Mahendra Mahey of the DevCSI project gives the developer view of engaging with estates systems and data

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Hack Events, Innovation and Estates and
Greening ICT
How do people responsible for Greening ICT/
Estates systems and software developers work
more effectively together to stimulate technical
innovation #devcsi
Mahendra Mahey (m.mahey@ukoln.ac.uk)
Project Manager of DevCSI Project
Intelligent Buildings and Smart Estates
UKOLN is supported by:
Realising the ICT Opportunities
www.ukoln.ac.uk
De Montfort University,
A centre of expertise in digital information management
29th November 2011, Leicester, England, UK.

2. #devcsi
Who am I?
• Mahendra Mahey
• Project Manager
• JISC funded Developer Community Supporting
Innovation Project (DevCSI)
• Based at UKOLN
• University of Bath
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Aim of the Presentation
• Learn about the Developer Community Supporting
Innovation Project
• What are Hack events and having one in this area?
Why Hacking is a good word in software
development?
• What developers want from estates managers/
greening ICT and vice versa?
• Your ideas
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4. #devcsi
Quiz
• What do the following have in common?
• Colgate - 1806
• Lilly - 1876
• General Electric - 1892
• Hershey’s – 1894
• 3M – 1902
• Black and Decker – 1910
• Microsoft - 1975
Innovation does happen in a
down market
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successful companies
innovate in a down market
Jason Calacanis, Entrepenuer
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disruptive innovation
• Put the customer, and their important, unsatisfied job-to-
be-done at the centre of the innovation equation
• local context, customer facing
• Embrace simplicity, convenience, and affordability
• local context, convenience
• Create organizational space for disruptive growth
• invest locally in capacity to innovate
• Consider innovation levers beyond features
functions
• Become world class at testing, iterating adjusting
• local integration, tweaking SaaS, rapid innovation
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cost or investment?
• IT regarded as a sunk cost in HEIs
• a capacity for technical innovation is a strategic
resource which needs investment
• in the institution
• in the sector
• technical innovation is, itself, an investment
• outsourcing IT has a cost
• reduced capacity to innovate
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year one:
energy, engagement, critical
mass proof of concept
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barn-raising
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events
• with JISC
• Rapid Innovation Programme Meeting
• with librarians repository managers developers
• Mashed Libraries (3 regional), Open Repo 2010, Reading List Hack Event
• with OSS Developers (working with OSS Watch)
• Engaging Developers with OSS, Workshop on Open Dev, Transfer Summit
• with Scientists/researchers
• Google Wave Hack Day
• with developers from other sectors
• Pair Programming, Developing Phone based applications, BarCamp London, Bath
Camp
• with everyone, together
• dev8D
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building capacity
Before
After
1 minute
30 seconds
Shiraz won the most improved award
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University of Kent
• Team of 6 developers won first dev8D
competition 2009, with List8D – open source
reading list management software
• Leap of faith sending 6 developers, came back
inspired, motivated, validated
• Only noticed when something goes wrong
• Transformed to agile way of working and methods.
Physical (the hub) and mental space (time)
List8D – Reading List Software
http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/list8d/- provided by Michelle Pauli
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the manager s view
• They gained a huge amount. They came back very
enthusiastic and full of good ideas. It did a great
deal for morale and motivation…. It's a very
powerful thing when your peers say that you are
doing something the best,
• ...decided to use the momentum of Dev8D to
move forward with agile working and the List8D
project by providing the development team with
two very important assets: physical and mental
space.
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OR10 Dev Challenge
• Enhance single metadata records with as many
automatically created, useful links to related
external content as possible.
• used remote services to link data and add functionality
Enhanced Metadata Record
• bringing remote services to bear in a local context
• users, domain experts and developers collaborating
successfully
http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/or10dev/
Richard Davis and
Rory McNicholl from
University of London Computer Centre
Links Managed by
Google doc
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year two:
focus, value, sustainable
growth
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value
• having local/institutional
developer resource available
is valuable
• that local resource, while
limited, can be backed-up by
a community of peers
• a well connected community
of developers is greater than
the sum of its parts!
