Keynote speakers announced for Jisc conference 2008
It was confirmed today that Lord Puttnam and Angela Beesley are to be the keynote speakers at Jisc’s annual conference to be held in Birmingham on the 15 April 2008. With Innovation as the conference’s theme, both speakers will, say conference organisers, provide challenging and though-provoking perspectives on how ICT can support education, research, lifelong learning and the wider needs of society.
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate is one of the most acclaimed producers of recent British film history. The recipient of an Academy Award (for Chariots of Fire in 1981) and a BAFTA Fellowship, in 2006, he left the film industry to pursue interests in British politics and education and was knighted in 1995 and made a life peer in 1997.
With lifelong interests in education, communications and innovation, Lord Puttnam is Chancellor of the Open University (and formerly, between 1996 and 2006, Chancellor of the University of Sunderland), a former Chairman of NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), a member of the Board of Trustees of Futurelab, the inaugural Chair of the General Teaching Council for England in 2001 and president of UNICEF UK.
Chair of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation - the non-profit organisation which operates Wikipedia and other wiki-based reference works - Angela Beesley has also served as an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation and has been involved with the Wikipedia community for more than five years.
In 2004, she co-founded Wikia, a commercial wiki company which is developing thousands of wikis on topics ranging from education and science to gaming and popular culture and prior to her involvement with social software, Angela was a researcher and test developer at the National Foundation for Educational Research.
Further details of the programme will be available in the coming months.