Kaptur Steering Group Meeting, 6th February 2012

Posted: February 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: meetings | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

On Monday we held our first Kaptur Steering Group meeting at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. This was followed up with a meeting with Simon Hodson, JISCMRD Programme Manager in the afternoon. There are a lot of action points to follow up from both meetings and further blog posts will follow on some of these.

The presentations given on Monday are available from the Kaptur SlideShare page. As mentioned during the meeting, we are using SlideShare as a way to generate altmetrics for the project and also to ensure ease of access to outputs from Kaptur.

At the Steering Group meeting we were delighted to welcome high-level senior management and Project Sponsors from all four institutions; they were so engaged with Kaptur and keen to get involved to promote the project which was wonderful. Earlier this week I followed up one of the action points from the meeting which was to create a one-side Word document with headlines about Kaptur tailored particularly to the Project Sponsors role. This is to enable them to promote Kaptur more effectively within their institutions. [NB: The Steering Group members had previously received key points in terms of their roles and responsibilities, and the purpose of each steering group meeting when they were invited to join the Steering Group in October. This was followed up with a Steering Group Terms of Reference document a couple of months prior to the meeting.]

Simon Hodson recommended sending the Steering Group members a separate monthly lightweight report i.e. targeted to their needs as opposed to the report sent to Simon and blogged about overall project progress.

This week the Project Officers have been moving onto the next stage of the project – the modelling and technical workpackages – which run parallel and will involve the setting up of working groups at each institution to inform and support these stages. The working groups will continue to build on existing relationships established through the environmental assessment, as well as draw in the full spectrum of stakeholders i.e. IT, Library, Research Office, Researchers etc. The Kaptur Technical Manager has also been setting up meetings with IT at each institution as part of the work he is doing on the Technical Analysis.

#jiscmrd – Kaptur’s post on benefits and metrics #KRDS

Posted: December 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: project posts | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Simon Hodson, JISCMRD Programme Manager, has asked all 18 month JISCMRD projects to write a blog post about the key expected benefits that each project will achieve, and what metrics we will use to evidence these at the end of the project.

Links

Following a presentation by Neil Beagrie, Director of consultancy at Charles Beagrie, the JISCMRD projects were provided with a ‘Summary of Benefits Identified by the RDMI Projects’ and a ‘Summary of Metrics Identified by the RDMI Projects’. We were invited to select three benefits and then match these up with the appropriate metrics, making sure to include both quantitative and qualitative metrics for each benefit. I would like to emphasise that the following has not been discussed within the project team yet and is subject to confirmation.

Benefits

  1. Sustainability of research data infrastructure.
  2. Change to user practices.
  3. Mitigating organisational risks.

Metrics

  1. By each institution creating and approving its own Business Costs and Sustainability plans; the ultimate proof is in the longevity of the research data infrastructure. Qualitative data will be gathered through the Steering Group meetings which will include high-level senior staff across the four institutions. Quantitative data may include percentage or estimated cost savings/efficiencies for central services and/or departments.
  2. By taking a snapshot of existing practice at the four institutions through the Environmental Assessment report and then through maintaining user engagement throughout the project and taking snapshots at key stages to monitor progress. Qualitative data will be gathered through the interviews undertaken as part of the Environmental Assessment report, and through ongoing engagement e.g. through working groups and/or focus groups. Quantitative data will be gathered in the following ways: online questionnaires and/or feedback forms to record the impact on working practice of the project, these would be undertaken at key points e.g. we are planning an online survey in January, and would also gather feedback after training events; if online training materials are created then usage statistics will be gathered.
  3. By taking a snapshot of existing practice at the four institutions through the Environmental Assessment report and then through maintaining user engagement throughout the project and taking snapshots at key stages to monitor progress. Qualitative data will include a range of stakeholder examples of improved risk management e.g. organisational practice before Kaptur and how this has changed during/afterwards. Quantitative data may include a percentage improvement in routine back-up of data, and/or a percentage improvement in research data management awareness and policies/systems.

Neil emphasised that when using the KRDS tools it is a good idea to do initial work by one individual and then work this up in a project team context. Therefore the points raised in this blog post will be discussed at our next meeting in early January and possibly again at the Steering Group meeting. Neil also mentioned that it was important to adapt the tools to your project needs. From reading the documentation I am also aware of the need to start with the benefits framework tool prior to moving on to the value chain and benefits impact tool. The work done by other projects giving example worksheets is really useful, in particular the UK Data Archive and the Archaeology Data Service. Reference: Report and Presentations from the JISC Digital Curation/Preservation Benefits Tools Project Dissemination Workshop

#jiscmrd Programme Launch – Tips from Brian Kelly

Posted: December 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: events, project posts, resources | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Links (via @briankelly)

Tips from Brian Kelly

  1. Instead of having a separate website and blog, integrate the web pages into the blog or vice versa.
  2. Think about what will happen to the blog if you leave or what happens after the end of the project.
  3. Use the ‘about’ page to really say how you are going to use the blog e.g. your blogging practices and approach and why – see Blog Policies.
  4. Write a ‘Communications Strategy’.
  5. Engage with high impact channels in the following ways: think of a human interest angle to your story; be proactive in seeking opportunities e.g. if there is a relevant news story that your project relates to in some way.
  6. Write a ‘Press Release from the Future’ as a way of setting where you want to be and then working out how you will achieve it.

How we are planning to use these for Kaptur

  1. Plan to integrate website/blog; our Technical Manager is back in mid-January so may ask him to set up a wordpress.org via our website instead of the current wordpress.com (will require re-directs obviously and not ideal so will think about it first).
  2. We are working towards a Data Management Plan for our project’s research data including the blog, a blog post about this will be forthcoming.
  3. We have now updated our About page to include a blog policy.
  4. Although the JISC Project Plan has various plans within the document such as a Dissemination Plan (ours is available here: Kaptur Project Plan (PDF)), Brian was talking specifically about how to target those channels that are high impact e.g. Times Higher Education, radio, and TV. See point 5 for tips.
  5. The visual arts researchers that we are engaging with at each of the institutions have the potential to address these points, subject to the research criteria we are applying of ‘informed consent’. We will look out for these opportunities.
  6. This is on my ‘to-do’ list e.g. ours may include ‘having an article in Times Higher’

On a side note, I chose to use SlideShare for Kaptur based on reading Brian Kelly’s blog post about SlideShare, which I then blogged about for a different project back in May: Identifying impact with SlideShare

I have also begun using Storify after Brian showed me how the Event Amplifier uses this. A Storify has been created for this week’s Kultivate event on Linked Data.