#ioe12 Coffee Breaks with a Little Open Licensing Thrown In

Doing an online learning course is just like being at school….I’m playing catch up already! Actually I was pretty good at school, it’s just now that life gets in the way!

I have finally worked my way through (most of the) the first module on Open Licensing and will share some thoughts on it in this post, but first I wanted to tell you about my #ioe12 coffee break! (I know, I’ve started with the coffee break rather than the learning – making sure I get my priorities right!)

#ioe12 Coffee Break

Some colleagues at the University of Bath are also taking part in MOOCs and early this week, at the suggestion of Jez Cope we met up for a “#ioe12 tea break” (naturally I had a coffee). Jez, an ICT Project Manager from the Chemistry department, and I have both registered for the Introduction to Openness in Education course while Marie Slater and Julian Prior from the e-learning team have signed up for the Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012 Syllabus offered by the Society for Learning Analytics Research.

We started off by comparing the 2 courses. The lak12 course looks a little more structured than the ioe12 one. It is divided up into weeks and specific dates are given for each week. At the moment only week 1 is available. There are also introductory notes for each week and explanations for the resources listed. The ioe12 course takes a more “in at the deep end” approach and I think I might have struggled with some of the first topic resources if I hadn’t had a reasonable back ground in the area already. There was no overview of what the resources were or the angle they were coming from. It was very much up to us to decide what we made of them and whether we agreed with them. I guess it’s a good lesson in the Internet generally – every Web resource has an agenda, does this one align with yours?

All 4 of us at the #ioe12 coffee break were already struggling to spend time on the course. Julian admitted having started a MOOC before and doing nothing for it bar signing up on the registration page. We all agreed that you get out of it what you put in and it’s very much up to you how much work you want to do. If nothing else, an online course offers links to excellent resources, almost like a topic driven filter of your rss feed or Twitter stream. Julian and Marie had signed up for their course at the recommendation of their line manager. Jez and I were doing the course as a form of CPD (continuing professional development) and largely in our own time. I wonder which of us will get the most done?

So coffee and tea break over here are my (brief) thoughts on open licensing.

Open Licensing

The resources given in the first topic were collectively in support of sharing and putting works into the public domain. Jez has written a really good overview of the concepts explored and I really don’t want to out do him . A few thoughts…I read Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig many years ago and I really liked his ideas around our need to understand free as a part of our cultural ecology. Much of what he says is very US centric (though the Copyright Term Extension Act did mean that both the US and UK now have the same copyright terms of life + 70 years) but some of ideas have really concreted my feelings in this area. For example:

• Copyright policy is not just about enabling commercial success but is about what level of control we are going to exercise over public reality.
• Intellectual property and physical property are very different.
• Over zealous copyright stifles creativity and innovation. Creation always involves building upon something else.
• Ideas are non-rivalrous – people can’t use them up by using them.
• Piracy is complex.
• Openness is a commitment to a set of values
• The ‘public good’ is not something that can only be measured by profit.

I have to admit I didn’t read the two papers by Rufus Pollock, they were both pretty lengthy and not particularly recent. I’ve bookmarked them and will take a look at them on a lengthy journey sometime soon. I had a look round his Web site instead. Rufus Pollock is the founder the Open Knowledge Foundation and their ideology is definitely one to be noted (the promotion of open knowledge leading to better governance, culture, research and economies). I felt that some of his comments on his blog didn’t necessarily align with where the Open Knowledge Foundation seems to be now. e.g .“This is because our philosophy is that what is important is CONTENT. It is NOT about the fancy bells and whistles, the flash plug-ins, and all the other meretricious tartuffery of the modern web” . For reference a tartuffe is a hypocrite who pretends to religious piety. Maybe the commercial Web fits this description but the Web in which I work doesn’t. Maybe I don’t get it, but I quite like the modern Web. Am I going off topic?

