Lapse in Blogging

It seems such a long time since I managed to write a post and in this time so much has happened.

We are well on our way to providing our first ever user group. The venue has been selected, booked, the last thing to do it to confirm numbers and the bookeing. Hopefully, this will be complete by the end of the day. The programme of what is happening for the day is well on its way. There are areas that need work and there is now so little time in which to do the work. But the very nice folks over at OSS-Watch have agreed to help and provide a presentation on community and how it works within the world of open source. But we would like the day to be more centered around those who are going to use the WebPA tool and support insitutional users.

Before preparing for the user event, I ran a work shop at the University of Coventry who have installed WebPA and are in the process of piloting the tool with a small number of academics. This ment that the people attending the workshop had very specific questions about the tool and its operation. None of the questions where anything that I hadn't faced before, but they did introduce some ideas and concepts I had never considered. As always more food for thought. To try and ensure that these where not lost the new features have been added to the projects source forge area, and also noted on the project website.

Over a month...

I just came to write an update to the blog to give you some idea of what is happening with the project and realised it is well over a month since I last posted anything and it is already coming up to the end of the month.

To recap the month just gone will be far to audios for both me as a writer and to you as the reader. Instead I will try to highlight some of the success that we have managed and also cover some of the problems we have encountered.

One of the reasons for not being able to write to this blog as much has steamed from the fact the project has lost a member of the team. Steve has moved on to pastures new and I can be grudge him the opportunity that came up for him. As a result of this loss the project is suffering, hopefully only for the short term. However, Steve has left a couple of elements which he did not have time to finish off to his satisfaction. One of these elements is the production of the case studies. Although Steve managed to get around 14 academics here at Loughborough there are others who could not see him in time. Due to this I have picked the stragglers up and hope to have them done by the end of next week, but the case studies so far are all on the project website (I added the ones Steve completed under his name, there is no way I could take credit for his hard work.)

Before an event in Cardiff set up and run by the Engineering Subject Centre, I met the new Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching, who was interested to hear about the use of WebPA at the University of Wales, Newport. The academic tutor has also been able to provide the project with a case study, although this is not community development in the code side of things it still constitutes (as far as I am concerned) this should count as a success for the project.

Another event, but local to Loughborough University was also a success and for three hours I don't think I got a break from talking about the WebPA tool and its use at Loughborough. I did though find out some interesting ways in which the tool is being used here. Again these are practices that were never considered through out the history of the project.

Finally, we are being invited to some interesting workshops as participants (JISC formative e-assessment 2nd practical Enquiry Day andCommunity Building and Open Source Development Workshop) and some as presenters (Using Technology to Support the Student Learning Experience). As you can imagine the coming month is going to be hectic, with lots to do and places to go. On top of this we will be releasing the next version of WebPA, which will require updates to the user guides for both the installer, administrator and the academic user, so if there is anyone out there who can help, all offers will be considered (of course in an open source way).

Using technology for Effetive Project Communication

Tomorrow I attend an event by the above name. The event is being run by Netskills at the request of JISC to support projects in communication. The blurb states the following;

For some projects, the first and only contact with the community is a final report. However, a project is more likely to be successful if it engages with the community throughout its duration, promoting ongoing reflection and allowing audience feedback to direct the project.

Emerging web technologies such as blogs, wikis, pod casts and social networks can provide an effective way to do this. This event will consider best practice in using such technologies in the context of communication and dissemination for your JISC project.

By the end of the workshop participants will have created an action plan for how technology can best support their project communication and dissemination activities.

Really, I think the title for the workshop may be really misleading. Perhaps something more about communicating with your community via technology would have been more appropriate.

One element that I am not sure that is being covered is identifying the community. I know that some projects do not widely disseminate their information, but perhaps this is due to them not knowing who to communicate with.

It is okay having all the technology at your finger tips, but if you are not sure about your target audience then how do you select the most appropriate tool for communication. Not all the tools out there are going to be successful. Why would you create and host a forum, if your target audience is not likely to communicate using it. Also the failure of one medium will not ensure the success of another.

I know that this blog is successful in some respects. This is due to the fact that I collect stats, but also that comments have been left and some of the topics of the posts have been the source of discussion else where. But if I were to alter this blog and move to a wiki, where I would have less control and other peoples opinions may obliterate my own and not be relevant to the work of the WebPA Project, then the success would diminish. I might also find that I would be treading all over other peoples toes.