Date: Friday, 28th November 2008
An informal gathering for those with an interest in email and integrated communication at the University. After a brief 30 minute presentation, delegates had a chance to chat about the issues in groups.
Speakers:
Neil Elliot on Mulberry 4 and new user mailboxes.
A 20 minute presentation consisting of the following:
John Richards on integrated collaboration and communication tools.
A 10 minute introduction and reflection on the changing needs of users.
"Our current email infrastructure processes millions of messages a year, reliably and rapidly. But the uses of email have changed. Users are sending larger and larger messages with pictures and video. They may wish to store and search many years worth of mail. And they want email to be closely integrated with other collaboration and communication tools. Meanwhile, third party providers are offering web-based services with gigabytes of quota, and some universities have outsourced their student email provision, despite concerns over data protection and confidentiality.
What challenges and issues do we face in providing email for staff and students? Where should we going next with our email service?
Feel free to add further discussion on the Futures Café blog.
I wouldn't know how to improve it really, I really enjoyed the event. I'm not usually a fan of moving around tables but this really did work. I met new people and found it comforting that the problems I face are quite common everywhere, other support staff experiences are the same.
External speakers. More chance for the whole group to share knowledge about what products/services/approaches they are using to address particular issues.
Maybe a slightly larger room. I found the seats were tightly packed together. Fine if your a super model but I'm not ;-(.
Drinking water available throughout the event
Keep on with daring today such as today's one. Good venue, good breakout sessions.
Get some external speakers in. Perhaps have a choice of several topics to attend in a single event. Provide "nitty-gritty" show and tell on more complex subjects. Like how the next generation departmental backup system might work, what is being done with regard to IDM with grouper and LDAP, integration with other institutions with Shibboleth, architecture of the ACRC HPC Babyblue Crystal cluster. Get different teams involved who specifically work in researching future technology, etc Webfutures at ILRT.
To have laptops etc where you could have a fiddle with the new systems/on line demos
to purchase a wireless presenter from insight, it will make it easy for the speakers :)
I think that the event was very successful, especially for the first run through. However, some thought now needs to be given about how to turn the results into further work, rather than just having a good chat and then seeing the outputs being unused.
Format was Ok - although felt driven by the centre It felt a bit like a focus group.
Very good format, breakout groups with a facilitator are a good way of discussing. ITSS meetings are just to large to discuss anything so this style was good. Many thanks to the organisers. (Provide more coffee :) )
Outside vendor in to talk about product we use?
The straws idea really allowed mixing and meeting new colleagues. The earlier in the event that mixing is done, the better.
Make them regular and make them relevant to current issues/developing trends.
We need lots of these events. There are a whole range of topics where information sharing would be very valuable. I feel this one allowed us to share information upwards to IS. This compliments a staff conference where info transfer tends to be downwards from IS. Small, topic focused events would be good for peer to peer info sharing.
Great location. Well organised. Relaxed informal atmosphere - very good
Thoroughly enjoyed the session. So good to finally start thinking out of the "university" box and realise we are part of a bigger world with competition, challenges and other professionals. Hope some (if not all) of this will feed back to managers so changes start to happen quickly. The only downside would be that sessions need to be kept within times advertised.
The Futures Cafes are an excellent idea, and I think they have got off to a flying start. This event was very well organised. The real value, however, will depend on whether we can find the resource to take forward the topics discussed!
The venue was very nice. Got a bit bored towards the end.
One of the best courses I have been on. Great idea with the straws, forcing people to interact with one another. Very well organised.
Whilst I expect that Neil's presentation was useful to some ITSS, it has nothing to do with futures. The futures cafe should be 'horizon scanning'.
More time needed to network. unclear as to the outputs from it and what happens to these.
DO IT!! :) Take the ideas about a new communications platform forward and publish a timeframe and plan to implement a new system. Otherwise it will just remain a talking shop. But the Futures Cafe itself was excellent.
I really liked the format that was carried out, particularly liked swapping groups for the brain storming at the end.
I really liked the informal relaxed environment. I felt the group sessions were more productive because of this, and because the group members were changed for each session, and the sessions themselves were quick - no one person got a chance to dominate.
An IS person writes: Just thought I'd chip in some feedback from the Futures Cafe event. Overall I really enjoyed it and thought it was well received by the attendees. The venue was great and the food much better than the Hawthorns fare! To over come the problems with presenters needing access to the mouse to run their presentations how about purchasing a wireless presentation pointer? I spoke to several of the support staff on the day and the feedback they gave was positive. Many said that they couldn't attend ITSS because of work commitments but did think they could get to Futures Cafe if there were regular events throughout the year. A couple of staff said they found the ITSS forum quite intimidating because its large and very formal. The cafe was friendlier and it was easier to chat to colleagues. One person did suggest having a wiki or other discussion forum as a spin off. They wanted somewhere to post ideas where other support staff could post comments/feedback. The support staff wiki does fulfil this function but again may be seen as too formal for many. [Ed. We've set up a Futures Cafe blog - see how you get on with that].
Note: This was very much a pilot event and we were aware that not all the content was particularly future-looking. We have plans for some more speculative topics and to invite external speakers to some future events.
