http://svy.mk/devcsi12

The broad topics of this survey include: benchmarking developers across the sector; examining stakeholders’ views of software development; discovering examples of local innovation; and gathering suggestions about the on going future development of a developer community in UK education. The survey is very important for informing future work of the DevCSI project and should provide useful information as to the value and importance of developers to innovation in the education sector. It should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. So if you are developer in education, you work with developers, or your work is effected by the work of developers please fill in this important survey.

Each respondent will be able to enter a prize draw to win a £200 Amazon voucher or one of four £50 vouchers. If you would like to enter for your chance to win, please follow instructions at the end of the survey.

Thanks for your participation and good luck in the prize draw!

See the results of last survey.

Please feel free to pass this blog posting on, or repost. Thank you.

• Rob Allen
• Miro Keller
• Asif Akram
• Mark MacGillivray
• Hugh Glaser

The workshop will enable developers to work with researchers from any discipline. This could be to provide extra development effort on interesting open-development projects, partnering with research groups or simply attracting users for the software that has been developed. Each developer will report back about their experiences via the DevCSI and Software Sustainability Institute blogs.

Just one day after Valentine’s Day, come and feel the respect we have for you at Picture This!

This one-day workshop being run as part of the Dev8D+ programme of events at ULU, London, on 15th February, is a great chance to work on real-life problems around image metadata, talk to practitioners, help to solve their problems and… feel the respect!

Picture This! is a one-day workshop taking place at Dev8D+ and run jointly by the Metadata Forum and the Application Profiles Support project. The workshop will bring together developers and non-technical practitioners to explore the issues around image-based metadata. Starting with a programme of lightning talks where participants can share experiences, explain problems and pitch ideas, the day will focus on providing participants with practical solutions to image metadata problems. The workshop offers a unique opportunity for participants from a technical and non-technical background to work together to find ways to improve the delivery of services dealing with images. The event requires no previous experience, just an interest in metadata and images and a willingness to explore working together.

We’re offering -

- A Developer Challenge that will run throughout Dev8D – 16th-17th Feb with first prize of £50 Amazon voucher and second prize of £25 Amazon voucher.

Tokens to swap for exciting, enticing mystery prizes throughout the day and night of 16th Feb – Rewards for your solutions from grateful practitioners – Free lunch – Our undying respect and devotion

What you need to do -

- Log in to the Picture This! page on the Dev8D wiki, where you can get updates of problems practitioners are facing and see if you can offer a solution – Come along on to the workshop and listen to lightning talks outlining more problems and issues – Talk to practitioners about your ideas for solving their problems – Work with them to develop solutions – Grab your prizes – Feel our respect for you! You will need to book for the event.

1. Since the University of Oxford does not permit a grant-holder to advertise for staff before receipt of the grant award letter, and because it takes on average 3 months to appoint a new member of staff, we lose a significant portion of the overall project duration to the recruitment lead time.
2. There is no reliable career development path for developers and researchers working on JISC projects, which deters many good candidates from even applying for such positions.  It is extraordinarily hard to find anyone already skilled and competent who is prepared accept a one-year contract.
3. Appointed staff have no long-term security, making it more likely that they will leave for more permanent positions before the project ends.  An academic colleague of mine recently said: “I can no longer live on temporary contracts, which used to be 5 years and are now only 5 months; what a world”.
4. The uncertainties of the grant funding lottery and the absence of reliable bridging funds from the University cause further staff losses between projects.  I recently lost from my group a valued researcher and developer with significant international recognition because he needed greater continuity of income to sustain a young family.
5. Relevant technical skills and knowledge of the academic environment cannot reliably be maintained across projects.  Many new projects are therefore forced to start from scratch, and coherence of development across multiple projects is difficult to maintain, particularly where specialist technical skills are needed.  This fragmentation of the development process means that many JISC-funded projects, after showing initial success, are abandoned, with resulting waste of research investment.

1. Greater flexibility in the start and end dates of projects, to enable time for staff recruitment where required, and to schedule participation of in-post staff.
2. For projects that have been granted time extensions, flexibility in the timing of expenditure and in the final budget accounting of JISC money that has already been remitted to the project institution.
3. That consideration be given, even in these hard times, to the funding of a limited number of centres of development excellence for three or more years, thereby sustaining research teams with proven track records, as long practised by the Research Councils (with their admittedly deeper pockets).

Time to impact

Originally published on 15 Feb 2010 by David Shotton

As part of this work Evidence Base is aiming to gather the views of a selection of stakeholders relevant to the work of DevCSI. One way in which we are doing this is by conducting a survey with members of stakeholder groups including developers, users (academics, researchers, librarians), managers, funders and vendors.