Before I go here are a few other blog posts that do a much better job at distilling the first topic:

• Open Licensing #ioe12 – Post2
• ioe12 & the day of the internet blackout
• #ioe12 Open Licensing, Copyright, Public Domain, and the Common Man
• Open licensing

Staying Connected in a Big Remote Worker World

As remote working becomes more usual I’ve started to notice a few more people like me: people who work from home or outside the office and who blog about their experiences. One such person is Doug Campbell who shares his thoughts on the Remote Worker Daily blog. You can follow Doug on Twitter at @dailyremotework or email him at remoteworkerdaily@gmail.com.

Doug has written a guest blog post on Staying Connected in a Big Remote Worker World – Family and Friends versus Work and Business – My Approach.

**********************

My name is Doug Campbell. In addition to writing for my blog, Remote Worker Daily, which I write remotely and to which I have posted to from around the world, I work a full time job as a technology consultant in the metro Washington, DC area where I work remotely part of the week.

My current client is fully remote, located in three separate cities across the United States. In my spare time, I am a part-time freelance consultant in the Enterprise Document Management space, which is also fully remote. My current freelance client is located in the UK.

In past jobs, I have worked with remote teams in India, Europe, and Canada on software development projects. I have also worked longer term fully remote while on vacation in Canada and South America.
I have been involved in some level or degree of remote work for almost 14 years.

The first challenge is staying connected.

As you can imagine, staying connected with all of these different teams in different countries, cultures, and time zones has provided an interesting challenge, and I haven’t even mentioned my family, located a thousand miles away.
So how do I stay connected in this big remote worker world? I have one approach for work and business, and a different approach for family and friends.

The second challenge is effectively drawing the line to keep family and friends separate from work and business.

Let’s start the discussion of what I call the “firewall to my personal life”. I have separate approaches to work and business connectedness than I do to family and friends for several reasons;

1. Privacy – I don’t necessarily share my weekend photos from the pub with my clients.
2. Safety – As Remote Worker Daily grows, so does the possibility of running into the occasional weirdo, stalker, angry reader, or identity thief.
3. Peace of mind – I also like to keep work and business separate from friends and family.

I find this works well for me, but some people effectively mix work and pleasure.

How I stay connected with work and business

1. Dell laptop – for all writing and work related software.
2. Apple iPhone 4S – I use this phone for everything from internet browsing to video-conference to email to phone calls.
3. LinkedIn – keep an extensive professional network.
4. Facebook – a separate account for Remote Worker Daily.
5. Email – a separate account for Remote Worker Daily, remoteworkerdaily@gmail.com
6. Twitter – used for Remoter Worker Daily @dailyremotework
7. GoToMeeting – affordable and reliable video conferencing.

Quick Tips:

1. Set expectations with employers, colleagues and clients on agreed upon work days and times, preferred communication channels, and frequency of communication.
2. Cheap isn’t always better, make sure you have a good quality, reliable connection.
3. Keep it professional. It’s easy to accidentally let your guard down when working at home in your pajamas.

How I stay connected with family and friends

I have been fully utilizing technology to cost-effectively keep in touch with friends and family (who are currently spread out in Canada and South America) whether I am home in the United States, travelling for fun, or vacationing. I have always been able to find free or affordable internet access wherever I travel.

The list of technology and tools that works well for me:

1. Dell laptop – for all writing and work related software.
2. Apple iPhone 4S – I use this phone for everything from internet browsing to video-conference to email to phone calls.
3. Skype – I regularly video-conference with family and friends.
4. Vonage – for home telephone and long distance. They have a very affordable world plan. I also use their iPhone application.
5. Facebook – my personal account, I regularly update throughout the day.
6. Twitter – My personal account.
7. Email – Personal email account.

Quick Tips:

1. Be sensitive to time zones. I learned this the hard way when I accidentally called my brother at 3 AM in his local time from China, which was an 11 hour time difference.
2. Be sensitive to technology preferences. Skype video-conferencing works great with my brother, but it has to be a telephone call with my parents.
3. If you wouldn’t want your boss, mother, and priest to see it, don’t send it via Twitter or post it publically on Facebook. And yes, many employers and recruiters do research employees or future employee’s public social media profiles.

Conclusion

Keeping connected with work and business, and family and friends should be guided first and foremost by common sense, and secondly by putting yourself in their shoes before acting.

