Building on Use of Personal Web 2.0 Technologies

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Building on Use of Personal Web 2.0 Technologies
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conference
s/online-information-2009/

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, UK

Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk,
taking photos, discussing the content using
Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing
distractions to others is minimised.
Email b.kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk Twitter http//twitter
.com/briankelly/
Blog http//ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Twitter tag online09
Resources bookmark tagonline-information-2009
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This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonComme
rcial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
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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 UKs higher and
  further education cultural heritage sectors
• Involved in the Web since January 1993
• Currently active in promoting best practices for
  Web 2.0

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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

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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

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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

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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

Or will Conservative plans be more relevant to
the sector?
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Opportunities Challenges
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Web 2.0

• A Non-technical Perspective on Web 2.0
• Its not just about the technological aspects,
  its about rethinking ownership and use of
  services and content

• 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

Web2MemeMap, Tim OReilly, 2005
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Its About The Individual!

• How do you relate to a world in which the focus
  of the Social Web is the individual. Challenges
  posed
• Its my space
• Sustainability
• Privacy
• Editorial control
• Branding

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Why Use the Social Web?
http//www.flickr.com/photos/quelsaa/2080736454/si
zes/o/
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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
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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 shouldnt 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 isnt necessarily
  easy)
• Be prepared to write off investment if users
  dont want what weve developed

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Being Realistic

• Options in light of the credit crunch
• Lets build up an empire now which will be
  embarrassing to close down
• Lets use issues of ownership, stability,
  privacy, to stifle discussion of 3rd party
  solutions
• Lets explore a blended approach (a 3rd way?)

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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.

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Managed External Services

• Were seeing greater take-up of email in the cloud

Cloud computing - Hope or Hype?, From A Distance
blog, 4 Nov 2009, Chris Sexton
Discussions about managed cloud services now
mainstream
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Unmanaged External Services

• My UK Web Focus blog, hosted on Wordpress.com

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Unmanaged External Services

• IT Service director blogs on 3rd party service!

And allows unmoderated 3rd party content to be
published
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Use of Cloud Services
Policies

• Use of services in the cloud
• We are committed professionals
• We want to support innovation
• We can demonstrate best practices

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Lightweight Policies
Policies

• Experience at Croydon Council illustrates the
  need for lightweight and flexible policies

Mosman Council provides an example of a
lightweight policy for Twitter
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Risks and IWMW 2006
Risk Management

• Risk assessment approach initially developed for
  IWMW 2006

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Risks and IWMW 2006
Risk Management

• Summary of the risks

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Risks and IWMW 2006
Risk Management

• There are also risks in doing nothing

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Towards a Framework
Risk Management

• Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking A
  Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services,
  Museums the Web 2009 conference

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An Audit Framework
Risk Management

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

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Bottom-Up or Top-Down?
Risk Management

• 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

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Bottom-Up And Top-Down
Risk Management

• 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

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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

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Example Audit
Risk Management

• 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

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Example Risk Assessment
Risk Management

• 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

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Example Risk Management
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

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Example User Education
Risk Management

• 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

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