Linking Feral Event Data: IWMW 2009 Case Study

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Linking Feral Event Data: The IWMW 2009 Case StudyA Slidecast for the “Linking Feral (Uncontrolled) Data” workshop at DC09

Brian KellyUKOLNUniversity of BathBathUK

UKOLN is supported by:This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

Resources bookmarked using ‘dc-2009' tag Resources bookmarked using ‘dc-2009' tag

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/online/dc09/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/online/dc09/

Email:[email protected]

Twitter:http://twitter.com/briankelly/

Blog:http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/


www.ukoln.ac.uk

2

IWMW 2009

IWMW 2009:• UKOLN’s annual

Institutional Web Management Workshop

• Set up in 1997 & held annually since

• Aimed at members of UK HE’s institutional Web Management community

• For practitioners, not researchers

• 200 participants (& ~60 watching video)


www.ukoln.ac.uk

3

An Amplified EventRecent IWMW events have been ‘amplified’. Technologies:

• Live video stream of plenary speaker

• Event blog• Video interviews• Official live blogger• Extensive use of

TwitterBest Practices

• AUP • Quiet zone (no

photos, …)• Agreement from

speakers


www.ukoln.ac.uk

4

The Live Blogging

Dedicated Twitter accounts:• iwmw: event administration (“anyone found a

phone”)• iwmwlive: live blogging of plenary talks

Approaches:• Dedicated official blogger

(posted at iwmwlive, summaries on blog & video interviews)

• Tag for event, based on approaches used in previous years and for use in other services (e.g. Flickr): iwmw2009


www.ukoln.ac.uk

5

The Approaches (1)

Service integration:

• Events tweets pulled into Coveritlive

• (Potentially) allowed people without Twitter accounts to engage in discussions

• Provided another integration environment e.g. <http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2009/video/>

• Provides additional RSS feed

• Avoids “Twitter rot”


www.ukoln.ac.uk

6

The Approaches (2)

Remote audience as first class participants:

• Slides on Slideshare• Engagement over Twitter

(“can’t hear”)

Note accessibility benefits (remote audience as visually & audio-impaired)

Note accessibility benefits (remote audience as visually & audio-impaired)


www.ukoln.ac.uk

7

The Approaches (2)

Remote audience as first class participants:

• Slides on Slideshare• Engagement over Twitter

(“can’t hear”)

• Questions posed on Twitter:


www.ukoln.ac.uk

8

The Approaches (3a)

Tagging:• #iwmw2009 and (optional)

#Pn for plenary talks• Unique (?) tags for 2 talks

(#iwmwp4 and #iwmwp6)

Use of Twitter at IWMW 2009If you wish to refer to a specific plenary talk or workshop session, we have defined a hashtag for each of the plenary talks (#p1 to #p9) and workshop session (#a1 to #a9, #b1 to #b4 and #c1 to #c5).

Use of Twitter at IWMW 2009If you wish to refer to a specific plenary talk or workshop session, we have defined a hashtag for each of the plenary talks (#p1 to #p9) and workshop session (#a1 to #a9, #b1 to #b4 and #c1 to #c5).


www.ukoln.ac.uk

9

The Approaches (3b)

What have the audience taken from the plenary talks?

iwmwlive Twitter account asked standard question at end of plenary talks:

“What is the main thing you will take away from Derek's talk? #iwmw2009 #p1”

• What do I take from #iwmw2009 #p1? No one's got a clue so keep your fingers crossed!

• Take-away: The Googleisation of the student mentality #p1 #iwmw2009

• #iwmw2009 #p1 Most important thing taken away - reinforcing that modern comms are change and *not* dumbing down

• #iwmw2009 #p1 I'll take away a brilliant metaphor for how we are reacting to the dark conditions rather than making sure we read the signs

• #iwmw2009 #p1 Going to grapple with how to find our digital content & what to do with it.


• #iwmw2009 #p1 "Images are the new words"


• Take-away: The Googleisation of the student mentality #p1 #iwmw2009

• #iwmw2009 #p1 Most important thing taken away - reinforcing that modern comms are change and *not* dumbing down

• #iwmw2009 #p1 I'll take away a brilliant metaphor for how we are reacting to the dark conditions rather than making sure we read the signs

• #iwmw2009 #p1 Going to grapple with how to find our digital content & what to do with it.


