Tech Lunch

I enjoyed last week’s meeting of East Anglia Online User Group (EAOUG) at the Royal Society of Chemistry. There were several interesting speakers from the library world talking about ways in which technology was changing their working practices and introducing the need to learn new skills. Some of the presentations are now available online at the group’s website.

There were some interesting discussions and I learned a lot about some of the everyday realities of working with new technologies in libraries. There was a definite feeling that an issue for library staff is a developing ‘digital divide’ between the younger users, who are steeped in technology and have expectations as to its use, and the staff, who tend to be older and have less time to learn about new things. One delegate recounted how she had resorted to using Facebook in order to contact a young borrower who had failed to return a textbook as all other forms of communication, even email, had failed. Several people concurred in the view that students, in particular, viewed email as rather old fashioned!

As ever, a quick note on the lunch. My offline feedback is that I don’t devote enough time to lunch and that I need to try harder, so here goes. You may remember that I was a little bit worried about how far the Royal Society of Chemistry might go in the preparation of lunch. As the clocks on the wall had chemical symbols instead of numbers I was concerned that this might demonstrate a rather unhealthy interest in all things chemical. However, I’m pleased to report that this was not reflected in the either the choice of ingredients or the means of preparation. Lunch, in fact, consisted of a tasty spread of sandwiches with an interesting twist – the brown and white bread mixed together on the same sandwich. It’s these little touches that I find interesting. Desert was a platter of exotic fruit slices, so, an overdose of fructose rather than anything less healthy.

Yesterday I was in London, for an invited workshop on horizon scanning for strategic futures planning, courtesy of the DTI’s Office for Science and Innovation. Horizon scanning is a process of trying to anticipate the future through, to quote the Chief Scientific Advisors Committee, “the systematic examination of potential threats, opportunities and likely developments including but not restricted to those at the margins of current thinking and planning.”

This kind of technique is becoming more widely used in government circles. There has been a particular interest in it from those departments with an interest in science, especially after the BSE farming crisis and the perceived mishandling of the GM foods debate. Indeed, chatting to delegates over coffee, who were mainly from various government departments, it became clear that civil servants are being increasingly asked to move away from their traditional job of purely drafting policy. They are being asked to work in ‘delivery mode’ and act not only to manage projects, handle finances and deal with risk analysis, but also to have input to strategic decisions on future directions for government.

The event was held at a superb venue, the Founders Hall, home of the Worshipful Company of Founders, one of the thirty or so Companies of the old London City, dating from the 1500s. I was interested to see that hung above the porcelain in the toilets were framed examples of dinner menus from meetings of the Founders in the 1930s. These listed delights such as Lobster casserole au Chablis, Passion Fruit Sorbet and Grouse Pudding. I was therefore pretty upbeat about the prospect of lunch. Sadly, the nice, but unadventurous ricotta and spinach lasagne that was offered to vegetarians did not quite match my expectations. Although they did serve coffee with liquorice allsorts, something I’ve not come across before.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to be attending the JISC annual conference in Birmingham. This is where delegates from across the UK gather to discuss all things technical for universities and colleges. I mentioned at the time that faggots and peas used to be a local delicacy but there was no sign of it yesterday. Instead, for us veggies there was a mushroom ravioli, and in the interest of research I also helped myself to some of the wild rice with herbs, which was top-hole. For the carnivores there was a Mexican chicken dish, which apparently was very nice, but a straw poll revealed it could have done with being a little bit spicier.

There were about 600 delegates at the conference this year including a strong delegation from Denmark and the Netherlands. For me it was a little bit nerve-wracking as we were launching a new TechWatch report, which I authored. The report is called What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education, and was commissioned by some of the people within JISC who are starting to tackle some of the practical issues affecting repositories and digital libraries. If you have a long train journey ahead of you and feel inclined to plough through over 60 pages of what has been described as ‘adult material’, I would be pleased to hear what you think of it.

Received confirmation today of our stand allocation for the JISC AGM conference, the annual get-together of ICT and technology-related staff from across UK universities and colleges. As the Technical Editor for the JISC TechWatch project I’ll be staffing a stand for the day and talking to people. This year’s event is on 13th March in Birmingham. Traditional fare in these parts, or ‘snap’ as they would say, would probably be faggots and peas, but I suspect that JISC will be laying on a more standard business lunch.

If anyone reading this is going to the conference and would like to say hello, I’ll be on stand 36. We could even review the lunch together.