Category Archives: twitter

twitter, weeknotes

Immaturity Framing – Weeknote #270 – 3rd May 2024

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Spent some time working on some draft themes for a possibly (maturity) framework for the intelligent campus.

I am a little but loathe to call it a maturity framework, as we really don’t confidently know what a mature intelligent campus looks like. However at this stage I don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about a name, when there is much more to do with the framework.

I am planning to use the FE Digital Elevation Tool as a starting point. The first stage is to identify the main themes. This is what I arrived at, reflecting on the work I have done in this space for the last eight years.

  • Vision
  • Campus
  • Data
  • Digital
  • Technology
  • People
  • Activity
  • Policy
  • Process
  • Security
  • Ethics
  • Energy
  • Community

A theme has many sub-themes, so we could take people and break it down into staff and students.

Each sub-theme has many competencies. Competency has three statements and there are four responses to each statement.

  • Completed
  • In progress
  • Not started
  • Not a priority

This will take some time to work on, but I am planning to run some community events around this.

I rebooted my monthly Intelligent Campus newsletter on the Jiscmail. You can subscribe to the mailing list here.

I wrote a blog post about a Wonkhe article I read.

Across the country there are a real variety of university campuses. No two campuses are alike, but all have similar challenges that the Estates team have to work with. There was an interesting article from Wonkhe a few weeks back on what keeps your estates manager awake at night? from the incoming AUDE chair.

I also published some thoughts about personalisation.

I have been looking at what we mean by personalisation in higher education. What I have discovered is that there isn’t really any clear idea or definition of what we mean by personalisation and across the sector there are varied views and opinions about what is personalisation, what can be personalised, and importantly why we would do this.

We had our monthly team meeting.

I am recognising that now as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing some articles and news that would have been shared on Twitter. I would also use the postings (especially of links) I made to Twitter to inform the writing of these weeknotes. I need to reflect on what this means going forward and if there is some other kind of mechanism I can use. I really don’t want to go back to the Twitter.

Shorter week next week with the bank holiday. I am chairing a session at Jisc’s Connect More event next week, so attended a rehearsal on how to use the platform we are using.

twitter, weeknotes

It was rather cold – Weeknote #255 – 19th January 2024

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Having done a lot of travelling and with anticipation with work being done on the office in Bristol, I planned to spend a lot of the week working from home. However the work being done was rescheduled. Well at least I could access my locker in the office this week.

Much of the week though was researching, writing, and reviewing some documentation for some work we’re doing in the optimising operations and data space. It was challenging, as it is quite complex, and wide in scope. Working out what we wanted, what is needed, and what then, was quite challenging.

I am realising that as I no longer use Twitter, that I am missing out on news and views. I am not getting this from Threads or Bluesky.

A good example was this thread from Charles Knight discussing falling recruitment in higher education.

There is often talk about the future of higher education and how universities need to respond. I do think that there is still an assumption that the traditional three year undergraduate degree programme is set in stone and will be here for a long time. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but what I do think we will start to see is young people wanting more flexibility, and we will see employers wanting more flexibility and more specialism. It’s an interesting space, but this is less about predicting the future, more about building in the resilience and agility to be much more responsive to future changes in student demographics.

I realise that I am not as immersed into the AI in education discussion as colleagues both in Jisc and in the sector. There is a lot happening in this space. Though I have played with Bard and Firefly, I’ve not really taken a deep dive into AI.

It was great though to see my colleague Lawrie getting his research into academics’ use of AI published in Nature.

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Just doing stuff – Weeknote #253 – 5th January 2024

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A shorter week with the bank holiday. Always nice when coming back from nearly two weeks leave to just 15 emails in the inbox. Knowing that you can probably delete all of them in one fell swoop as well. This time last year I had 109.

I went to our Bristol office a couple of times. It was very quiet on Friday, which wasn’t too surprising.

I spent much of the week planning an intelligent campus workshop I am doing next week in Norwich. As well as developing and designing the workshop, I also needed to sort out the travel and accommodation. With the planned tube strike, I decided that not only would I drive, but would take the opportunity to undertake some additional field work in the student experience landscape.

I finished off a blog post I started writing last year. It was on why I had quit the Twitter.

On September 24th 2023 I posted my last tweet to the Twitter (or X as it is called now). Since then I have not posted to the Twitter, or replied to any posts. I have retained my account though as I have an improbable hope that one day things might go back to the way they were. I think though that it unlikely.

I also published a post while I was on leave about how I might (re)subscribe to Flickr Pro.

Flickr is one of the first social networks I joined way back in 2007, which to me feels like just a few years ago and not 16 years ago!

