Archive for the ‘Wales Wide Web’ Category

Summer of Innovation, business models and culture

November 28th, 2014 by Graham Attwell

On Wednesday I attended the JISC Summer of innovation event at Reading University. This was a showcase for projects undertaken in summer 2014. Jisc is running an elevator system, selecting some 20 student projects a year who each get £5000 in funding. The format of the competition, says Jisc, “allows students to get full credit for their ideas, and have an ongoing role into their development. As well as showcasing the results of this work the event was designed to seek partners to work with to develop the ideas further.

Each of the project made a short pitch to those attending. And there was ample time to go around the presentation stands for demos and talks with developers. The projects were on the whole very impressive. It almost seems unfair to pick anyone out, but since I was on the lookout for projects I might want to work with further, then my pick of the bunch has to be evaloop. Evaloop developed by Shanghavi and Thiemo Fetzer, both postgraduates at LSE, have developed a mobile app which provides teachers or trainers with an easy way to collect feedback from students. According to the LSE web site “Amar and Thiemo have ten years of teaching experience between them which helped them to identify the difficulty of getting timely feedback in a cost effective way and to create ‘evaloop’.”

As a whole, the products looked pretty cool and you could see at least some of the picking up traction. Talking to the students, though, I was less convinced about the sustainability and business plans. Most had formed companies and were putting forward subscription models. All assured me that their services scaled technically and they probably do. But when I asked them how their company scaled socially they looked at me blankly. I asked a number whether they expected to be selling the same subscriptions to the same applications in two or three years time. This seemed reasonable since I was talking to a bunch of young, ambitious, clever entrepreneurs – or would be entrepreneurs. They admitted they had not thought about that. And although many were seeking to sell subscription services to universities, they did not really seem to know who might have the power to sign up to such a package.

Only Evaloop seem to have considered the Open Source Model. And I guess that is part of the present culture of software development. Apps are not released as open source, instead the business approach is to provide paid for services or at best a premium model. I think that is a shame, since, working with a wider community, many of these projects could make a real difference and get significant take up. However, I suppose another way to look at it is that if say only two projects go on to develop as viable products or services and sustainable enterprises, that has to be seen as a success, especially given the very limited pump priming funding from Jisc. I’ve signed up with five or six of the projects to get future updates, in addition to planning a trial of evaloop. And I will keep readers here in the loop on any updates. In the meantime check out the projects on the Jisc Summer of Innovation website.

Open Data App Challenge

November 12th, 2014 by Graham Attwell

Pontydysgu are working with the UK Data Service to open up three datasets under an open data license and then run an Open Data App Challenge during late spring/summer 2015. This a ESRC (Economic Social Research Council) innovation fund project.

Last Friday I went to a UK Data Service panel session and networking event at the Open Data Institute in London talking about our work and the issues around opening up data under an open data license. The audience was mostly App Challenge members and data owners. This event was held as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science Week and we invited along some other experts as well.

The session included Ralph Cochrane (App Challenge), Louise Corti (UK Data Service), Jonathan Raper (Transport API), Olivia Ely (UKCES), Moeen Khwaja (Thingful)

Ralph has wriiten about the event on the Open Data Challenge web site. “The UKCES and their LMI for All programme have one of the best developed government APIs for accessing open data around jobs, careers and employment statistics)” he says.

“Transport API is the leading provider of open transport data in the UK. Anyone can sign up to their API on a pay per use basis. They have data relating to trains, roads, construction and even Heathrow airport.

Thingful is a discovery or search engine for the Internet of Things. There are many sensors and devices out there that publish their state and if you can link these as a data stream they can enrich many other datasources and services. For example, there are weather sensors on top of most high rise buildings in London. Could they be connected to the Met Office to help with weather based planning?

Louise is the project leader for the Open Data App Challenge project and is based at the University of Essex campus in Colchester.

Ralph Cochrane moderated this panel session and is the founder of App Challenge. He’s a crowdsourcing expert and runs the developer community day-to-day working with many of the world’s leading companies.”

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