Author: Joss Winn

Student as Producer Meets Pedagogy of Excess

Joss Winn Keynotes

This is Prof. Mike Neary’s speech, welcoming delegates to Lincoln, where he discusses the University of Lincoln’s Student as Producer project, Charles Babbage’s steam driven Analytical Engine and Steampunk.

 

Good evening and welcome to DevXS at the University of Lincoln, taking place here in the Engine Shed.

My name is Professor Mike Neary, I am the Dean of Teaching and Learning at the University of Lincoln, and it gives me great pleasure to officially open this event.

The title for my brief talk is Student as Producer meets Pedagogy of Excess, and in presenting my talk I hope to provide an explanation for the title of the conference: DevXS.

DevXS is a BarCamp / Hackathon – style conference that recognises the progressive ideas and talent that students can bring to the development of higher education services.

At the core of DevXS is a two-day developer marathon, where students: you, are encouraged to team up and build cool things that contribute to university life. It’s about students/you sharing your ideas, mashing up data and building prototypes that improve, challenge and positively disrupt the research, teaching and learning landscapes of further and higher education.

Prizes will be awarded to the best ideas, prototypes and collaborations.

DevXS builds on the success of the JISC funded Developer Community Supporting Innovation (DevCSI) project and events that it runs, such as the annual Dev8D conference.

Let me say thanks to UKOLN and all the Sponsors who helped get this event ready at Lincoln and elsewhere, especially Ric Howard, Network Engineer from ICT Services, Amazon Web Services, Xirrus, OCLC, University of Lincoln ICT Services, The Library, the School of Computing, the LNCD group at the University of Lincoln and JISC.

Throughout this conference you will be working mainly in this great hall: The Engine Shed. The Engine Shed was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1874 as covered accommodation for servicing steam engines. The Engine Shed was converted in 2004 by the University of Lincoln as a music and concert venue and assembly hall for the use of SU and students at the University of Lincoln, as well as a resource for the city of Lincoln

The Engine Shed might be regarded as a monument to an obsolete technology, but the links between the steam engine and computational machines is much closer than one might think.

We should remind ourselves that the first computational devices, designed by Charles Babbage in the early 19th century, were referred to as Engines: the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine; and that the Analytical Engine, was built to be powered by steam.

One can only imagine how the world might be different if Babbage had been able to build his Analytical Engine. Indeed, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling have done just that in their jointly authored novel The Difference Engine, published in 1990. In this book they imagine a world in which steam powered computation has become ubiquitous. The book, as I am sure you know, has given impetus to the genre of reverse or retro-engineering, which calls itself SteamPunk. You should know that the SteamPunk movement holds its international conference here in Lincoln each year.

I think we should celebrate the fact that steam and the electric powered digitialised engines you are using this weekend are being brought back together by this event. I am sure (pretty sure) that Charles Babbage would approve.

But this conference is about more than engines and computers and machines, although they lie at the centre of what we/you will be doing this weekend. DevXS is about you the students, and visitors and sponsors and support staff and academics who will be working together in collaboration and co-operation as part of an academic project to further advance the production of knowledge and meaning: to build cool things that contribute to university life.

At the University of Lincoln, we are formalizing this process of collaboration between students and academics, in which students are part of the academic project of the University. The slogan for this project is Student as Producer. If you want to find out more about Student as Producer then please check out our website. Student as Producer is proud and pleased to be one of the major sponsors for this event.

But in the moment of creating Student as Producer we are also redesigning/re-engineering, deconstructing and putting Student as Producer back together: hacking it and mashing it up.

The strength of Student as Producer is that students are at the core of the University’s academic project. The limitation is that students are still students. The project that lies behind Pedagogy of Excess is to see if it is possible to intensify the student experience or student life so that students become more than students in and against the prevailing context of higher education.

We take our inspiration for Pedagogy of Excess from the student protests of 1968 in Paris and around the world. In that brief moment in time students were described as ‘being more than students’ in a period of national and international social, political and economic emergencies. In that moment the students who were protesting became ‘revealers of the general crisis’. In that moment students in Paris and around the world looked to find solutions to these emergencies, many of which extended beyond their own immediate experience of student life. They did this through establishing democratic and progressive projects across a range of educational and other social, political and economic matters. In that sense students were being and becoming in excess of what they might normally have expected from their lives as students.

