Recapping some live-streaming services

I’ve been running moderatered text based IM chats for the past couple of years to help increase conversion of enquirers to applicants and applicants to registered students.

My reasoning for sticking with text only chats was the number of participants that we have around the world with low bandwidth.  However I think simple text chats are a bit backwards these days and I’ve just agreed to do a couple more next month just before I leave London.  So I spent a bit of time this weekend investigating what else might be possible, particularly looking at things like Skype, ooVoo, uStream, Justin.tv, BlogTV, Mogulus, StickAm and the underlying StreamAPI.  I don’t think I’ve yet found the ideal solution.

Most provide a video feed that I could embed in another page alongside a private moderated chatroom.  However I think the adverts and interfaces leave a lot to be desired.

Mogulus, StreamAPI, and our current chat provider, Parachat, may all have solutions that fit my needs but I need to explore more and figure out what kit/staffing we’ll have on the day and figure out what the cost will be.

What was interesting was going back and looking at the services with a fresh pair of eyes.  Looking at uStream in particular (with it’s chat and twitter integration) reminded me to go back that I need to go back and look at these ideas about sharing conference presentations more widely and efficiently.

Galton – The father of crowdsourcing

I was at Internet World this morning. (Q.1 Why does an internet show not have free wifi? I was reliant on an O2 Edge / GPRS connection, which was a shame as I otherwise I probably would have tweeted more things I found useful.  Q.2 Wonder why Internet World considers me a VIP?)

I’m not sure it’s really as valuable a show as I used to find it. Either I’ve got more knowledgable (I wish) or it’s dumbed down, and simply isn’t as leading edge as it once was.

However I ended up in a couple of interesting sessions and learnt a bit. The first session was on UGC, in particular for wiki style sites. What interested me was the analysis that they did on the range of areas that users feel able to comment on and how quickly they were able to switch their focus. They showed one individual who comments a lot making comments every few minutes on a very diverse set of subject areas.

What was also interesting for me about this session was the historical perspective of crowdsourcing, with Galton being credited as being one of the first (see paragraph on being at a livestock fair and using the mean of the crowds guesses at a livestock fair to estimate a bull’s weight).

There were also a couple of good warnings about the madness of crowds – the expert view and tulipmania were good examples.

The buzz monitoring session was interesting and very well chaired. I was very surprised by the number in the room who trust free tools to manage their media monitoring. For some reason I expected more to using professional services (although again this could have been a reflection of who was in the room).

There were a couple of good quotes that stick out for me “Social media is just people talking amplified” and something along the lines of “You can use people or tools/machines. At the moment people are better, but the machines are learning.”

I meant to ask a question about taking culture in to account when responding but as usual I’d forgotten what I wanted to ask when the opportunity arose.

In general I think that the most that the event provided was confirmation that I’ve been pushing things in the right general direction, which while nice, isn’t necessarily worth several hours out of the office.

It was however good to meet a few people and I managed to use a real live QR code (from the back of my VIP badge) on the train home which got me very excited.

Twittering in conferences

On Wednesday I was asked if I could run a presentation for the Centre for Distance Education. That night I couldn’t sleep and instead of counting sheep I thought about conferences and presentations.

Twitter actually provides a useful addition to conferences. I hate the idea of twitter as a backchannel – it’s not a backchannel it’s a public conversation.  Within conferences and presentations it can provide an echo-chamber for the speaker(s) to understand what’s going on and a place to refine thoughts and continue a conversation.

However I wonder if it’s as useful as it should be.  I’ve got a very long unfinished post (private link at the moment) about a conference I was involved in from a couple of months ago.

As I was lying in bed I thought about the major problems.

1.) Integrating the feedback from Twitter in to the main presentation
2.) Using the tweetstream – especially at a later date, I don’t think conferences can rely on search.twitter.com, e.g. search for a conference from last year on Twitter then search for it on Google with a site:twitter.com modifier.
3.) Attribution of tweets and the unintended changing of meaning of what a speaker actually means

This lead me to two particular thoughts which I noticed as tweets from two people the next morning about tweeting when a keynote speaker and about using the tweetstream.

