My personal side has been blowing his trumpet:
Read more at https://bruceryandontexist.info/2019/10/31/bruce-of-all-trades/
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Author Archives: Bruce Ryan
RIVAL event 1: Thursday 11 June #lisrival
We had a lot of fun at RIVAL event 1! This event, and three following events in November 2019, March 2020 and July 2020, aim to seed a collaborative network of Scotland-based Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers and practising library and information professionals interested in maximising the impact and value of library and information science research.
For anyone who couldn’t make it, the movies and photos hopefully give some of the flavour of the day. Continue reading
What has Bruce been up to in the first half of 2019?
Napier
| When | What | outcome and notes |
| December to early January | marking Work-based learning mid-year reports | Success: Marking was done, including handling students’ queries, and writing and delivering a presentation on how I will mark final reports. |
| January | PB in Brazil: whether and how PB benefits the very poor in Sao Paulo | work on a paper was stalled for ages. It took until late June to get a focus-group transcribed. Translation is to follow… |
| February to May | running WriteNow! sessions on Wednesday afternoons |
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| February onwards | RIVAL: 4 networking events in 2019-2020 for Library and Information Scientists and practitioners | See project website for details. |
| March onwards | GCRF map/database The Scottish Funding Council wants a map of all of the GCRF projects it funds. Image of possible look-and-feel is here | awaiting contract-signature |
| February, May | Internal examiner for 3 BIT MSc students | All three passed. (Credit belongs to the students and their supervisors!) |
| April-May | Writing RFC funding applications |
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| May | Marking Computing in Contemporary Society courseworks | Work was done. |
| June | Marking Work-based learning final reports | work in progress |
Elsewhere
| January onwards | minuting meetings between Community Councils Together on Trams and Edinburgh Council’s Trams Team | better citizen-involvement? |
| September 2018 onwards | member of £eith Chooses steering group | Success! See website. Survey on possible improvements due to close soon. |
| since time immemorial | minutes and websites for three Edinburgh community councils: Leith Central, Leith Harbour & Newhaven, New Town & Broughton | Success, I think: better recording and publicising of hyperlocal government activities |
| ongoing | taking part in various democracy events, e.g. practical democracy project, Democracy Alive | Some better understanding of what various bodies are doing to improve democracy. I’m not sure how effective they will be, or what my role should be. |
Alicja Pawluczuk and John Morrison’s presentations at #digiimpact
I’m trying to work a bit less and play more, so today I was delighted to take a break from writing academic paper-writing to attend an event based on my colleagues’ (Alicja Pawluczuk and John Morrison) PhD research. This post is my tweets, hopefully in chronological order, with minimal editing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for all of the round-table discussion, but it would have been bad practice to tweet from that anyway.
John is @digiethnography. My less relevant tweets are in block-quotes. Continue reading
Social media survey
My colleague Frances Ryan (no relation) is researching social media use by proxy. Please take her survey (see her web-page). Click the images below to see the details.
You’ll be contributing to a great, important piece of research!
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UKRI GCRF Regional Engagement Event – Glasgow: slides
With thanks to the speakers for permission to share them, here are the slides for most of the presentations at this event
- Dan Haydon: Glasgow University’s Centre for International Development
Stephanie Connelly: Optimising decentralised low-cost waste water infrastructure - Mark Pelling: Resilience portfolio challenge
- Jaideep Gupte: Cities and sustainable infrastructure
- David Beards: SFC perspective on GCRF
- Daniel Robinson: New & forthcoming calls
Register now for RIVAL event 1: Thursday 11th July, Edinburgh
Text shamelessly copied from Hazel’s post
Registration is now open for the first RIVAL event on Thursday 11th July 2019 in the Horizon Suite at at Edinburgh Napier University’s Sighthill campus. Participation is free of charge for Scotland-based members of the library and information science practitioner and research communities interested in maximising the impact and value of library and information science research.