I also started taking a photograph a day. Something I have done for a fair few years now.

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I’ve quit the Twitter

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Originally posted to Tech Stuff.

Twitter

On September 24th 2023 I posted my last tweet to the Twitter (or X as it is called now). Since then I have not posted to the Twitter, or replied to any posts. I have retained my account though as I have an improbable hope that one day things might go back to the way they were. I think though that it unlikely.

I had found over the last few years that my engagement with Twitter was declining and that I was finding it less useful as a social networking tool. There were days and weeks when it was really useful and interesting, the LTHEChats or as a back channel at a conference, but most of the time it wasn’t really working for me.

Over the last few months though, after Elon Musk bought the Twitter, I have noticed that not only engagement continued to decline, but also the functionality of the site was starting to break down. Combine that with the increase in hate speech, right wing rhetoric; I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would leave, and I did so in September.

Twitter

I have been a fan of micro-blogging (as it was called back in the day) since 2007. Something I heard about on a podcast. I joined Twitter, like quite a few other people in March 2007.

This was my first tweet.

This was from my second day on Twitter…

In an effort to really understand the potential and power of a micro-blogging service such as Twitter, I made a conscious effort to use the service on a regular basis. Often I would be working, take a break, grab a coffee, and think oh I must post something to Twitter so would post I was drinking a cup of coffee. Now I like coffee, but it wasn’t long before I had a reputation for coffee drinking on Twitter. Something that has stuck ever since.

In 2007 I actually didn’t use Twitter that much that year, though I was using a different micro-blogging service called Jaiku. Jaiku was a microblogging social network and mobile app that was founded in Finland in 2006, a month before Twitter. It allowed users to post short messages, or “jaikus”, sharing their thoughts and opinions on all kinds of subjects. The main reasons I used Jaiku, was firstly the community. My community was on Jaiku, and that was where the conversation was. The second reason was that Jaiku supported SMS.

In the US you could send and receive tweets by SMS, but this was not supported in the UK. Jaiku did support SMS, and some members of my community preferred that medium for engaging with the service.

SMS was much bigger in the 2000s and since then has been generally replaced with messaging services and something called WhatsApp!

The SMS constraint of 140 characters was the reason why Twitter (and Jaiku) restricted their micro-messages to 140 characters.

Jaiku was acquired by Google in 2007, but Google failed to integrate it with its other products and services. It also stopped other people from signing up, and then killed the SMS integration. As a result, Jaiku’s user base dwindled, and the service was shut down in 2012.

Though well before then I had migrated back to the Twitter, as more and more people I knew from the educational community found and started engaging with Twitter.

2009 was the year that delegates at ALT-C discovered the Twitter! In 2008 there were roughly 300 tweets and about forty people tweeting, in 2009 the amount of tweeting went through the roof!

Over the next ten years I would use Twitter on an almost daily basis. I used it to post (social) updates, professional updates, share links. It was a great tool for adding a communication back channel at conferences. 

I liked using IFTTT to gather information on people’s tweeting. I used the tool myself to share Instagram posts.

A highlight for me was the #LTHEChat tweetchats. Though I didn’t participate every week, when there was an interesting topic, it was fun to engage with that community.

But over time things started to change.

I posted this tweet in October 2021

I think it was a combination of the algorithm, but also a lack of engagement in Twitter from my community, and probably importantly I wasn’t really posting anything of interest.

Over the next two years I found Twitter less and less interesting and less useful. There were occasional peaks of engagement and activity, but for the most part, for me, it was declining.

When Elon Musk bought out Twitter, things just got worse. Much of the functionality started to break down. Changes to the algorithm meant I was getting less engagement, but more extreme messages were appearing in my stream. 

In the end I had enough and I left. After posting nearly 63,000 tweets over sixteen years, it was time to call it a day.

I will admit to visiting the site now and again, but I am glad I left. Still not fully engaged with Threads and Bluesky as alternatives though.

altc2022, altc2023, conference, twitter

Still Socially Acceptable

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I stopped using the Twitter in September. Though I still yet to delete my account, partly as I think one day, it might go back to what it was. Well one can dream. If I do look at the service, I come away disappointed and saddened.

The last conference I really used Twitter was ALT-C 2023.

I have been using Twitter at the ALT conferences since I joined Twitter in 2007. In 2010 I had said about the Twitter

Overall from my experience, Twitter has really added value to conferences I have attended and made them more joined up and much more a social affair. It has helped to build a real community, especially at ALT-C.

This year, not so much.

