Bringpeer: Building a Better Social Network for University Students

Last year I mentored the "Bringpeer team" in the Innovation ACT competition. The idea was to building a better social network for university students, starting with the Australian National University (ANU).  The team did not win the competition, but the ANU saw enough promise in the idea to support the start-up.  The product was launched during "O-week", with more than three hundred students signed up so far.

I will be speaking on "Innovations in teaching innovation", at the CSIRO ICT Centre, Center, Australian National University in Canberra, 4pm, 27 April 2015.

LinkedIn Admitting Minors Risk to Professional Service

LinkedIn, which was previously a business orientated social networking service has announced it will admit minors, down to the age of 13. This change is being characterized as being for "Smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures". At the same time LinkedIn launched "University Pages" on LinkedIn, for students and alumni to connect. However, having non-adults on LinkedIn will cause considerable problems for the existing professional adult users. I suggest LinkedIn provide a way to separate the student and professional users.

Using Social Media in Local Government

The University of Technology Sydney have released "Using Social Media in Local Government: 2011 Survey Report" by Karen Purser (June 2012). As well as the full report, there is a summary available.

Table of Contents

2. About the Survey
2.1 Methodology
2.2 Sample
2.3 Questionnaire
2.4 Coding
2.5 Statistical significance
3. Executive Summary
4. Detailed Findings
4.1 Understanding of social media
4.2 Use of social media by councils
4.3 Ownership of social media inside council
4.4 Social media policy
4.5 Staff use of social media
4.6 Councillor use of social media
4.7 Social media evaluation
4.8 Opportunities and effective use of social media
4.9 Barriers and risks of using social media
4.10 Use of social media in an emergency
4.11 Social media tools
5. Conclusions
Appendix - Survey Questions ...

3. Executive Summary
Social media has really only been around for ten years. The year 2002 saw the launch of the first significant social networking site, Friendster. Myspace was launched in 2004, followed by Facebook in 2006 and Twitter in 2006. Not much is heard of Friendster or MySpace nowadays, but according to research conducted by Sensis 2 in 2012 - Facebook dominates as the most used social networking site, being used by 97% of social networking participants or 6 out of 10 Internet users. This was unchanged in the past year. Facebook is used by more than 95% of social media users from both sexes and at least 93% in all age groups. LinkedIn was the next most popular social media platform, being used by 16% of social networking users, up from 9% last year. Twitter was used by 14% of social networking site users, up from 8% last year, and Google+ was used by 8%.

This represents a massive change in the way people communicate with one another, and with the organisations they interact with, including local government. ...

In considering future use, councils are most likely to intend to use Twitter, followed by mobile apps like Snap Send Solve and the Youtube and Facebook.

Interestingly, while some rural/remote councils felt that social media was not relevant to them or their communities, one rural/remote council had found that they were able to communicate much more effectively with their residents via social media as they were too geographically dispersed to support a local newspaper.

As might be expected, the strongest drive for a council to use social media came from staff responsible for communications (41%), and communications staff “owned” councils social media initiatives in 61% of cases.

The majority of councils were developing (50%) or had in place (26%) a social media policy of some sort – in most cases (84%) the policies were based on an existing policy of another organisation and either adopted with little change or used as a framework for a more tailored policy. This suggests a need for the development of standard social media tools and resources which can be easily tailored to suit individual councils.

Just on half of all participating councils who are using social media confined its official use to one or two staff members, most likely the in the communications team, where one exists. A further third of councils expanded their use of social media to key personnel throughout the organisation. ...

Few councils (21%) provided social media training for their staff, and even fewer (9%) provided social media training for their elected representatives, although many supplied them with smart phones and tablets which can be used to access social media, and 64% of participating councils had one or more elected representative who used social media to comment on or discuss council business. ...

Interestingly, 14% of those councils who were using social media had also found it to be useful to manage controversial issues, address public misconceptions and build positive reputations, and a further 10% had found it effective for emergency management. ...

The most significant barriers to the use of social media were to do with a lack of resources and a lack of knowledge. In particular a lack of sector wide guidelines and education was cited as a barrier – coupled with a lack of understanding of social media inside the organisation. ...

Significantly, much of the perceived risk associated with social media use clustered around information management and record keeping issues, suggesting a lack of clarity around state record keeping regulations as they relate to social media and commensurate uncertainty within the sector as to their responsibilities.

Further uncertainty was evident when councils were asked about the extent to which they
might consider using social media in an emergency, following on from the experience of Queensland councils during the floods and cyclones of 2011.

Importantly, a key finding of the Queensland Flood Commission of Inquiry Final Report was that Councils that have not already done so should consider how social media may be used effectively to provide accurate information about flood levels and local conditions to residents during a flood event.
...

From: Purser, K. (2012) Using Social Media in Local Government: 2011 Survey Report, Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government, University of Technology, Sydney, Retrieved from: http://www.acelg.org.au/upload/program2/1340860323_SocialMediaReport_web.pdf

Government: 2011 Survey Report, Australian Centre
of Excellence for Local Government, University of
Technology, Sydney

Gov 2.0 at the Department of Education in Canberra

Pia Waugh introduced the Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime event, hosted by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in Canberra. Damien Battisson, Director of Social Media at DEEWR, spoke first. He used the founding of Canberra as a metaphor, with many false starts and that exploring a little more would produce further results. He also put in a plug for the DEEWR hi-tech theater which is available for hire, as are the services of the DEEWR social media team.

