hack events _greening_ict_mmahey

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Hack Events, Innovation and Estates and Greening ICT How do people responsible for Greening ICT/ Estates systems and software developers work more effectively together to stimulate technical innovation

Intelligent Buildings and Smart Estates Realising the ICT Opportunities De Montfort University, 29th November 2011, Leicester, England, UK.

Mahendra Mahey ([email protected]) Project Manager of DevCSI Project

UKOLN is supported by: www.ukoln.ac.uk A centre of expertise in digital information management

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Who am I?

•  Mahendra Mahey

•  Project Manager

•  JISC funded Developer Community Supporting Innovation Project (DevCSI)

•  Based at UKOLN

•  University of Bath

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Aim of the Presentation

•  Learn about the Developer Community Supporting Innovation Project

•  What are Hack events and having one in this area? Why Hacking is a good word in software development?

•  What developers want from estates managers/greening ICT and vice versa?

•  Your ideas

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Quiz

•  What do the following have in common?

•  Colgate - 1806

•  Lilly - 1876

•  General Electric - 1892

•  Hershey’s – 1894

•  3M – 1902

•  Black and Decker – 1910

•  Microsoft - 1975

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Innovation does happen in a down market

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“successful companies innovate in a down market”��

��Jason Calacanis, Entrepenuer

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disruptive innovation

•  “Put the customer, and their important, unsatisfied job-to-be-done at the centre of the innovation equation” •  local context, customer facing

•  “Embrace simplicity, convenience, and affordability” •  local context, convenience

•  “Create organizational space for disruptive growth” •  invest locally in capacity to innovate

•  “Consider innovation levers beyond features & functions”

•  “Become world class at testing, iterating & adjusting” •  local integration, tweaking SaaS, rapid innovation

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cost or investment?

•  IT regarded as a sunk cost in HEIs

•  a capacity for technical innovation is a strategic resource which needs investment

•  in the institution

•  in the sector

•  technical innovation is, itself, an investment

•  outsourcing IT has a cost

•  reduced capacity to innovate

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year one:��energy, engagement, critical mass & proof of concept

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barn-raising

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events •  with JISC

•  Rapid Innovation Programme Meeting

•  with librarians & repository managers & developers

•  Mashed Libraries (3 regional), Open Repo 2010, Reading List Hack Event

•  with OSS Developers (working with OSS Watch)

•  Engaging Developers with OSS, Workshop on Open Dev, Transfer Summit

•  with Scientists/researchers

•  Google Wave Hack Day

•  with developers from other sectors

•  Pair Programming, Developing Phone based applications, BarCamp London, Bath Camp

•  with everyone, together

•  dev8D

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building capacity

Before After 1 minute 30 seconds

Shiraz won the most improved award

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University of Kent

•  Team of 6 developers won first dev8D competition 2009, with List8D – open source reading list management software

•  Leap of faith sending 6 developers, came back inspired, motivated, validated

•  Only noticed when ‘something goes wrong’ •  Transformed to agile way of working and methods. ‘Physical’ (the hub) and ‘mental space’ (time)

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/list8d/- provided by Michelle Pauli List8D – Reading List Software

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the manager’s view

•  "They gained a huge amount. They came back very enthusiastic and full of good ideas. It did a great deal for morale and motivation…. It's a very powerful thing when your peers say that you are doing something the best,"

•  “...decided to use the momentum of Dev8D to move forward with agile working and the List8D project by providing the development team with two very important assets: physical and mental space.”

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OR10 Dev Challenge

•  Enhance single metadata records with as many automatically created, useful links to related external content as possible.

•  used remote services to link data and add functionality

•  bringing remote services to bear in a local context

•  users, domain experts and developers collaborating successfully

Links Managed by ��Google doc

Enhanced Metadata Record

Richard Davis and ��Rory McNicholl from

University of London Computer Centre

http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/or10dev/

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year two:��focus, value, sustainable growth

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value

•  having local/institutional developer resource available is valuable

•  that local resource, while limited, can be backed-up by a community of peers

•  a well connected community of developers is greater than the sum of its parts!

•  developers can empower users

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value: knowledge transfer

•  data-centric research will demand skills currently held by developers (e.g. version control)

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/

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value (for money): training

•  Value of using peer to peer training

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sustainability: support •  events give commercial players direct access to

developers in the HE community, more sponsorship, setting challenges, testing

•  this is commercial developers talking to HE developers, rather than commercial sales-people talking to IT managers in HE

•  some have already recognised that this is an opportunity

•  using a pool of HE developers to test and develop against their APIs - this is really valuable and very cheap

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•  495 respondents

•  Developers, their managers, Senior IT managers Vendors, Funders, Users (Academics, librarians, researchers)