IOE12, MOOCs and Vegetarianism

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a while now (3 years 4 months) and recently I’ve struggled a little with content. During the blog’s life I’ve covered many of the challenges related to remote working and, although issues still arise, for me remote working has become almost too normal to blog about. It’s a little like being a vegetarian – which I am – when you become one you talk about it a lot (the why, the how, the challenges, the opportunities), but over the years it’s just the way you live your life. Sometimes you just need a new angle, or maybe a new recipe. For a while I’ve tried out the ‘amplified event recipe’ and have posted about relevant tools and practices. As it is new year I’d like to try out something different…

I’m going to give online learning a go.

The Introduction to Openness in Education course #ioe12 is what is know as a Massively Open Online Course or MOOC. The Educause paper 7 Things you should know about MOOCs provides an excellent introduction to the concept but to summarise:

A massively open online course (MOOC) is a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any person—with no limit on attendance—who wants to take the course.

I’ve decided that I am going to participate in the Introduction to Openness in Education MOOC and blog about 1) what I learn and 2) my experience in taking part on the course. My plan is to take this course outside of work time and to write a blog post on each of the topic areas:

• Open Licensing
• Open Source
• Open Content
• Open CourseWare
• Open Educational Resources
• Open Access
• Open Science
• Open Data
• Open Teaching
• Open Assessment
• Open Business Models
• Open Policy

I know a little about most of the topics areas already but I’m hoping that the course will allow me to find out more about them and also clarify how I actually feel about openness in education. I’m also hoping that being open about what I’m doing will encourage me to complete all the topics and earn, at the very least, an OpenEd Overview (Novice level) badge. I think a few of my colleagues from the University of Bath are also going to attempt the course so there should be a support network there for me too.

To get started I have signed up to the participants page and intend to start working my way through the course as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long it will take, I’ll just have to give it a go.

I’ll still be writing about my usual topics but hopefully this approach will add some much needed freshness to this blog!

Weather the Weather

So what completely screws up your day if you are a home worker? Coughing cat? Lack of decent heating? Constant knocks at the door from door-to-door sales people? Bad broadband?

Well “all of the above” if you are me, but the latter can make working near on impossible.

Since I moved house (to an area slightly outside of the main town) my broadband hasn’t been great but turning the router on and off usually kick starts things. However this week hasn’t been lousy and the down time is becoming a bit of an issue.

I’m blaming the weather! It’s causing chaos!

It’s true that the weather can have an effect on speeds. The Sky Web site states that “Exceptionally hot or cold weather can affect the speed of your broadband. On particularly hot or cold days you may notice an effect on your broadband speeds.” Freezing temperatures can result cable lines freezing over over so badly as that they cannot operate as expected. Blown over telegraph poles can also be problematic. Snow can be a problem too and can cause slower or dropping connections due to moisture creeping into the wiring joints. As it’s harder to get about in extreme weather it can also increase the time it takes engineers to fix problems.

The other issue is that when the weather is bad more people work from home (or stay off work) which means that there is an increase on usual internet traffic. It’s all those people snuggled up on the sofa watching BBC iplayer!

Of course things could be worse and you could lose heating or power. Now that really would be a problem!!

Sky give some advice on dealing with slow broadband speeds.

The first step is closing and restarting your browser, then you can try switching your router on and off and your entire machine on and off. Other approaches you can take include unplugging all connections, making sure all devices (such as laptops, games consoles) are logged off the wireless, checking your hardware set up and changing your router settings.

As a last resort you could contact your service provider and/or phone company. Good luck with that!

According to the BBC Weather site the gales are slowly easing so fingers crossed things will be back to normal soon.

London Green Hackathon

Is your New Year’s resolution to do something good in 2012?

Why not go along to the London Green Hackathon at University College London, 28 – 29 January 2012. They are offering a weekend of hacking on climate change, sustainability, energy and carbon emissions.

The free tickets went really fast but 50 more have now become available, so don’t waste any time!

