I’m privileged to be chairing this year’s Online Information Conference, which starts this Tuesday, 30th November and runs until 2nd December. The conference is linked with the Online Information Exhibition, with over 200 international exhibitors and more than 9,000 attendees from over 40 countries across the globe. The exhibition covers 6 different subject areas: Content Resources, ePublishing Solutions, Library Management, Content Management, Search Solutions and Social Media.
It’s hard to believe that 12 months have elapsed since the previous conference. Where did that time go?
The social media revolution continues apace, with many hundreds of new apps and web services appearing each day. The technology we use at home or in our pockets is often far more advanced than what we use in the workplace. We’re using mobile devices (iPhones, iPads etc.) that give us instant access to the web, and have a choice of literally hundreds of thousands of applications that support our on-line activities and lifestyles – over 300,000 apps for the iPhone alone.
Some commentators have likened the disruptive effects of social computing to the industrial revolution of the early 19th century. The main difference now is that whereas large Enterprise used to lead technology innovation, it’s now being driven bottom-up by users and consumers. We’re now all connected and far more willing and able to share knowledge and co-create.
I’ve lost count of the number of start-ups and services that have been spawned on the back of Twitter, which maybe demonstrates the inherent scalability of the intranet and the web, where potentially millions of users can be supported by a teenager with a PC working from his bedroom. Delivering services with minimal infrastructure is one of the new paradigms of the social web; the threat to traditional red brick business models is no longer confined to their traditional big business competitors, but also lightweight “micro” businesses that use web services to provide scalability and agility.
We’re also seeing a revolution in the use of open and linked data. Driven primarily by the public sector in response to the expectations of citizens for greater transparency in government, which in turn has spawned a whole new breed of Social innovators and armchair auditors. Everyone is now a data analyst. We’ve never had so much data and information to play with.
Coupled with this we have the “Google effect”, with users now expecting almost instant access to information as it happens. Accuracy and objectivity is becoming less important than speed and accessibility.
All of this is driving rapid behaviour change in both society and the workplace. Whether we’ve realized it or not, consumers are now driving the technology revolution and business is trying to keep up.
How are users and business adapting to this changing information and technology landscape? What innovative new products and working practices are emerging from the disruptive effects of these changes? This year’s conference will be looking at all of these issues, with presentations and an insight from some of the industry’s leading thinkers. This year we have four tracks or themes that will look at many of these industry trends and issues:
1. Exploiting open and linked data. Introduced as a track in its own right in 2009 and of growing importance especially in the public sector; open and linked data is creating new opportunities for information professionals and the creation of new information services and products.
2. Harnessing opportunity from the social web and the cloud. Although the use of social media is now mainstream in many organisations there are still barriers and limitations that are preventing the benefits of social media to be fully realised. This track gets to the heart of the issues with many real world experiences.
3. Information Professionals demonstrating value and impact. In economically straitened times when information services are under scrutiny information professionals need to be able to demonstrate value and impact to justify their existence, focus will be on challenges facing academic libraries and new projects that are using cutting edge technologies to deliver positive bottom line results.
4. New platforms and user behaviours for delivering content. Focusing on using mobile and “the cloud” to deliver information services, how are libraries and organisations using these technologies, what are the opportunities, how will these technologies change the future role of the information professional?
We also have a great line up of speakers, with special mention for our keynote speaker Dion Hinchliffe, an Internationally recognized business strategist, enterprise architect, author, blogger, and consultant on Web 2.0, enterprise architecture and co-author of the book ‘Web 2.0 Architectures‘.
So, I’m hoping that all of the delegates will make the most of this year’s conference. The quality of the papers and presentations submitted to the organizing committee has established a new benchmark, and I for one will be looking forward to attending as many sessions as I can. If you are a regular reader of this blog, or know me in either a social or business capacity, please do come and say “hello”.
Stephen Dale
The confluence of a number of initiatives around the UK Government’s transparency agenda has opened up a significant and exciting opportunity to deliver the first of a number of applications that will be made available in the Knowledge Hub App Store. The foundations for this initiative include:
1. The transparency agenda requirement for all authorities to openly publish spending data in reusable from January 2011 onwards.
2. Announcement about the publication of Government spending data
3. LG Group Practitioner Guide to publishing local spend data
4. ESD-Toolkit project to develop an online tool that will convert council csv files on spending into RDF, Linked Data format.
5. The announcement by Talis to offer UK Local Authorities free Linked Data hosting for published expenditure data
6. The Knowledge Hub project to provide an open platform for community collaboration and development of value-added applications (mashups etc.).
The key differentiators between this KHub app and the many and varied apps and websites that are now publishing details of government or local government spend data are:
1. The purpose is to provide insight and opportunities for improving local council performance and efficiency and not just to know where and how money is being spent. This will be achieved by including additional contextual data from sources such as ONS, to provide data on spend per head for specific service lines, e.g. social care.
2. The app and the business intelligence it offers will support the work of local council officers and heads of department; it can be used by citizens though this is not the primary audience.