• developers can empower
users
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value: knowledge transfer
• data-centric research will demand skills currently
held by developers (e.g. version control)
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/
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value (for money): training
• Value of using peer to peer training
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sustainability: support
• events give commercial players direct access to
developers in the HE community, more
sponsorship, setting challenges, testing
• this is commercial developers talking to HE
developers, rather than commercial sales-
people talking to IT managers in HE
• some have already recognised that this is an
opportunity
• using a pool of HE developers to test and develop
against their APIs - this is really valuable and very
cheap
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Stakeholder Analysis
• 495 respondents
• Developers, their managers, Senior IT managers Vendors,
Funders, Users (Academics, librarians, researchers)
• Tested a number of assumptions behind project
• Huge agreement not just with developers
• Local developers understand local context, act as bridge
between remote service providers, open source communities,
and local end users and add value by integrating into local
contexts – 75% +
• Local developers work closely with end users to deliver
innovation – 75% (more work needed though)
• Can be shared with sector – 88%
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Stakeholder Analysis
• Huge variety in agreement about whether stakeholders
understand the value of local developers
• Undervalued, short term contract, lack of professional
development . career opportunities (70+%), poor
management, mixed about training opportunities
• Barriers to innovation include, lack of time, staff,
funding, poor internal communication, poor
management, bureaucracy
• Big demand for sector wide developer community,
raising profile of developers, links with commercial
developers
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Stakeholder Analysis
• Views on outsourcing vs in house development
mixed and complex
• Vendors want to work with developers in
Academic community
• Need more evidence as to value that developers
bring
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Stories of Local Development
• Stakeholder survey, over 120 stories
• Whittled down to over 50
• Narrowing down further to have at least 10 case
studies showing value and impact of local
developers (some studies may have metrics as
well)
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British Antarctic Survey
RRS James Clark Ross Itinerary
Passenger Movements on RRS James
Clark Ross
South Travel Database - http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/
provided by Dave Connor and Ellen Bazeley-White
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Summary of Case Studies
• Initial batch of 10 Case Studies
• In house development achieved 29% more user
engagement in the development of software
compared to 1% engagement in outsourced
solution on similar project
• Efficient gathering of precise user requirements (as
compared to outsourcing) because of:
• Better understanding of local context – local knowledge of
institutional culture, key contacts, systems, data sources
• Better communication with end users, relationships built on
trust and familiarity, motivation and enthusiasm
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Summary of Case Studies
• Local development is based largely on flexible
methods (some agile, e.g. SCRUM), iterative, lots
of testing, feedback, organic (not restrained by the
processes that would be initiated if the work was
outsourced)
• ‘perpetual rolling beta’, with plenty of evidence of
examples of using or wanting to use a more
professional approach.
• Many examples of Open Source development
• Deep in-depth integration was possible to meet
exact requirements of the users in a more efficient
way than compared to outsourcing
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Summary of Case Studies
• Leads to upskilling and investment in staff (making more
informed choices of when it makes sense to outsource
or not and to continue to innovate in other areas),
• makes knowledge transfer easier and supporting staff
through cheaper training or support issues
• Some examples of using students as a source of
software development
• Savings - money / time (freeing up staff to provide a
better quality service), and increased user engagement
within house projects where the final result appears to
be appreciated by the users more and a greater sense of
ownership is developed (see above)
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Summary of Case Studies
• The importance of good documentation to allow
easy transfer of knowledge to another developer is
critical and doesn’t happen as often as it should
• Savings - money / time (freeing up staff to provide a
better quality service), and increased user
engagement within house projects where the final
result appears to be appreciated by the users more
and a greater sense of ownership is developed (see
above)
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In House Development
• timing (more control of rollout and ability to
respond to changes quickly)
• quality control (local knowledge means better
quality partly because of the understanding that
they will be eventually providing support)
• knowledge transfer (less time and effort required
on passing knowledge to other staff)
• financial (often due to scope creep, outsourcing
can be expensive and also costs such as support
and modifications in the long term are not
realistically costed)
The Case for In-house Development (Wilder, 2099),Vice President Aptech Computer Systems (Hospitality Upgrade, 2009)
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In House Development
• a clear vision of the final product
• good requirements gathering
• active risk management
• post mortem reviews
June M.Verner and William M. Evanco, In–House Software Development: What Project Management Practices Lead to Success?,
Published by the IEEE Computer Society, 2005
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Dev8D
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Innovating with a Kinect
• Microsoft Kinect
• Dev8D 2011
• http://vimeo.com/20521841
A first at Dev8D:
Open source
iPhone app for
home automation
http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/02/26/world-first-at-dev8d-open-source-iphone-app-for-home-automation/
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Interacting with a computer in
lab
• Experiments with Kinect
• Possible way to control mouse cursor by waving
hands?

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Controlling molecule visualisation

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Competitions 2011
• Developer Challenge at
• Open Repositories 2011 (Austin, Texas)
• http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/dev-challenge-or11/
• Repositories Fringe 2011(Edinburgh)
• http://rfringe11.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
• DiscoDev
• http://blog.discovery.ac.uk/2011/09/15/developers-entries-help-us-explore-new-
possibilities-in-discovery/
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Year three:
more focus, value, sustainable
growth, evidence, strategic
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DevCSI Phase 3
• More strategic
• Gather more compelling evidence of the value and
impact of Developers
• Develop materials aimed at Managers
• Influencing Managers of Developers to get
developers to play a larger role in technical
innovation
• Senior IT Directors
• More case studies, particularly metric’s based
studies
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DevCSI Phase 3 - Events
• DevXS – A student developer event
• 11-13 Nov, 2011, Lincoln
• http://devxs.org/
• Dev8D 2012!
