The Australian Research Council (ARC) has asked universities to provide information about their researchers’ publication records, so that it can test a suite of performance indicators. The aim, apparently, is to propose that the new performance indicators form part of the Commonwealth Government’s proposed Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) framework.
Peter Merholz observes that conferences are increasingly popular as revenue-earners for design consultancy and media companies. The TED Talks have set a new standard for such events, both in the immediate face-to-face experience they offer and in the way they make content freely available online after the event. On 22 November 2008 the University of British Columbia will hold its first Terry Talks event, modelled on TED but with students as the speakers.
Yale University Press has published a commentable version of The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan L Zittrain. The online version of the book caught my attention for two reasons:
- The web site organises comments by linking them to the relevant paragraph in the book’s text; the ‘comments box’ moves down the page as you scroll through the book’s text, keeping pace as you read and enabling you to flip easily between the original text and the comments. I saw a prototype of a similar comments system earlier this year: the Zittrain book is the first time I’ve seen it ‘in production’ on a professional publisher’s web site.
- The ability to relate a comment to a specific paragraph could be remarkably valuable for the author, for without the Internet it can be hard to get such detailed feedback on a draft manuscript.
The UK government decided a couple of years ago to streamline its hundreds of departmental web sites. The aim was to create just three sites that would deliver the full range of egovernment services and information in a user-friendly, accessible manner. If Guardian columnist Michael Cross’s experience is typical, it seems the strategy is successful.
A consultant’s case study about the Sabre airline reservations company’s intranet implies that it’s the semi-casual ‘social networking’ vibe that makes the intranet so successful as a knowledge-sharing forum. While agreeing that the vibe is important, I’d wager it’s actually the ‘relevance engine’ that they can’t do without. No matter how pretty or user-friendly your web interface, if staff can’t find what they’re looking for (with a minimum of fuss) then they’ll abandon the intranet and find another workaround.
