By Rob Bristow October 16, 2012
Uncategorized

I was reviewing some of our events for some briefing papers and the like that I am hoping to get moving on shortly, and was looking again at the “Storified” write-ups of the events we held over the last 18th months on various topics in Green ICT.

If you don’t know what Storify is, its strapline is “Find the best of social media”. As they say: “Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative.” With the help of the wonderful Event Amplifier, Kirsty Pitkin, we did just that for a number of events. Kirsty took over my twitter account for the duration, and tweeted key insights and points made by the speakers. Meanwhile she (in most cases) recorded video and audio streams. Later she wove these with the tweets (mine/hers and others) along with still pictures, presentations and her narrative, to produce something that is in someways better than actually being there on the day.

If you want to check them out you can find them at:

1. Conferencing in Universities and Colleges-Improving Performance, and Reducing Travel and Stress?
   
   The Conferencing in Universities and Colleges Workshop gathered together senior managers and travel coordinators with an interest in improving performance and minimising business travel. The workshop had a local audience at the University of Warwick and was streamed to a wider audience following remotely via the Janet Video Conferencing Service.
2. Cloud and Shared Service Solutions-An event for IT and strategic decision-makers in HE to discuss how to create a level playing field for business and environmental optimisation
   
   This workshop aimed to give IT and strategic decision-makers in HE a chance to find out more about the potential advantages and disadvantages of cloud and shared services, and the opportunity to reflect on the key factors that are likely to influence decisions in this area.
3. Intelligent Buildings and Smart Estates -A workshop to consider how ICT can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of university and college estates, and to reduce the costs, energy consumption and carbon emissions of buildings
   
   The event was designed to help build links between Estates and ICT practitioners, with the aim of stimulating subsequent technical actions on areas such as interfaces and standards.  This included a lively workshop session to discuss the issues and a series of presentations from the differing perspectives of the estates manager, the software developer, and commercial providers in this space.
4. Best Practice Criteria for Sustainable E-Learning– An exploratory workshop examining the sustainability of e-learning from economic, pedagogic and environmental perspectives
   
   Participants heard three short presentations discussing the issues associated with economic, pedagogic and environmental best practice within e-learning, each of which suggested a series of criteria for best practice.  The presentations were followed by roundtable discussions allowing participants to evaluate and refine these criteria.  This summary provides an overview of the issues raised by these presentations.

One heartening aspect of these captures of events – things that are by their nature ephemeral and sometimes only marked by a few decks of cryptic Powerpoint slides, is that they seem to have been very popular with a combined viewing total of over 2,300 – now that’s what I call Event Amplification!