We are interested in your views and invite you to complete the survey before 30th November: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/devcsi

All completed survey responders have the option of entering a prize draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher.

Thanks for your participation and good luck in the prize draw!

Please pass on the link to the survey if you know of others who may be interested.

Create a functioning repository user-interface, presenting a single metadata record which includes as many automatically created, useful  links to related external content as possible.

A Developer Lounge was set up at the conference where developers could work on their entries for the challenge over two days. Entrants then had to present what they had developed to an audience of around 50 plus people and panel of judges. The judges, who were:

• Paul Walk (UKOLN – Deputy Director) – Chair of Judges
• Andrew McGregor (JISC – Programme Manager Information Environment)
• Wolfram Horstmann (Chief Information Officer for Scholarly Information at the Universität Bielefeld and Programme Chair of Open Repositories 2010)
• Sarah Shreeves (Coordinator for the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS))
• Hannah Payne (Welsh Repository Network – Project Officer (Organisational))

then met to decide who would be the winners and runners up.

The awards were announced at the conference dinner, the night of Spain vs Germany semi-final at the World Cup, where Spain won 1:0. Luckily it was a happy audience (except for our German colleagues   – even if they did play the best football in the tournament!).

We received 7 entries in total, the panel commenting on the very high standard of all the entries. Presenters were from the UK, Spain and the Netherlands and we must thank everyone for all their hard effort!Below are listed all the entries, with videos, audio and pictures of their pitches. The winners and runners up were also interviewed after the challenge had finished.

The winners!

Rory McNicholl (Developer) and Richard Davis (Repository Manager)  – University of London Computer Centre

13172548

Video of Richard Davis pitching their team’s entry (Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl).

Richard Davis has subsequently blogged about their success, explaining in further detail the thinking behind their entry.

13206212

Interview with Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl after their success.

Podcast of interview

The runners up!

Sam Adams (Developer) and Peter Murray-Rust  – University of Cambridge

13172670

Video of Sam presenting his pitch

13206258

Interview of Sam talking about his entry

Podcast of interview

Honourable Mention

13172921

Honourable Mention for Adam Field and Dave Tarrant for their entry ‘Tweepository’ both from the University of Southampton.

This was considered the most innovative challenge entry by the judges.

Oscar Naim (Microsoft Research) presenting on Zentity

13173523

Oscar showed a couple of relevant scenarios supported in Zentity 2.0 that were relevant to the challenge. For example, as data is added into the system (via their Web UI), Pivot collections are created automatically (Pivot is a visualization tool from Microsoft Live Labs).

Bram Luyten (@mire) presenting the work of Stijn Van der Wielen entitled ‘Repository RADAR’

13173507

Presentation Bram gave at Open Repositories.

13147633

A screen cast demo from Stijn Van der Wielen

Sebastian Ten Holter and Michael Fedarb  (Equella) presenting on how  Equella meets the Developer Challenge.

13173501

Talat Chaudhri from UKOLN presenting on Drupal Fauxpository (user testing by Stephanie Taylor)

13369522

Some screenshots of the winning entry (Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl)

For a more detailed explanation of the entry, please visit, Richard’s blog posting about their entry.

This year’s challenge was created by crowd sourcing responses to Paul Walk’s original blog entry inviting ideas for the challenge. After several responses, a draft challenge was created and further comments were invited. After discussion, the challenge was finalised and announced one month before the conference giving developers plenty of time to work on their entries. We encouraged teams comprised of developers working with non-developers (such as repository managers) to enter.  Just to reccap, the final challenge was:

Create a functioning repository user-interface, presenting a single metadata record which includes as many automatically created, useful  links to related external content as possible.

A Developer Lounge was set up at the conference where developers could work on their entries for the challenge over two days. Entrants then had to present what they had developed to an audience of around 50 plus people and panel of judges. The judges, who were:

• Paul Walk (UKOLN – Deputy Director) – Chair of Judges
• Andrew McGregor (JISC – Programme Manager Information Environment)
• Wolfram Horstmann (Chief Information Officer for Scholarly Information at the Universität Bielefeld and Programme Chair of Open Repositories 2010)
• Sarah Shreeves (Coordinator for the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS))
• Hannah Payne (Welsh Repository Network – Project Officer (Organisational))

then met to decide who would be the winners and runners up.

Panel of judges (left to right) Andrew McGregor, Sarah Shreeves, Hannah Payne, Wolfram Hortsmann, Paul Walk (Chair of Judges) and the audience for the 'Developer Challenge - Show and Tell'.

