So here’s my once a year post

Off to the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2009 (IWMW2009) at University of Essex in Colchester on Monday organised by UKOLN. Looking forward to seeing loads of friends again. IWMW2008 was excellent and a lot to live up to!! I took loads of photos of people and places last year and intend to again this year. Plus, I’m chairing plenary sessions P4 and P5 on day 2.

A return to blogging for IWMW2008

I've decided to have another go at blogging for the up-coming Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008 event in Aberdeen. This year's theme is 'The Great Debate' - the impact of Web 2.0 on UK Higher Education and their provision of web services and content. I'm looking forward to sessions on implementing content management systems and the use of social media in UK HE. I'm interested in finding out what other uni's are doing with technologies that enable easier and less formal communications between prospective students and staff, current students and staff and other stakeholders and members of university communities. Back to blogging constitutes a challenge for me - I'm not naturally given to write often, but having the IWMW event to focus on and being entrusted with some new services and strategies at University of Kent this year should keep me on the straight and narrow! Setting up the laptop for travel at the moment and bookmarking the web 2.0 sites I'll be using during the week - ning, twitter, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us and blogger plus the main IWMW 2008 site at UKOLN.

A high-intensity singing weekend

So - Thursday evening - Ange and I were two of the soloists in Mozart's Solemn Vespers with The Deal And Walmer Handelian Society with our friend Peter conducting - the concert went very well and the audience seemed to enjoy it. It was in St. Andrew's Church, Deal - a very high Anglican affair with incense, stations of the cross, statues of the Virgin Mary etc. Very beautiful inside though.

On Friday we sang in this term's Cantemus concert - a programme of a mass by Victoria (Missa surge propera), a short song by Janacek and rather too many madrigals - on reflection, I should have cut a couple that I had volunteered the small group to do. Again - the concert went well and we were in another beautiful church, this time St. Martin's, Canterbury - the oldest church in continous use in the UK and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site with Canterbury Cathedral and St. Augustine's Abbey.

Still in St.Martin's, this time as part of the Queen Bertha singers (she used the church in the 7th Century) I sang for a wedding on Saturday (Jesu, joy of man's desiring, Bach) and also a Eucharist on Sunday morning.

After that, I was very glad for coffee with the group in the Goods Shed and then lunch at home and asleep during some tennis and the US Grand Prix.

I almost didn't notice the football.

Sigh.

Here I am doing my demo

A live internet demonstration to my department that actually worked (mostly).

Photo for my profile

  

Preparing the laptop

So - here I am preparing the work Viglen Dossier to give my demo of Web 2.0 things tomorrow. My demo is to show my colleagues in Communications & Development at the University of Kent some new technologies and Web 2.0 products that might help us sell the University and might help us work better together. First thing to set up is favourites to the things I'm going to demo:

• Blogger
  http://www.blogger.com/
• My blog - Air de cour
  http://airdecour.blogspot.com/
• Wikipedia
  http://en.wikipedia.org
• Apple iTunes and Podcasts
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/
• Frappr
  http://www.frappr.com/c/user/createamap
• Flickr
  http://www.flickr.com/
• Del.icio.us
  http://del.icio.us/

I'm also going to use a few blogs of people I know and pop them in the nav bar of this page and use Wikipedia to explain blogging, podcasting, Web 2.0 and web feeds. IWMW 2006 tried to use loads of these things this year - I'll use that as an example of how these technologies could help us work together.

Showing people how to blog

I've foolishly offered to demonstrate blogging to my colleagues at work - the one main point I want to make is how easy it is to post without knowing any code or any specialist technology at all - fabulous. Will it catch on?

London by night (whilst on a boat and a bit drunk)

Here is my first post - a strange picture of the London Eye from a boat when a bit drunk - it was the night of my friend Sara's wedding reception on the Silver Dolphin from the Savoy Pier.