• #iwmw2009 #p1 "Images are the new words"


www.ukoln.ac.uk

10

The Approaches (4)

Engaging With Audience’s Thoughts

• Live speaker interaction with ‘Twitter wall’ for #P4 on “What is the Web?” (& event summary: #P9)

• #iwmwp4 tag used to avoid confusion with other sessions

• James will respond to things that are raised on the #iwmwp4 tag. Reporting of his talk will continue on #iwmw2009 #p4 as with other talks

• Social web is important because it is about connecting people, other people and content. Not the be all and end all but still key #iwmwp4

• #iwmwp4 think Paul trying to say tht courses are products nd thy could (in a brave world) be rated by students (the descriptor would remain)

• what is the web? - the web is what you access thru your web browser - but who cares and why does it help to ask the question? #iwmwp4

• I think nomenclature is the least of our challenges. Should move on from discussing the labels, and get to the meat! #iwmwp4

• do shoe makers ask "what is a shoe?" - #cobblers #iwmwp4


www.ukoln.ac.uk

11

Recording The Evidence (1)

Twapperkeeper:• Hashtag

specified prior to event

• Tool provides HTML and RSS views of tweets (1,657 items)


www.ukoln.ac.uk

12


WTHashtag:• Hashtag specified prior to event

• Screenshot taken shortly after event

• Blog post on statistics published shortly after event

• Data no longer available

1,530 tweets170 contributors218.6 tweets per day42.5% come from “The Top 10″4.4% are retweets20.0% are mentions34.5% have multiple hashtags

1,530 tweets170 contributors218.6 tweets per day42.5% come from “The Top 10″4.4% are retweets20.0% are mentions34.5% have multiple hashtags


www.ukoln.ac.uk

13


Backupmytweets:• Used for my Twitter

accounts (iwmwlive & briankelly) rather than of hashtags

• Tool provides HTML, JSON & RSS views of tweets (280 items)

• Data migrated to managed area


www.ukoln.ac.uk

14


Twitterdoc:• PDF of up to 500 tweets

for event• File copied to managed

area


www.ukoln.ac.uk

15


The Archivist:• Desktop client

used to search for #iwmw2009 hashtag shortly after event

• Tool provides XML and CSV views of tweets (1,024 items)

• Live data no longer available


www.ukoln.ac.uk

16

Background:• Tweets for plenary talks

(#iwmw2009 #Pn) copied to UKOLN Web site

• Links for searches for 19 parallel sessions (#iwmw2009 and #a0-9, #b1-b9 or #c1-c5)

• Data no longer available• “current date limit on

[Twitter] search index is "around 1.5 weeks but is dynamic and subject to shrink…” Techcrunch, 11 Aug 2009

Providing Access to Evidence


www.ukoln.ac.uk

17

Reserving The Evidence

Data (and image) of (transient) Twitter records migrated to UKOLN Web site few days after event.Blog posts provides summaries.

Data (and image) of (transient) Twitter records migrated to UKOLN Web site few days after event.Blog posts provides summaries.

http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2009/twitter/http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2009/twitter/


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Why Are We Doing This?Why do we wish to reuse the Twitter posts?

• To allow speakers / facilitators to see comments after the session

• To allow participants to reflect on discussions• Potentially to enhance accessibility of videos

(use iwmwlive record as caption)• As a testbed for research (e.g. exploring how

Twitter is used and how it develops)• To advise others who use Twitter in various

ways (e.g. as a formal teaching aid)

18


www.ukoln.ac.uk

19

The Concerns

Don’t Do It! (keep Twitter as intended)• It’s over-complex• It’s killing the spontaneity of the back channel• I’ll be forced to self-censor


www.ukoln.ac.uk

20

The Concerns


Don’t Do It! (keep events as intended)• It’s noisy, distracting and rude• Speakers won’t be open and honest• It’s only for the geeky elite!


www.ukoln.ac.uk

21

The Concerns


Don’t Do It! (keep events as intended)• It’s noisy, distracting and rude• Speakers won’t be open and honest• It’s only for the geeky elite!

Do It (but don’t use Twitter)• Use an open source solution• Use a distributed solution• Use a richer solution (rooms, access

management, …)


www.ukoln.ac.uk

22

Additional Complexities

Who owns the data? • Author of tweets according to Twitter T&Cs

The tweets have escaped! Tweets replicated in:

• Misc. search engines; • Twitter harvesting tools e.g. The Archivist• Integration environments e.g. Coveritlive• Blogs; Web pages; etc.• Local file store• …


www.ukoln.ac.uk

23

Issues

Should we be harvesting feral event data?

Should we regard (public) tweets as fair game?

Is Twitter good enough?

How do we address the risks of:• Changes in T&C (and trust) for commercial

services (e.g. Twitter; FriendFeed/Facebook, …)• Reliance on (unproven?) alternatives• Migrating a community to a new environment• Missing the ‘point’ of and differences between the

tools (Twitter & FriendFeed are different – see Caemon Neylon’s post )


www.ukoln.ac.uk

24

Questions?

Note that comments, questions, etc. on issues raised are invited on the UK Web Focus blog: <http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/>

Note that comments, questions, etc. on issues raised are invited on the UK Web Focus blog: <http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/>


www.ukoln.ac.uk

25

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/

Linking Feral Event Data: IWMW 2009 Case Study

Education

Transcript of Linking Feral Event Data: IWMW 2009 Case Study