The awards were announced at the conference dinner, the night of Spain vs Germany semi-final at the World Cup, where Spain won 1:0. Luckily it was a happy audience (except for our German colleagues   – even if they did play the best football in the tournament!).

Audience at the conference dinner waiting for the announcement of the winner of the Developer Challenge

We received 7 entries in total, the panel commenting on the very high standard of all the entries. Presenters were from the UK, Spain and the Netherlands and we must thank everyone for all their hard effort!

Below are listed all the entries, with videos, audio and pictures of their pitches. The winners and runners up were also interviewed after the challenge had finished.

The winners!

Rory McNicholl (Developer) and Richard Davis (Repository Manager)  – University of London Computer Centre

Rory McNicholl and Richard Davis winners of the Developer Challenge at Open Repositories 2010 (Madrid) both from the University of London Computer Centre.

Andrew McGregor presenting the winners of the Developer Challenge at Open Repositories 2010 (Madrid) to Rory McNicholl and Richard Davis at the conference dinner

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video of Richard Davis pitching their team’s entry (Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl).

Richard Davis has subsequently blogged about their success, explaining in further detail the thinking behind their entry.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interview with Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl after their success.

Podcast of interview

The runners up!

Sam Adams (Developer) and Peter Murray-Rust  – University of Cambridge

Sam Adams runner up at the Developer Challenge

Sam Adams announced as runner up at the Developer Challenge

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video of Sam presenting his pitch

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interview of Sam talking about his entry

Podcast of interview

Honourable Mention

Click here to view the embedded video.

Honourable Mention for Adam Field and Dave Tarrant for their entry ‘Tweepository’ both from the University of Southampton.

This was considered the most innovative challenge entry by the judges.

Oscar Naim (Microsoft Research) presenting on Zentity

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oscar showed a couple of relevant scenarios supported in Zentity 2.0 that were relevant to the challenge. For example, as data is added into the system (via their Web UI), Pivot collections are created automatically (Pivot is a visualization tool from Microsoft Live Labs).

Bram Luyten (@mire) presenting the work of Stijn Van der Wielen entitled ‘Repository RADAR’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presentation Bram gave at Open Repositories.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A screen cast demo from Stijn Van der Wielen

Sebastian Ten Holter and Michael Fedarb  (Equella) presenting on how  Equella meets the Developer Challenge.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Talat Chaudhri from UKOLN presenting on Drupal Fauxpository (user testing by Stephanie Taylor)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some screenshots of the winning entry (Richard Davis and Rory McNicholl)

ULCC Developer Challenge Entry - Screenshot 1: EPrints Abstract page with added links generated dynamically by mapping embedded RDFa metadata to an external list of relevant services

ULCC Developer Challenge Entry - Screenshot 2: EPrints Abstract page with added links generated dynamically by mapping embedded RDFa metadata to an external list of relevant services

ULCC Developer Challenge Entry at OR10 - Screenshot 3: EPrints Abstract page with added links generated dynamically by mapping embedded RDFa metadata to an external list of selected services

Curated list of Target Services in Google Spreadsheet

For a more detailed explanation of the entry, please visit, Richard’s blog posting about their entry.

The DevCSI project is proud to announce that it will be organising the Open Repositories 2010 Developer Challenge at the Fifth International Conference on Open Repositories in Madrid – Open Repositories 2010.

The tag for the challenge is: #or10dev

The Challenge

Create a functioning repository user-interface, presenting a single metadata record which includes as many automatically created, useful links to related external content as possible.

The Prize

A prize of 2000 Euros is available to the winners and runners up.

Further Information

For further information and clarification of the challenge, please go the OR2010 Developer Challenge website.

Teams must include at least one developer and one person representing the ‘user’.

You can enter your team using OR2010 CrowdVine site by adding your entry to the CrowdVine discussion.

This forum is for:

• Discussing the challenge
• Sharing ideas
• Looking for team members
• Expressions of interest in submitting a challenge

Good luck!

JISC and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) recently hosted a one-day meetup for academic developers to share ideas, code and experiences around using Widgets in a higher and further education environment, held on Tuesday 13th October, 2009 at the Upper Hall, University of London Student Union.

The discussion focused on the potential of Widgets to enhance and enrich any web page or site, and the implications for improving virtual learning environments, in particular through integration with Google Wave.

Ross Gardler, service manager of OSS Watch at the University of Oxford and a member of the ASF kicked things off with an introduction to the Apache Incubator.