We are once again in a moment of crisis, expressed as social, economic and political emergencies. One of the forms this crisis takes is a crisis of the meaning and purpose of higher education. In response to this crisis, students in the UK and around the world together with workers, academics, and activists are, once again, through their protests and occupations revealing the real nature and extent of this crisis as well as attempting to find some solutions to the crisis.

I very much hope that this conference, DevXS at the University of Lincoln can regard itself, at least in some ways, as being part of this process of revelation and resolution.

And, while you are doing all of that, make sure you have a great time.

Welcome to Lincoln. Now and Forever.

Preparing the Engine Shed

Joss Winn Announcements

Most of the organisers are now in the Engine Shed getting the place ready. Here are a few pictures.

 

Ric, networking the place
View from the stage
Kit for each table top
Mezzanine for lightning talks and rest
The technical crew
Power under each table
The view from the mezzanine
Preparing the stage
The bar and the mezzanine

A few reminders

Joss Winn Announcements

Don’t read your email? Life live in social networks? Well, we hope this reaches you at the last minute. Here’s a note that was sent out last night…

This is the last email you will receive from the DevXS Team before you arrive. We promise!

We would like everyone to have a great weekend, so here are some very important things to consider:

  1. You must bring your own computer. We do not have any laptops or PCs for delegates. Remember to bring a (short) ethernet cable, if you have one. There will be wifi, but we recommend bringing a cable (oh, and power supply!).
  2. Free parking is available for the duration of the event. For this, you should use the university parking (not the hotel) and you must email us your car registration number before midday tomorrow (Friday). If we don’t get your registration number, you may be charged £3 for the whole event.
  3. DevXS is a marathon development event. There will be a rest area on Saturday night but no beds. You are advised to bring a sleeping bag or blanket.
  4. Here’s a simple map for getting to all the key DevXS sites by foot, train or car: http://g.co/maps/fwhru
  5. If you’re doing a talk, please bring a VGA adapter.
  6. That’s it! We can’t wait to see you all. If you have any problems you can email us (as always) at hello@devxs.org.

Thanks,
The DevXS Team

Conference profiles, Wiki and IRC

Joss Winn Announcements

Here’s an email that was sent out yesterday to delegates. If you registered for the conference you should have seen this in your INBOX. It’s an important message, especially if you want to travel to the conference by car or share a hotel room with someone specific on Friday night.

Hi {firstname},

DevXS 2011, the student developer conference, is only 8 days away. We’re putting the final touches on the last few details right now, but we’ve got a few things that we’d like to ask you to do and make you aware of. Here goes!

Firstly, if you haven’t done so already you can now update your profile at http://devxs.org/me/edit – make sure that what we know about you is right! You’ll need the email address and password you signed up with – if you’ve forgotten either of them just email us and we’ll get you back on track.

Secondly, and quite importantly, we need you to tell us if you’re arriving in a group (for example if a few of you are sharing cars) so that we can make sure we have enough car parking spots. We’d also appreciate if you could let us know if you want to share a hotel room on the Friday with anybody. You can find the conference directory at http://devxs.org/event/2011/directory if you want to see who else is coming from your institution. To let us know just hit reply and email us the details.

Thirdly, we’ve put a load of useful information on the conference Wiki at http://2011.devxs.org/wiki/Useful_Information on getting here, accommodation, network, what to bring and so-on. Give it a read if you’ve got any burning questions.

Finally, we’ve got a couple of new places for you to congregate and discuss things regarding DevXS. First of all is our Wiki where you can discuss ideas, data sources, teams and so on at http://2011.devxs.org. Secondly is our IRC channel (for those of you who remember IRC) at #devxs on Freenode. You can connect to chat.freenode.net, or chat through your browser at http://webchat.freenode.net. More help with IRC is on our Wiki. http://2011.devxs.org/wiki/DevXS_Chat

As always if you have any questions or problems please feel free to email us.

See you there!

The DevXS Team

DevXS Data

Joss Winn Data, Teams , , , ,

At time of writing, we’ve eight places left for DevXS. Once they have been grabbed, a waiting list will open up in case some people do not confirm their registration or cancel over the next three weeks.

