A couple of resources to support jiscri bidders
Since JISC are not planning a briefing day for the 03/09 Rapid Innovations Grants call, we have provided a couple of resources to support the call documentation.
The first is a high level overview of the reasoning behind the rapid innovation approach and what we hope it will achieve:
The presentation used in this video can be found on the prezi site.
We have also provided a podcast of three JISC programme managers talking about the call and explaining the thinking behind some of the most important sections.
The example bid that is mentioned in the podcast will not be available for this call. Please look to paragraph 65 in the call document for the bid structure.
As always, if you have any questions, please post them as comments.
Developer Happiness Days Winners Announced…Soon!
As many of you will know from the longtail of developer happiness days (tag: dev8D), the shortlist for the developer decathlon has now been announced. Potential winners of the Five Thousand Pound Grand Prize (or even the two-thousand pound runner up prize) include:
(IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER):
“List8D” prototype by Team Bsmmmm
“Lazy Lecturer” prototype by Team Three Lazy Geeks
“sh!” prototype by team Rangtangdingdong
“splashurl” prototype by team halfHourHacks
“SpACE tool” prototype by team SpACEmen (second video here):
STAY TUNED FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNERS THIS WEEK!
Library round up: event, discussion and new domain model
This post more or less repeats some JISC news items (sorry) but I wanted to make sure readers of this blog saw some JISC library related activity that has been discussed, published and presented this week. In particular I want to draw attention to Peter Murray-Rust’s blog posts on the Library of the Future, in case anyone wants to contribute before he speaks at the JISC/Bodleian Library event on 2 April. You can register to attend the Libraries of the Future event in person or in Second Life. Related information:
Overview. Speakers. Registration. Agenda.
Event tag: LOTF09
Peter has blogged some ideas and sought feedback (you’ll need to scroll through a few pages on his blog to see all of the discussion). He has identified some people and organizations that, as a scientist he personally considers relevant to librarians / libraries of the future. He only includes a couple of librarians; the list of those identified leans towards computer scientists not information scientists. In general (my crude summary of a wide ranging discussion!) he appears to be highlighting the need for a revolutionary attitude, more experimentation and for academic librarians to be promoters of good policy and practice with regards to ownership and access to scholarship, and the need to move to the web.
“…the librarians of the future. They build vital, communal, information resources. They invite collaboration, either directly or implicitly. They overthrow conventional wisdom and entrenched systems and interests.”
The blog discussion is interesting, there have been quite a few contributions, and I think it points to the importance of communication between librarians, computers scientists, researchers, learners and university managers.
And to briefly draw your attention to some other library focused activity from JISC this week:
The TILE (Towards the Implementation of Library 2.0 and the eFramework) project report and briefing paper has been published. This includes a library domain model developed to identify what the library processes are in the networked environment in the light of changing behaviour and information provision. The work has focused in particular on two increasingly important areas in delivering relevant services, these are context/personalization and contribution. There will be further consultation on the domain model via a workshop later in the year.
Finally at the JISC Conference this week there was a session on the Future of Academic Library – this discussed issues such as shared services, the evolving library collection and introduced a collaboration between JISC, SCONUL, BL, RLUK and RIN to consult and develop positions on the way in which libraries can respond to change.
Grant Funding Call 03/09 aka jiscri
The jiscri call mentioned in our previous blog post is available now. Sorry that it is a little later than initially suggested but this was due to the need to ensure that the evaluation process for the bids for the 12/08 call ran to time.
We are excited about this call and are looking forward to seeing imaginative and exciting bids. Please feel free to contact any of us on Twitter, this blog, by email and by phone if you want to ask a question, discuss a possible bid or get clarification on any part of the call. We hope to be able to offer some form of online briefing for the call, watch this blog for more news.
To help you navigate through the call document we thought it might be useful to provide a reading key.
