Dear all…..

The twestival sheffield organisers have met today and we’ve expressed a pretty unanimous concern that the event might not reach all our expectations. Due to many different reasons we’ve decided that rather put on a half-assed event and risk undoing the many months of hard work we’ve put into organising great community events in and around sheffield, we would be better to take a step back and look to next year.

So it’s with huge sadness that we have to say goodbye to our efforts to make twestival sheffield happen this year. If anyone else has the burning desire to pick up the mantle then we can happily transfer whatever knowledge and contacts we have. At this stage, the event simply wasn’t coming together as we had hoped.

Apologies for the huge dissapointment, but on the upside many of our friends and neighbors in the north are hosting their own twestival events and have made kind offers to welcome all. Please see the twestival site for details.

Please also bear in mind that there is a huge calendar of community tech/geek events coming up in sheffield over the next year. For details come along to the monthly sheffield geekup or follow @sheffieldgeeks on twitter.

With a little sadness, some relief, and enthusiasm for a year full of events,
Ian.

My notes from the #mashbash meeting 1 with the sheffield archer project.

Cathederal Archer Project Ltd

Meeting between Archer Project and Barcamp Sheffield #bashmash organisers, 21st Jan 2009

Present:
Jag Gill
Ian Ibbotson
Chris Murray
Tim Renshaw
Tracey Viner

The Archer Project (CAP, or more formally the “Cathederal Archer Project Ltd”, see http://www.sheffield-cathedral.co.uk/links.asp?articleID=50) is a not for profit project based out of sheffield cathederal who offer food and a base for the homless in sheffield as we attempt to break the cycle of deprivation.

Barcamp sheffield is an annual event hosted by the sheffield geek community -headed up jag- looking to apply local talent and technical knowledge to short focussed projects that will benefit the city and it’s people. These projects are being run under the #bashmash tag.

On Wed 21st jan CAP and #bashmash had an initial get-together to discuss what form a #bashmash project based around a new online CAP presence might take. The following are notes.

An initial concern was described that although the archer project is fundamentally supported by the cathederal, some people may be put off by the closeness of the CAP branding to the cathederal branding. The team brainstormed some initial requirements
Website design, inkeeping with the cathederal branding, yet noticably different
Hosting
Some form of Viral Marketing to promote the site
SEO to get the CAP site up rankings
Interactivity
We discussed the options for embedded twitter feeds to add a dynamic quality, EG, # of meals served today, daily weather reports, interim statistics such as # of homless at last count.
Discussed the need for walled garden interactivity, so user contributed materials do not negatively impact on the “Brochure site” aspect.
Use of photo-blogging

Some of the primary requirements of the web-site we came up with
Support CAP in funding applications, essentially have a component which is a stylish and professional brochure site describing the work of CAP
Provide a place for the CAP team to show evidence of their work (Again supporting funding applications)
Provide information to help link up with other support agencies / support other agencies / demostrate how CAP can help.
Provide a place for the homless in sheffield to meet the world essentially putting a human face on the issues facing the city.
Provide a place to electronically publish the CAP news letter. Resources for the paper based news-letter are sparse, the site based news may not be bound by these constraints, although the need for content is primary.
Provide a place to announce and promote CAP campaigns. Specifically
Big Sleep Out
Harvest Festival
Christmas Appeal
Sheffield Sharks appeal
Provide a link to “Just Giving” / have space for e-commerce / e-giving applications

Some random thoughts which came up
What happened to the old SIF sheffield information forum. Is there any way to start to tie together #bashmash projects into a wider information network
Contact with the crisis marketing manager
We need early access to logs for key supporters
It would be great to have a Facebook app
Could we link up with Weatherwatch to have a dynamic alert
Could we get kids to build arduino based thermometers in #geekupsheff-kids to raise awareness?
How can we contribute to the wider sheffield community
Links to sheffield First Step Trust? Sheffield Advice Link? Other projects?
Links with silentsheffield.org
Links with homeless assessment service
Homeless Link Network
Links with Drug Action Teams
Links with Tunring Point
Links with Sheffield Theatres
An information resource for homelessness – articles?
We could mash up thinks like the #meals statistics using google forms, RSS and yahoo pipes to form a feed to the webapp.
Could we use some microformats for opening times etc to share data with other sheffield orgs? Semantic geeky project thoughts here.
GPS tracking units to see where people go/how often they get moved along?

