Well it’s time to leave Napier for 6 months to pursue other personal interests. I’ll be back in October to work on the IL-DEM project with Peter Cruickshank and Hazel Hall.
For now a huge thank-you to friends and colleagues in the School of Computing/IIDI, principally in the Centre for Social Informatics.
I hope this blog given an idea of how fun and rewarding it is to work in Edinburgh Napier University‘s School of Computing. While most of my experience is within the Centre for Social Informatics, within that school, I studied for an MSc here first, being taught by staff from many centres. I count myself very lucky to have studied and worked in such a great place with encouraging, supportive people all around me.
The School is now offering four PhD places in some very diverse topics: find out more here. And find out more about the topics that would fit in the Centre for Social informatics here.
But hurry! The closing date for applications is 15 January 2016.
I love working in academia, not least because I often get to do new things. Perhaps the best example so far is the Workforce Mapping Project commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA). The headline results have now been published.
I got to work with Library and Information Science researchers Hazel Hall and Christine Irving, and Employment researchers Robert Raeside, Tao Chen and Matthew Dutton, giving me exposure to several new fields.
(I wrote this post on the train this morning but didn’t get a decent wifi connection until I arrived at my hotel.)
The digiCC workshop roadshow is on the road again! Today I’m travelling to Elgin so I can co-host tomorrow’s workshop for CC and Registered Tenant Organisations members from Moray and nearby LAs. I’m very grateful to co-hosts Tracey Rae and Alison McLaughlin of Moray Council for all they and their colleagues have done to make this event work.
Partly so I can get it clear in my own head, here are the themes I’m currently working on, and the other work I’d also like to do if I ever get the chance!
The Scottish Government’s ‘Fairer Scotland’ national discussion has been running for a few months now. As the Scottish Community Alliance put it, this is an attempt to crowdsource policy. There’s a series of events around Scotland, at which the Scottish Government ‘wants to work with a broad mix of people across the country to prioritise practical steps that can be taken to create a fairer Scotland’.
But as well as talking directly with people across Scotland, the SG also wants to work with those who (should) most closely represent communities: community councillors. As Marco Biagi (Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment) put it, key questions are
Context for the Fairer Scotland Event – Marco Biagi MSP
Mr Biagi said a lot of things I liked to hear. He quoted the calculation from our 2012 report (PDF – see page 5) that arguably only 4% of Scotland’s electorate could vote in recent CC elections – the others were all uncontested due to lack of candidates. He is clearly interested in better mechanisms for local democracy and social justice (a priority for the SG), and looked forward to delegates’ views. He noted that one had come from Oban (100 miles each way) and appreciated that CC members are volunteers who may well have taken the day off work to attend this event.
This presentation was given by Mark McAteer, who stood in for Colin Mair, the IS’ chief executive. (Mr Mair was suddenly unable to attend due for personal reasons.) His main themes seemed to be
This was the start of the fun parts for me. My table had delegates from Argyll & Bute, Fife, West Dunbartonshire, Stirling, and Glasgow. (One asked me not to report her CC, so I’ve omitted CC, delegates’ and the facilitator’s names.) Here’s the issues we came up with. Continue reading
Delegates were asked to pose questions for this session. Continue reading
Bruce's IT-ish world 