This was followed by the next speaker, Keren Flavell from Wholesome Media, using the building of the Sydney Harbor Bridge as a metaphor for the NBN (attributed to Dr. Karl. She then introduced the topic of participatory democracy and the Victorian Parliament. Unfortunately the definition of "Participatory Democracy" used, was not one I recognized. What Keren described was education and consultation for representative democracy. In contrast participatory democracy has more direct involvement of the citizens in the process of government.
An interesting quad chart was presented with axes of empowering to educational and non-social to social. But it was not clear to me that empowering and educational were points on the same continuum.

Curiously after the discussion of high ideals, the details were about two Twitter accounts (@Parliament and @Participates). These Twitter accounts are used to report bills before the house and committees. However, these are basic housekeeping functions (pun intended), not really about participatory democracy. I suggest a more proactive approach would be to make Hansard live, that is rather than have to wait until the next day, the Hansard would be sent out delayed by only a few seconds. This live feed could have links and advice on bills embedded.

"Parliament of Victoria Explains: How Parliament makes laws" was created as an on-line video in the style of "Electing a US President in Plain English" to educate the citizens.

The claim was then made that no Parliament had worked out how to use Face-book. This seemed to me a strange claim to make. Face-book is intended for groups of "friends" to socialize. There is no reason why this would be useful for a parliament. The reason given for this not working was that Face-book was not being used to drive an agenda (but such driving an agenda would be the opposite of participatory democracy). The solution proffered was the "Town Hall" application. This seemed to be a US based solution where "town hall meetings" are common, but may not suit Australian democracy.

Many of the initiatives presented appeared useful, but missed the point of what participatory democracy is. This is not about the Parliament "educating" the citizens, setting an agenda and then inviting citizens to input to the issues selected by the parliament. Also this approach does not appear to allow for the political parties and factions, which are an important part of Australian democracy.

If the Victorian Parliament uses the Internet to bolster representative democracy that is worthwhile, but the Parliament should not claim this is participatory democracy.

Michael (Mick) Chisnall, Director of the Australian Capital Territory’s Government Information Office, then talked on "Government in a Connected Society". This was an interesting thoughtful talk on the nature of society, the Internet and government. Mick pointed out that the use of "networks" in support of society in not new, with the Roman empire using roads and sea lanes to form a society and the Internet was just the 21st century version of this. He showed a graph with social connections on one access and communications connections on the other, with web 1, 2 and 3 progressing from bottom left to top right.

Mick cited the book "Cyber Chiefs" by Mathieu O'Neil (when he was at ANU). He commented that on-line reputation is by contribution, not formal position. However, it seems to me that the Internet ethos was continuously derived from academic discourse, at the same time the technology was being built to support academic work. Also reputation in academia and on the Internet is built up into semi-formal positions. This reputational influence happens explicitly on some social networks: you must be authorized by your peers to have access to some functions. This is not that different to someone being appointed to an academic position or job, based on their reputation.

Mick then discussed citizen centric services (which seems to me to be the complement of democracy). The piece of the puzzle I see missing is the role of the private sector.

Mick argued for network empowerment, rather than hierarchy. This seems to me to be too radical for government to accept and not necessary. It should be possible to have a network for delivering services and a hierarchy for making decisions. It should be possible to build systems which cooperate to deliver services, hiding the complexity of government structure from the user, but still service the reporting and decision making process of that complex system.

Mick pointed out the success of virtual community cabinets. Also he highlighted the changes to the ACT public service. But is some ways the ACT Government is relatively easy to simplify, as it is just a city council. One aspect I think the ACT Government needs to look at is its relationship with citizens living in cluster housing. Flats and apartment buildings have a "body corporate" which is a form of privatized fourth level of local government. The important issues for local government are garbage collection, roads, street lights, water, power and the like. In the case of the apartment building I live in all these services are provided by the body corporate, not by the ACT Government.

Recording of the presentations will be available later.

Online Social Network Analysis for Education, Marketing and Information Warfare

Professor Amr El Abbadi, from University of California, Santa Barbara talked on "Information Diffusion in Online Social Networks: From Analyzing Trends to Stopping Misinformation" at the Australian National University in Canberra, this morning. He started by discussing Everett Rogers work on Diffusion of Innovations, and Malcolm Gladwell's popular book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", before new in depth analysis of how trends spread on-line. This work has very wide spread application: it could be used to design better on-line courses by understanding how information about a topic is diffused within a class, it could be applied to an on-line political campaign, it could be applied to marketing a product. More worryingly, the same techniques could be used by an oppressive regime to identify and neutralize opponents. This could also be used as a key part of information warfare, to identify an attack and counter it. Presumably the DSD Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) are working on this as part of their Cyber Event Management and Reporting System , along with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). There is more detail in the paper "Information diffusion in social networks: observing and affecting what society cares about".

COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR

DATE: 2012-03-14
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU
CONTACT: lexing.xie@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Social networks provide great opportunities for social connection, learning, political and social change, as well as individual entertainment and enhancement in a wide variety of forms. Online social networks also provide unprecedented amounts of information about social interaction and provide opportunities to study social interactions on a scale and at a level of detail that has never been possible before. In this talk, we will consider ways of systematically exploring the vast space of on-line social network problems. Namely, we will consider three dimensions; understanding, managing and reporting on social networks and focus on example studies relating to these dimensions. We will focus on two applications: limiting the spread of misinformation in social networks and trend analysis. In the former problem, we study the notion of competing campaigns in a social network, and explore the spread of influence in the presence of such competing campaigns. In particular, we develop protocols whose goal is to limit the spread of misinformation by identifying a subset of individuals that need to be convinced to adopt the competing (or "good") campaign so as to minimize the number of people that adopt the "bad" campaign . The second problem is motivated by the critical role the identification of popular and important topics plays in better understanding societal concerns. We propose two novel structural trend definitions referred to as "coordinated" and "uncoordinated" trends that use friendship information to identify topics that are discussed among clustered and unconnected users respectively. Our analyses and experiments show that structural trends are significantly different from traditional trends and provide new insights into the way people share information online.

This work was done jointly with Divyakant Agrawal and Ceren Budak.
BIO:
Amr El Abbadi is currently a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his B. Eng. in Computer Science from Alexandria University, Egypt, and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in August 1987. Prof. El Abbadi is an ACM Fellow. He has served as a journal editor for several database journals, including, currently, The VLDB Journal. He has been Program Chair for multiple database and distributed systems conferences, most recently SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010 and ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC) 2011. He has also served as a board member of the VLDB Endowment from 2002-2008. In 2007, Prof. El Abbadi received the UCSB Senate Outstanding Mentorship Award for his excellence in mentoring graduate students. He has published over 250 articles in databases and distributed systems.

Yammer for the Learning Organization

At the Australian eLearning Congress in Sydney, Associate Professor Philip Uys, Director Strategic Learning and Teaching, Charles Sturt University, mentioned CSU has an active Yammer community, discussing how to do university education better.

Visualisation tool for student social network

The Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice (SNAPP) is a software tool from University of Wollongong which shows who talks to who in a student discussion forum. I tried it with the Moodle forums in my Green ICT course and, not surprisingly, it showed myself at the center of the network. The tool also works with BlackBoard /WebCT and operates via a Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer web browser.

As it is the tool is interesting, but perhaps a little too sophisticated for the average teacher. I would prefer something which would give me a tabular summary, rather than an interactive 3D graphic. A simple table could tell you which are the students not engaging in discussion, the key information brokers, provide some learning community metrics, and some input for marking.

Also the security issues with the software are not clear. Is the data from the password protected course web site being transmitted to University of Wollongong, or is the processing being done locally on my computer?

Indonesia Overtaking Australia with Wireless Internet

Greetings from the famous room N101 at the at the Australian National University, where Dr Idris Sulaiman, is speaking on "ICT-enablement in Environmental Social Movements in Indonesia". He is describing the social changes that the Internet and social media are having in Indonesia. Facebook's second largest number of users are in Indonesia (after the USA). The rapid increase in urban Indonesia is causing problems with traffic but also providing benefits. There is an increase in fixed line telephones, but what is most interesting is the rapid rise in mobile phone use, to the point where it now exceeds that of developed nations.

The Mig33 social network has 45M users in Indonesia and is unusual in being a subscription based service, contrary to the conventional wisdom, which says few will pay and even fewer in a developing nation.

Facebook, Twitter and Mobile applications are being used by official Indonesian government agencies and also by NGOs for politics and fighting corruption. This has popularised the use of the technology in the public's mind.

There is strong competition for mobile phone call time in Indonesia, with this competition now driving down data charges as well. There are "office-in-a-box" products being offered and 4G wireless.

Dr Sulaiman described the work of NGOs working wireless technology to help local people be heard on environmental issues, including Telapak.

Dr Sulaiman describes Indonesia as a 'near-networked' nation. He argues that argues that ICT-enablement is now having a significant effect and that such developing nations with smart phones are bypassing development steps of western nations. The use of smart phones in Jakarta now exceeds that of Sydney. With more applications becoming avialable for smart phones and tablet computers, this may see developing nations in a better position to exploit the technology and take the lead globally in the information economy.

This has significant implications for Australia, which has invested $43B in a nationalised fibre optic National Broadband Network. It may be that Indonesia's free market wireless approach turns out to have been the better option. If most consumers and small businesses access the Internet via a hand held wireless device, then the rationale for the NBN evaporates. However, as Dr Sulaiman pointed out the wireless has capacity limitations and in Indonesia (and Australia to a lesser extent) latency and daily peak period cause problems. These limitations are likely to be acceptable for casual personal use but not for business.

Using Social Media to keep customers informed in a disaster

Isabelle Johnson, Corporate Communications Manager, Strategic Projects at Ergon Energy will talk on "Social Media - Ergon Energy's experience during Cyclone Yasi" at a RIM Professionals Australasia Queensland Branch Breakfast, 21 June 2011 in Brisbane.

