Bruce's IT-ish world

Bruce's IT-ish world

Author Archives: Bruce Ryan

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About Bruce Ryan

https://about.me/bruce.ryan

Looking ahead to RIVAL event 3

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I’m really looking forward to RIVAL event 3, admittedly with a bit of nervousness about running an online event. (I’m always nervous about everything I do, so going virtual isn’t the real cause.) Anyway this post is to look at the treats awaiting RIVAL network members on Thursday 19 November, not to focus on me.

Many of the ‘skeletons’ of these treats will be hosted on the event web-page. But the tasty ‘flesh’ (c’mon, it’s just past Hallowe’en) will be in the interactions between network members during the event. We will live-tweet what we can, so please follow @lisrival. Continue reading →

From despair to where? Some lessons from lockdown

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This was originally written as a ‘reserve’ presentation for RIVAL event 3‘s ‘sharing our skills’ section. Fortunately enough people who are good at presenting volunteered, so Hazel Hall suggested I turn it into a blog-post. 

So here it is. The first part is a whistle-stop tour through my current ‘life under lockdown’; the second part is some lessons from recent online conferences I’ve attended, and from many community council online meetings. It’s meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but with some genuine lessons and realisations.

I should admit that the title of this post is a deliberate misnomer. I’ve despaired over many things, but turning RIVAL events virtual is not one of them. (It has been a lot of work though.) 

Click any image to see it full-size in a new tab or window.

Thanks to Marina Milosheva for advice on an early draft. Continue reading →

Memories of #AECIST20

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I recently attended an European chapter of ASIS&T Information Science Trends online conference This year it focussed on health information hehaviour. The following are my digitally-assisted memories of #AECIST20, i.e. adaptations of my live-tweets from the event. As ever, this report is mostly to help me sort what I need to do from what I want to do after being stimulated by many fascinating presentations. Any mistakes or misrepresentations in the below are of course my mistakes. Continue reading →

What has Bruce been up to during lockdown?

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It appears I’ve been relatively quiet during the past 5 months, at least on this blog. There have been personal reasons for this, as covered in my personal blog. Continue reading →

Digital exclusion in Scotland: tweets by @operanomad and @OliverEscobar

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NB @operanomad and @OliverEscobar gave retrospective permission to copy their tweets. 

Cat Macaulay (Chief design officer at the Scottish Government, @operanomad) talks about the ~800,000 digitally excluded people in Scotland. She states in another thread: [it] benefits no one to have so many digitally excluded/inactive and no or low basic digitally skilled in Scotland. (I’d add that this argument applies worldwide. This is not a criticism of the focus on Scotland in the following.) Continue reading →

PhD studentship available at Edinburgh Napier University

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(adapted from an email from Professor Hazel Hall)

Edinburgh Napier University is keen to receive applications from Computer Science or Software Engineering Bachelors or Masters graduates (or final year/Masters students due to graduate) with (or on target for) a first class or 2.1 degree, and who have some experience of studying Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, or Machine Learning (e.g. as part of a module, or in a project). Continue reading →

Meet the RIVAL network: members, skills, and locations all mapped

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(shamelessly copied from Hazel Hall’s blog-post)


Professor Hazel Hall and I have recently added new content about network members to the Research Impact Value and LIS (RIVAL) project web site. This includes:

This adds to existing content on RIVAL people:

If you are looking for library and information science professionals in Scotland interested in research impact and value, this is the place to start.

What has Bruce been up to in the last 6 months?

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Academic/Napier

  • The RIVAL network: I’m PA to the ∏, administrator, map-creator, videographer, data-analyst and much more
  • IL measures paper: Peter and I are contributing a section to a paper by Gunilla Widen. This will report on the survey of community councillors, and how (not to) measure workplace information literacy.
  • marking: some marking of students’ placement reports.
  • information avoidance in diabetes: because I don’t want to know about my diabetes, but because I do want to know why this is. And I want to to help others with this bad combination, and to maybe generate some theory!
  • SFC GCRF map. This is to create a web map of SFC-funded GCRF projects. Draft version is here: http://bruceryandontexist.net/SFC/VA42-2019_11_19/. <insert moan about administrivia>
  • Failure: REDACTED

Non-academic

  • Still minutes secretary and web-weaver for 3 Edinburgh community councils
    • But I’ve worked out how to cut down on the hours while still doing what they want.
  • £eithChooses PB event: publishing, IT, web, admin…
  • Community Councils Together on Trams: minutes and asking important impertinent questions
  • Failure: I didn’t cease smoking. Instead Varenicline made me vomit.