The test collaboration from MAGIC (series of postgraduate-level lecture courses in mathematics, employing the Access Grid videoconferencing technology) to integrate CREW has been agreed to extend until September 2011.
CREW and some related projects are being demosnstrated as part of the JISC 2010 Conference, 13th April 2010, during their lunchtime demonstration slot: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2010/04/jisc10/programme/demos_lunch.aspx
“Towards PowerPoint 2.0: Examples using the CREW virutal research environment” Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW) creates a framework for researches that integrates a video conferencing environment with event data harvesting. Results from a multi-site mathematics post-graduate lecture series, as well as the MIMAS Intute data harvesting process will be demonstrated. Automated semantic annotation has been produced for 4000+ events and 530+ hours of seminars.
Registration is free but must be done on-line. #CritterVRE #jisc10
Soon CREW software will be extended to support more event administration functionality, specifically with the goal of allowing event organisers to plan a “greener” event. Features to be added include an automated way to put event delegates in touch with each other (where permission is given) ahead of an event – in order that they may make voluntary shared travel choices, a “calculator” to help event organisers to estimate the carbon footprint of their planned event and a way to link delegates easily to mobile-accessible software (based on Bristol’s Mobile Campus Assistant), to help them on route.
For more information see Bristol University’s JISC-funded Greening Events project, which will develop CREW as part of a prototype toolkit for event organisers during 2010.
New CREW users with the #CritterVRE project are to exploit the twitter integration with CREW. This will be at the Eurographics UK Chpater Conference in Sheffield Sep 6-8 2010.
http://www.eguk.org.uk/TPCG10/index.htm
Hope to see you there.
CREW Extension 1/2 day workshop “Informal Workshop: Towards Collaborative Spaces forming an Enhanced Research Environment” 17th Dec 09
11am-1pm
Virtual Research Environment CREW (Collaboorative Research Events on the Web) Extension outcomes and results. Demos will be show the integartion within the Access Grid multi-site mathematics post-graduate lecture series (MAGIC http://maths.dept.shef.ac.uk/magic/index.php) as well as the MIMAS Intute data harvesting processes.
A multi-site system was setup including Phil Cross integrating through Skype in an inforal way to the Access Grid. Full demos of the new systems occured both from intute and MAGIC.
Thoughts for future work were disccussed.
There have been a few review sessions for CREW and other VRE projects.
A notable activity was from Paul Miller who reviewed by doing. On the 12th October 2009 CREW Recorded Paul Miller, The Cloudofdata “Being at the Interface” 2-3pm Room 1.10, Kilburn Building, The University of Manchester. From the website Paul Miller works at the interface between the worlds of Cloud Computing and the Semantic Web, providing the insights that enable you to exploit the next wave as we approach the World Wide Database. Not directly related to SIGGRAPH but an interesting aside.
This was added as part of the University of Manchester SIGGRAPH Professional Chapter events and is replayable from here.
We’ve been ask to record a seminar here in Manchester. For me it was the first test of the final product. The recording worked well. If you want a look: http://tinyurl.com/ThomasHPayne (CREW URL are a pain – so I created a short cut). With the upload there have been a number of bugs. First I could not create a user name for myself. Secondly when uploading a recording to an event which does not exist in the crew server yet the creation of all necessary directories did not work properly. Harvesting of the uploaded event needed some tinkering. Once all the little bugs there overcome the recording played without problem.
CREW was presented in a short session covering all four VRE phase 2 projects. The event was a JISC funded workshop in Edinburgh (NESC 9th June 2009). This acted also as one of two wrap-up sessions.
This workshop also considered the Community Engagement projects.
Some random points, areas to be tackled and thoughts :
Lots of points raied on taking prototypes and current systems to the next stage – and enable new research.
Aside: Last month there was a longer presentation on CREW which is available on slideshare.
Two projects are continuing some of the ideas of CREW within the VRE Phase 3 Programme:
Both share a wiki at http://wiki.rcs.manchester.ac.uk/community/vre3 which has direct web lins for more information.
At the rSUE wrap-up meeting (6th-7th May 2009) the joint poster joined many (80+) project poster, leaflets and demonstrations. (poster top left)
Integration within Institutional Repositories and gaining committment from senior management is the next hurdle – but an interesting race. One aside was the extensive and at times (well occasionally) interesting tweets #RPMeet