About the CETIS 2014 Conference
This year’s Cetis conference, Cetis 2014, will be held at the University of Bolton on 17-18 June. The theme of this year’s event is “Building the Digital Institution“. As described on the conference web site:
This year’s conference focuses on the digital institution and explores how technology innovation can support and develop every aspect of university and college life, for teachers and learners, researchers and developers, service directors and senior managers.
In this post I will summarise the reasons why I am looking forward to the conference.
The Keynote Talks
There will be two keynote presentations at the conference. Phil Richards, the Chief Innovation Officer at Jisc, will open the conference and the conference will close with a talk by Audrey Watters, Education and Technology Journalist.
If you’ve not come acriss either of these speakers before you may like to watch video recordings of the speakers.
A few days ago Phil Richards facilitated a workshop session on Digital approaches to smarter working and in this video interview he summarises the workshop and shares some ideas generated about how Jisc could work with universities.
Audrey Watters is described as “a journalist, a high school dropout, and a PhD dropout — though she did complete a Master’s degree in Folklore. As a freelancer writing about educational technology, her stories have appeared on NPR/KQED’s MindShift blog, in O’Reilly Radar, on Inside Higher Ed, in The School Library Journal, on ReadWriteWeb, and in the Edutopia blog”.
Last November Audrey gave a keynote talk on the second day of the Open Education Conference. I have to admit that I’d not heard of Audrey before but when I came across a tweet from Dave Kernohan, Jisc in which he told us to “STOP EVERYTHING .. #CETIS14 @audreywaters is keynote” I was intrigued. I therefore watched the recording of her talk which is available on YouTube and is embedded below.
The Parallel Sessions
The keynote talks at the conference will be worth listening to. But, for me, the parallel session at Cetis conferences provide the opportunity for greater interaction and discussions. This year there will be two sets of parallel sessions. On Tuesday 17th June from 13.20-16.50 there will be sessions on
Developing a Learning Analytics Strategy for a HEI
LRMI: What on Earth could Justify Another Attempt at Educational Metadata?
Open Education: a New World Order?
Open Knowledge: Wikipedia and Beyond
The next day, Wednesday 18th June, the following sessions will run from 09.15-12.45:
Web Services or Cloud, Open Source or outsourced?
eBooks: the Learning Platform of the Future?
Open Education: from Open Practice to Open Policy
Building an Accessible Digital Institution
Unfortunately as I’ve agree to be involved with sessions on both days (Open Knowledge: Wikipedia and Beyond and Building an Accessible Digital Institution) I won’t be able to attend any other sessions. On the first day I would have liked to attend the sessions on Developing a Learning Analytics Strategy for a HEI (in light of my involvement with the LACE project) and to have address the question Open Education: a New World Order?. The sessions on Web Services or Cloud, Open Source or outsourced? (“..how we revamp our IT procurement processes in an environment where “build vs buy” looks quaint and simplistic given the range of options we now have to weigh up“) and Open Education: from Open Practice to Open Policy on the second day also look interesting.
Ye Olde Man and Scythe.
Image from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a CC BY-SA licence.
Opportunities to Network
Having opportunities to develop and maintain one’s professional networks is always important at conferences. I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed going to pubs which serve real ale at previous Cetis conferences (such as the Sacks of Potatoes near Aston University).
For this year’s event my colleague David Sherlock has helpfully written a blog post on Cetis Conference 2014 – fringe activities in which he suggests that:
History fanatics and beer drinkers will want to check out the Ye Olde Man and Scythe which is one of the the 10 oldest pubs in Britain. The 7th Earl of Derby was executed here during the civil war, his ghost has appeared in the book Bolton’s most haunted and plenty of YouTube videos
I hope to get to this pub at some point during the Cetis conference!
Note that the registration fee for the conference is of £120 (although an early bird registration fee of £100 may still be available). This includes the conference dinner, although accommodation has to be booked separately.
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