aim of improving connectivity between the NHS and universities involved in health related education and research. And the rewarding experience with helpful partners has continued! Malcolm is the facilitator for the NHS-HE Forum meetings which continue twice per year and during the last two years a successful parallel Scotland NHS-HE Forum has been created. There is more background at www.nhs-he.org.uk.
Polar Bear Pirates − everyday people making a difference Adrian will be sharing with us some of his unique experiences from his colourful career and taking us on a highly entertaining and emotionally charged roller coaster ride along the road to Fat City. Along the way he will point out characters that we will all be able to easily identify with, including Neg Ferrets, Sinkers and BLOATERS. He will explain the powerful relevance of TNTs and take an inspiring look at his own eye opening findings of six years research into the world’s most successful people.
Welcome to Fat City and to a whole new world – a world not a million miles away where TNTs rule and Neg Ferrets, BLOATERS and Sinkers reside – all of whom you will no doubt instantly recognise!
Why the world of Polar Bear Pirates was born in the workplace – out of necessity to deliver as a team – to motivate, engage and retain staff − to help everyday people to make a very real difference and to get an edge over the competition.
Riot policeman, milkman and salesman were just a few of the many entries on Adrian’s CV before he moved into the IT industry and discovered an ability to motivate and inspire others.
The son of a Yorkshire coalminer, Adrian has quickly established himself as one of the most popular motivational speakers in Europe today.
He is now a bestselling business author with his first book Polar Bear Pirates And Their Quest To Reach Fat City being successfully sold worldwide.
Brilliantly inspiring, hilariously funny and easy to relate to, Adrian cuts through complex motivational psychobabble, making it fun, relevant and useful. People come away from Adrian’s presentations feeling inches taller, knowing how to make a difference and with very large grins on their faces!
Born in the workplace, out of necessity to inspire others on shoestring budgets, his unique world of motivational terminology is today helping to inspire ordinary people from a vast array of organisations around the world to be extra-ordinary.
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