It also led me to start playing around, with a few things and last night I watched the extremely good .eduguru’s presentation at #hewebcornell which prompted a few further thoughts about how the process could be improved further.

I’ll need to write more sometime.

(P.S. 12.05.09) – Just discovered this great post by James Clay about use of Twitter in conferences and social reporting.

Rwanda at the RCS

The RCS is an organisation I can only admire.  I’m on their mailing list and they sent me information about this event yesterday.  Shame, I can’t go as I’ll be in Hong Kong.

Paul Kagame has said that Rwanda will cement its ‘bitter divorce’ from France – the country he holds responsible for the 1994 slaughter of up to one million of his people – by joining the Commonwealth.

Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, applied for Commonwealth membership in 2003 and many people anticipate that its application will be approved at the next CHOGM. Yet questions are being asked of Kagame’s motives. His human rights record as leader and Rwanda’s role in the recent eruption of conflict in the DRC add a further dimension to this crucial debate.

This event is the first in our new series of ‘Question Time’ debates. An expert panel will field your toughest questions from the floor. Audience members are invited to send their questions to the Public Affairs team prior to the event (publicaffairs@rcsint.org). Please note that, on this occasion, only questions submitted in advance will be accepted from the floor.

To reserve places for this and other RCS events quickly, easily and at any time please book online here: www.thercs.org/events

If you are unable to book online, you may call 020 7766 9202 / 05.

Please feel free to pass on this invitation to friends and colleagues.

Wednesday 11 February, 6.15 pm

The Commonwealth Club, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AP

‘Spotlight on Rwanda’

Chair:             Peter Kellner

Panel:             Alison des Forges, Senior Adviser to the Africa Division, Human Rights Watch & expert witness to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Joel Kibazo, Africa commentator & former Director of Communications, Commonwealth Secretariat

Andrew Mitchell, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor, The Independent

Vincent Gasara, Journalist & Secretary, Rwandan Community Organisation in the UK

Comparing the Car and Education Industries

I was at a session on regional trading blocs in education yesterday.  In terms of content:

• Alison Doorbar from JWT talked about the research they have done in East Asian student mobility.
• Frances Kelly (EU office of the Ministry of Education, New Zealand) mainly talkled about Education at a Glance and the three main educational trading blocs
• Don Olcott (OBHE) talked a bit about the why – pointing out a range of facts on the way – I don’t think I ever realised that by 2015 China will have the largest population of English language speakers.  He also pushed the point that, “there are institutions playing in the international market that have no business being in the market.”
• Colin Grant (from Surrey) challenged the subtext that there is a market to be carved up and that the characterisations that Education is trade, that Trade blocs exist, that there is Competition over students or that Globalisation is new.

I didn’t think it was the most fantastic of sessions as I don’t think that there was much to be learnt, however there was a question to the panel on whether the Car and Education industries can be compared.

I think maybe that the panel were probably expecting something deeper or more topical.  I certainly was.

Instead it ended up being phrased in terms of, “a Lexus is a better car than a Rolls Royce, but some people still want to buy Rolls Royce…”

It’s still a good question.  After all cars are expensive purchases but essentially all they do is get you from A to B.  OK so some cars may have slightly different features but essentially people will buy based on their emotional connection to the brand.  (Thought to self: What do we do to build this emotional connection?)

However, I was expecting either the question to move on to Fordism or post-Fordism in education (I work in distance education after all) or for it to be about branding (after all a Lexus is just a Toyota and a Rolls is just a BMW – and these Liverpool degrees are really from Laureate). Alternatively I was waiting for some sort of comparision with the parlous state of the big three American car companies!

ExCeL

The conferences that I’ve at this week have been held at excel, which is a pretty much in the middle of nowhere (out in East London).  It really doesn’t strike me as the best place to hold an international conference in which we’re trying to give visitors a positive experience of the UK.

It’s such a desolate location (all of the cafes and shops around here seem to close by 5pm) and it takes about an hour to get from here to anywhere in Central London (where all of the social activities for these conferences take place).

