I have not yet finished thinking about what my key take-aways from the Digital Researcher event on Monday, which is why they have not been blogged. Partly this is due to a busy week at work and partly because my energy has been directed into discussing what kind of followup there should be with the participants.
A Ning was mooted as an idea for capturing the inputs and outputs of the event, but this idea was overtaken by one of the events’ tutors who instead established a Friendfeed page. I have made the case for having a website – blog – page – something, somewhere, that pulls all the links and feeds together. It seems I am marking myself out as some kind of librarian luddite unwilling to wade through the Twitter or Friendfeed posts or Google for hashtagged Bit.ly links. Most responses have been along the same lines: join in the conversations and you will find what you want. Really? How does one know what is there if one doen’t know what’s there in the first place and consequently how to search? This, by the way, is a rhetorical question. I ask it on behalf of the people I spoke to on Monday who were confused and finding the concepts presented challenging.
My concept was that Vitae would be sending out some kind of post-event email, which could contain one link to one page: a starting point for the DR10 attendees who may not have wanted to dive right in and tweet stuff. One big barrier is that we have no way of knowing up-front who is behind a Twitter ID. It would have been great had the event provided contact details of any kind – but adding people’s Twitter IDs to the participant list or name badges would have been a helpful thing to do.
I am left wondering what the aims of the DR10 event were, and whether there were any kind of measurables put in place. A target for the number of people engaging with Twitter as a result? A new community of PGRs established that would mentor each other into finding their own discipline-related networks? How is the pilot event being evaluated to establish if it is worth running again?
So far Vitae have not followed up on either of the two interactions I have had with them [the promised network wasn’t established after the part-timer event I went to in May 2009; and I certainly didn’t receive an email telling me when booking for DR10 opened). It may be therefore that my expectation of a co-ordinated follow up is unrealistic.
It’s a couple of days since the event. Real life is starting to encroach again on the participants’ time. Has the momentum been lost?
Sara Batts - Research project progress 
4 comments
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March 19, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Elizabeth (Careers Service)
Hi Sara
I’ve been following the #dr10 discussions with real interest and I understand your views – and don’t think you’re a librarian luddite!
I was involved in initial discussions about the event but, primarily through lack of time, couldn’t be involved any further. However, whilst the discussions excited me, I was also a bit uneasy that maybe I didn’t “get” the whole twitter/friendfeed “conversation is everything” ethos properly, and I should just let them get on with it without me.
Maybe I should have stayed and spoken up for the “Web 1.0 but tentatively getting into Web 2.0” participants? (Mea culpa: it was a friendly, open discussion & no-one rail-roaded me, though my initial concerns that the researchers I work with struggle to “get” RSS feeds were brushed aside quickly.)
Vitae is a broad church and all who are involved with it are enthusiasts who genuinely care about researchers and their development (nb I’m not employed by them or on commission!). Maybe this time the voice of those just getting to grips with social media is getting a bit lost in the enthusiasm of the converts.
As for a record of the event, pulling all resources together, I’m sure one of you could put together a Netvibes or similar page, with feeds from the Twitter and Friendfeed discussions displayed, a feed from the Vitae blogs and the slides from Slideshare. You could also put links to relevant websites & resources and some comments boxes. Not so much a “shut up and listen” site, but an “I’m here when you need me to get started – if you want to talk, join me on Twitter or Friendfeed” site. I’ve used something similar (http://www.netvibes.com/postgradcareers) for the few web 2.0 training sessions I tried to run.
I’ve learnt a lot myself from the #dr10 conversations and hope there’s a way of pulling it all together for those who are still taking their first tentative steps into this new social world.
Best regards
Elizabeth Wikinson
March 19, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Sara Batts
Thanks for your comment, Elizabeth. Your Netvibes suggestion is pretty much exactly what we had had in mind. It’s good to know it isn’t an isolated view. I would have had it done by now – but it’s no good having it just for my benefit. Without support from the Vitae team pointing people somewhere other than Friendfeed, the audience would be limited. So I’ve spent the week instead trying to argue the case for a permanent web presence. Now I have run out of time! I’ve been pushing my luck interacting as much as I have during the day so now I need to catch up on the day job and the actual research bit of the PhD.
March 20, 2010 at 3:34 am
Tristram
Hi
I was responsible for directing the #dr10 event so I’m concerned if you think that we haven’t done the follow up well. Let’s try and make some decisions and then act on them.
I’d agree that we should try and get a message out to all participants telling people where the conversations have been continuing since Monday. I’ll speak to the people at Vitae and try and get this to happen ASAP
Pulling together some kind of hub for these discussions would be a useful thing to do. I suppose I was hoping that the Vitae pages could form the basis of this http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/219961/Digital-researcher-blog.html . These pages are currently hosting all of the slides from the event as well as blog posts and comments. We could also plug in RSS feeds from the Twitter and Friendfeed discussions to them as well I think. Anyone can post to this page either as a blog post or as a comment.
Would this be enough? If not I think that the other two options would be (1) A Ning community as you originally suggested. I said that I thought that this was worth a try, @ajcann disagreed. Neither of us work for Vitae so the suggestion hasn’t been ruled on in any way. If you think it is worth doing we can still set this up. Option (2) would be to establish a Netvibes page or something similar to serve as the Hub. We could do this. In fact we could do all of these and with the exception of some of the RSS feeds on the Vitae site any of us (tutors or participants) could start the ball rolling.
So what do you think?
My only slight concern is that #dr10 wasn’t really meant to become a community in and of its self. Rather it was supposed to be an event that enabled people to access the communities within their own disciplines and outlined some of the benefit of the web 2.0 world. Whether it has the potential to be the centre of a community of researchers who are interested in discussing how research and technology interlink I guess we’ll see. I’d be really excited if this was the case.
So, sorry if there is frustration out there but this is all evolving stuff and we are feeling our way. The fact that the conversations have continued in the way they have has been very positive. Perhaps we haven’t found the right room for them yet – but we’re not done yet.
March 20, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Sara Batts
Thanks for your comments. Using the blog page for the event sounds like a good solution, particularly since the slides are already there. It’s that kind of a ‘start here’ hub that would help direct the follow up. It is a pity that the Friendfeed discussion seems to have focused on how to use FF and not whether it is the best tool for the job. That is what I have found frustrating. Continued exhortations to join in a conversation are all well and good. But if what I want is a relatively stable link to a service or a presentation mentioned on Monday, asking or searching isn’t an efficient way to go.
I had seen the DR10 community not as a permanent discussion space about digital research but more of a starting place for people to do two things. First, to maintain some of the conversations that were started face-to-face on Monday as people coach each other in the different Web 2.0 available. Second, to organise the static information. As a bonus won’t that make planning a future event simpler? You could point future participants to this resource hub.
I think there were plenty of people around on Monday who need a bit more help to put into practice what was discussed. Those same people will find Friendfeed difficult to get the hang of, so a helping hand might be appropriate?