There hadn’t been a huge amount of engagement on Twitter at ALT-C 2022 so I didn’t have huge expectations.

Much of the online discussion that took place at ALT-C 2023 this year was on a Discord server, but it still wasn’t at the levels that I have seen in previous years.

I have seen a continual decline in the engagement with conference backchannels. I do wonder why this is?

conference, twitter, weeknotes

What Was Wonkfest – Weeknote #245 – 10th November 2023

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I was mainly in London this week trying to avoid the rain.

I was attending the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education, this is the conference previously known as WonkFest. The name change was more about the challenge in delegates getting funding to come to the event… so you want to go to a conference, that should be fine, what’s it called. Seriously?

It was a rather good conference, some really good sessions, too much choice sometimes. Only downside was, one of the rooms for the parallel sessions, was too small, so as a result lots of people who wanted to attend the session were turned away (including me).

I enjoyed the session, “in conversation with David Aaronovitch“ I did have a question about the Remembrance of the Daleks… but a quick check of Wikipedia and I realise that Ben Aaronovitch wrote the Daleks and is David’s brother… So won’t be asking that question then!

I did a few sketch notes.

What do the UK’s places want from their universities?

How do you solve a problem like HE regulation?

What might the future of education technology hold?

Not as many as I might do at other conferences, as the format of some of the sessions, didn’t lend themselves to sketching.

There was a couple of good blog posts on the WonkHE website about the event.

I had to spend some time reviewing and collating materials, and writing briefing note and bullet points for a panel session at HEAnet on Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities of the Modern Campus. As the considered expert on the intelligent campus, I often get asked to provide a perspective on the future of the university campus.

It is the intelligent campus that I will be speaking about, next week at Learning Places Scotland 2023 in Glasgow. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

I had to plan in a call to discuss the presentation.

video recording
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

On Monday before heading off to London, I had a great discussion with colleagues in the office about broadcast and recording capabilities within our Bristol office. The reality is that though I would love to have a proper TV studio in the office I really need to plan and deliver some initial content first, to provide some foundations to a proof of concept.

There was a discussion on the possible future of the office, as in redesigning the space to reflect the current (hybrid) working practices. So more collaborative spaces, more occasional spaces, more spaces for online conversations and meetings, and so on…

Continued doing more work on the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data.

I had a great meeting with Josie Fraser discussing digital skills and digitisation.

We had some great old person digital transformation reminiscing.

Had a pre-meeting for Jisc OfS meeting next week. As a result I have some preparation to do.

I did miss using the Twitter at the conference this week, though I did post to Bluesky and Threads, it wasn’t quite the same, and very little engagement. I did look at the Twitter and there were some posts, so I do think even if I had engaged, there wouldn’t have been a serious amount of traction and discussion.

altc2023, facebook, flickr, social networking, twitter

Revisiting Visitors and Residents

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I was in our Bristol office for an in-person workshop. I was attending a community manager training understanding behaviours workshop in Bristol. The workshop was led by Dave White. The focus was on digital practice and involved looking at visitors and residents and mapping your online activities.

I have done this workshop before quite a few times, and have even delivered a version of it as part of the Digital Leaders Programme and at the ALT Conference. So it was very familiar territory for me.

Despite having participated before in these kinds of workshops, I still threw myself into the process.

It was interesting to map my internet activity, as my online behaviours have changed quite a bit over the last few years (and even over the last few months).

One of the interesting observations as I reflect on the map, is what is missing. I use Google to search everyday, and I think that has become so normalised in my behaviour that I didn’t even consider putting it in. Having said that I am using search in Google Maps a lot more these days and that is something I didn’t use to to (and it is on the map).

I also reflected that Wikipedia is not there either, and this is a site I use on a regular basis for both finding out stuff and checking information, but I also use it to read about stuff that I find interesting, sometimes going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of articles.

WordPress, a tool I use all the time for blogging was also missing in action.

On previous maps I did, Twitter was huge bubble or square on the map, today X is over on the left side of the map. Whereas before I would consider my behaviour to be resident in Twitter, these days it is a place I visit rarely and stopped engaging with the site last month. My replacements of Bluesky and Threads are there, but from a personal social perspective Facebook has become more dominant.

After using Flickr album at ALT-C in September, I have been thinking about re-engaging with the service and paying the subscription. ALT-C was also where Discord became my conference tool of choice, I think though that my use of that will decline over the next few months.

Another service, which I use to use a lot, Google Docs, is now a much smaller part of my digital footprint. I certainly don’t use it like I did a few years ago. Maybe that is the nature of the work I am doing, but I think also the use of Office 365 at work has changed how I collaborate on shared documents.

