CREW

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

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.

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 :

• Visualization of user awareness – lots of people are unaware of tools.
• Security – data issues.
• Support infrastructure – how to create an aligned infrastructure: key is AG
• How to start a new service…?
• Q – what stops or hinders research.

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.

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

Gas Street Works are filming the CREW project (VRE2 Programme) today.

Demonstrations:

CREW and myExperiment are sharing a demonstration slot at the JISC Conference 2009 – Edinburgh EICC Tuesday 24th March.

11:10am-11:30am CREW Demonstration; stand 4 – Tuesday 24th March 2008

There will be pre-setup time and available for discussion from 9:30am.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/jiscconference09

The new version with semantic based facet searching and harvesting tools was shown.

This image shows the setup showing all components in a connected – if not necessarily tidy – manner.

CREW and other AG  (VRE projects) were presented as part of the JISC Roadshow in London

Workshop title From motion capture to ancient manuscripts: using complex digital resources across disciplines, Given within the talk “Reasons and Experience for Needing Visualizations of Complex Remote Data Sources”, Martin Turner, University of Manchester Friday 30th January 2009. This involved also a series of visualization steering methods and example case studies from experiences at the University of Manchester and the vizNET (JISC) initiative.

Workshop abstract was “Researchers from all parts of the campus are long-used to collecting, structuring and presenting their data in databases, spreadsheets, webpages etc, using a range of widely available and generic tools. In recent years, however, advances in digitization technologies have led to the creation of much more complex data objects.”

Topics did include a discussion on meta-data and its essential use and search, but no final solutions were given. One point was the concept of providence and also how to change meta-data – lots of food for thought.

PS should be available as a video recorded session – without the question and answer sessions.