The project has volunteers who could be recruited in to update stats / tweet information / write articles and postings.

We discussed technology choices, and unless requirements change, are happy that we could implement the following infrastructure
Wordpress as a primary hosting environment
Hosting provided for a minimum of n years provided by #bashmash
Google Analytics and statpress for stats
The #bashmash project will focus around usability and graphical design
There will be space for other contributed projects such as twitter feeds and facebook applications, this should provide opportinities for all who are interested to get involved, around the core design and implementation team.

Initial thoughts about the day
It would be nice to see mock-ups (HTML, Graphics) as early as possible in the day.
Tracy will act as on-site customer to give feedback on designs and usability
Should we use a design methodology / process on the day?
Handover and sign/off / go live

Closing thoughts
The #bashmash day needs to have a sustainability plan as an output
We need to give some thoughts to Critical Success Factors
Publishing Measurements is both good and bad as it supports funding, provided the stats look good and are maintained.

(My) Overall feelings, the primary customers (The CAP team) need to a site to support their funding applications, and their service users. These two groups have different, but equally important requirements. There is a desire to stay within the broad theme of the cathederal, yet be distinct.

Outstanding
Sort a venue
Get volunteers – Jag is handling this
Sort out the process

Extra information

Possible sections
Home
Who We Are / What We Do
Donation (Link to just giving)
Volunteering
New/Newsletter – upload press cuttings, newsletter PDF’s
Events
Supporters
CAP Health
CAP Catering
CAP Gardening
CAP Education
CAP Activities
Contact Us
Links to useful sites – HomlessLink, Crisis, Shelter, etc
CAP Staff/Board
Examples of clients / work in progress
Questions – show church support without it taking over

Themes for the site (We would like the design to reflect these feelings)
Trust
Warm
Open
Friendly
Respected
Opportunity
City Centre
Community
Caring

Other – Mailshot, newsletters, social networking… Other? Got some sample pages
Will scan the sample pages and my notes pages / diagrams and attach asap.

Here’s a calendar I’m maintaining with various geeky events. Please feel free to send stuff to me on any of the usual channels, or get in touch to get permission to add events yourself.

Here’s a quick very specific workflow for anyone wanting to get data out of a garmin GPS60 and into JOSM for editing, it’s actually pretty trivial, but I had to dig around a bit. The commands will probably work for other USB garmin units…

1) Look at openstreetmap and find a spot on the map where you know there are missing features

Here’s loxley valley, I know that there’s a footpath going from the upper half of Myers Grove Lane, down past the Robin Hood Pub, over the river loxley and up the other side of the valley, and it’s not on openstreetmap.com. Sweet!

2) Turn on your GPS and go walking, taking waypoint notes along the way

The best bit

3) Go home and boot up your fave distro and install gpsbabel (apt-get install gpsbabel for me)

4) Download your trace data (Where you walked, I had to do this as root for dev permissions)

root@bhor:~# gpsbabel -t -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F my_track.gpx

5) Download your waypoint data (Your, um, waypoints, I had to do this as root for dev permissions)

root@bhor:~# gpsbabel -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F my_waypoints.gpx

6) Load into JOSM and edit / save / upload

When you’re done, you can see your trace and waypoint data.

7) Click “File” -> “Download from OSM” to pull down all the openstreetmap data for the area you’ve walked over

Add features corresponding to your trace and waypoints. In my case, a new footpath, a couple of new postboxes, a bridge, 2 schools and a community ctr (and a slight fix to the path of the river loxley so it actually flows under what I know to be a bridge. (I hope thats the right thing to do :S)). Upload your changes to openstreetmap.com

9) Enjoy your work on openstreetmap.com

- Will add the photo just as soon as the OSM render is complete

10) Don’t forget to upload your postcode coordinates to freethepostcode.org!

Read this today and it resonated with me for some reason, worth a read.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Been a while since I posted, alas blogging not uber high on my GTD list, so often gets pushed back… However, I thought it might be fun to share some of the work we’re doing in the lexaurus vocabulary editor in relation to SKOS vocabularies. Rob Tice has sent me some screenshots of lexaurus ingesting the SKOS vocabulary for agriculture, here’s the results

Here in image one there’s the post ingest status report saying that 28954 terms have been imported in 269 seconds. As a part of the SKOS import we have to do a fair few cross references and referential lookups, so the performance isn’t quite as blistering as the ZThes import, still pretty good tho.