“Meet great developers and sustainability experts as we help out our planet with some innovative hacks. Come along, solve problems, and invent new ideas and applications that help address climate change.“

The events are part of a European series of Greenhackathons organised by AMEE, who aggregate and automate access to the world’s environmental and energy information.

You can follow the event on Twitter on @ameedev and @greenhackathon and see who is attending on Lanyrd.

2012 – The Year to Work from Home?

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. I certainly did!

So will 2012 be any different to 2011 when it comes to remote working? Well there is one big event that could have significant impact on the way people work….the 2012 Olympics.

Although the government have been working for some time on a transport strategy for the olympic games and the paralympics, which will take place in from July to September this year, gridlock is still predicted in the capital.

A report by the London Assembly’s transport committee published last year stated that travel problems were one of the biggest risks to London 2012, with extra traffic piling “extreme demand on a network already creaking at the seams“. Londoners currently spend an average of up to two hours per day on public transport and Transport for London estimates there will be an extra three million journeys a day on public transport during the games. Those working in the capital could find the summer months pose a real challenge to ‘just getting in to work’.

It has been recommended that businesses provide facilities for staff to work from home or use conference call facilities. However according to new research last week from global print solutions provider, Lexmark, almost two thirds of small and medium businesses across the UK do not currently have a flexible or remote working policy in place.

The survey revealed that just one in five of respondents’ organisations have plans to introduce a policy before the start of the London Olympics next year, despite the significant demand from workers for increased flexibility during the 17-day event.

So will 2012 really become the year of remote working? If businesses have any sense it will be…

Twitter saved my Hamster’s Life!

The festive season is upon us, so I thought I’d share a merry tale with you all.

Last week I was away at a conference and left my family to fend for themselves. I gave them a ring on the second night and found out that the hamster (a male Syrian hamster called ‘Tickles’) had escaped. My middle daughter had left the cage door open and Tickles had gone for a wander, anyway disaster was averted and Tickles was found safe and well.

The night I got back Tickles seemed to be ‘going for it’ in his hamster wheel and all seemed to be well. In the morning everyone was ready for school/work when there was a sudden scream from my middle daughter (it’s her hamster – and she keeps telling us as much too). Tickles was lying flat out in her cage and looked dead. I sent the children away and gave them the old “animals can’t live forever, he’d had a good life” talk – which wasn’t strictly true as he was only 6 months old. I figured he’d eaten something while being out on of his cage the other day. I took the children to school and told my daughter’s teacher about the situation. We decided we’d bury Tickles that evening. Sat at my desk ready to work I sent the following tweet:

I then received this reply from @glittrgirl

Was I wrong, was he still alive?

I got up and took another look at Tickles – he was limp and cold like a cuddly toy, but he was still alive. His cage had been in our conservatory, which although OK during the day was pretty cold at night. The manic running around in his wheel could have been an attempt to stay warm. It looked like he was hibernating.

I did some research on the Internet (hamsterific.com) and found out that this can happen when there is an extreme drop in temperature and that I needed to wake him up to save his life. I sat put the lifeless hamster onto a hot water bottle and started massaging him. Not a lot happened but I managed to get some sugary water into his mouth. By lunchtime there were signs of recovery but when I put him back into his cage he went all limp again, almost like he was in a coma. I ended up putting him on a towel on my modem (nice and warm – probably not a good health and safety tip) and spent any spare moment I had rubbing his and talking to him. I was now determined to bring the hamster back from the dead!!

By early afternoon Tickles was showing real signs of recovery and I was able to tell my daughter the good news at the school gates. She was very ecstatic (and only slightly disappointed that the grave stone she’d coloured at school would go to waste and that a guinea pig was now out of the question!)

So Tickles lives to fight another day and it’s all thanks to @glittrgirl and Twitter.

Tickles in a festive mood!

Merry Christmas to y’all!

Disaster Planning for Conferences

Skype link and presentation stage

Disaster! Your key note speaker can’t make it due to a family crisis!!!

This is what happened on day 2 of this year’s International Digital Curation Conference, 5 – 7 December 2011, Marriott Royal Hotel, Bristol, UK. Unfortunately Professor Philip E Bourne from the Department of Pharmacology, University of California San Diego wasn’t able to fly over for the conference.

