Kick-off meeting: 22nd Jan 2007

Colin and I attended the kick-off meeting for the current round of toolkits and demonstrators in JISCs new location in London (just off the Strand), which was held on Monday 22nd January 2007.

I think all in all we both found it a pretty interesting exercise. I was involved with last year's round through the TReCX project. This kick-off meeting differed in several ways to the previous one I had been to. One way, was the lively presentation given by Andrew Charlesworth on the legal issues concerning software projects in the HE/FE sector. The other, was in the way that this year we have been put into peer-pairs from the start (pairing up with an associated project in which we have something(s) in common, such as project aims, choice of technologies, etc). Last year, we formed peer pairs about halfway through. The way in which we did this was fun too, via speed-dating. We had 4 "rounds" each of 5 minutes in length, whereby each of the projects gave a (very) short presentation on what their project was about to the other 3 projects sat round the table. After the last round, we then had to write down on paper up to 6 projects (in order) with whom we would like to pair and the reasons why. (At the time of writing, we have yet to be informed who we are actually going to be paired with - that's down to the organizers!).

(On the train on the way there I was quite chuffed to have been able to have done a spot of online banking on my relatively old Nokia 7210, via the rather cunning Java-based Opera Mini web-browser!).