Today we are liveblogging from the OR2012 conference at George Square Lecture Theatre (GSLT), George Square, part of the University of Edinburgh. Find out more by looking at the full program.
If you are following the event online please add your comment to this post or use the #or2012 hashtag.
This is a liveblog so there may be typos, spelling issues and errors. Please do let us know if you spot a correction and we will be happy to update the post.
Kevin Ashley is introducing us to this final session…
How many of you managed to get along to a Pecha Kucha Session? It looks like pretty much all of you, that’s fantastic! So you will have had a chance to see these fun super short presentations. Now as very few will have seen all of these we are awarding winners for each session. And I understand that the prizes are on their way to us but may not be at the podium when you come up. So… for the first session RF1, and in the spirit of the ceilidh, I believe it has gone to a pair: Theo Andrew and Peter Burnhill! For the second stream, strand RF3 it’s Peter Sefton – and Anna! For RF3 it’s Peter Van de Joss! And for RF4 it’s Norman Grey!
And now over to Mahendra Mahey for the Developer Challenge winners…
The Developer Challenge has been run by my project, DevCSI: Developer Community Supporting Innovation and we are funded by JISC, which is funded by UK Government. The project’s aims it about highlighting the potential, value and impact of the work developers do in UK Universities in the area of technical innovation, this is through sharing experience, training each other and often on volunteer basis. It’s about using tecnology in new ways, breaking out of silos. And running challenges… so onto the winners of the Developers Challenge at DevCSI this year.
The challenge this year was “to show us something new and cool in the use of repositories”. First of all I’d like to thank Alex Wade of Microsoft Research for sponsoring the Developer Challenge and he’ll be up presenting their special prize later. This year we really encouraged non developers to get involved to, but also to chat and discuss those ideas with developers. We had 28 ideas from splinter apps, repositories that blow bubble, SWORD buttons.. .and mini challenege appeared – Rob Sanderson from Los Alamos put out a mini idea! That’s still open for you to work on!
And so.. the final decisions… We will award the prizes and redo the winning pitches! I’d like to also thank our judges (full list on DevCSI site) and our audience who voted!
First of all honourable mentions:
Mark McGillivray and Richard Jones – getting academics close to repositories or Getting Researchers SWORDable.
Ben O’Steen and Cameron Neylon – Is this research readable
And now the Microsoft Research Prize and also the runners up for the main prize as they are the same team.
Alex: What we really loved was you guys came here with an idea, you shared it, you changed it, you worked collaboratively on it and
Keith Gilmerton and Linda Newman for their mobile audio idea.
Alex: they win a .Net Gadgeteer rapid prototyping kit with motherboard, joystick, monitor, and if you take to Julie Allison she’ll tell you how to make it blow bubbles!
Peter Sefton will award the main prize…
Peter: Patricks visualisation engine won as we’re sick of him entering the developer challenge
The winners and runners up will share £1000 of Amazon Vouchers and the winning entry – the team of one – will be funded to develop the idea – 2 days development time. Patrick: I’m looking for collaborators and also an institution that may want to test it get in touch.
Linda and Keith first
Linda: In Ohio we have a network of DSpace repositories including the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives – all written in real peoples voices and using audio files, a better way to handle these would be a boon! We also have an Elliston Poetry Curator – he collects audio on analogue devices, digital would be better. And in the field we are increasingly using mobile technologies and the ability to upload audioj or video at the point of creation with transcript would greatly increse the volume of contribution
MATS – Mobile AudioVisual Transcription Service
Our idea is to create an app to deposit and transcript audio – and also video – and we used SWORDShare, an idea from last years conference, as we weren’t hugely experienced in mobile development. We’ve done some mock ups here. You record, transcribe and submit all from your phone. But based on what we saw in last years app you should be able to record in any app as an alternative too. Transcription is hugely important as that makes your file indexable. And it provides access for those with hearing disabilities, and those that want to preview/read the file when listening isn’t an option. So when you have uploaded your file you request your transcription. You have two options. Default is Microsoft Mavis – mechanical transcription. But you can also pick Amazon Mechanical Turk – human transcription, and you might want that if the audio quality was very poor or not in English.
