Random Hacks of Kindness Event: 1st – 2nd December at University of Southampton #rhoksoton
November 26, 2012
by Lisa Harris
Dirk Gorissen from Engineering is running this weekend’s Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) event in the University of Southampton Mountbatten Building (53). It takes place in the Common Room on Level 3.
A RHoK (founded by Google, Microsoft, Nasa, and others) is all about bringing domain experts, programmers, and makers together for a weekend in order to solve problems related to humanity and international development.The University of Southampton will be one of the satellite cities as part of the global Random Hacks of Kindness Event
RHoK are an awesome way to learn something new, test your skills, meet new people, and do something for the good of the world. For more details about how they work see this post.
The event will be supported by the Student Digital Champions led by Ivan Melendez.
Registration Deadline:
Friday, November 30. Get your tickets via Eventbrite
Reception: Friday, November 30, 2012 6pm in the Trago Lounge, 190-192 Portswood Road, Southampton. â
You can read Dirk’s report of the previous RHoK event here
Schedule:
Saturday, December 1st
9:00am – Welcome & problem statement presentations
10am – Form groups and hackathon begins
12:00 – Lunch
Presentation by Mark Lunney from the London Google Developer Group
Presentation by Jack Townsend form CleanWebUK
Presentation by Justing MacKinnon, founder of crisismappersUK
5:30pm – Team status reports
6pm – Pizza
Hackathon continues until 11pm
Sunday, December 2nd
8am – Doors open
9am – Breakfast
10am – Team status report
12pm – Pizza
3:00pm – Hackathon ends & judging begins
5:00pm – Judging completed & prizes awarded.
Sponsors:
- Enterprise @ Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton and Microsoft
- Microsoft Gadgeteer
- ATASS
- Dominos Pizza, Avenue Branch, Southampton
Hacking the Notion of Cyber Security
by Jussi Parikka
Cyber security might have become a widespread term in public debate, government security arrangements as well as funding bodies’ strategical directions but it has longer historical and cultural roots.
The recent organisation of security and defence around the at times ephemeral seeming threats of “the cyber” is pitched as a necessary move to combat the security issues from other national bodies, and importantly from a range of non-governmental threats. Indeed, in the post 9/11 world, threats are often intentionally pitched as such ephemeral forces that cannot be identified by a clear name; from criminal organisations after monetary profit to organised attempts to inflict damage on national and corporate infrastructures to the at times puzzling inclusion of network politics and activists as cyber threats, cyber security seems to be a field that is happy to include a lot. Of course, as security companies like F-Secure know well, there is a lot happening on the dark side of network culture (as we slightly poetically named it in our 2009 volume The Spam Book ). Some of the most famous cases have indeed been attacks against for instance Iranian nuclear plants, like the infamous Stuxnet worm. Since then, speculations concerning Israel and US involvement have been voiced — also referring to the “Operation Olympic Games”.
Curriculum Innovation, Workshops and the #Digichamps
November 16, 2012
by Lisa Harris
We are running a number of informal workshops as preparation for our new Living and Working on the Web Curriculum Innovation module which starts in February. Each workshop represents a key chunk of module material and the content and exercises are being developed and tested in these workshops with the direct support of the Student Digital Champions (#Digichamps)
Read the rest of this entry →
Invitation for DE members to attend Industry Week
November 16, 2012
by Lisa Harris
The Web Science Doctoral Training Centre has put together a programme of activities in collaboration with the business community that will provide students with some incredible opportunities for their current research training and future career:
(1)Â Â Â Industry Week 3-7 December 2012
A programme of lunchtime industry seminars in the week December 3rd-7th. Over the five days, fifteen companies from various sectors will be talking about the challenges that they see the web providing, giving students the opportunity to seek out industry-relevant research questions.
Digital Economy members may be particularly interested in attending the lunch on Wednesday 5th in Building 58/1007 from 12 until 2pm in which Julius Duncan, the Marketing Director of Headstream and Chair of the Creative Digifest Panel, will be amongst the businesses discussing the challenges posed by recent web developments. Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of the Centre of Excellence in CyberSecurity Research will introduce the Centre and discuss its relevance to the business community. He will also introduce the cybersecurity research student projects underway at Southampton.