Information specific to this call
- Who’s eligible? - paragraph 4-5, pages 1-2
- What are the priority areas? – paragraph 32-63, page 7-12
- What about projects that don’t address a listed priority area? - paragraph 25-29, page 6
- What kind of deliverables are we looking for? - paragraph 17, page 4
- What user engagement do I need to include in my bid? - paragraph 18, page 4
- What are the deadlines for submitting bids and getting feedback? - paragraph 96, page 19
- What are the project timescales? - paragraph 3, page 1
- What’s an Information Environment? - paragraph 9 and 25-26
- Who do I contact for further information? - paragraph 113-114, page 21
Standard bidding information
- How do I write a bid? - paragraph 65, page 14-15
- How do I format and submit a bid - paragraph 97-106, pages 19-20
- Is there a checklist for submitting a bid - paragraph 112, page 21
- When will I hear about my bid? - paragraph 108, page 20
- What about recruitment? - paragraph 15, page 3
- What about partnerships and consortia? - paragraph 5 page 2
- How will projects be managed? - paragraph 20, page 4
- How does this relate to other calls? - paragraph 22-24, page 6
- What other projects and work do we need to be aware of? - paragraph 21, page 5
- What’s the IE demonstrator and why do we need to work with it? - paragraph 21 bullet 2, page 5
- Do we need to work with the e-framework? - paragraph 73, page 16
- What about software licences? - paragraph 71-72, page 16
- Where can I find out more about fEC and TRAC? - paragraph 78-85, page 17
- Do I need to worry about FoI? - paragraph 86-88, page 18
- What are the terms and conditions attached to the funding? - paragraph 89, page 18
- Will I need to attend lots of meetings? - paragraph 66, page 15
- What are the IPR conditions? - paragraph 92-93, page 18
These are just the points we came up with, Twitter or post a comment on this blog if you have other suggestions that we should add here.
Remember to tag any tweets and blogs with jiscri
Amber Thomas, Andy McGregor, Balviar Notay, David Flanders, James Farnhill
Information Environment Rapid Innovation Grants
We (Andy, Amber, Balviar, David, James) are happy to announce that we are about to issue a new Grant-Funded Call for rapid innovation projects within the Information Environment on 6 March 2009. You’ll be able to read all the text about what money is available and the conditions for using it in more detail in the Grant but to give an overview of what we are looking for:
- Innovative projects that create a ’something’ related to a user need from a named community. That something could be a new interface, a service that brings together existing services or a tool of some sort;
- The scope is quite simply something that is within the Information Environment (see: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment.aspx for definition). We are not being overly prescriptive;
- The projects should be up to six months in length and between £15,000 and £40,000;
- The documentation for everything in the Call is going to be kept lightweight so we can keep the focus on solutions to user needs rather than filling out forms. We’re just looking for five pages in the bid and the project documentation is going to be kept to blogs or wikis so we know what you’re aiming to do and how you are getting on with achieving it but you don’t spend hours telling us about it;
- The approaches should be agile or open. We’d like to see early engagement with users and for that engagement to be kept up so what is produced responds to their needs and is user-led rather than technology-led.
The drivers for this grant have come from a number of different directions:
- dev8D (http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/) proved to be very successful in getting users and developers together to create innovative solutions to user needs. We felt we should be doing more of this in the Information Environment;
- Whilst we recognise that certain big central services such as the UK federation could and should be provided by JISC, we also recognise that there needs to be funding for smaller, lighter tools, services and interfaces that help users achieve their goals;
- Whilst there is a place for bigger projects that involve senior managers, we feel that there is equally a place for projects where the bulk of the money goes to developers;
- The last few years have seen an increase in the development of lightweight solutions that respond rapidly to user needs across both the academic and commercial sectors.
We’re looking forward to seeing what bids come back. This forms the perfect opportunity for:
- Those who have bid for funding before and would like funding to try out new areas where we may not want to fund via a big project;
- Those new to JISC who would like to dip their toe in the water and try a smaller JISC project before going for something bigger;
- Developers who have good ideas that they might not have quite enough time to fully develop within their normal schedule;
- Technical managers who may want to have funding to ‘try out’ new members for their team on a student placement basis, for example.
The tag for discussion on this rapid innovation Call is jiscri. Please use this if you’re commenting on the Call via Twitter or posting on other blogs and social media about it so we can easily gather all those comments together and learn and respond as we go along. Subscribe to the JISC-ANNOUNCE list at www.jiscmail.ac.uk to get notified about this or other funding opportunities from JISC or go along to http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities.aspx on 6 March to get the call.