Here’s some more screenies showing the label nodes and editing pages in different languages. The data is held in the lexaurus canonical schema, so it can go out as ZThes or SKOK or whatever else we need.

More to follow, but I thought these interesting to put up now, just to stimulate discussion.

As it’s my personal blog…..

Every once in a while someone brings this old chestnut up, and I thought it was probably about time I aired my recollection….

A few years ago we were out on a pretty serious “Northern” christmas party which had kicked off at lunchtime and gone on well into the evening. The attendees were from a wide variety of backgrounds: our own company, a company we were working with lots at the time, and associated friends and customers of both groups. As the day wore on, one of the party became increasingly agitated. This was, as is always the case, a perfectly nice person who was carrying a bit too much personal baggage at the time and had too much to drink. I can say this, because I can become a morose so-and-so after a few beers, and alcohol affects different people in different ways. Alas, in this case, the beer manifested itself in outward aggression. Initially, this exposed itself as simply trying to pick a fight with two separate people. When it became apparent that nobody was going to give into that kind of thing the mood changed somewhat and we’d gone from slightly charged to grabbing someone (Not me I hasten to add, I only got involved at this point) by the throat with one hand and grabbing a bottle with the other. What followed can only be described as a brief scuffle which ended with my holding onto this person and exchanging a few words. After a few moments I let go and everything was fine. Apologies were exchanged and all was well with the world. No fists were involved, no mention of operating systems (Was made all day long actually), and no real drama.

Some people I know have a huge lack of understanding of the martial arts, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say how proud I am, of the people I train with, in the past and now, and in fact of who I am, and my actions generally. I might be romanticizing a little here…. Firstly, when it came to it, the guy probably wouldn’t have glassed anyone. Just after picking up the bottle he might have thought, WTF am I doing, and then let it go. I have to say I think there was a substantial amount of red mist by that point and I don’t know what would have happened if he’d been left to get along with it. The way I see it tho, two people were protected that night, especially the aggressor. Besides the obvious criminal implications of what might have transpired, I can’t imagine the employers involved could have allowed anyone with a violent crime behind them to continue working in an educational setting.

Whilst I’m on a roll…. Here’s a story seldom told before

Many years before, in between my hapkido and taekwondo days I was walking through town, and heading towards the then underpass under arundel gate in the town center. As I walked towards the steps a couple in front of me got to the top of the steps and turned away, opting instead for crossing the road. Hmm… So I headed towards the steps and rounding the corner found four young males standing over a motionless body. It did, in fact, look like a pretty serious mugging. Nowthen, the reason I got into MA in the first place is that my mouth sometimes runs on its own and gets me into potentially silly situations. So I asked what was going on (Well, sorta). It later was explained to me that this is what had really happened……..

These five chaps had been to a funeral and gone out to send their friend off in style. In the late afternoon they stopped for burgers on the moor and headed to the next pub. At the top of the steps, one of the five had taken a tumble, bashed his head and was in fact choking quite properly on his half swallowed McDonalds (I was already a veggie by thiis point, but it only re-enforces my conviction ). When I got to the bottom of the steps the chap was a beautiful shade of blue, and his mates were in a frenzy. A couple of pats on the back and a little encouragement got him going again, and although still out of it, alive and well at least.

Ok, it’s nothing that anyone else wouldn’t have done. However, firstly, I’d obtained my first aid qualifications as a direct result of my MA training. At some point, anyone who’s serious about training realises that bad things can happen, either in training, or in real life, and if you’re serious about protecting yourself and others, you better know what you’re doing when it comes to helping people. Secondly, although I would have shouted from the top of those stairs anyway, I was able to do it with some confidence and authority.

So I get a bit disappointed when people make fun of these situations. To my count, my MA training has probably directly saved 1 life, and possibly stopped two serious injuries and two people from trouble with the authorities, as well as minor “Conversations” where someone was sent on their way happy. I’ve simply walked away from just as many when possible. I’ve never yet hurt anyone, and I’ve stood up to people who actually wanted to do me harm, and allowed them to continue along with a different perspective. I don’t know what other people would do in the same situations, but I’m pretty happy being self-reliant and knowing I can depend on myself to do the good stuff, and the bad stuff as needed. I’m proud of these achievements, even if people trivialise and caricature them just for effect.

As they say… Talk if you will, walk away if you can, run if you must, but if all else fails; defend yourself

Bah.. End rant.