MAVIS allows some additional functionality – subtitling, the ability to jump to a specific place in the file from a transcript etc. And a company called GreenButton offers a webservices API to MAVIS. We think that even if your transcription isn’t finished you can still submit to the repository as new version of SWORD supports updating. That’s our idea! We were pitching this idea but now we really want to build it! We want your ideas, feedback, tech skills, input!
And now Patrick McSweeney and DataEngine.
My friend Dave generated 1TB data in every data run and the uni wouldnt host that. We found a way to get that data down to 10 GB for visualisation. It was back ups on a home machine. It’s not a good preservation strategy. You should educate and inform people and build solutions that work for them!
See: State of the Onion. A problem you see all the time… most science is long tail, and support is very poor in that long tail. You have MATLAB and Excel and that’s about it. Dave had all this stuff, he had trouble managing his data and graphs. So the idea is to import data straight from Dave’s kit to the repository. For Dave the files were CSV. And many tools will export to it, its super basic unit of data sharing – not exciting but it’s simple and scientists understand it.
So, at ingest you give your data provenance and you share your URIs, and you can share the tools you use. And then you have tools for merging and manipulation. the file is pushed into storage form where you can run SQL processing. I implemented this in an EPrints repository – with 6 visualisation but you could add any number. You can go from source data, replay experiment, and get to visualisations. Although rerunning experiments might be boring you can also reuse the workflow with new similar data. You can create a visualisation of that new data and compare it with your original visualisation and know that the process has been entirely the same.
It’s been a hectic two days. It’s a picture (of two bikers on a mountain) but it’s also a metaphor. There are mountains to climb. This idea is a transitional idea. There are semantic solutions, there are LHC type ideas that will appear eventually but there are scientists at the long tail that want support now!
And finally… thank you everyone! I meant what I said last night, all who presented yesterday I will buy a drink! Find me!
I think 28 ideas is brilliant! The environment was huge fun, the developers lounge were a lovely space to work in.
And finally a plug… I’ve got a session at 4pm in the EPrints track and that’s a real demonstration of why the Developer Challenge works as the EPrints Bazaar, now live, busy, changing how we (or at least I) think about repositories started out at one of these Developer Challenges!
At the dinner someone noted that there are very few girls! Half our user base are women but hardly any women presented at the challenge, Ladies, please reprasent.
And also… Dave Mills exist. It is not a joke! He reckons he generated 78 GB of data – not a lot, you could probably get it on a memory stick! Please let your researchers have that space centrally! I drink with reseachers and you should too!
And Ben, Ben O’Steen had tech problems yesterday but he’s always here and is brilliant. isthisresearchreadable.org is live right now, rate a DOI for whether its working.
And that’s all I have to say.
And now over to Prince Edward Island – Proud Host of OR 2013
I’m John Eade, CEO of DiscoveryGarden and this is Mark Leggot. So, the first question I get is where are you? Well we are in Canada! We are tiny but we are there. Other common questions…
Can I walk from one end of the island to the other? Not in a day! And you wouldn’t enjoy it if you did
How many people live there? 145,000 much more than it was
Do Jellyfish sting? We have some of the warmest waters so bring your swimsuit to OR2013!
Can you fly there? Yes! Direct from Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa,(via Air Canada and Westjet) and from New York City (via Delta). Book your flights early! And Air Canada will add flights if neccassary!
We will work diligently to get things up on line as early as possible to make sure you can book travel as soon as possible.
Alternatively you can drive – you won’t be landlocked – we are connected to mainland. Canada is connected to us. We have an 8 mile long bridge that took 2 and a half years to build and its 64 metres high – its the highest point in PEI and also the official rollercoaster!
We are a big tourism destination – agriculture, fishing, farming, software, aerospace, bioresources. We get 1 million tourists per year. That means we have way more things to do there than a place our size should – championship quality gold courses. Great restaurants and a culinary institute. We have live theatre and we are the home of Anne of Green Gables, that plucky redhead!
We may not have castles… but we have our own charms…!
Cue a short video…
Mark: free registration if you can tell me what the guy was doing?
Audience member: gathering oysters?
Mark: yes! See me later!
So come join us in Prince Edward Island. Drop by our booth in the Concourse in Appleton Tower concourse for another chance to win free registration to next years event. We’ve had lots of support locally and this shoudl be a great event!