You are invited to participate in a workshop on:

Application of Cloud-Based Social Environments to Enhance Business Activity and Knowledge Exchange

Research partners

 

Welcome to the Campus Cloud workshop website Date: 12 noon on Wednesday the 27th October 2010 until 3pm (at the latest) Location: Daresbury Innovation Centre (DIC) within Daresbury Science & Innovation Campus (DSIC) - exact location details will be emailed before the workshop commences Contact: Alastair Robertson (a.w.robertson@lancaster.ac.uk), Lancaster Centre for eScience Click here to register This workshop is designed to highlight how recently developed private social network software combined with online collaboration environments can be applied to support public service organisations specialising in assisting enterprise. Increasingly, public service sectors and academic units provide support operations to business in various ways. As support service provision increases, the question of how to maximise the benefit to all stakeholders needs to be evaluated. This workshop shows how cloud based technology has been applied to maximise the impact of business support programmes. The model that has been applied shows that large numbers of owner-managers of businesses can be provided online spaces where they can remain in contact with those that have assisted them, and also be provided up to date information on support operations (e.g. Solutions for Business or Business Link). Moreover, it provides support agencies the ability to remain in close contact with the people they support, both service providers and clients are readily contactable as needed, quickening knowledge exchange between stakeholders. Additionally, we are able to create information support worksites which existing users can voluntarily opt into. Using this 'joinable' site approach we are also able to provide social networking areas designed to help people meet up and communicate on matters of interest. The nature of tools within sites is broad ranging from 'push' communication tools (mail list tools, announcements) to '2 way' asynchronous communication tools (e.g. forums) and synchronous tools (chat and web conferencing). The worksites also allow users to add their own content, link into external web resources (e.g. YouTube, business information sites) and contains a full email alert system that keeps the ecosystem moving forward. Security of information is of paramount importance. Worksite members delineate into Maintain and Access users. Maintainers (the site owners) can select how much information is available to Access users. Only those members of a Sakai worksites are privy to the data it contains. All data is protected from the WWW regardless of security settings and can be stored within guaranteed data protected locations (i.e. the UK). The platform used to deliver services is called the Sakai collaboration environment. Sakai is an open source package with around 25 full time developers around the globe. Used in 20% of US research institutions, it provides a quality assured flexible cloud environment that can be installed in a number work situations. The Collaborative Research in Business (CRIB) project is funded by JISC and has developed a Sakai based private social network environment that stakeholders (public services, academia and business professionals) become part of. In this space they can search for people and their resources, link up to colleagues (Facebook style) and automatically spin off collaboration work groups. This technology will be deployed during summer 2010 and will be live demonstrated at the workshop. Since Sakai social network deployments can be federated it is feasible to link multiple institutions and agencies meaning people and resources are readily searchable without need to resort to traditional Google searches. The application space for this technology is broad and includes consortium building activities, ongoing research group activities and resource sharing. A key benefit of this approach is that all stakeholders share a flexible common platform. The future will extend Sakai on a number of dimensions. We have in plan to install eCRM and project management tools that would be available to all stakeholders and would like to hear your views on the direction we should take next. Click here to register Running Order Chairperson: Barbara Allan, Hull University Business School Presentation 1: What is Sakai and how has it been deployed to support research and business? Alastair Robertson, Lancaster Centre for eScience Presentation 2: The need for common platforms to support research, collaboration and e-communities. Rob Allan, STFC Daresbury 30 Minute Networking Lunch. Technology Demonstration: Live demonstration of Sakai, engaging workshop delegates to communicate with each other within the portal. During this phase of the workshop, if you had registered online and have brought your laptop, you'll be handed a userid and password. Participants will be registered into a secure Sakai project site that delegates can use to explore Sakai functions, participate in forums and join 'joinable' Sakai sites. During this demonstration you'll be walked around the Sakai environment and will be able to ask questions to the software developers and existing users of the service. Further networking opportunity and informal Q&A.