Brian Kelly has started by outlining his AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) for his talk – he is happy for us to record it, blog it, etc. This highlights the fact that I haven’t had permission from anyone else to blog their talks.

I guess if someone objects, I’ll consider their objections, and decide whether to change my notes to reflect objections or corrections.

Brian is outlining the experience of ‘Children of the Web’ – today’s undergraduates use the web naturally. But what does it mean to ‘IT Support’ – should we be supporting Amazon, Flickr etc.

Brian has suggested that the image of IT people is negative – perhaps even worse than Librarians. Not sure where this leaves me as a qualified librarian working in IT.

Brian has suggested that ‘e-learning’ is different to previous IT applications. Traditionally we have been looking for the best software to do something. However, e-learning is about ensuring “changes (learning) happens inside a student’s head.”

I would argue that this is really about a move from applications to services. To be trite, Applications are easy – services are hard. Perhaps having solved the easy problems (applications are now cheap and easy to write), we are now trying to solve the harder ones – engaging with the service.

Seemed inevitable, Brian has mentioned Web 2.0. Using Google as an example. Compare our University Maps to the Google equivalent (try searching “tw20 0ex” on Google Maps

Brian’s keeps making the point that we are often putting ourselves (IT Services that is) in the way of what users want to do. We have gone from enablers (we give access to IT) to barriers (we stop people using services).

Perhaps we (University IT) need to separate out our ISP type activities (networking halls of residence, providing access to students/staff) from our more ‘Corporate’ IT activities. We do this in an organisational sense (we have an ‘Admin computing’ section), but in reality we run these quite closely together. It would be interesting to look at other organisations.

Interestingly Brian has just mentioned University of Manchester – apparently restricting p2p filesharing to free up network bandwidth for Skype use. This is an interesting approach – but also shows the limitations of University IT – my ISP at home doesn’t have to ban one thing to support another (does it?)

Brian has proposed some principles for IT services

Just a namecheck for ‘UCISA 2.0’