Equally as important as getting the power back on was keeping our customers and stakeholders up to date on our progress.

The social media sites, Twitter and Facebook, were introduced for the first time as a disaster response community communications channel.

This presentation includes an overview of lessons learnt ...

From: "Social Media - Ergon Energy's experience during Cyclone Yasi", RIM Professionals Australasia, 2011

This appears to be an update of the talk "Ergon Energy's social media experience during Cyclone Yasi" given at Queensland State Archives Forum, 29 March 2011. Some excerpts from the slides:

Keeping the public informed during Yasi

• 212,000 calls to contact centre
• news media – wide coverage
• ‘Live read’ safety advertising
• 71,000 website hits
• 10,000 Facebook followers

What led us to use social media

We had in place:

• storm centre website
• social media strategy
• successful trial
• communication process

We wanted to:
• listen and engage
• give our customers
another way to reach us

Social Media – our experience

• Facebook and Twitter hidden but ready
• Observed QPS flood response
• Added value to existing processes
• Command centre – social media room
• Single source of truth
• ‘Lead posters’

Social Media – the risks

• Capturing & reporting safety
issues
• Access to complete, timely info
• Influence, not control

Social Media – the benefits

• Kept customers updated in real time
• Provided a forum to talk & share info
• Built better & stronger relationships
...

From: "Ergon Energy's social media experience during Cyclone Yasi", Isabelle Johnson, Ergon Energy, for Queensland State Archives Forum, 29 March 2011.

Other presentations from the Records and Information Management Forum, Brisbane, 29 March 2011, Queensland State Archives:

1. QUT agency experiences Tania Meggitt, Queensland University of Technology
2. Records implications for social media, Troy Pullen, Queensland State Archives
3. Social media - Ergon Energy's experience during Cyclone Yasi, Isabelle Johnson, Ergon Energy
4. Disaster Occupational Health and Safety, Peter Twigg, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland
5. Prepare, prevent and respond: conservation and preservation, Annette McNicol, Queensland State
6. A guide to working through a disaster, Sharon Muldoon, Department of Communities

Cyber Revolution Talk in Sydney by Member of the Egyptian Council of State

Dr Mohamed Chawki, of the Egyptian Council of State, will speak on "Egypt's Cyber Revolution", in Sydney, Wednesday, 18 May 2011.

Seminar

UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre in association with the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology invites you to a free seminar, one of the 2011 Cyberspace Law and Policy Series:

Topic: Egypt's Cyber Revolution
Speaker: Dr Mohamed Chawki (Egyptian Council of State)
Date: Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Time: 4:45 for 5:00-6:00pm, including time for questions and discussion
Venue: Staff Common room, 2st Floor (at opposite end of building to lifts) Faculty of Law building, UNSW lower campus (near Roundhouse), Kensington, Sydney

Abstract: The Egyptian people have managed, through a peaceful revolution, to topple a dictatorship that ruled the country for 30 years. One of the most interesting aspects of the revolution is that technology, particularly the Internet, played a very important role. During the first few days of the revolution, Facebook and Twitter became the primary means for the Egyptian people to spread the word about what was happening in the country. Twitter and Facebook posts provided a real-time update of events taking place all over Egypt, while also providing pictures and videos for the world to instantly see. This presentation will address and analyse the role of ICTs and social networks in the Egyptian revolution.

About the Speaker: Dr Mohamed Chawki is a Senior Judge of the Egyptian Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court. He is a founder of the International Association of Cybercrime Prevention (Paris) and of the African Centre for Cyberlaw and Cybercrime Prevention (Kampala).

Bookings: Entry is free, no need to book. Please RSVP to feedback [at] cyberlawcentre.org.

Structure of public expression online

Greetings from the Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute (ADSRI) at the Australian National Unviersity, where Hai Liang, Web Mining Lab, Department of Media & Communication, City University of Hong Kong s talking on "The structure of public expression and issue rise: Participation heterogeneity, concentration, and timing in internet forums". He studied 3,000 posts to Internet forums to find the the structure of the interaction. These were collected from a popular Chinese Internet forum. The results that threads of discussion which start intensively are more successful. The aim of this work was to contribute to civil society. It would be interesting to see if there are different forms of discussion in different countries, cultures and from people with different education.

The rise of public issues in Internet forums plays an important role in the formation of public opinion. This study investigates the structure of public expressions in the Internet forums, and aims to detect the structural characteristics of the successful rise of public
issues. This study analyzed 110 threads with more than 3,000 posts that were collected from a famous Chinese Internet forum. The results suggest participation heterogeneity, concentration, and intensive replies at the early stage are associated with a higher
probability of successful thread building. The model can explain 68.5% variance of the number of posts in the thread. The results imply that the structure of public expression is crucial for the rise of public issues. ...