3. It is, as the name suggests, using linked data to add context to open spend data, i.e. delivering the benefits of a semantic web application. (What is open and linked data?)
The proposed KHub App will interface with an aggregate store of local authority open spend data, hosted on the Talis platform. The App will enable the user to perform deep-dive queries and visualisation of specific spend data categories, and spend data comparisons across local authorities.
The specification of the Linked Data Spend App is currently work in progress, but some ideas for what the App could potentially deliver include:
- Spend by category: charts and tables, drill down into service
- Spend by supplier: charts and tables
- Supplier by categories: who are the suppliers and who do they supply: table with links to companies house information
- Spend by region or council by category: overlaid on an interactive map
- Spend by region or council by service: overlaid on an interactive map with drill down into service and category
- Spend over time
- Productivity measures: spend per head on social care, spend per head on bin collection, spend per mile of highway maintenance.
Outputs from this project, apart from the app itself, will be:
- Documentation on how the application(s) could be hosted on any web site.
- Published code developed for the visualisation application(s) under open source license.
The Linked Data Spend App will be launched early 2011 and will be one of many apps delivered as part of the Knowledge Hub App project.
Data flows for the Linked Data Spend App.
See also the Talis blog on this project.
More details will be provided as part of the launch communications. In the mean time I will be happy to respond to any questions.
The Online Information Conference is scheduled to run from 30th November to 2nd December. This is my first year as Conference Chairman, so mixed feeelings at present of anticipation and trepidation! The following is a pre-conference interview I gave to Knowledgespeak.
1. Can you briefly talk about the Online Information? Also, can you share with us any interesting events / trends for the 2010 Conference?
Online Information is the largest UK event dedicated to the information industry, providing an annual meeting place for more than 9,000 attendees from over 40 countries across the globe. This unique free-to-attend event consists of an exhibition with more than 200 international exhibitors, an extensive educational show floor seminar programme, plus a range of exciting and stimulating show features. Focusing on new technologies and key sectors, the show covers 6 different subject areas: Content Resources, ePublishing Solutions, Library Management, Content Management, Search Solutions and Social Media.
Online Information feature areas are set to be a major highlight of the 2010 event. The XML Pavilion, launched in 2009, is back and the Library Management Zone is being introduced for the first time, adding a new dimension to the event. The all new Library Management Zone plays host to exhibitors covering Library Systems, Library Security and RFID, and offers visitors the chance to view a wide range of library products. The Library Management Zone has been introduced to give exhibition visitors the opportunity to get to grips with new systems and technologies designed specifically for library environments. Other established and highly popular feature areas include, Global Business Information Forum and the European Librarians Theatre and International Forums. There will be a high percentage of new services and products for attendees to see with many regular high profile exhibitors showing new and evolved products plus we are delighted to welcome a high number of new exhibiting companies to Online this year.
2. The 2009 Online Information conference focused on innovation and emerging technologies. Briefly talk about this year’s theme – Discover new ways of working in the linked and social web.
I think most of us will agree that the velocity of change, both social and technological – has increased over the past 10 years and shows no sign of slowing down. The internet is giving us unprecedented access to information, and knowledge. New tools, applications and social networks are opening up opportunities for people to connect and collaborate far more effectively than ever before. Traditional red brick business models are gradually being replaced by lightweight “micro” businesses that use web services to provide scalability and agility.
Coupled with this we’re seeing a revolution in the use of open and linked data. Driven primarily by the public sector in response to the expectations of citizens for greater transparency in government, social innovators are using this data to create value-added applications, e.g. linking socio-demographic data with maps to show visual hot-spots.
All of this is driving rapid behaviour change in both society and the workplace. What can we discover from users and organisations that are in the midst of these changes? How are users and business adapting to this changing information and technology landscape. What innovative new products and working practices are emerging from the disruptive effects of these changes? This year’s conference will be looking at all of these issues, with presentations and an insight from some of the industry’s leading thinkers.
3. The 2010 conference features four tracks that will address important industry trends, technologies and other pressing issues. Can you briefly talk about these individual track sessions?
Of course I would be glad to, in no particular order:
Exploiting open and linked data
Introduced as a track in its own right in 2009 and of growing importance especially in the public sector; open and linked data is creating new opportunities for information professionals and the creation of new information services and products
Harnessing opportunity from the social web and the cloud
Although the use of social media is now mainstream in many organisations there are still barriers and limitations that are preventing the benefits of social media to be fully realised. This track gets to the heart of the issues with many real world experiences.
Information Professionals demonstrating value and impact
In economically straitened times when information services are under scrutiny information professionals need to be able to demonstrate value and impact to justify their existence, focus will be on challenges facing academic libraries and new projects that are using cutting edge technologies to deliver positive bottom line results.
New platforms and user behaviours for delivering content
Focusing on using mobile and the cloud to deliver information services, how are libraries and organisations using these technologies, what are the opportunities, how will these technologies change the future role of the information professional?
4. How, in your opinion, have the needs of information-consumers evolved in the recent few years? How is the Online Information Conference evolving accordingly?