•  Tested a number of assumptions behind project

•  Huge agreement not just with developers

•  Local developers understand local context, act as bridge between remote service providers, open source communities, and local end users and add value by integrating into local contexts – 75% +

•  Local developers work closely with end users to deliver innovation – 75% (more work needed though)

•  Can be shared with sector – 88%

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Stakeholder Analysis

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•  Huge variety in agreement about whether stakeholders understand the value of local developers

•  ‘Undervalued, short term contract, lack of professional development . career opportunities (70+%), poor management, mixed about training opportunities

•  Barriers to innovation include, lack of time, staff, funding, poor internal communication, poor management, bureaucracy

•  Big demand for sector wide developer community, raising profile of developers, links with commercial developers

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•  Views on outsourcing vs in house development mixed and complex

•  Vendors want to work with developers in Academic community

•  Need more evidence as to value that developers bring

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Stories of Local Development

•  Stakeholder survey, over 120 ‘stories’ •  Whittled down to over 50

•  Narrowing down further to have at least 10 case studies showing value and impact of local developers (some studies may have metrics as well)

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26 provided by Dave Connor and Ellen Bazeley-White

South Travel Database - http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/

British Antarctic Survey

RRS James Clark Ross Itinerary Passenger Movements on RRS James Clark Ross

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Summary of Case Studies

•  Initial batch of 10 Case Studies

•  In house development achieved 29% more user engagement in the development of software compared to 1% engagement in outsourced solution on similar project

•  Efficient gathering of precise user requirements (as compared to outsourcing) because of:

•  Better understanding of local context – local knowledge of institutional culture, key contacts, systems, data sources

•  Better communication with end users, relationships built on trust and familiarity, motivation and enthusiasm

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•  Local development is based largely on flexible methods (some agile, e.g. SCRUM), iterative, lots of testing, feedback, organic (not restrained by the processes that would be initiated if the work was outsourced)

•  ‘perpetual rolling beta’, with plenty of evidence of examples of using or wanting to use a more professional approach.

•  Many examples of Open Source development

•  Deep in-depth integration was possible to meet exact requirements of the users in a more efficient way than compared to outsourcing

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•  Leads to upskilling and investment in staff (making more informed choices of when it makes sense to outsource or not and to continue to innovate in other areas),

•  makes knowledge transfer easier and supporting staff through cheaper training or support issues

•  Some examples of using students as a source of software development

•  Savings - money / time (freeing up staff to provide a better quality service), and increased user engagement within house projects where the final result appears to be appreciated by the users more and a greater sense of ownership is developed (see above)

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•  The importance of good documentation to allow easy transfer of knowledge to another developer is critical and doesn’t happen as often as it should

•  Savings - money / time (freeing up staff to provide a better quality service), and increased user engagement within house projects where the final result appears to be appreciated by the users more and a greater sense of ownership is developed (see above)

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In House Development

•  timing (more control of rollout and ability to respond to changes quickly)

•  quality control (local knowledge means better quality partly because of the understanding that they will be eventually providing support)

•  knowledge transfer (less time and effort required on passing knowledge to other staff)

•  financial (often due to scope creep, outsourcing can be expensive and also costs such as support and modifications in the long term are not realistically costed)

31 The Case for In-house Development (Wilder, 2099), Vice President Aptech Computer Systems (Hospitality Upgrade, 2009)

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In House Development

•  a clear vision of the final product

•  good requirements gathering

•  active risk management

•  post mortem reviews

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June M. Verner and William M. Evanco, In–House Software Development: What Project Management Practices Lead to Success?, ��Published by the IEEE Computer Society, 2005

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Dev8D

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Innovating with a Kinect

•  Microsoft Kinect

•  Dev8D 2011

•  http://vimeo.com/20521841

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http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/02/26/world-first-at-dev8d-open-source-iphone-app-for-home-automation/

A first at Dev8D: Open source iPhone app for home automation

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Interacting with a computer in lab •  Experiments with Kinect

•  Possible way to control mouse cursor by waving hands?

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Controlling molecule visualisation

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Competitions 2011

•  Developer Challenge at

•  Open Repositories 2011 (Austin, Texas)

•  http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/dev-challenge-or11/

•  Repositories Fringe 2011(Edinburgh)

•  http://rfringe11.blogs.edina.ac.uk/

•  DiscoDev

•  http://blog.discovery.ac.uk/2011/09/15/developers-entries-help-us-explore-new-possibilities-in-discovery/

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Year three:��more focus, value, sustainable growth, evidence, strategic

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DevCSI Phase 3

•  More strategic

•  Gather more compelling evidence of the value and impact of Developers

•  Develop materials aimed at Managers

•  Influencing Managers of Developers to get developers to play a larger role in technical innovation

•  Senior IT Directors

•  More case studies, particularly metric’s based studies

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DevCSI Phase 3 - Events

•  DevXS – A student developer event

•  11-13 Nov, 2011, Lincoln

•  http://devxs.org/

•  Dev8D 2012!

