Tracking and Trends
So my reorganised department has a new name - Communication (sic) and Systems - and we're in the Mathematics, Computing and Technology Faculty (I really don't understand the URL? hopefully it's temporary?), along with the Computing Department, the spritely named Design, Development, Environmental and Materials Department (they wanted to be called "Human and Technological Futures", I think?), and the Mathematics and Statistics Department.
As befits a deptartment that includes the old ICT and Technology Management departments, and a Faculty that includes us and the Computing department, the (ongoing) integration of our previously distinct IT systems is not going smoothly. The old Technology Faculty and Maths and Computing Faculties, which have merged to create the new faculty, used separate email, mailing list and conferencing systems, and reconciling them is causing the IT strategy group severe problems, I think... heh heh :-)
Reorganisation has also provided the opportunity for lots of new groups to help us co-ordinate our various activities (?!). One such group is a 'scanning' group for the combined Masters programme. I'm not too sure what they are scanning, exactly, (though I'm trying to find out), but here are some of the things that I pay (partial;-) attention to that I would class as scanning activity...
- technology trends scanning - (i.e. what should go in our courses 3-5 years down the line? the UK gov Horizon Scanning Centre occasional publishes some interesting stuff, and the Futures Analysts' Network (FAN Club) regularly have get togethers (not that I've ever been able to get to one...); I personally sign up to alerts from some of the IT consultancies and occasionally try to interest others in what they do (e.g. Harnessing New Technologies);
- competitor scanning - why can't we do almost anytime start courses, like Liverpoolfor example (I spotted that from an ad on Technorati!);
- policy tracking - that is, IT and technology policy, rather than skills etc.; e.g. the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee and eGov Monitor are on my feed subscription list;
- job tracking - e..g IT Jobs Watch is a fun way to spend a coffee break once a month;-)
- student numbers - our strategy and planning office presumably produce briefings (?), IET publish lots of stats, (and the new Facebook app stats may also be worth casting an eye over every now and again? ;-); UCAS publish annual statistics about HE degree uptake - I keep wondering whether I'd get into trouble if I uploaded their data to Many Eyes?
- watching the funders - HEFCE, JISC, and the EPSRC are the ones I keep a weather eye out for - though I rarely approach them. I should probably pay a little more attention to BECTA too...
- And of course, you can't beat good old immersion in the blogosphere either ;-) When we were scoping Click On series 2, I set up an ICT tech news'n'blogs watch page on Netvibes, which provides an at a glance view over a quirky sampling of the IT news space! I have to admit I prefer the river of news view I get daily in my feedreader, though...
What really strikes me is that scanning is about being sensitive to the flow and dynamics of what's going on, picking up signals from the ongoing chatter, rather than infrequently sampling from the deluge...
Groups are all very well, but this sort of thing needs an ongoing conversation... it strikes me that subscribing to feeds is a good way of supporting this sort of activity... and as we all know, We Ignore RSS at OUr Peril.
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Tags: rss, horizon scanning, futures
Posted by ajh59 at November 8, 2007 10:15 PM