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digifest22, twitter

…and that was day two

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Some of my highlights from the second day of Jisc’s Digifest.

The second day opened with Dr Sarah Jones, associate pro-vice-chancellor education (transformation) from De Montfort University talking about the 2030 learning landscape.

I did enjoy Sarah’s keynote and she covered lots of stuff, I liked how she bought Wordle into the presentation.

It was then time for my session on Powering HE – the HE sector strategy.

In this session, James will showcase Jisc’s HE sector strategy, Powering HE, and why and how we developed the strategy. He will explore what Jisc is doing and planning to do in the HE teaching and learning space. He will bring the session together with the impact the strategy is having on university members across the UK.

I was quite mentally exhausted after delivering my session, and I was just sorting stuff out in the room, so I missed the next session. I went for coffee.

I attended a session from the Jisc Data Analytics team on their products and services and how they can be used and their usefulness for universities (and colleges). Data informed decision making is something that can help and support individuals making decisions about what they need to and want to do.

I went to the AI insights session with Michael Webb, which was really interesting and informative about the work Jisc has been doing in the AI space.

It was good to see that there was a realistic approach being taken with how we could use AI, and concrete activity in delivering services using AI.

The day ended with a keynote panel discussion reflecting on the many highlights of the conference.

Do what were your highlights of the event?

I have to say I did enjoy Digifest 2022, it was nice to be back at an in-person conference, meeting up with friends, colleagues and meeting new people. There were so many of those in-person interactions that are so challenging to recreate online and are often missing from online events I have attended over the last two years. 

It was just two years ago that we were in the ICC at Digifest 2020 with the imminent threat of lockdown, everyone washing their hands to the tune of happy birthday and no one was wearing masks. Two years is such a short time, but so much has happened in that timeframe. We know that the pandemic isn’t over by any means, but not only has so much happened, but we also learnt many things as well.

For me I did notice that there was a lot less usage of Twitter over the event, I don’t know if this is because it was less used during online events that we’ve forgotten how useful a back channel can be, or just a general decline in the use of Twitter because of the noise. Having said that there was an interesting discussion on Twitter just after the conference on digital transformation.

This got me thinking more about how we can both explain this, define it, but also how do you make it happen.