•  Hack events!

•  Life Sciences - Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life Sciences Hackathon

•  Still in planning stage, may be an idea from this event?

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What does Hack Mean?

•  Hack (computer security) to break into computers and computer networks

•  Hack (computer science), an inelegant but effective solution to a computing problem - (loosely used)

•  Emerging as a tool for innovation e.g. BBC

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/2011/oct/��18/hacking-academy-devxs-conference

Reclaiming the word ‘Hack’

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DevXS 2011

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Student Developer Hack Event – working with the

University of Lincoln

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Structure of Hack Events

•  No fixed structure, no perfect formula, dynamic and changing

•  A doing event, people create stuff, spirit of event

•  Sharing, talking and collaboration

•  Lightning Talks

•  Ideas

•  Rewards / incentives

•  Gentle pressure to produce

•  Length depends on resources

•  Continual access to room 45

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Preferred Components (1)

•  Announcement of date 2-3 months in advance

•  Plenty of discussion before event, using mailing lists, groups, wikis (not everyone participates), get ideas

•  Developers and users together – difficult to strike balance but worth it

•  Need to have people who are in the spirit of the event, prepared to contribute

•  Informal non-threatening environment

•  Introductions, Lightning Talks, get people talking

•  Ideas phase (from previous discussions)

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Preferred Components (2)

•  Two days better than one

•  Need time to talk and share ideas

•  Accommodation near hack venue, so hacking can be late

•  Continual access to room

•  Rewards / incentives

•  Social element.

•  Recording outputs important

•  Serendipity an important component

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Hack events

•  Reading Lists

•  http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2010/07/31/reading-list-hackday-cambridge/

•  Linked Data

•  http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/01/26/linked-data-hack-days-13th-14th-january-2010-bristol/

•  OER

•  http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/04/18/oer-hack-day/

•  Accessibility

•  http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/07/07/accessibility-hack-days/

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Just a few ideas from Hack events •  Visualisation of BBC data

•  Used a (1907) Metric RDF graph structure that one group member had applied to molecule comparison context (Tanimoto coefficient), and applied this metric to BBC data overnight

•  Live Subtitling of Video

•  VTT Video Caption Creator

•  http://scottbw.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/creating-subtitles-and-audio-descriptions-with-html5-video/

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The Story of a Hack Day

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1. Come up with ideas 2. Group together 3. Categorise 4. Consider and choose ��the ideas

5. Get into groups 6. Work into the night 8. Present to audience

? 9. Develop Further

7. Work during the day

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Some examples •  Why people come to Hackdays


•  Some ideas


•  The process


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Useful tools for Hack Event

•  Mailing List (before event)

•  Google Group (before)

•  Wiki, website, blog – legacy of event

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Developers and Domain Experts working together •  Working in teams

•  Domain experts are uber users, checking and advising

•  Domain experts are not restricted by technology, some ideas are too ambitious, others are definitely doable

•  Pitching ideas to developers

•  Developers pitching to domain experts

•  Developers learning a new domain

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What developers are looking for in Hack Days (1) •  Clearly articulated ideas

•  Paper Prototypes

•  Doable in the time

•  Access to tools

•  APIs to software as well as keys (getting one software interface to talk to another one)

•  Software Development Kits

•  Software as a Service

•  Data Sets

•  Virtual Machines 54

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What developers are looking for in Hack Days (2) •  Good documentation

•  Users on hand to give feedback, ideas, explanation

•  Can anything of the idea be achieved in the time given?

•  Is it fairly simple to implement?

•  Functional demonstrator can be produced?

•  Subversion Repository, e.g GITHub

•  Places to publish apps

•  Simplifying Testing, test environments

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What Estates /Greening ICT experts are looking for? •  Ideas to develop further

•  Innovation

•  Solutions to problems

•  Knowledge about why specific solution is appropriate

•  Inside Information about services and tools

•  Knowing what is possible

•  Reinventing the wheel, anyone been here before

•  Breaking problem down into chunks, focusing on those that are doable in time

•  User stories

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Ideas

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•  Hack Event (Jan 25-26), Estate managers bring along a developer?

•  Sponsoring a Challenge at Dev8D, February 14-16

•  A general developer challenge?

•  Getting some rapid innovation in the estates /greening ICT domain

•  Chipping away at systems! Get access to the data

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Philosophy

•  Need to have a sharing culture

•  Is this possible in academia?

•  Fun, dynamic, doing!

•  Willing to work

•  Ability to communicate ideas clearly

•  Informal, non judgemental, all ideas welcome

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Commercial Vendors

•  Sponsoring Prizes

•  Providing data

•  APIs

•  Getting developers to produce apps from the data

•  Participating in event!

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