From: The structure of public expression and issue rise: Participation heterogeneity, concentration, and timing in internet forums, ANU, 2011

Social Networking on the Road to Damascus

Greetings from BarCamp Canberra 2011 in in Canberra, where the "lightening" five minute talks end the day. One of interest was Tim Conway who says he is giving a talk on Social Networking in Damascus is a few weeks time. He requested input to his twitter address @conwaytb

Electronic Document and Records Management

Here is my attempted buzzword enriched rewrite of the description of the course COMP7420 Electronic Data Management.

Some proposed changes:

1. Course title: change to "Electronic Document and Records Management": the rationale for this is that "Electronic Data Management" is associated with the more techical aspects of the use of database systems. The EDRM term is more broadly applicable and of wide interest.
2. Course Description: Remove mention of e-libraries, as librarians have not shown interest in the course.
3. De-emphasise the technical: XML, XHTML HTML stuff: the students will still be doing it, but I will ease them into it gradually.
4. Learning Outcomes: Remove all but one of the "describe" objectives and add an "evaluate" learning objective to make it higher order.
5. Indicative Assessment: Replace the online quizzes and examination with a second assignment. Increase the Online Discussion from 20 to 24%. I am proposing to change the assessment method as it suits the material and also because I am confident in using the same assessment methods as for the Green ICT course. The forums and work based assignments worked particularly well with public servant students.

Some remaining questions:

1. Recommended Courses: At present it says: "Ability to use a computer. Experience in document use in the workplace.". That is a bit vague. Are there any formal definitions for these used by educators? For example for computer skills, I could specify the equivalent of International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) Certification, but would anyone know what that is?
2. Are there standard descriptions of workplace related study?

Also I have been invited along to meet the people doing Government 2.0 in the Commonwealth Government. I will see what suggestions they have.

Electronic Document and Records Management COMP7420 - Details

Offered By:	School of Computer Science
Academic Career:	Graduate Coursework
Course Subject:	Computer Science
Offered in:	Summer Session, 2011
Unit Value:	3 units
Course Description:	Government 2.0/Web 2.0, open access and social networking have created a demand for rapid access to information and greater involvement in the decision making of government, commercial and not-for-profit organisations. Smart phones and tablet computers using wireless networks allow mobile access to cloud computing resources world wide. This poses a challenge for organisations to provide access and input, while maintaining the security and integrity of records, the privacy of personal information. This course investigates how traditional records management techniques and document formats have been adapted to the Internet era. The use of web technology for practical e-commerce and e-publishing applications is emphasised using case studies, standards and guidelines of real organisations . Emphasis is placed on the information needs of the Australian Public Service, but is also applicable to the private sector. Identifying steps that can be taken to accelerate the uptake of electronic documents by government, in conjunction with small and medium-sized enterprises, this course enables the participant to learn practical skills for incorporating e-commerce into their organisation. The focus is on document representation, knowledge discovery, storage and retrieval. The areas covered include requirements, XML, XHTML, HTML metadata, data management. More information is on the course web page: http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7420/. This course is offered subject to sufficient enrolments .
Learning Outcomes:	Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to do the following: Describe the use of electronic documents, the recordkeeping framework, processes and systems in an organisation (SFIA Level 3). Evaluate options and make recommendations for the use of electronic documents, recordkeeping frameworks, processes and systems in an organisation (SFIA Level 5).
Indicative Assessment:	24% Contributions to the 6 weekly discussion forums 76% Two assignments, due in weeks three and six, 38% each.
Course Classification(s):	Transitional courses are designed for students from a broad range of backgrounds and learning achievements, which provide for the acquisition of generic skills; or an informed understanding of contemporary issues; or fundamental knowledge for transition to Advanced or Specialist courses.
Areas of Interest:	Business Information Systems, Computer Science, and Information Technology
Eligibility: An undergraduate degree
Recommended Courses:	Ability to use a computer. Experience in document use in the workplace.
Consent Required:	Consent is required prior to enrolling in this course.
Technology Requirements:	Access to computer and Internet
Academic Contact:	tom.worthington(a)anu.edu.au

Automated Stakeholder Selection from Social Networks

Greetings from the famous room N101 at the ANU Department of Computer Science in Canberra, where Soo Ling Lim from University College (London) is talking on "Using Social Networks to Identify and Prioritise Software Project Stakeholders". The research is detailed in "StakeNet: Using social networks to analyse the stakeholders of large-scale software projects" (Soo Ling Lim, Daniele Quercia, and Anthony Finkelstein, 2010).

Based on the research a web based tool Stakesource, has been developed. This will send out email to a list of potential stakeholders, allowing them to rate their colleagues.

The talk is about identifying people important to a software project. While the description of the technique suggests automated extraction of information. Soo Ling described a manual process where staff and students were interviewed at UCL and paper forms filled in. People were asked who else was important. I had assumed that the information would be derived automatically from existing online information. As an example LinkedIn and similar systems which relate people to people might be used.

One limitation with any such process is that the project manager first has to nominate the list of potential stakeholders. An example Soo Ling used was for an access card system for UCL. While asking staff and students on campus about the system, the developers forgot to ask external library users disenfranchising a large number of interested people.

It seems to me that with large scale systems with millions of potential users and therefore stakeholders, this method will not scale, even with the use of an automated tool. It might be better to concentrate on getting input online from anyone concerned.

