I’m at the JISC Conference today in Birmingham, looking forward to what I hope is a day with some challenging and interesting stuff.

One of my colleagues is attending the main ‘digital libraries’ sessions, so I’ll be focussing on some of the other areas (one session on the ‘Strategic Content Alliance’ and another on Virtual Research Environments). I’ll be doing a combination of blogging here and also twittering – the relevant tags are ‘jiscconference08’ (for blogs and photos) and #jisc08 for twitter – in case of confusion, you can try http://tinyurl.com/52zure to get an aggregated view of posts from whatever source associated with the conference.

The keynote is going to be given by David Puttnam – so, here goes…

First, though, and introduction from Sir Ron Cooke, Chairman of JISC – reflecting on the overuse of acronyms by JISC – what do VKEE, IRCA, RoMEO, RIOJA, QJIMS stand for? Answers on a postcard please.

Sir Ron now reflecting on (his personal view of) the challenges facing the JISC, including:

• How will JISC continue to serve the UK as a whole? 
• Portability – as we see convergence of PC, Mobile, TV etc… 
• Increased datastorage – e.g. the IBM ‘racetrack’ technology (is that better than an acronym?) 
• Energy – green/sustainable computing agenda 
• National e-infrastructure – as users we expect to be able to handle the complex picture in a simple way – we want the mechanics to be invisible. There is a real challenge to us in managing the lifecycle of data, and we are facing an unprecedented amount of data via online publishing. Individuals need to develop analytical skills to assess information and data and make judgements about it. 
• The ‘Strategic Content Alliance’ – a JISC lead and managed alliance of 7 organisations – NHS, National e-Science Centre, MLA, British Library, Becta, BBC, JISC – more info at www.jisc.ac.uk/content http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/eresources/contentalliance.aspx (and hopefully later on this blog today)

Sir Ron saying that ‘we’ tend to assume students are ‘computer literate’ – but the study out of UCL earlier this year suggests that they are really only familiar with basic tools – students easily move on when they don’t easily get what they need from a specific source.

Sir Ron, now asking ‘why do we adopt the ICT tools availble to us so poorly – skills of individual academics must be part of the answer.

Finally (says Sir Ron), we can no longer engage solely within the UK – we have to engage at a wider level (specifically European mentioned, but I think global would be more accurate – US, India, China etc.)

Sir Ron now introducing David Puttnam