An idea I had a few months ago came to fruition yesterday with the first UWA Emerging Technologies Forum going off with a bang.  Our speakers were from the

• WebOffice
• Virtual Universe Project
• Library
• alumniConnect project
• iPoint
• Online Student Journey Project

More than 75 people attended from across the university and there were lots of opportunities for questions and networking. 

The next few blog posts include the slides form each speaker.  Accompanying audio will be available sometime on the weekend.  The forum booklet will soon be downloadable and editable from the Online Student Journey project wiki

I’ve returned to the online world after a few weeks of self-imposed ‘darkness’ (which coincided with an overseas holiday and writing a major grant submission).  Back now with lots of news to post about a new Facebook fan page and a half-day forum I’m hosting next week on emerging technologies.  More to come tomorrow…

Good to be back

Having met, chatted, bonded with and been inspried by so many people across UWA working in online tools, web delivery, communities of practice, social media etc the inaugural Web

2.0 community networking event was held on the 28th Jan.  After 20 minutes of mingling we got straight into the organised networking activity (based on tokens handed out at the beginning) and it seemed to work fairly well.  People got to rotate between 3 different groups of people, notes were taken, connections made and conversations had.  We’re moving into Facebook as a way of keeping track of thing and otherstaff I hadn’t met with yet are finding us there.  Next morning tea – early march

The Online Student Journey project takes me to some pretty interesting places – and yesterday it was the Google Earth project and the UWA Virtual Universe Project both coordinated by Jay Jay and Chris Thorne through the UWA School of Physics. 

Of all the 3D Google Earth images in Western Australia, 98% of them are of the UWA campus (which is why the land surrounding the campus looks so flat!) thanks to the efforts of this project.  SketchUp (a Google tool) is used to create the buildings which can then be used in a number of platforms including Seconf Life (after some adapting), Virtual Universe and Google Earth.

Anyone can see the 3D project – just download/open Google Earth, navigate to 35 Stiurling Highway Nedlands and make sure you check the ‘3D Buildings’ box

Maybe not a link – but certainly something in common.  Social networking is being keenly discussed across this campus under the banner of *engagement* and the online communities project by the Office of Development is the latest project to approach fruition.  The first Steering Group meeting was held yesterday and it was encouraging to hear a repeated focus on the community aspect of an online community.  Whilst we (Anne, Michael, Jill, Meredith, John and I) started to make traction about what we thought the community might focus on and what benefit participants would gain I was also thinking of the most recent and, by all accounts hugely successful social network to be launched in the US.

Do I mean Pass It Along (developed by IBM and Duke University who say it is “aimed at facilitating collaborative knowledge sharing within organizations”). Not this time.

I am referring to the new social networking site launched by World Wrestling Entertainment called WWE Universe.  Seriously there are lessons to be learned here!  WWE Universe had a reported 200,000 members sign-up with virtually no promotion.  The network is targeted to fans (mostly men aged 18-35 – not much of a surprise) and the pro-wrestlers themselves make frequent appearances, chatting with members, promoting events and launching pay-per-view.  It’s a slick site with a purpose that has real and immediate benefit for fans.  The WWE gets to marshal their fans into one site and feed them content.  Sounds pretty smart to me and certainly sounds like something we could learn from for the OoD project*.

*(I concede we’d have less photos of people in spandex – that’s probably a good thing).

Great to have a drink and catch-up with Meg Poore tonight.  Meg is an instructional designer from ANU, in Perth this week to present at a NAGCAS seminar and we have bonded over a desire to convert the world (or at least our institutions) to Web 2.0.  Meg organised the 07 Learning Futures Forum that we used to publicise the NODE project on the east coast.  We shared the inside stories on training staff in emerging tools and found a lot in common.  Just wait til we get everything our own way!  I’ve got a lot of new ideas to get moving on – thanks again Meg (check out her wiki and blog)  

Lots happening already this week – a catch-up meeting with Sophie Sunderland (LLRS) generated all sorts of ideas about delivering material via voki, Second Life/machinima and discussion boards in a WebCT module.  Sophie is off to storyboard (we agreed she would “develop content with delivery in mind“) whilst I get ready to get her up to speed on some of the tools and add material to the project wiki as I go.  Great to have an inspirational chat so early in the week!

The power of networking and my eagerness to promote the project has already resutled in a neat cross-collaboration.  I’ve been invited to join the Steering Group for the new Alumni online community project being run by the Office of Development