Using Social Networks to Crowdsource Stakeholders

Soo Ling Lim from University College (London) will talk on "Using Social Networks to Identify and Prioritise Software Project Stakeholders" at the ANU Department of Computer Science in Canberra, 4pm 14 October 2010. This is a fee talk, no need to book, just turn up.

The research is detailed in "StakeNet: Using social networks to analyse the stakeholders of large-scale software projects" (Soo Ling Lim, Daniele Quercia, and Anthony Finkelstein, 2010).

While the talk is about identifying people important to a software project, the technique might be applied more broadly to business, administration and politics, to find out which people are actually important in making a particular decision, rather than who is notionally in charge.

In his PHD Thesis "Australia's online censorship regime" Peter Chen carried out some quantitative analysis of the relationships between lobby groups involved in the parliamentary inquiries into Internet censorship in the late 1990s. However, with more use of social networking, there should be more data available for such analysis.

Using Social Networks to Identify and Prioritise Software Project Stakeholders

Soo Ling Lim (University College, London)

COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR

DATE: 2010-10-14
TIME: 16:00:00 - 17:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, Computer Science and Information Technology Building, The Australian National University, Canberra
CONTACT: Chris.Johnson@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Many software projects fail because they overlook stakeholders or involve the wrong representatives of significant groups. Unfortunately, existing methods in stakeholder analysis are likely to omit stakeholders, and consider all stakeholders as equally influential.

To address the problems, we have developed StakeNet, a method that uses social networks to identify and prioritise stakeholders. StakeNet identifies an initial set of stakeholders and asks them to recommend other stakeholders, builds a social network whose nodes are stakeholders and links are recommendations, and prioritises the stakeholders using a variety of social network algorithms.

To evaluate StakeNet, we apply it to a large software project to develop an access control system for 30,000 users. Results show that StakeNet identifies a highly complete list of stakeholders, and prioritises the stakeholders accurately.

We have also developed StakeSource, a software tool that automates the manual processes in StakeNet (_www.stakesource.co.uk _). StakeSource is now used in major software projects in UK and Japan.

This talk describes the StakeNet method and its evaluation, and demonstrates the StakeSource tool.

BIO:
Soo Ling is a Research Associate at the Department of Computer Science, University College London. Her research investigates the use of social networks and collaborative filtering techniques in requirements engineering.

Ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Yve Dougall, National Policy & Research Analyst of ACS, will talk on "The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication" at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, 7 September 2010.

The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Exploring the interplay between deception and identity on: social networking sites (SNS); text (SMS) and email.

The ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet and to control that can access this information, only becomes an ethical issue when there is a causal concern for Internet privacy. Internet users may achieve an adequate level of privacy through controlled disclosure of both personal and factual information about themselves. The technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects. The Internet blurs the boundaries between self and game, self and role, self and simulation, self and communication. Participants are whatever they can pretend to be. They enjoy the artificial social construct on social networking sites or the manipulated façade of virtual worlds, without questioning where it comes from, who created it, or for what purpose. The popular culture that appropriates everything and turns it into a simulation and a story line becomes the model for the self, society and reality. Life becomes a symbolic arena for the acting out of manufactured identity selves that is then communicated in a contained and controlled storyline through selected ‘friends’.

The goal of this presentation is to inform and dispel myths with academic factual research on how prevalent online identity deception actually is and to examine the effects of and the conditions that give rise to it.

Biography: Yve Dougall

Yve Dougall is the National Policy & Research Analyst of ACS, based in Canberra. Prior to joining ACS nearly two years ago, she was working with the Office of Transport Security, heading the Aviation Security Technologies Team.

She initially studied Engineering back in the early eighties and was the first female civil engineer to be awarded a cadetship by then Telecom Australia. After working in Building Design Standards, for four years - she shifted gears and decided to embark on journalism. She was based with Reuters in Hong Kong as a war & foreign correspondent, returning to Australia in the late eighties to work for SBS.

A return to fulltime study followed with a major in Philosophy, where upon graduating she moved to Canberra with her husband in 1994.

She has held diverse Government contracts over the years specializing in addressing ICT Business Cases within the Federal Sector, her areas of expertise are in change management, project management, policy to program service delivery and stakeholder engagement. Other contracts have included Minter Ellison and Engineers Australia.

She is currently undertaking postgraduate research in ethics and information technology at the Centre of Applied Philosophy and Applied Ethics at ANU. ...

Social media in the Obama Whitehouse

Jonathan Greenblatt, former member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, will talk on "Contemporary US Politics of Social Innovation", in Canberra 19 April and Sydney 20 April 2010.

The United States Studies Centre and
DEEWR’s Social Innovation and Social Policy Groups
invite you to a presentation by Jonathan Greenblatt on

Contemporary US Politics of Social Innovation
Jonathan Greenblatt
Former member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team

Seminar Abstract
President Obama and the White House administration are leveraging social media to accelerate social innovation. The President has also established a new Office for Social Innovation recognising that government alone can’t address the complex social issues that we face. Instead, organisations from the private, public and non-profit sectors need to collaborate to identify and implement potential solutions. The establishment of the new Office shows that the US federal government has a key role to play in promoting and facilitating social innovation.

