John Krug - tech writer, cycling

EPUG-UKI Alma Analytics Day 2015

Or, trying to organize a mini conference/workshop in a rush is not wise

09 Oct 2015

After getting back from holiday on 21st September, some mild panic ensued. The second AAD (Alma Analytics Day) under the auspices of EPUG-UKI was due in 12 working days, with two of those being the actual EPUG-UKI AGM and another day in York. Nothing had taken place beforehand due to heavy involvement in a JISC Research data spring project called DMAOnline and attendance at the IGeLU15 conference.

It was time to get moving. An event had been set up on Eventbrite from 18 August, so I knew plenty of people were going to be attending. We had been hoping to use a room at the British Library, the same venue as for the EPUG-UKI AGM, but it turned out to not be possible so Andrea Stubbs at the BL arranged for us to use BMA House in Tavistock Square as a venue. That was confirmed on 18th August.

All that involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. So having a definite venue and knowing we were definitely going to be able to go ahead it was time to get some content arranged. However, being involved in DMAOnline and the new JISC competitive process and IGeLU15 meant I didn’t get started until after leave on 21st September. That was the big mistake, assuming I needed a venue before organizing the structure and content of the day, and then leaving the organization till so late.

What I had in mind was a number of joint session ‘lightning talks’ and parallel session workshops. Contributions for the ‘lightning talks’ were needed and presenters/leaders for the workshop sessions. I composed an email asking for contributions and volunteers and sent it to the attendees on 24th September. While people were thinking about what they could do there were no replies within a day or two which considering everybody was getting ready for the new academic year was, in retrospect, hardly surprising. Just because my role is largely free of the constraints of the academic year these days does not mean that everybody else would be able to devote much time to the rapidly coming AAD15.

A few people volunteered lightning talks and workshop sessions and I got on the phone a few times using gentle persuasion to flesh out the programme.

On the 5th October it was down to London for two days of the EPUG-UKI AGM. Amin Hussain from the University of Manchester and I were voted onto the committee to add some Alma and Analytics impetus, so I’m looking forward to being involved with the work that EPUG-UKI does. Which I’m hoping is going to involve more Analytics and Developer days as that’s my interest.

On the 7th I headed over to BMA House. Our event was taking place in the Prince’s Room, a large circular two storey high room in the centre of the building. It looked fabulous. Acoustics were bad though but things improved after bringing in a microphone. Unfortunately we could not get another room for the parallel sessions which caused a bit of a problem with noise interference between the two groups.

The Prince's Room at BMA House

Alan Oliver from Ex Libris started things off with a brief presentation about the big news from the day before, the proposed acquisition of Ex Libris by Proquest. With that out of the way it was onto Analytics with a couple of lightning talks. There were supposed to be 43 people attending of which for a variety of reasons only 38 actually made it. Which, I think, is a pretty good turnout.

In the end the day turned out mostly fine. Very tiring, for me personally, having hosted 3 of the workshop sessions. It’s great to be involved in building a bit of a community, sharing experiences, meeting new people and networking. The initial survey response shows that the day was well-received, perceived to be valuable and most would attend again and recommend similar events to colleagues.

Lessons

  1. Time keeping is difficult when distracted by providing content. Sorry. Could do with a better conference chair possibly with a rod of iron for ruling. It also meant I wasn’t paying much attention to the talks as I was busy juggling stuff in my head which was unfortunate.

  2. We need a machine set up for any presentations and demos and have the presentations ready to go. We spent too much time messing with laptops and cables. The machine needs a mouse for those, like me, who find mouse pads challenging.

  3. We need as many rooms as we have parallel sessions, each room should have a projector or ideally a high resolution big telly. Lots of people have Macs and iPads so something with an Apple TV for sharing the screen by Bluetooth would be great for the workshop sessions. If anybody knows of something that works with PC’s as well please let me know. Microphones are necessary as soon as you get more than a few people in a room. Many people are naturally quiet.

  4. More comprehensive agenda, available well in advance, like a proper conference. So people can choose sessions well in advance. Ideally if presenters know the audience capabilities and skills some customization can be done. This can be done in registration with Eventbrite with some appropriate questions.

  5. Catering, double and triple check the requirements and communications between ourselves and the venue for this. I heard some vegans missed out on lunch, for which I can only apologize and make sure it doesn’t happen next time.

  6. Many were new starters with Analytics and had come to learn. So the Analytics 101 session should be the first item of the day.

  7. Need a few more pictures of the day for this sort of post.

  8. Use a hashtag not shared with the 2015 American Academy of Dermatology conference.

Many thanks to all who attended and presented, making the day successful and in particular to Andrea Stubbs for helping with the organization. Thanks to EPUG-UKI for funding the event.

Now, for the next one!