As noted earlier, the internet is giving us unprecedented access to information, and knowledge. Over the past several years we’ve seen the barriers to publishing lowered, which has triggered enormous growth in non-curated information, e.g. from personal blogs and Twitter feeds. Consumers now expect information to be delivered in almost real-time, which continues to be a challenge for the traditional publishing models. We can perhaps recall that the first pictures and information from the 7/7/05 London bombings came from people at the scene, via blogs and tweets from mobile devices. Everyone is now a potential news reporter. Coupled with this we have the “Google effect”, where the perception is that information can be found within seconds of a search query being submitted. Accuracy and objectivity of the information has become secondary to speed and access.
Curated knowledge and information sources, e.g. media, information vendors, academic institutions, have come under increasing pressure to show their value. This is driving innovative ways of delivering information and new products (e.g. Library services) through digital channels, with many of these organisations tapping into the social web to connect with and get closer to potentially new consumers.
The Online Information Conference maintains links with people, experts and organisations across the whole spectrum of knowledge and information creation, curation and publication in order to identify emerging trends and innovations. This ensures that for each conference we have a blend of practice-based experience and thought leadership from recognized experts. In this way, we maintain an eye on the future whilst utilizing the vast experience of the present and past to provide context to where the industry is headed, and how information consumers will be affected.
5. Lately, we have seen that new leaders are emerging with the vision to adapt or change their business models to embrace the opportunities created by the social web and the cloud. What are the implications of these generational changes in technology and online networks and do you see the Online Conference as a venue for sharing information about these changes?
Take-up and adoption of social computing is following the standard Rogers Adoption/Innovation Curve (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards). Cloud computing is probably still at the early adopters stage, though one could argue that the social web is now well within the bell curve of early and late majority. Some commentators have likened the disruptive effects of social computing to the industrial revolution of the early 19th century. The main difference now is that whereas large Enterprise used to lead technology innovation, it’s now being driven bottom-up by users and consumers. We’re now all connected and far more willing and able to share knowledge and co-create.
The technology we use at home is often far more advanced than what we use in the workplace. We’re using mobile devices (iPhones etc.) that give us instant access to the web, and have a choice of literally hundreds of thousands of applications that support our on-line activities and lifestyles. Some business leaders and organisations (e.g. Amazon) recognized this shift to consumerism long before we used the term “social web” or “Web 2.0″ and developed or adapted business models that could leverage this increasing connectivity and scalability of the web. The phenomenon was adequately described in Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail”.
So, whether we’ve realized it or not, consumers are now driving the technology revolution and business is trying to keep up. Organisations and businesses that fail to grasp the opportunities of the social web will be at a disadvantage to those that do. We’re already seeing evidence of this in various research reports.[1]
We can therefore anticipate further and rapid “socio-technology” change going forward. One emerging trend is the increase in “micro-businesses”, i.e. those that can service large numbers of customers with limited resources, utilising web services to provide scalability (e.g. witness the number of businesses that have been created on the back of Twitter).
The Online Information Conference will continue to monitor and analyse the knowledge and information management landscape, and through our extensive network of industry practitioners, academics and thought leaders, will provide a place and time to share knowledge and facilitate honest debate about the impact of the social web.
[1] The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies. http://www1.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/2009f500.cfm
I will be running a session on the ‘Knowledge Hub‘ at the the Local by Social Online Conference this Wednesday 3rd November, 3pm to 4.30pm (GMT). See more details below about the Online Conference. A brief synopsis of the Knowledge Hub:
Knowledge Hub will support service improvement, efficiencies and innovation across local government. It is a Web 2 social media development and offers opportunities to foster greater collaboration across the sector and wider use of digitally based information such as open and linked data. Knowledge Hub builds on the successful Communities of Practice (CoP) space with over 75,000 registered users and is considered the most advanced online practitioner group in the public sector. Access to the new environment will allow councillors, officers and practitioners across the public sector to take advantage of new media tools and techniques for knowledge sharing and improvement.
More than just an IT solution, the KHub is a far-sighted social media resource that could lead to a major cultural change in the public sector.
The Local by Social online conference is just part of a wider strategy to support local government and its partners in using social media to improve services and knowledge sharing across the sector. The following abstract from Ingrid Koehler explains:
The Local by Social online conference is showcasing a range of digital innovators in local public services. Social media: Citizen and council strand has a range of brilliant speakers covering the breadth of how social media is being used to innovate and improve local public services and engage citizens more broadly and deeply.
And this is only one strand of the conference! The other cover the use of social media for better knowledge sharing and practice development within the sector and the use of open data for transparency and improvement.
How does this work? Speakers will provide material in advance and will then be available to answer questions and engage in discussion. But really they’re only there to prompt discussion. This conference is about you! Your experiences, your challenges and your solutions to share with colleagues across the country and around the world. Or you can just listen and learn. Sign up to the conference and you’ ll be alerted to speakers who interest you and round-ups of key content, so you never miss a thing.
The Slidecast presentation below has been posted to the Online Conference website. If this is of interest to you, then hope to ‘see’ you at the online conference on Wednesday 3rd November.
