OUseful.Info, the blog…

And so it goes… I’m in the process of going down to 0.8FTE at the OU, and taking up a day a week with the Open Knowledge Foundation [announcement] :-)

I’ll be working with them on the School of Data and no doubt be inflicting crazy hacks and data-related tales on a wider audience through the School of Data blog.

I’m also looking forward to working with potential but currently “non-consuming” open data users to get a better feel for what tools, techniques and training would actually be useful to folk…

Most of my work time will remain with the OU, although one thing I am keen to explore is how initiatives such as OpenLearn, as well as formal education programmes, can be used to complement data education activities offered by initiatives such as the School of Data. (If you have any ideas – please get in touch;-) I also want to start looking in more detail at data-related tooling and workflows, particularly in the context of research skills development, to try to get a feel for what sort of practice researchers engage in around data use…

I’ll try to use context to make it clear what capacity any posts that appear here – or elsewhere – relate to, or what hat I’m wearing whenever I do a presentation. Regular readers may already have noticed that I’ve started linking out to posts that I’ve written elsewhere, and that’s one way I’ll try to separate concerns. As a result, this blog may become even more personal notebook like, so you have been warned!