However in talking to a few British Council staff I think the general dissatisfaction with the venue has been noted and that we probably won’t be using ExCeL in the future.

Spot me

I mentioned in an earlier post the Gong Global conference that I am at today and tomorrow and how I thought the registration system was good.  Well I was amazed at the Spot Me system that they are using.

It’s a little handset (image right) that holds all of the conference information on it.  Agenda, maps, searchable delegate list across all sorts of fields etc.  It allows text messaging with other delgates, has voting options, handshaking abilities (exchange of contact info), person radar (i.e. it will help you find people, tell you who is standing around you) etc. etc.

Wow!  I’m impressed.  I’ve used it already to find someone and have swapped contact details and made notes, and sent messages to, against a couple of contacts already.  It’ll be interesting to see how it works through the conference. (Updated post conference – OK I managed to use it to send a couple of messages and to arrange to meet up with a couple of people, and we used it interactively to vote in a session, however the geo-location wasn’t great – it was OK for being alerted when someone you where looking for was close by but the radar was practically useless. Personally I think it was very useful but I can see that the same functionality and more could have been run from a 3G mobile phone with some specific web interfaces.)

The opening session was interesting.  The main speaker was the David Lammy, who has a highly impressive background (Lammy was the first black UK student to enrol for Harvard Law School – I think he was there and so is friends with Obama – he was asked questions about the friendship and what Obama might mean for glogal higher ed in any case).

What’s going to be normal in the future…

Tom Savigar gave the first session that I thought was really good from the EducationUK Partnership Conference although I think the briefing he may have been given might have been a bit off as whilst his presentation was interesting it didn’t really address what the technology changes actually mean for International Education recruitment.

Tom has a really interesting background.  The main theme of the presentation was the suggestion that there is a firm line between under 25’s and over 25’s

He’s currently giving the example of a 5 year old who uses SkyPlus to book Christmas presents (rather than the Argos catalogue) and how when she went to Highbury for an Arsenal game – she asked, “why can’t I pause it”.

The rest of this post will continue as a simple serious of quotes that I take. I may tidy it up later.  There will hopefully be a link to the presention (as yet it hasn’t gone live).

Key quotes so far:

Future’s happened just not very well distributed.

Am interesting explanation of slash / slash kids. Kids that want to do this slash that slash this slash that…

Social networks still the first place for the newest interesting thing.

Moving in to a more female age…. it’s not about making things pink but it is about collaboration.  People who thing that they know more about us than the they know about themselves.  Beginning of womenonomics.

Example of Paul Griffith Babycakes clothing utilisation of MySpace and RSS and other.

Example of the internet taking over as the main media resource.

Role of video games fastest growing sector (bigger than film, books and music). 36,000 batteries for the Nintendo Wii were sold in the UK at Christmas.

Some examples of democratisation of broadcast quality, always on equipment, example of Cybershot camera linkng directly in to Flickr.

3G phones in Africa…..

Facebook profiles being printed as CV’s used as memorial notes at funerals.

Pico projectors – linked to mobile phones

2D barcodes – QR codes / links to RFID tags as well

iSkills (US Eductaional Testing Service)

People are surpassing Moore’s Law.

Haptic technologies.

Free-sumerism

Consequences

Developing a brand, network or experience around what they or the friends like.

Role of men diminishing – not taking part in the revolution as much

Recommend reading: David Pink (A whole new mind) – should this be Daniel Pink

Need enabler technologies.

Trend adoption is getting faster.

An I can do attitude – careering between jobs.

People are now self-actualisers (in the 80’s this was not on our radar).

How can we fit in to these relevant spaces.

People are people – they are human beings. They go in to shops and look, and socialise, but they might well buy online.

Multi access points for content (cross platform is key – we have to be seamless)

Assimilation is of surface information.  Not interested in time consuming meditiative media.

Expect our systems, hierarchies and processes to be over-writen.

(Side note: book tokens may not be the best sort of prizes for competitions.)