From 4pm on this same day (5th December) the Digital Economy USRG will be running an informal âSocial Media Tips and Tricksâ session open to staff, students and industry guests featuring a number of lightning talks about new tools and time saving practices.
(2)Â Â Â Industry Forum 7-8 February 2013
This year the plan is to build on the research questions uncovered at the Industry Week, in a two-day workshop that allows brainstorming of solutions and on-going research proposals in small groups.
(3)Â Â Â Directors’ Dinner 18 April 2013
Business Solent will be inviting 40 of their regional business network’s company directors to meet the DTC students over dinner and to hear brief presentations about the outcomes from the Industry Week and Forum. This will then lead into a future round of invitations for industry seminars and research workshops, supported by Business Solent.
The aim of these events is to give students experience of turning their increasing research maturity into business leadership. This applies at whatever stage they are at in the programme, as they will be working together as a cohort, and supporting each other in teams.
If you would like to attend any of these events, please fill out THIS DOODLE POLL to confirm your attendance.
Cybersecurity Research Students and the Digital Economy
by Graeme Earl
At the last DE lunch on 29 October 2012 Maire Evans, Dominic Hobson and Mu Yang spoke about their respective research activities in the area of Cybersecurity, co-ordinated via the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cybersecurity Research. I thought that this offered a perfect example of multidisciplinary research in the Digital Economy and so I asked them to provide some collective thoughts on their research and working.
Mu Yang is a fourth year Ph.D. student from Web and Internet Science research group in ECS. Her research was partially funded by an ECS scholarship. Mu Yang has been investigating the security, privacy properties in anonymity networks. In particular, she has looked at various attacks which compromise the security of anonymity networks, modelled these attacks analysing the security loss, developed a game-theoretic model for studying usersâ cooperation and selfish behaviours, and proposed a mechanism encouraging exit traffic in Tor under mechanism design theory.
Dominic Hobson just started the PhD phase of a 4 year integrated PhD (1 + 3) in Web Science having come fresh from an undergraduate degree in Computing Science. His funding was provided through the Web Science DTC which is in turn funded by the RCUK Digital Economy Theme. At the moment, his research is focused on how people pay for illegal things online. He is particularly interested in what, at the moment, seems to be a common payment method called Bitcoin which has many features that make life extremely challenging for authorities but at the same time has many legitimate uses. This is a technically and socially fascinating system.
Maire Evans has also just started the PhD phase of the iPhD, along with Dominic. Maire has a first degree in Philosophy and Linguistics and a taught conversion MSc in Computer Science. She has since worked in corporate reporting, information and knowledge management, communications and editorial, as well as having taught for a brief period. Her research centres around Crime and Cybercrime, with a focus on Open Crime Data and Social Machines.
Live webcasts from the Internet Governance Forum
November 1, 2012
by Lisa Harris
Join live webcasts and discussions from the Internet Governance Forum in Baku.
Thanks to everyone who voted for Internet Governance Forum sessions we should take part in as part of the Southampton Remote Hub. We’ll be following sessions on: cybercrime and rule of law; information and ethics; power, politics and internet filtering; social media and young people’s freedom of expression; open knowledge in developing countries; and a session giving an overview of global Internet infrastructures. You can drop in for any of these sessions.
We will also have a 30 minute introduction to the Internet Governance Forum on Monday 5th November at 10am, where Tim who has been at the last three IGF meetings will give a bit of background to what it is, what to expect, and how we’ll be taking part via Remote Participation.
More details on sessions in the attached, and in the online schedule:
Internet Governance Forum â Southampton Remote Hub
5th â 8th November 2012 â Access Grid Room â Building 32
Join us at a Remote Hub, joining selected sessions from the Internet Governance Forum, taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan â and join the online conversation around key Internet issues.
The 7th Internet Governance Forum will bring together over a thousand participants from governments, industry and civil society to debate key Internet issues â from technical infrastructure to social impacts.
Weâre hosting a Remote Hub in Southampton, following the WebCast and connecting with other groups both in Baku, and following from around the world.