If you’ve not already registered, please do so right now. If you have registered, but have not responded to the confirmation email, please do so right now (check your spam folder if you don’t see the email). If you have confirmed your place (thanks!), please take a look at the data below to see if other people are attending from your university. If it looks like they are but you don’t know who they are, contact us and we’ll put you in touch.

Whether you’re coming as a group or on your own, we’ll be helping you organise teams on the Friday night so that everyone gets a chance to meet and learn something from each other over the course of the weekend.

Here are the conference stats as of Friday 21st October 2:49pm. We currently have 192 bookings…

Array
(
    [confirmed] => 166
    [accommodation] => Array
        (
            [by_status] => Array
                (
                    [confirmed] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 130
                            [none] => 10
                            [local] => 26
                        )

                    [unconfirmed] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 19
                            [none] => 5
                            [local] => 2
                        )

                )

            [total] => Array
                (
                    [shared] => 149
                    [none] => 15
                    [local] => 28
                )

            [by_gender] => Array
                (
                    [male] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 136
                            [none] => 11
                            [local] => 24
                        )

                    [female] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 13
                            [none] => 4
                            [local] => 3
                        )

                    [other] => Array
                        (
                            [local] => 1
                        )

                )

            [by_role] => Array
                (
                    [delegate] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 142
                            [none] => 12
                            [local] => 20
                        )

                    [speaker] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 5
                            [none] => 1
                        )

                    [admin] => Array
                        (
                            [none] => 1
                        )

                    [organiser] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 1
                            [local] => 5
                        )

                    [helper] => Array
                        (
                            [shared] => 1
                            [local] => 3
                            [none] => 1
                        )

                )

        )

    [role] => Array
        (
            [delegate] => 174
            [speaker] => 6
            [admin] => 1
            [organiser] => 6
            [helper] => 5
        )

    [gender] => Array
        (
            [male] => 171
            [female] => 20
            [other] => 1
        )

    [institution] => Array
        (
            [University Of Hertsfordshire] => 1
            [King's College London] => 1
            [Robert Gordon University] => 1
            [University Of Aberdeen] => 1
            [University Of Northumbria] => 1
            [Heriot-watt University] => 1
            [University Of Aberystyth] => 1
            [Manchester Metropolitan University] => 1
            [The Open University] => 1
            [Staffordshire University] => 1
            [Liverpool John Moores University] => 1
            [Xirrus] => 1
            [University Of Glasgow] => 1
            [Aberystwyth University] => 1
            [Ourduino Ltd] => 1
            [Heriot Watt University] => 1
            [University Of Exeter] => 1
            [University Of Sheffield] => 1
            [Open University] => 1
            [London] => 1
            [Heriot Watt] => 1
            [Robert Gordons University] => 1
            [Liverpool Hope University] => 1
            [Ljmu] => 1
            [University Of Dundee] => 1
            [Kingston University] => 1
            [University Of Chester] => 1
            [University Of Nottingham] => 1
            [The Robert Gordon's University] => 1
            [Bournemouth University] => 1
            [Cottage Labs] => 1
            [University Of Preston] => 1
            [Southampton University] => 1
            [University Of Manchester] => 1
            [Happyninjas] => 1
            [Queen Mary University Of London] => 2
            [University Of Stirling] => 2
            [University Of East Anglia] => 2
            [The Robert Gordon University] => 2
            [University Of St Andrews] => 2
            [Newcastle University] => 2
            [Heriot-Watt University] => 2
            [University Of Oxford] => 2
            [UKOLN] => 2
            [University Of Portsmouth] => 3
            [University Of Ulster] => 3
            [University Of Hull] => 4
            [University Of West London] => 4
            [Middlesex University] => 4
            [University Of York] => 5
            [University Of Edinburgh] => 6
            [Anglia Ruskin University] => 6
            [University Of Bath] => 8
            [Keele University] => 10
            [University Of Liverpool] => 10
            [University Of Central Lancashire] => 15
            [Sheffield Hallam University] => 15
            [University Of Southampton] => 15
            [University Of Lincoln] => 31
        )

    [unconfirmed] => 26
    [vegetarian] => 18
    [cars] => 17
)

Confirmed speakers at DevXS

Joss Winn Speakers , , , ,

You’ll have seen the schedule that we have for DevXS. Here’s some information about the speakers we have confirmed so far.

Hmm, I wonder who wants to do the midnight Keynote…..?