So what did we do?

Plan A was to have Philip connect through a Skype connection and provide the audio part of his presentation. His slides would be presented on the big screen at the conference and the chair (Professor Matthew G.Davidson, Associate Dean (Research) from the Faculty of Science, University of Bath) would move the slides for Philip. Luckily this worked perfectly and the audience (and remote audience) were treated to a seamless presentation.

Behind the scenes there were a couple of things going on that are worth noting. We connected up with Philip through Skype in reasonable time for the talk and made sure that he was kept up to date with what was going on using messaging e.g. “get ready to go, the sound is perfect etc.) We didn’t allow Philip to hear the audio till the end of his talk – primarily to avoid distracting him with our conversations but also because the last minute nature of the set up didn’t allow time for testing. At the end of Philips talk we managed to connect to the mixer desk and use the microphones in the room so he could hear questions. We didn’t use video for the talk. It was 1am in California where Philip was Skyping from so he was probably ready for bed! Not only this but there were concerns about using video over the wireless connection, which was all that we had. Big thanks to the AV team at the Marriott hotel for helping us with this.

We did have a Plan B. Philip’s slides were available on Slideshare and he had also pre-recorded his talk and shared in on SciVee (it would have been played in video and document mode). SciVee is a provider of internet video and rich media solutions for the scientific, technical, and medical market.

SciVee in video and document mode

Plan C was phoning Philip’s mobile up!!

So what’s your back up plan for when your speaker can’t make it?

Rich Pitkin on the streaming desk

The Quandary of Quality

Last Thursday I ran a seminar on The Benefits of Amplified Events as part of the Green Impact seminar series at the University of Bath. A full abstract with links to the resources (including a set of short videos created by Brian Kelly) is available. My slides are available from Slideshare and embedded below.

There is also and Adobe Connect recording of the seminar.

After the seminar one of the attendees admitted that he found it all very interesting but was slightly concerned about the quality of the resources (streamed video, video snippets, audio etc.) created. He explained that even a slight crackle in audio put him off entirely and that he felt he’d always rather be at an event then watching it streamed.

We then had a really interesting discussion about the quandary of quality and I wanted to post a few thoughts here.

• The level of quality required is relative – There will be times when a high level of quality is necessary (for example if you are creating DVDs of talks), but there will also be times when a lower level is required (for example when putting on the Web). High quality video is resource intensive – it requires a good deal of effort to move about, store and edit. You will need to think about the context – what level of quality will your audience expect and are you willing to pay? Commercial outfits will produce excellent quality outputs but they cost – think about your business model.
• Seamless technology is very important – If the audio isn’t working or the video is blurry people will not be able to watch. Make sure the technology works in advance, test it and test it again. Even if you are doing it yourself you can make every effort to crack this nut. However there are still times when technical difficulties can’t be avoided – it happens in all areas of work – we all just have to learn from it and move on.
• Online/hybrid events are not the same as face-to-face events – They are different. Often they are an alternative because people cannot travel or attend. Some might argue that they are “better than nothing” but potentially they can be just as good, but different. Audiences need to be aware of this and event organisers need to manage expectations.
• It just won’t work for some people – However it will work for many others. The face of events is changing and ‘trial and error’ is necessary to make things better. As and individual, and as an organisation, you can decide if you wish to embrace change, or not.

As an aside….I know that my husband and I have different levels of tolerance when it comes to quality of audio and video.

I still love the crackle of an LP and the feedback from an amp. High definition television is wasted on me and I’m just as happy watching fuzzy videos as I am staring up at the big screen in a multiplex cinema. Many things are ‘good enough’ for me.

My husband is a music purist with classical music training and an ear for electronic music. Bad sound quality makes him wince. He understands the physics of sound and the mechanics of video.

I often think that I’m the lucky one as I’m enjoying the AV a lot more of the time than he is!

Business Models for Video Streaming

Many large-scale conferences now offer some form of streaming of talks or videos of the talks soon after the event. How they actually do this varies hugely.

