Category Archives: IT-ish stuff

What has Bruce been up to in the first half of 2019?

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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
  • success! 95% of writing goals met; 23,720 words written (579 per session per attendee)
  • failure: I wasn’t paid for this. Even though the initiative was strongly appreciated by participants from other schools, the feedback on the funding bid was ‘schools should do this themselves.’
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
  • Information avoidance in diabetes (PI: Gemma)
  • LitRev paper with Leandro (PI: Colin)
  • examination of Todd’s data (PI: Laura – she wrote this bid)
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.

What has Bruce been up to in the second half of 2018?

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Napier

# When What outcome and notes
1 July RIVAL: community event on the theme of LIS research impact:

 success!
Also enabled further funding application (line 5)
2 July applying for GCRF funding for PB in Brazil success!
See line 7
3 July marking work-based learning 2017-18 final reports ——-
4 September Drafting an idea for some public engagement/democracy work to revisit in 2019
5 September RSE funding application to follow up RIVaL: RIVaL network success!
Work to start in Feb 2019
6 October marking work-based learning 2018-19 initial reports ——-
7 October to present PB in Brazil: whether and how PB benefits the very poor in Sao Paulo Bruce going to Sao Paulo 4 to 27 Jan, Wegene 4 to 13 Jan LitRev in progress
builds on CSI’s relationship with University of Sao Paulo
8 November marking BSAD coursework 1 ——-
9 November application for RIO funding to run WriteNow! writing sessions in 2019 success!
working with Frances
10 December marking work-based learning 2018-19 mid-year reports ——-
11 December marking BSAD coursework 2 ——-

Question

Could I offer a short course or other help to students’ improve their report-writing skills?

Elsewhere

12 July contribution to 2018 Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide: A Longitudinal Assessment of Municipal Websites Throughout the World fancy certificate of thanks
13 July to present minuting meetings between Community Councils Together on Trams and Edinburgh Council’s Trams Team better citizen-involvement?
14 September Taking part in a follow-up to research by the Scottish Community Development Centre on community councils. led to involvement in draft PB charter
15 September to present member of £eith Chooses steering group voting Saturday 23 February 2019
16 October, November further participation in Scottish Government (SG) Online Identity Assurance stakeholder group

 TBC
17 November participation in debate/research on governance of and possible new powers for community councils TBC
18 December commenting on Scottish Government draft Open Government Action Plan appreciated by SG
19 December participation in Scottish Government/CoSLA event on mainstreaming participatory budgeting. Write-up of event is in a set of posts starting here TBC
20 all year minutes and websites for three Edinburgh community councils:

 better recording and publicising of hyperlocal government activities

Online identity assurance programme: Scottish Government ‘show & tell’ (28 March 2018) #identityassurance @digitalscots

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This post is my digital record of the Scottish Government’s Online Identity Assurance (OLA) ‘show and tell’. The day was very informative, and provided me the opportunity to catch up with friends in civil society circles. I’m especially interested because online identity is a natural precursor to online voting, another problematic area that greatly interests me.

The post starts with a recap of what was said at the event, then notes my input at the event. Next are my reactions to the event itself, followed by my thoughts on the whole OLA programme. In summary, while I think OLA is very worthwhile, and that the Scottish Government is trying to do it the right way, I have a lot of reservations about how useful it will be for those who most need government support.
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Anti-social not-worker

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My personal side breaks into this blog to say how either side of me communicates.

Bruce Ryan's avatarDigital evidence that Bruce might have a life

I do not use Facebook messenger. I refuse to have this on my phone, and generally ignore the the messaging bit of Facebook in browsers. It may not be logical but I resent being forced to have another app on my phone. Maybe I’m just getting old. If you want to contact me, in my order of preference

  1. talk to me, face to face (vastly preferred). You’ll generally find me in room C45 at Napier’s Merchiston Campus, at home, at LifesCycle at a community council meeting or cycling between two of these destinations
  2. email me (strongly preferred)
  3. comment on one of my WordPress blogs – so it will email me a notification
  4. phone me
  5. text me
  6. tweet me (last resort)

But please bear in mind that my phone is quite often on silent, and I’ve switched off every alert apart from for incoming calls. And don’t even mention Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp…

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