Today I travelled to Perth to attend the first meeting of Information Science Scotland for this academic year. Information Science Scotland is a consortium of the four Scottish Universities that offer courses and conduct research in Information Science. Representatives from departments of each university meet on a regular basis to plan the group’s activities.
An unwelcome question
At a party recently another guest kindly asked me how I felt about “returning to work in the autumn” after my “long summer vacation”. I held my breath for a few seconds, then carefully replied that my annual leave entitlement is 27 days plus 14 fixed/public holidays. (This may be fewer than his – I didn’t ask). To get the conversation back on track, I then enthused about my fabulous two-week holiday in the far north west of Scotland in August, and the events that I managed to catch during the Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe. In response he told me about his own summer break. We were both able to enjoy this pleasant, yet insignificant, conversation ending on a happy discussion of the best British summer weather in years.
In early July I wrote a blog post about Macedonian intern student Dushko Staneoski. Dushko joined us over the summer 2013 to design, implement and evaluate a WordPress site for Connect, the network for women studying computing, engineering and the built environment at Edinburgh Napier University.
Girl Geek Scotland is hosting a dinner event on Friday 30 August at Summerhall, Edinburgh. The evening starts at 17:30 with networking, followed by a panel conversation over dinner with five high profile female panellists from Silicon Valley: Suzanne Doyle-Morris; Wendy Lea; Hedi Roizen; Ann Winbald; and Karen White.
The four partner universities of the ESRC Scottish Graduate School of Social Science information science pathway hosted iDocQ 2013 in Aberdeen on Monday 24th June. iDocQ is the annual doctoral colloquium for doctoral candidates in information science and other related disciplines.
Tracking scholarly digital footprints
Like many I communicate my scholarly research over multiple platforms in a range of activities that have now become routine for research-active academics. These include, for example:
Screenshot of link listings on Hazel Hall’s About.me page
Dr Robert Irvine
Many congratulations to Dr Robert Irvine, who graduated with his PhD from Edinburgh Napier University on Wednesday at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.
I co-supervised Robert’s doctoral study entitled Success factors for organisational information systems development projects: a Scottish suppliers’ perspective.
The starting point for Robert’s work was the acknowledgement that organisational information systems development (OISD) projects have long been associated with failure, and the cost of these failures is enormous. Yet, despite numerous previous studies, understanding of real-world projects is limited. In particular, Robert identified that little was known about the way in which various factors affect the success of OISD projects. In addition, Robert’s work concluded that earlier research has generally tended to focus on OISD projects from an in-house or client perspective, with the views of the supplier largely ignored.
The Institute for Informatics and Digital Innovation (IIDI) is currently advertising a funded PhD place to start in September 2013. The full advertisement can be found at at jobs.ac.uk and on the Edinburgh Napier University vacancies web site. There is also an associated item about the vacancy on the IIDI news feed. The closing date for applications is Monday 1st July 2013, with interviews expected to take place on Wednesday 24th July 2013.
Patrick Notz
At the exam boards this week it was announced that one of the projects that I supervised in 2012/13 has won the Institute of Informatics and Digital Innovation award for knowledge exchange.
The winning work examined the application of social media in the heritage sector, drawing on a case study of social media practice at the National Museum of Scotland. It was completed by final year undergraduate student Patrick Notz.
A month ago I blogged that I was busy setting up a one day training course as part of the the ESRC Scottish Graduate School of Social Science summer school on behalf of the Information Science pathway. The details of this event, which takes place in Edinburgh on Thursday 20th June, are now live.
Hazel Hall 