JISC

JISC’s largest conference to date with 780 actual and 300-plus virtual delegates generated over 1,300 ‘tweets’ (messages posted on the Twitter website), making it Twitter’s most discussed event for 48 hours – globally – surrounding the conference itself on 24 March 2009. 

New JISC chair Professor Sir Tim O’Shea opened proceedings by summarising a successful year of achievements for JISC. This included the operation of Super JANET 5, the fastest research network in Europe, and running the world’s largest access management federation, with over eight million single sign-on users. Professor O’Shea also underlined the importance of collaboration if the UK is to remain at the forefront of education globally; a key issue raised during Monday’s pre-conference round table discussions whose outputs will inform JISC’s future strategy.  

Live online interactivity

The keynote speakers were streamed online live, including the inspirational opening plenary by Professor Lizbeth Goodman and the equally informative closing presentation from Ewan McIntosh, Commissioner of 4iP (Channel 4’s Innovation for the People project).

The fully comprehensive conference blogs were maintained by JISC’s team of roving journalists, including delegate interviews and coverage of the diverse break-out sessions, on themes ranging from identity management and using Virtual Research Environments to e-Portfolios. This live amplification of events and emerging themes allowed far wider participation in the discussion than would normally have been possible.

'JISC have set a standard in conference participation that's going to be hard to beat'

Twitter post 

Though instantaneous online communication channels like Twitter are still relatively new, the sheer number of active users within the higher education community emphasises their innovation-friendly, ‘early adoptive’ nature. Twitter also allowed closing keynote Ewan McIntosh to request topics for discussion from the delegates, making for a relevant speech, tailored to the needs of the audience.

In a similar vein, a ‘text wall’ projected behind the speakers in the ‘Mind the Gap…Understanding the tensions between institutions and the learner’ break-out session also allowed delegates to text their questions in, for proper consideration by the presenters.   

Emerging themes

'Back home and reflecting on the JISC Conference - really thought provoking keynote from Ewan McIntosh'

Twitter post

For those who prefer their information in more familiar formats and who are not yet part of the ‘blogosphere’ or ‘Twitterverse’, the keynote presentations will be available to view online, and session information, blog posts and podcast interviews are available via the JISC Conference programme pages. Please visit these pages to catch up with or comment on the events and presentations at your convenience, and to grasp an overview of the conference’s emergent themes, which will go on to inform JISC’s forthcoming strategy. 

Commenting on the conference, David Lammy, Minster of State for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, left a guest post on the JISC Conference blog, sharing his views on web 2.0 technologies within education and asking people to continue debating the topics raised at the conference.

JISC Conference blog
Presentations and Audio from the conference
Twitter stream of comments concerning the conference
Delegate Feedbak Form Let us know your views on the conference
JISC Conference 09