Thanks to project funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, we are able to subsidise costs of participation. We can contribute up to £25 towards the travel costs of those based in the Central Belt not local to Edinburgh. As well as travel, we can also contribute to accommodation costs for those from the rest of Scotland (up to £130 total for those on the mainland, and up to £280 total for those from the islands).
We are looking forward to welcoming a mix of information professionals from across Scotland to this event, including practising library and information scientists, and library and information science researchers (academic staff, research staff, and PhD students).
Speakers at this first RIVAL event include Hazel Hall (Edinburgh Napier University), Sarah Morton (Matter of Focus), and Louise Graham (Edinburgh Libraries). The programme also includes time for networking and unconference presentations, and for delegates to determine future elements of the RIVAL project.
- Full details are available at https://lisrival.com/rival-events/event-1-july-2019
- Register on EventBrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rival-event-1-tickets-58793103756.
To find out more about the other networking events in November 2019, March 2020, and July 2020, and the RIVAL event contributors, please see the RIVAL web site at https://lisrival.com or contact the RIVAL administrator: Dr Bruce Ryan by email at b.ryan@napier.ac.uk.
Developing new ways to study information literacy: examples from the workplace context and among youth
This workshop was presented by Professor Gunilla Widén(@gunillawiden) to members of Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics. This post is based on my live-tweets and the text of Gunilla’s slides, so the good things here are from Gunilla, and any mistakes are by me. My thoughts are in block quotes. Continue reading
Workshop on ‘international development with lasting impact’
This workshop was presented by Professor Mark Reed. It was aimed at researchers at Edinburgh Napier University intending to apply for Global Challenges Research Funding. This post is based on my notes from the day, so the good things here are from Mark, and any mistakes are by me. Readers should also check out Mark’s Fast Track Impact website, especially the resources section. Mark can be contacted via pa@fasttrackimpact.com or via @fasttrackimpact
In this post , the words ‘project’, ‘research’, and ‘researcher’ should be read as ‘GCRF-funded project’, ‘GCRF-funded research’ and ‘GCRF-funded researcher’. My post–facto comments are in block quotes. Click the thumbnail images to see full-size versions. Continue reading
UKRI GCRF Regional Engagement Event – Glasgow
Today I was at a one-day information event run by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). According to UKRI, the GCRF is a ‘a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government in late 2015 to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries’. Also, ‘GCRF forms part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment.’ My paraphrase is that GCRF funds research specifically to do good things™.
It’s already been good for me and my colleague Wegene Demeke because it funded our research in Brazil earlier this year. Now the onus is on us to follow up that 3-week project with a bigger piece of research leading to positive impacts on Brazilian society. So I was keen to learn more about how to do this from the funders themselves. In fact I was so keen I was on an aarrgghh-o’clock train this morning to sunny Glasgow. (I am not usually capable of simultaneous speech and locomotion, let alone anything approximating to thought, before about 10am.)
Lessons and take-home messages
- GCRF has been going for more than 4 years and will finish at the end of year 5, so why did I only hear of it in mid-2018?
- This is probably because my university was awarded an amount of funds for seed-projects in 2018, and I’ve not looked too assiduously for funding!
- If I heard correctly, there isn’t a guarantee of GCRF 2.
- However, UKRI and the research councils wouldn’t be running events like this if GCRF2 was unlikely.
- According to other another researcher I talked to, Wegene and I aren’t the only ones finding it difficult to obtain funds for translation.
- Our saga is too painful to repeat here.
- The value of this sort of event is who you meet.
- I met another researcher who is doing engineering research in Brazil. I hope this will help build our networks in Brazil.
- There was much emphasis on GCRF research hubs.
- There was also much emphasis on the GCRF collective programme.
- However, the collective programme isn’t the only current GCRF funding stream at the moment. Researchers should also look for ‘network-plus’ grants
- GCRF challenge leaders can be emailed at challengeleaders@ukri.org.
Below the cut are my notes (edited for legibility) and photos of slides. I believe slides will be circulated, so I should eventually be able to replace the photos with better images.
Bruce's IT-ish world 