I touched on possible business models in the post I wrote on Openness and Event Amplification last month. I wanted to take a more detailed look at this area and see if I could define a set of possible business models and also raise some of the challenges within each approach.

Do it Yourself

This is likely to be the cheapest option available to event organisers. On a fairly fundamental level the event team will need to assign roles and someone will then need to use a phone or camera to film talks. These can then be served up through a free streaming service (like LiveStream, Bambuser, blip.tv, Ustream etc.), a paid for streaming service or through a webinar service (like Adobe Connect, Collaborate etc.) The videos can also be shared using services like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Yahoo Video etc. It is worth noting that some video sites have limitations on the length, file size and formats they will accept. Event organisers will also be wise to add good metadata to the videos as this will help their categorisation and enable others to find them. Some of the videos may need editing in some way and there are countless free and licenced services out there. It is more than likely that many of the decisions regarding tools and services may be dictated by what your institution already has a licence for.

There is a comprehensive list of video hosting services on Wikipedia

At the Institutional Web Management Workshop that I have chaired for several years we have tended to rely on the skills of the host institution in streaming talks, which is a slight variation on the DIY model. Last year we found that the host institution couldn’t provide this service so we did the work ourselves.

The biggest cost here is the resources needed to train staff and the time needed to actually carry out the actual work (for example video editing can be hugely time-consuming). This approach works best if you have staff members who are interested in learning the skills needed and if you are likely to be organising events on a regular basis.

Cost: $

Event Amplifier

I’ve mentioned Kirsty Pitkin many a time, she’s definitely my event amplifier of choice! Kirsty and the rest of her team have a set of skills (live blogging, tweeting, filming, video editing etc.) that are essential when amplifying events and they also own all the necessary equipment. Not only that but Kirsty has an excellent grasp of the academic sector. These days Kirsty is extremely busy and I’ve no doubt that there will be others joining her in this space in the not too distant future – if there aren’t already. I can see the role of event amplifiers developing into a sort of ‘wedding planner for event amplification’ where they lead you through all aspects of the amplification from pre-event, during event and through to post-event. Their role is likely to extend beyond that of just video streaming. They will help you with many of the choices available but are also likely to be fairly flexible and happy to use the tools and services your institution already has a licence for.

Cost: $$

Outsource to a Commercial Company

Taking this one step further event organisers can employ commercial video streaming companies who carry out all aspects of event amplification. Obviously cost is dependant on what you exactly you would like done and at what spec you require it. Services like SwitchNewMedia are experts at this in the HE sector. The likelihood is that services like this will have a set of tools that they use and there will be less flexibility in processes and approaches. There are an increasing number of commercial media streaming companies out there and it probably makes sense to go with one that has been recommended by others. This approach is likely to be the most costly and the one in which you have the least control over tools and services used. It is probably the most appropriate approach for large scale conferences where quality is key and there is no room for technical error.

Cost: $$$

Use a Commercial ‘Kit’

At the APA Conference I attended last week all the sessions were videoed and archived through the River Valley TV service. The service send someone along who records the sessions using a fairly low spec camera (not HD). The videos are then edited (in Kerala, India) and delivered up on the River Valley TV site asap. The cost is fairly minimal. I chatted to the River Valley TV guy at the conference and he explained that in the future they intend to offer a ‘take away kit’ for users. Users are delivered the cameras, film the event, return the cameras and then the videos are edited and distributed online. I can see this model really taking off.

Cost: $$

Other Questions to Consider:

• Who is paying for this?
• Will you charge for access to the recorded talks?
• Will you charge for remote attendance of the live event?
• Will the streaming costs be paid by upping the price for face-to-face attendees?
• Will you allow advertising? Will the resources be freely available or not?
• Do you have the right processes and policies in place to allow you to video talks?
• Have you asked the presenters?
• Have you asked the audience?
• Have you decided on a licence?
• What impact will streaming have on your attendance?
• How much does quality matter?

The recent Streaming Media Europe Conference 2011 has some talks that might be of interest.

So are there any more potential models that I could list here? Or are there more questions that need consideration?