FOTE09 and project collaboration

Last Friday (2nd) I attended the Future Of Technology in Education conference (FOTE09). Information about the conference can be found here, and there should be presentation video and slides available soon.

The conference had two main strands: Cloud Computing and Social Media. Both strands were interesting, but I feel that the questions were very broad and the subject matter not focused enough on Libraries to be of real value. There were some snippets through the day that were of relevance to the Library:

A presentation on Digital Repositories touched on the subject of the CLA Copyright License. According to the presenter there are Digital Repositories that have developed solutions to handle material produced under the CLA Copyright License. He suggested that these repositories can handle everything from classification to authorisation, which would be a giant leap forward from the system we have now.

There was also some interesting discussion on the use of cloud computing within institutions. A view from the Microsoft and Google perspectives were presented (the two major players in cloud computing for education) as well as a view from Amazon's services. Although the day had been structured as a for/against split for cloud computing, the attendees didn't see it that way. There was a lot of discussion from the floor suggesting that it was a far greyer area and institutions should select the best service for the job, be that cloud based or not. There was also discussion regarding student choice, with many comments suggesting we shouldn't push students to one technology, but let them have more choice.
For a more detailed look at Cloud Computing read one of my older blog posts here.

However, the most productive part of the day came from a surprising source. Whilst at the conference I bumped into Sue Westerman from the Learning & Teaching Enhancement Unit. Sue and I started talking about the presentations and one presentation in particular: the presentation on Huddle. Whilst this presentation was criticised by the majority of the floor for being a sales pitch, I believe it was justified seeing as they were one of the main event sponsors. Huddle is a hosted project management and collaboration package. It has been tested in CCCU by the Learning & Teaching Enhancement Unit, who I believe are actively promoting it to departments within the University.
For some time now I have believed that the way forward in project management is via a social network approach. Sharing documents, discussions, blogs, messages, and calendars in a centralised, secure environment should dramatically speed-up the project process and enhance communication across disparate teams. I have looked at many products such as:

Glasscubes
Basecamp
PBWorks
OpenAtrium
and of course Huddle

The one I had decided was the best solution was OpenAtrium. It wasn't as feature rich as the other packages, but it was free and Open Source, so would be relatively cheap and easy to install. However, two strands of information on the day came together to change my mind. The first was talking to Sue about how they are promoting Huddle within the university. The second came from the discussions earlier in the day surrounding Cloud Computing. It is no secret that the Library Systems team are under increasing pressure from an ever increasing workload. It is also no secret that in this economic climate in is highly unlikely we will have any significant boost to the number of staff within the systems team. This means that we have to find innovative ways to manage our current workload without compromising on service delivery. It occurred to me whilst we were discussing cloud computing that a great portion of my systems administration time is spent on installation, development, and customisation when we purchase new products. This means there is always a significant delay between purchase and using the product in a productive way. There is also a large amount of ongoing administration that is always needed, such as backups, upgrades, and file maintenance. Finding a way to dispense with the initial set-up and ongoing maintenance would save an enormous amount of work and make the product far more productive in a shorter space of time. Cloud Computing could be part of that answer. I'll compare Huddle and OpenAtrium to try and show how...

OpenAtrium is free so there is no initial cost, but would require a server for installation. Even if this server was a 'virtual server' (computing services new way of deploying servers) we would still need to meet and discuss requirements with computing services. This is no easy task and can take several months to get it to a point whereby it is ready for Library use.

OpenAtrium would need to be installed and then configured to work with our existing systems. This again would need a lot of input from computing services, but would also take a great deal of effort from the Library Systems team.

OpenAtrium would need a lot of ongoing maintenance with backups, upgrades, and administration.

Huddle on the other had is a hosted service, so there is no need for any infrastructure here to support the software except a browser. Huddle is also already installed and working, so no need for any time spent on installation, development or configuration. The backups, upgrades, and all the system administration would be handled by the Huddle team, so a huge administration saving.

The are only two negatives I can see from Huddle. This first is that it employs its own authentication system, meaning that everyone would have (yet another) username and password to maintain. However, this might change if we had Shibboleth in place. The second is the cost. Huddle is a subscription service that is paid monthly dependant on how much of the product you use, whereas OpenAtrium is completely free. Having said this, the administrative costs of supporting a package internally rather than hosting it elsewhere more than offsets the costs in my opinion.

Anyone can sign-up from a free Huddle account and get access to one workspace. I have already signed up, so if you want to join my workspace and see how Huddle works, then email me and I'll send you an invite. Also Sue has agreed to give me a quick demo of how they are using and promoting Huddle, which should be very interesting.