UKOLN is supported by:
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
Mahendra Mahey [email protected]
Why local developers are important for innovation in education
Collaborations Workshop, Friday 4th March 2011, 09:45 – 10:00 Edinburgh, Scotland.
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“successful companies innovate in a down market”���
���Jason Calacanis, Entrepreneur
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cost or investment? • IT regarded as a sunk cost in many educational
institutions
• a capacity for technical innovation is a strategic resource which needs investment
• in the institution
• in the sector
• technical innovation is, itself, an investment
• outsourcing IT has a cost
• reduced capacity to innovate
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Developer Community Supporting Innovation
funded project Based at UKOLN, at the University of Bath
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energy���engagement���critical mass ���& proof of concept
Phase 1: Aug 2009 – July 2010
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events • with JISC
• Rapid Innovation Programme Meeting
• with librarians & repository managers & developers
• Mashed Libraries (3 regional), Open Repo 2010, Reading List Hack Event
• with OSS Developers (working with OSS Watch)
• Engaging Developers with OSS, Workshop on Open Dev, Transfer Summit
• with Scientists/researchers
• Google Wave Hack Day
• with developers from other sectors
• Pair Programming, Developing Phone based applications, BarCamp London, Bath Camp
• with everyone, together
• dev8D
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building capacity
Before After 1 minute 30 seconds
Shiraz won the most improved award
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building stuff together • building stuff as free-form
R&D
• doing so in a very open , informal, playful, and fun environment
• contributing ideas
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OR10 Dev Challenge • Enhance single metadata records with as many
automatically created, useful links to related external content as possible.
• used remote services to link data and add functionality
• bringing remote services to bear in a local context
• users, domain experts and developers collaborating successfully
Links Managed by ���Google doc
Enhanced Metadata Record
Richard Davis and ���Rory McNicholl from University of London ���Computer Centre
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case studies • University of Kent ay Canterbury
• Manager’s View
• "They gained a huge amount. They came back very enthusiastic and full of good ideas. It did a great deal for morale and motivation…. It's a very powerful thing when your peers say that you are doing something the best,"
• “...decided to use the momentum of Dev8D to move forward with agile working and the List8D project by providing the development team with two very important assets: physical and mental space.”
• More studies being commissioned in year 2
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Value���Sustainable growth
Phase 2: Aug 2010 – July 2011
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Annual event
Cross pollination, networking, sharing ideas, etc
National / International Challenges
Hackdays ���(2 days)
Reading Lists Linked Data E-Learning
EPub Bioinformatics
Challenges, Rewards, Recognition
Over 120 sessions
Mobile technology Business process modeling Workflow tools
Paper Prototyping
Software documentation Documentation retreat,
peer reviewed documentation
Epub Supporting events: Collab workshop Mashed Libraries, etc
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focus: devs, users & SaaS
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Value • having local/institutional developer
resource available is valuable
• that local resource, while limited, can be backed-up by a community of peers
• a well connected community of developers is greater than the sum of its parts!
• 3,500 developers on contacts list
• developers can empower users
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value: knowledge transfer • data-centric research will demand skills currently
held by developers
• growth of researchers choosing a career path in software development?
• librarians at Mashed Libraries
• peer-peer (dev8D)
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value (for money): training Per Day Costs (GBP)
Per Hour Costs per del(GBP)
Scala http://skillsmatter.com/course/java-jee/bject-oriented-meets-functional-an-exploaration-of-scala 697.5 87.1875 http://www.artima.com/seminars/ 325.5 40.6875
Average 63.9375 Ruby on Rails http://pragmaticstudio.com/rails 418.83 52.35375 http://www.jbinternational.co.uk/ruby-on-rails-training-uk.html 400 50 http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby_on_rails_i 364 45.5
Average 49.2845833333333 Linked Data http://events.linkeddata.org/iswc2008tutorial/ http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/wiki/index.php/ISWC_2009_Registration 125 15.625 http://www.semsphere.com/en/training/courses/details/7-official-sts-course 234 29.25 http://topquadrant.com/training/intro.html 314.125 39.265625
Average 28.046875 Iphone http://training.oreilly.com/introiphoneapp/ 420 52.5 http://miamiiphone.eventbrite.com/ 326 40.75 http://www.jbinternational.co.uk/iphone-application-development-training-course-uk.html 598 74.75
Average 56 Multicore programming workshop http://www.exitcertified.com/specialized-training/NCT-100.html 582.17 72.77125 http://www.datasim.nl/education/CourseDetails.asp?CourseID=CPP-OMP 445.5 55.6875
Average 64.229375 Cloud Workshop http://www.momentumsi.com/training/courses.html 3150 393.75 http://www.learningtree.com/courses/1200.htm?i=UNKNOWN&em=&f=blog_cc 581 72.625 http://www.jbinternational.co.uk/cloud-computing-training-software-as-service-training-virtualization-training-course-uk.html 597.5 74.6875
Average 180.354166666667 Google App Engine workshop http://skillsmatter.com/course-details/cloud-grid/developing-with-google-apps-in-the-cloud 650 81.25 https://training.figleaf.com/register/index.cfm?ev_id=4491 418.83 52.35375
Average 66.801875 Arduino Workshop http://www.creativetechnologynetwork.co.uk/events/beginners-arduino-workshop 70 8.75 http://machineproject.com/events/2010/04/07/sensors-and-pattern-recognition/ 116 14.5 http://www.absolutebeginners.uk.com/ARDBEG_WShops_outline.php 137 17.125
Average 13.4583333333333
Stakeholder Analysis • 495 respondents
• Developers, their managers, Senior IT managers Vendors, Funders, Users (Academics, librarians, researchers)
• Tested a number of assumptions behind project
• Huge agreement not just with developers
• Local developers understand local context, act as bridge between remote service providers, open source communities, and local end users and add value by integrating into local contexts – 75% +
• Local developers work closely with end users to deliver innovation – 75% (more work needed though)
• Can be shared with sector – 88%
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Stakeholder Analysis • Huge variety in agreement about whether stakeholders
understand the value of local developers
• ‘Undervalued, short term contract, lack of professional development . career opportunities (70+%), poor management, mixed about training opportunities
• Barriers to innovation include, lack of time, staff, funding, poor internal communication, poor management, bureaucracy
• Big demand for sector wide developer community, raising profile of developers, links with commercial developers
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Stakeholder Analysis • Views on outsourcing vs in house development
mixed and complex
• Vendors want to work with developers in Academic community
• Need more evidence as to value that developers bring
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sustainability: community
• discussions valuable to peers and to JISC!
• Set up by developer focus, developers from the sector giving us direction
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sustainability: support • events give commercial players direct access to
developers in the HE community, more sponsorship, setting challenges, testing
• this is commercial developers talking to HE developers, rather than commercial sales-people talking to IT managers in HE
• some have already recognised that this is an opportunity
• using a pool of HE developers to test and develop against their APIs - this is really valuable and very cheap
More evidence • Hoping to have at least 10 case studies showing
local developer impact but providing a balanced picture where more work needs to be done
• Working on metrics, measuring the actual value of local development to an institution, efficiency savings, improved workflow
• UK Academic Developer Register, possible ideas include skills profiles, skills swaps, secondments, professional development
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• ?
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Phase 3: Aug 2011 – July 2012