As the name suggests, the Incubator is an environment in which open source software projects can develop into fully-fledged Apache projects. At present, there are 60 incubating projects in addition to the 66 top-level projects, maintained by around 2,000 code contributors.

A project becomes part of the incubator only after it has been successfully championed by one of the 262 ASF members. Each project has three mentors who initiate the project contributors into the Apache development philosophy.

Ross explained the incubator’s community-driven development approach: “The idea is that by the time you come out of incubation you’ve got a fully-fledged Apache project – that does not mean you have working code. It’s not an exit requirement. The exit requirement is that you have a working community. If you’ve got an exit community, then working code will emerge. [We say] community over code, meaning, look after the community before you look after the code.”

“There’s no set incubation period – the shortest time was 2.5 to 3 months. One of the longest running projects to date in the incubator is one from China which has been there for 18 months.”

“The reason we do this is because the industry loves ASF projects. They say, ‘If it’s an Apache project, we know that the IP is being managed properly. We know that we can use this software and that it has a vibrant community, and we’re not going to be solely responsible for maintaining the software development’. In other words, they know their risks are minimised as far as is possible when you’re dealing with OSS. That’s why the ASF and other foundations that work in similar ways are so popular.”

“The Apache incubator is only one potential route. There are lots of other routes, and you should find the right home for your kind of project. The reason Scott chose Apache was because they’re doing an implementation of a [W3C] standard, and Apache has a track record in implementing open standards in an open way, that gets you away from the normal cat-fighting that happens when businesses are trying to position for their market-share.”

Ross also emphasised the increased visibility that comes with being part of the incubator, as well as the increased influence which accompanies the incubator meetups at high profile events like ApacheCon.

As a final point of encouragement, Ross added that if you’re already working on something related to an existing incubator project, there’s no need to enter the incubator as an entirely separate project. Very often it can enter the incubator as a sub-project, effectively adding another dimension of R&D to that area.

Having set the scene, Ross gave the floor to Scott Wilson, assistant director of CETIS, the JISC’s innovation support centre for interoperability and standards in HE and FE. Scott gave an overview of the Wookie widget engine and progress on the W3C’s Widgets specifications.

Wookie is a Java server application that allows developers to integrate W3C widgets or built on services that use extended APIs, such as OpenSocial and Google Wave Gadgets with other software environments like Moodle, LAMS, WordPress, and Elgg.

It allows tremendous flexibility to enrich a website or virtual learning environment, as you can integrate single-user and fully collaborative applications into one space.

As explained on the Wookie page:

Administrators can upload Widgets packaged according to the W3C Widgets specification, and makes these available to applications using a REST API.

Applications typically have a plugin that implements this REST API, and enables users to pick widgets from a gallery of those available to add to their pages.

You can read more about Scott’s decision to develop Wookie in an OSS environment and Ross’ advice on engaging developers who are new to open source projects in Michelle Pauli’s report back from the latest OSS Watch workshop.

Scott’s slides from the meetup are available on slideshare.

And another presentation about the ‘The Life of a Wookie‘ from the OSS watch event at Oxford.

Finally, it was time to see Google Wave Gadgets in action with Wookie.

Wilbert Kraan, assistant director at the University of Bolton and at CETIS, the JISC’s innovation support centre for interoperability and standards in HE and FE, is one of the leading thinkers around Google Wave’s potential use in teaching and learning.

Positioned as a realtime personal communication and collaboration tool, Google Wave combines the best attributes of our digital communication arsenal in a way that promises to solve the problems inherent to all these tools.

This promise is especially relevant for large organisations and collaborative environments where the bulk of critical communication is undertaken through email and various other imperfect and fragmented communication and social sharing tools.

Google Wave’s open source approach to uniting these communication and collaboration methods holds tremendously exciting implications for the higher and further education sectors.

Wilbert sees the potential for integrating Google Wave gadgets into Wookie, creating a rich and incredibly flexible way to improve virtual and personal learning environments.

For an example of how this integration might work, you can read Wilbert’s thoughts on integrating Wave, Wookie and Twitter.

His final thoughts on the day:

“One of the questions I had coming here was whether the infrastructure was far enough along to allow people who are not so interested in the server end of things to pick stuff up and start making the widgets that they want to build for their own purposes.”

I think we’ve reached that point. The demos showed that there are still some rough edges — if you try stuff you might still see some error messages — but the basics are there- not just with Wookie, but also the widget authoring tool that Youth Media demoed [proving the commercial application of widgets].”

For more information, please see the IE Demonstrator Blog.