The work stuff is there, Outlook, Teams, (what was Yammer) and Dovetail. Though I personally use JIRA and Confluence, the rest of the people I work with don’t. I think what is interesting for me is how Outlook is a place I visit, but don’t necessarily use as a key communication or engagement tool, that’s where Teams comes into play.

Overall I did enjoy doing the mapping exercise and then reflecting on my practice.

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Blue Skies

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blue skies
Image by Mint_Foto from Pixabay

I managed to snag an invite code for Bluesky, which I am now using alongside Threads as a micro-blogging platform instead of X (what as the Twitter).

I haven’t quite engaged with my community on Bluesky, still more lurking (listening) than participating and engaging.

As with Threads, I will give Bluesky for time and engagement as experience tells me it takes time for a social media platform time to bed in and become part of people’s lives. I worry though as it is in beta, will it scale, but more importantly as it isn’t that easy and simple to sign up to (you need an invite code) will that mean people won’t join and seek a home elsewhere. Without a community, then there is a chance that people will stop visiting and not engage.

twitter, weeknotes

Busy, not packed – Weeknote #243 – 27th October 2023

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I went to the office quite a bit this week, travelling to Bristol. Our offices are busy, not packed, but busy.

Most of the week was continuing the planning, reflection, and researching concept of optimisation of operations and data. I was also researching and analysing the background, exemplars, benefits, issues, challenges, and barriers to shared services across higher education. I then started planning a potential report structure.

We had our monthly HEIRLT Leadership Meeting, and I also had my monthly one to one.

I did some planning and preparation for presentation for Learning Places Scotland 2023. I am doing a presentation on building the intelligent campus.

Universities and colleges spend billions on their campuses, yet they are frequently underutilised and are often a frustrating experience for students. In this session, James Clay will describe the campus of the future. How does a traditional campus become a smart campus? What are the steps to make a smart campus, an intelligent campus? The intelligent campus builds on the smart campus concept and aims to find effective ways to use data gathered from the physical estate and combine it with learning and student data from student records, library systems, the virtual learning environment (VLE) and other digital systems. This session will describe what data can be gathered, how it can be measured and explore the potential for enhancing the student experience, achieving net zero, improve efficiency, and space utilisation. It will demonstrate and explain to the delegates what the exciting future of the intelligent campus. James will also ask delegates to consider the ethical issues when implementing an intelligent campus as well as the legal requirements.

I was asked to conduct an initial ‘triage’ review of Jisc online advice and guidance that I am responsible for. There isn’t a huge amount on the Jisc website, so didn’t take long.

Did some preparation for Investigative study of higher education delivery in Wales session I am attending next week.

Starting to realise how over the last few years (but not really over the last few months) how much stuff I would get and learn from what was the Twitter. I made the decision to disengage from the Twitter and though not gone so far to delete my account, I haven’t posted there since September, I haven’t really got the same engagement and traction with Bluesky and Threads. I also realised that by tweeting out links and news, I would have a mechanism for remembering these stories and websites. Currently I don’t think the answer is Threads or Bluesky, but it might be in the future. I think I will need to rethink my workflows for news and content. I have done this before when Google Reader stopped working.

twitter, weeknotes

What no trains! Yes there were trains! – Weeknote #238 – 22nd September 2023

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This week, due to engineering work, there were no trains between Weston-super-Mare and Bristol. I also took a day’s leave bizarrely enough to travel on a steam train.

Quite a few meetings were cancelled this week, which I find frustrating.

I spent time this week on preparing a session and designing a presentation for a Leadership Masterclass, entitled Operationalising your Strategic Vision. This is an internal ninety minute online session about strategy and operationalisation of that strategy. Some of that masterclass will be based on this blog post on breakfast.

I also made the decision, rather than record the masterclass, it will be a rather interactive session, which a recording won’t capture.

Instead I will create a new and “proper” recorded video of the session that can then be used.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Attended a pipeline call with a team about their current future work.

I went back through and reviewed sessions I attended at ALT-C. This year they recorded all the sessions, so there is an opportunity to go and watch sessions I missed.

Had a call about a proposed session idea at Digifest 24.

I had to undertake various software and security updates. Took the opportunity to update the iPhone to iOS 17.

Had a short meeting on software licensing.

I have been working on some objectives for the next twelve months.

I have been reflecting on what good is, what it looks like, how would we know, what do we mean by good, how would we define good. How do we know something is good. What are the criteria we are using to base that judgement on?

Twitter

I have decided to call it a day with what was the Twitter. So no more top tweets of the week. There’s a blog post there. Maybe.