A few months ago we started to experiment with scrum, sprints and backlogs in an attempt to formalise our agile development processes. I thought it might be fun to try and keep the blog updated every couple of weeks with what’s moving in the k-int world.. so here goes…

Hana’s done some great work on the zero functionality release for the JISC Transcoder Project and it’s basically finished. I’m tasked with uploading this to the Amazon elastic cloud this week whilst hana pushes on with having a go at SCORM 2004 to IMS CP 1.1 trascoding. Hana has also spent a couple of days fixing a drag and drop bug in the vocabulary editor application and getting reload installed for some testing. We’re on the lookout for an SCORM 2004 content to test with (Especially older BBC JAM content).

Liams been doing loads of work refactoring the import and export modules in Vocabulary bank to make sure we can ingest and export both ZThes and SKOS and crosswalk between the two and in preparation for creating some additional export formats for specialist educational / eLearning applications. Liam’s also managed to create an installer for the new release of OpenCRM, our open source third sector call management / CRM application to go off to Sheffield Advice Link. We’ve been told that the latest released vocabulary editor can import the full 7923 terms from the IPSV Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary in 17 seconds, which isn’t bad going, considering the amount of cross referencing and revision management thats going on under the hood.

I’ve been on holiday but whilst I’ve been away I’ve made huge steps forward on a stand-alone OAI/ORE server that we can use to replace all the custom OAI servers we have dotted around the place. With the new server you just point the app at a JDBC data source and it does introspection to discover the DB schema, detect primary keys and timestamps, a few clicks later and you have an OAI/ORE feed for your database. The same infrastructure can be used in online or batch mode (Batch mode detecting changed records with checksums rather than timestamps, useful for normalised schemas where changes might not update datestamps). Initially this is for an update to the Peoples network discover application, but I’ve high hopes it will be useful in a wide range of cultural and governmental settings. This should give us an instant linked-data capability for projects like peoples network and other related metadata aggregator projects we’re involved with at the moment.

I’ve also (To my eternal shame in the office) started to do some real work on the JZKit documentation and the maven auto generated site, to make it easier for users of the toolkit to get to grips and diagnose problems. There seem to be a huge number of Z3950 projects in the offing at the moment, for a protocol thats supposedly legacy. I think thats great!

Rob’s made huge steps forward with the assisted tagging tool which is being used (in anger by many users) to create descriptive metatdata for literally thousands of learning resources. The new tagging tool seamlessly integrates with the bank vocabulary service so we can update the vocabularies used without updating the tool, and the new assisted tagging feature makes it easy for users to quickly tag resources without needed an in-depth knowledge of curriculum and administrative structures.

Thought it best to just have a quick update as there’s so much going on at the moment I’m in danger of missing important announcements.

Just before I left for a weeks holiday Neil, Hana and I attended a kick-off meeting for the JISC Transcoder project. There’s information about the project at that link, although I’ll be posting more about this shortly. We’ve already had loads of interest both from content providers and interested HE partners who want to be involved in testing and development. To cause such a stir so early on is great IMNSHO. I’m going to try and get a project page together in the coming week, and unless anyone has any better ideas I’m planning to tag project announcements and direct links as jisc-transcoder. A project-transcoder tag is available for resources useful to the project. so we can get some feeds going.

Hana has already made huge progress on the first release (Which transcodes a package into itself, but lets us test the upload/download and cloud infrastructure) and we expect to be sitting down real soon now to put some priorities on the next release.

Here’s an aggregated pipe of transcoder tags and blog entries.

We’ve just been talking to a really cool sheffield geek who’s got a neat HTML screen-scraping service and integrated it into JZKit to provide dynamic meta-search across services with no machine to machine interface. Very Cool.

However, in our discussions we realised that it might have even more value as a tool for converting HTML Silos into metadata-rich repositories. By combining this service with a SWORD deposit client and some MD5 checksums we can help digitisation projects who have large well-organised web sites, but perhaps don’t have OAI or SRU/SRW, we can create a preservation hub that exposes the content using open standards.

If you have a HTML silo of digitized data (Or any data for that matter) but no OAI or SRU, and you need such services, we’d love to test this idea by writing the scripts to populate an OAI and SRU repository… Any volunteers?

Going to spend some spare time throwing this and the JDBC/OAI/SRU gateway together hopefully in time for library mashup and bathcamp. Maybe we can come out of those events with some newly exposed data sources contributing to the linked data network.

Fun