Jonathan will draw on his experiences as a former White House official member of the Presidential Transition Team to examine how the Obama Administration is developing new models of innovation to change how government works. By leveraging insights from the fields of citizen journalism, social media and venture capital, the White House is changing Washington with its own unique brand of "social innovation."

When: Monday 19 April 2010
Time: 12:30 – 2.00pm
Location: Theatre, Australian War Memorial
RSVP: Places are limited, so please confirm your attendance by Thursday 15 April 2010 with Julie Ward via email: julie.ward@deewr.gov.au or phone: (02) 6240 9383

Biographical Information
Jonathan Greenblatt is the co-founder of Ethos Water, a former vice president of Starbucks Coffee Company, and an acknowledged thought leader on ethical branding, global development and social entrepreneurship. He is the founding president of All for Good and previously served as CEO of GOOD Worldwide. He also has served at the highest levels of government, including as an aide in the Clinton White House and, more recently, as a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team. He teaches social entrepreneurship at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA and advises corporations, foundations and non-governmental organizations on the intersection between business and sustainability.

You can find a more detailed bio at: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x18144.xml

Sponsored by the Social Policy Group with a view to building and sharing the evidence base for policy

Evidence driving policy: the DEEWR strategic policy and research seminar series

From: Presentation flyer, by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and the United States Study Centre (University of Sydney).

Military presentations and social media

Two publications on better presentations caught my eye in the NLA reading room today. One on how to use Twitter during presentations, the other on how military personnel can prepare better presentations.

The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever (Cliff Atkinson, 240 pages, New Riders Press, 2009) gives a step by step guide on how to use Twitter during a presentation for audience feedback. It also covers alternatives to Twitter which are better suited for discussion of presentations and how to set up a web version of your talk to allow for this. It is a very good "how to" as well as "why to" guide.

Towards better presentations (Commander Diane Boettcher, Professional Notes, Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, February 2010) is a short article urging military personnel to prepare better presentations. Having suffered from having to sit through many overly long bullet point acronym loaded PowerPoint presentations by defence personnel, I hope the suggestions are headed. I particularly like the suggestion to writing notes to accompany slide presentations. As the commander points out, slide decks tend to take on a life of their own and your presentation, or some slides from it may be widely circulated. If accompanied by some notes the presentation will make much more sense.

It would be interesting to see if the military are making use of the Twitter-type back channel for presentations. Clearly Twitter could not be used for classified presentations, but more secure systems with more limited coverage could be used.

Not a Review of Not a Gadget

This is not a review. Apparently Jaron Lanier has written a book called "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto". The only reason I know this is because people keep telling me via the Internet. I have had a gushing and completely unintelligible review sent to me by a librarian. A web search finds 3,680,000 mentions of the book. But I can't get the book and have to rely on what I read about it on the web, which seems to invalidate what the book says.

Mr. Lanier has chosen to have only a hardback print edition made available, no lower cost widely available, paperback. There are Kindle version and Audio download, but the price for these has been set even higher than the hardback.

I can't read the book (at least not at a reasonable price and my library's copy has not yet arrived), so I have to go by what the author, and others say about it. That is a little difficult as Mr. Lanier has only provided a few snippets about the book, such as "Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress." One message the book seems to have is that crowd sourcing does not necessarily provide good information. Another message seems to be that good information is not free. By making only very high cost versions of his book available, Mr. Lanier seems to be practising what he preaches. However, while I agree that the free-wheeling world of mash-ups may be an illusion, I don't think a quaint 19th century gentleman's club of exchanging ideas via books which take years to distribute and only to those with money is a good approach either.

The printed book is bound with "Deckle Edge" paper. This simulates handmade paper by machine fraying the edges of the paper. To produce a book about the follies of Web 2.0, which pretends to be a hand made object, is a folly in itself. Perhaps the pages of a book fraying around the edges is a good metaphor for the state of this approach to scholarly communication.

The sponsored Amazon.com Review says:

"... In You Are Not a Gadget, the longtime tech guru/visionary/dreadlocked genius (and progenitor of virtual reality) argues the opposite: that unfettered--and anonymous--ability to comment results in cynical mob behavior, the shouting-down of reasoned argument, and the devaluation of individual accomplishment. Lanier traces the roots of today's Web 2.0 philosophies and architectures (e.g. he posits that Web anonymity is the result of '60s paranoia), persuasively documents their shortcomings, and provides alternate paths to "locked-in" paradigms. Though its strongly-stated opinions run against the bias of popular assumptions, You Are Not a Gadget is a manifesto, not a screed; Lanier seeks a useful, respectful dialogue about how we can shape technology to fit culture's needs, rather than the way technology currently shapes us."

The author himself is positive about the effect of the Internet:

"... In the industrialized world, the rise of the Web has happily demonstrated that vast numbers of people are interested in being expressive to each other and the world at large. This is something that I and my colleagues used to boldly predict, but we were often shouted down, as the mainstream opinion during the age of television’s dominance was that people were mostly passive consumers who could not be expected to express themselves. In the developing world, the Internet, along with mobile phones, has had an even more dramatic effect, empowering vast classes of people in new ways by allowing them to coordinate with each other. That has been a very good thing for the most part, though it has also enabled militants and other bad actors."

