{"id":260,"date":"2009-05-14T21:07:18","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T21:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/05\/14\/on_the_rin\/"},"modified":"2009-05-14T21:07:18","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T21:07:18","slug":"on_the_rin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/05\/14\/on_the_rin\/","title":{"rendered":"On the RIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I found myself in front of about 40 incredibly bright people telling them that Social Media<\/a> is a waste of time.<\/p>\n

\nThe venue was a rather spiffy Hotel & spa (and damn if I didn’t forget to take my swimming trunks) in extensive, goose poo-covered grounds just outside Nantwich.<\/p>\n

\n\"Bluebells\"<\/a>
\nJust outside Nantwich<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThe event was the RIN<\/a> ‘s joint consultative groups away-day, attended by librarians and scientists and humanities-types (humanitarians? No, that can’t be right); an eclectic bunch of researchers and facilitators from many disparate disciplines but all intent on examining ways to improve the process of research in the UK\u2014to inform policy<\/a>, in fact\u2014and I was giving the keynote speech<\/a> [1], at the behest of the incomparable Branwen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nAs the taxi driver kept reminding me, there was just one road in and out: so I had to make it good.<\/p>\n

\nI saw people scribbling furiously, or determinedly tapping on their iPhones, as I threw up slide after slide (using the completely brilliant<\/em> Keynote Remote<\/a> application) saying that Web 2.0\/Social media is crap and no one should use it. Actually that’s not true\u2014I said why<\/em> researchers weren’t using it, but in a deliberately provocative way.<\/p>\n

\nAnd people got very het up and asked questions bordering on the furious. But it was a good night, and I did get to explain, before they tore me limb from limb, that I considered my brief was to be<\/em> deliberately provocative in order to promote discussion. Discussion was, indeed, provoked.<\/p>\n

\nThe next day we had a number of parallel sessions to decide on what the RIN should spend fifteen thousand quid. There were some fascinating proposals and I had the huge honour of sitting on a ‘Dragon’s Den’-type panel to judge the three proposals that made it through the first round of voting, together with Jenny<\/a> ‘researchers are too busy to faff around LOLing’ Rohn.<\/p>\n

\nThe winning proposal was to do with\u2014well, I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say at this juncture so I’ll just say it wasn’t Open Access<\/a> but a proposal to look into equal<\/em> access to published literature, for all universities and HEIs in the UK. And it was driven, quite forcefully I might add, by David Shotton<\/a>. So you know it’s going to be good.<\/p>\n

\nA good time was had by all, and I was completely stoked to be asked to join the Life Sciences & Medicine Consultative Group<\/a> as a result of scaring everyone.<\/p>\n

\nBut the really big news is that I was fortunate to be at Jenny’s table that evening for dinner, and that was a special place to be because she’s a complete whizz<\/em> at trivia: our table won the subsequent pub quiz, despite me not remembering ‘”Esk”:http:\/\/www.artmagick.com\/pictures\/picture.aspx?id=11765&name=on-the-esk-whitby’. But I did get ‘Survivor’, ‘Eucalyptus’ and ‘Harvey Keitel’, so I think I’m ahead on points.<\/p>\n

\n\"I<\/p>\n


\nfn1. And I was thrilled to discover that Slideshare<\/a> now accepts Keynote<\/a> presentations, as well as Pages documents. Oh yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I found myself in front of about 40 incredibly bright people telling them that Social Media is a waste of time. The venue was a rather spiffy Hotel & spa (and damn if I didn’t forget to take … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}