• Hack events!
• Life Sciences - Semantic Web Applications and
Tools for Life Sciences Hackathon
• Still in planning stage, may be an idea from this
event?
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What does Hack Mean?
• Hack (computer security) to Reclaiming the word ‘Hack’
break into computers and
computer networks
• Hack (computer science), an
inelegant but effective
solution to a computing
problem - (loosely used)
• Emerging as a tool for
innovation e.g. BBC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/2011/oct/
18/hacking-academy-devxs-conference
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DevXS 2011
Student Developer Hack Event –
working with the
University of Lincoln
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Structure of Hack Events
• No fixed structure, no perfect formula, dynamic and
changing
• A doing event, people create stuff, spirit of event
• Sharing, talking and collaboration
• Lightning Talks
• Ideas
• Rewards / incentives
• Gentle pressure to produce
• Length depends on resources
• Continual access to room
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Preferred Components (1)
• Announcement of date 2-3 months in advance
• Plenty of discussion before event, using mailing lists,
groups, wikis (not everyone participates), get ideas
• Developers and users together – difficult to strike
balance but worth it
• Need to have people who are in the spirit of the
event, prepared to contribute
• Informal non-threatening environment
• Introductions, Lightning Talks, get people talking
• Ideas phase (from previous discussions)
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Preferred Components (2)
• Two days better than one
• Need time to talk and share ideas
• Accommodation near hack venue, so hacking can be
late
• Continual access to room
• Rewards / incentives
• Social element.
• Recording outputs important
• Serendipity an important component
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Hack events
• Reading Lists
• http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2010/07/31/reading-list-hackday-
cambridge/
• Linked Data
• http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/01/26/linked-data-hack-
days-13th-14th-january-2010-bristol/
• OER
• http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/04/18/oer-hack-day/
• Accessibility
• http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog/2011/07/07/accessibility-hack-
days/
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Just a few ideas from Hack
events
• Visualisation of BBC data
• Used a (1907) Metric RDF graph structure that one group
member had applied to molecule comparison context
(Tanimoto coefficient), and applied this metric to BBC data
overnight
• Live Subtitling of Video
• VTT Video Caption Creator
• http://scottbw.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/creating-subtitles-
and-audio-descriptions-with-html5-video/
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The Story of a Hack Day
1. Come up with ideas
2. Group together
3. Categorise
4. Consider and choose
the ideas
5. Get into groups
6. Work into the night
7. Work during the day
8. Present to audience
?
9. Develop Further
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Some examples
• Why people come to Hackdays
• http://vimeo.com/19027894
• Some ideas
• http://vimeo.com/19038720
• The process
• http://vimeo.com/25858554
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Useful tools for Hack Event
• Mailing List (before event)
• Google Group (before)
• Wiki, website, blog – legacy of event
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Developers and Domain
Experts working together
• Working in teams
• Domain experts are uber users, checking and
advising
• Domain experts are not restricted by technology,
some ideas are too ambitious, others are definitely
doable
• Pitching ideas to developers
• Developers pitching to domain experts
• Developers learning a new domain
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What developers are looking
for in Hack Days (1)
• Clearly articulated ideas
• Paper Prototypes
• Doable in the time
• Access to tools
• APIs to software as well as keys (getting one
software interface to talk to another one)
• Software Development Kits
• Software as a Service
• Data Sets
• Virtual Machines
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What developers are looking
for in Hack Days (2)
• Good documentation
• Users on hand to give feedback, ideas, explanation
• Can anything of the idea be achieved in the time given?
• Is it fairly simple to implement?
• Functional demonstrator can be produced?
• Subversion Repository, e.g GITHub
• Places to publish apps
• Simplifying Testing, test environments
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What Estates /Greening ICT
experts are looking for?
• Ideas to develop further
• Innovation
• Solutions to problems
• Knowledge about why specific solution is appropriate
• Inside Information about services and tools
• Knowing what is possible
• Reinventing the wheel, anyone been here before
• Breaking problem down into chunks, focusing on those that
are doable in time
• User stories
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Ideas
• Hack Event (Jan 25-26), Estate managers bring
along a developer?
• Sponsoring a Challenge at Dev8D, February 14-16
• A general developer challenge?
• Getting some rapid innovation in the estates /
greening ICT domain
• Chipping away at systems! Get access to the data
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Philosophy
• Need to have a sharing culture
• Is this possible in academia?
• Fun, dynamic, doing!
• Willing to work
• Ability to communicate ideas clearly
• Informal, non judgemental, all ideas welcome
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Commercial Vendors
• Sponsoring Prizes
• Providing data
• APIs
• Getting developers to produce apps from the data
• Participating in event!
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http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/blog
m.mahey@ukoln.ac.uk
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