BUILA at UEL

Today was the BUILA AGM. BUILA is which is the association for international office staff from UK universities. I’m not an international officer but I obviously need to keep on top of and international trends so I like to stay in touch with this organisation.

The AGM was held at the University of East London (UEL) which has an amazingly modern campus right on the river close to City Airport.  It’s so different from the institution I work at. I think that the only things that might be common are the three shared words in their titles and the fact that they are located in the same city. I’m simply not used to having rooms called the hot hatch and the fab pad with sleek computers and bright orange furniture.

I came home from London tonight to play volleyball. We won 3-0 by the way – hurrah! However it’s back to the East End of London tomorrow for the EdUKP conference. I imagine that most of the talk this year will be related to PBS (the points based system being introduced by the UK Border Agency) which doesn’t interest me in the slightest as our students don’t need visas. The other hot topic will be crisis management, especially after the events of the past week in Bangkok and Mumbai. I have a few Facebook friends whose statuses have given an interesting take on the situation in Bangkok while a colleague of mine is currently out in Mumbai.

Going Global

Next week I’m going to be out of the office quite a bit as there’s the BUILA AGM on Monday, the Education UK Partnership Conference (EdUKP) on Tuesday and Wednesday and Going Global on Thursday and Friday. They are events I try and go to every other year or so just to catch up with old friends more than anything else.

In truth these upcoming events partly motivated me into starting this blog. I’m hoping to try and get colleagues of mine to share ideas of what we learn and try and capture as much as possible.

Why am I doing this? Well this post by Brad Ward struck a chord. I’m not expecting much online interaction given who the audience are but we’ll see how it goes.

I already know quite a few of the UK crowd and a handful of the overseas visitors but I thought it was worth mentioning these conferences a few days before they started in case anyone is like me and any of the key phrases set as an RSS / other types of alerts and is interested in sharing their learnings online.

I have to say was very impressed with the Going Global conference registration system (https://going-global3.marcom-education.com/) less so with the Education UK one (http://eukpconference08.marcom-education.com/). It seems different settings are being used so the Going Global registration system allows me to download my personal agenda to Outlook (and hence my iPhone), whilst the EducationUK one doesn’t – strange.

I’ve already begun to get a few emails from people going to Going Global – most are from agents but there’s the odd one or two that I’m actually interested in. One was from Michelle Caers about http://learnhub.com. It’s not a site I’d come across before but it could well be worth a bit of exploration as their stats (both supplied by Michelle and from Alexa) aren’t as bad as some of the sites that come my way.

Anyway the sessions I’ll be going to for the Education UK Conference will be:

• The Global economic review. Robin Bew, The Economist Intelligence Unit
• Transnational education
• Harnessing new technologies. Tom Savigar, The Future Laboratory
• Making scholarships work
• Brand and Identity Management – Lessons from the private sector. BJ Cunningham, entrepreneur and council member of Business Superbrands

I’ve also got individual appointments with BC staff from Singapore, Moscow, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo and Hong Kong, although I might well swap some of these.

Whilst for Going Global the sessions are:

• Opening Plenary – Rt Hon. Lord Neil Kinnock, Rt. Hon. John Denham MP Plenary Theatre
• Middle East and North Africa research: report on trends and developments – Daniel J. Guhr, Ruth Moir
• Debating agents’ secrets and new American Revolution: results from the world’s largest study of agents – Markus Badde, Mitch Leventhal
• Capitalising on China’s digital culture explosion – Andrew Disbury, Nick Jones, Sam Flemming, Zhong Weihe
• Developing partnerships with Nigerian universities – Albert Alos, Julius Okojie
• Global talent wars – George Yip
• International education partnership working at its best
• The global credit crunch: boom or bust for international education? – David Watson, Linda Yueh, Peter Engardio, Robin Bew Plenary Theatre
• Going Global: The Dimbelby Debate – Charles Leadbetter, Deng Yaping, Martin Davidson
• Support for international staff in UK institutions – Heather Timm
• Closing plenary: Leading the learning revolution – Martin Davidson, Richard Hames Plenary Theatre

There’s also some fascinating poster sessions at Going Global that I want to try and get to see as well.