But he sees a problem with web 2.0:

"The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress."

Social Networking Technology for Emergencies

The United Nations Foundation has released "New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks" (2009). The full report is available online, as one donw load and by chapter. The report recommends remove regulatory barriers for better early warning and emergency response and putting more resources into
local preparedness. The call for standardisation of communications is timely, including a global standard for cell broadcast technologies. Australia is entering another bushfire season with limited standardisation of systems at the national level. The report has received some criticism on the Humanitarian ICT discussion list for the breadth of coverage, but such a report can include online a limited amount of material.

1. Foreword
2. Acknowledgements
3. Executive Summary
4. Introduction
5. Alerts: Early Warning And Communication Needs
6. Preparedness: Building Communities’ Resilience
7. Response: Coordination In Emergencies
8. Rebuilding: Post-Crisis Services And Development
9. Recommendations
10. Endnotes

Executive Summary

Natural disasters and violent conflicts have always been part of human existence. But the number of humanitarian crises has been rising in recent years. Moreover, disasters strike
most frequently, and with the most devastating impact, in the least developed countries. These countries also have the weakest communications infrastructures, which poses a
particular challenge to governments, aid agencies, and the affected population at every stage of a crisis, from the runup to a disaster through to long-term reconstruction.

There have been dramatic advances in communications technology: in the number of new technologies, the mobility and range of functions available, and the spread of these technologies. Growth has been particularly strong in the penetration of mobile phones and more recently the uptake of social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter. One important change is a shift from one-to many forms of communication, such as television and radio, to many-to-many forms of communication, such as social
networking and crowdsourcing websites, that is changing the way in which information is delivered and exchanged.

Communications advances present an opportunity forhumanitarian organizations to harness modern technology to communicate more effectively with communities affected by disasters and to allow members of those communities to communicate with each other and with the outside world.

People in affected communities can recover faster if they can access and use information. A look at the use of communications technology during disasters in recent years shows
that while it has played a positive role, its full potential has not yet been realized.

Moreover, governments, humanitarian agencies, and local communities face challenges and risks associated with modern technological innovation. These include:

• Information flows must be two-way to be effective — from the external world to the affected community, but also from those affected to the agencies seeking to help
them in useful ways.
• Information will not be used unless it is trusted. The utility of any technologies will depend on the social context. People are a vital part of the communication system. ...

Recommendations ...

Remove regulatory barriers
Some regulatory barriers to effective early warning systems and emergency response remain, despite the great progress made in these aspects since the Indian Ocean tsunami. We identified:
• the need for further standardization of communications in emergency situations—such as a global standard for cell broadcast technologies, for example;
• the need to develop standards applicable to existing and future systems for delivery of early warnings or alerts;
• the need for inter-operability between public networks and networks dedicated to emergency communications; and
• a need for priority access by emergency services personnel to communications.

Furthermore, governments must extend the regulatory framework to new and emerging technologies. Regulation is lagging behind innovation. In particular:
• the international community needs to create a legal framework enabling the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, which hold great promise for collecting information for
use by humanitarian agencies but are currently unable to be deployed due to legal uncertainties.

Put more resources into local preparedness
People-centeredness has been one of the themes of this report. The people affected by an emergency are in the best position to know what is happening and what they need.

Preparedness requires long-term investment by humanitarian organizations, including investment in public education and capacity building in local media.

Information provision should be recognized as a standard part of both preparedness and aid delivery, and might include:
• preparation of off-the-shelf material agreed on between humanitarian and aid agencies (what to do in an earthquake, basic sanitation advice, for example);
• training humanitarian agencies in communication skills, including receiving and using feedback from communities; and
• the inclusion of a wind-up radio in aid packages.

Information needs to be collected and deployed to be effective. Often this will be done by official agencies, but their responsibilities may be overlapping and uncoordinated.
Preparedness also requires the international humanitarian community to be able to act themselves in a coordinated way on the information and analysis enabled by these emerging systems.

Agencies should share best practices with each other.
Agencies developing tools for use in disaster preparedness and emergency relief should also include consideration of their potential for communities’ post-disaster or postconflict needs, to leverage the investment of resources as effectively as possible.

Governments—especially in developing countries where access is not ubiquitous—also need to consider enhanced access to communications and investment in infrastructure, among all the competing demands for resources.

Leverage new media and crowdsourcing
Some of the most promising applications of new technology in emergencies use social media, often through crowdsourced applications.

As this report has shown, the issue of authentication is a key barrier to overcome. The development of methods and applications for verification of crowdsourced information
should be a priority. The humanitarian community can support the development of innovative platforms that addres the issue of verification as well as provision of information by users.

At the same time, it is important to ensure that communications technologies can offer their users a sufficient degree of anonymity and protection. This will depend on
technological solutions but also, importantly, the legal framework and public debate about the risks as well as benefits of anonymity. ...

From: New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks, United Nations Foundation, December 2009