Drop-in for any session. Find out more at the short Introduction to Internet Governance and the IGF at 10am on Monday 5th
**Monday, November 5 (Access Grid Room, Level 3, Building 32)**
> 10:00am â 10.30am – An introduction to the Internet Governance Forum â find out about the IGF, remote participation, and sessions coming up
> 10:30am â 14.00pm – Council of Europe: Cybercrime and the Rule of Law
**Tuesday, November 6 (Access Grid Room, Level 3, Building 32)**
> 10:30am â 12.00pm – The influence of politics over Internet users’ access and diversity
> 12:30pm â 14.00pm – Information Ethics and Internet Governance – Identity, design and preservation
**Wednesday, November 7 (Access Grid Room, Level 3, Building 32)**
10:30am â 12.00pm – Measures and practices for promoting open knowledge environment (OKE) in developing countries
12:30pm â 14.00pm – Social media, young people and freedom of expression
**Thursday, November 8 (Coffee Room, Level 4, Building 32)**
10:30am â 12.00pm – Open Government Partnership and IGF: reciprocal learning
12:30pm â 14.00pm – Understanding Internet infrastructure: an overview of technology and terminology
Detailed schedule at: http://bit.ly/soigf
Silicon Valley comes to Southampton StartUp Weekend
October 31, 2012
by Lisa Harris
On 9th – 11th November Southampton University will be hosting a Silicon Valley comes to UK 2012 StartUp Weekend. It is a 56-hour, non-stop national competition where teams with individuals holding different skill sets compete to build a successful start-up business. The winner of last yearâs event was Alejandro Saucedo from Southampton, and he is organising this year’s event with Petar Trifonov and Mariam Elbadri, one of our Student Digital Champions. Click here to register and for further details.
What is amazing about this yearâs event is that Startup Weekend and Silicon Valley comes to the UK are teaming up to bring the craziness of the events simultaneously in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Cambridge. These events will bring together developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!
The teams will be free to work on any startup they want but they have to use Open Data and hence they will have access to UK government data sets from data.gov.uk to build startups. Participants will use this data to produce high impact applications/websites to unlock the power of public data to help ârewrite the rules of the new economyâ.
A few days after the event, the top startups will be invited to attend an exclusive awards ceremony in central London and will also get the chance to fight in the Global Startup Battle taking place between the 130 Startup Weekend events. Last year the awards were presented by David Cameron. Prizes included a fully paid trip to Silicon Valley, California, where winners had the amazing opportunity to visit companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, between many others.
Digital Literacy Workshops
October 27, 2012
by Lisa Harris
Staff and students are all welcome to attend our upcoming workshops. More information and booking forms can be found here
These events are organised by Fiona Harvey from the Centre for Innovation in Technology and Education (CITE) and myself. They are run as informal discussions (with cake!) and include a number of short presentations â some from our Student Digital Champions
The workshops are also forming a test bed of ideas and links for our Curriculum Innovation module â Living and Working on the Web â which starts in February 2013.
Summary of #WebScience activity at Digital Futures Conference #DE2012
October 25, 2012
by Lisa Harris
Web Science researchers from the University of Southampton were out in force at the Digital Futures Conference in Aberdeen this week. Nicole Beale has produced a great Storify which summarises the work they presented and the associated conference activities.
Read the rest of this entry →
The DE USRG at Digital Futures 2012 – DE All Hands
by Graeme Earl
The DE USRG will be represented by approximately 16 delegates at Digital Futures 2012Â next week, all of whom are involved in posters, papers, or demos. These include seven papers, demos or posters by students from the RCUK DE Web Science DTC.
Keynote
Delivering the Smart Grid: How digital technologies can change the way we generate, consume and think about energy – Alex Rogers
Posters
- Christopher Phethean, Thanassis Tiropanis and Lisa Harris. Measuring the Megaphone: How are Charities Using Social Media for Marketing?
- Philip Waddell, Clare Saunders and David Millard. Global Justice Networks and Web technologies in contentious politics
- Richard Fyson, Simon Coles and Leslie Carr. Dissemination through Disintermediation
Papers
- Nicole Beale and Gareth Beale. The Potential of Open Models for Public Archaeology
- Ramine Tinati, Leslie Carr, Susan Halford and Catherine Pope. Exploring the Impact of Adopting Open Data in the UK Government
Ramine has also been examining the twitter activity around #de2012. More details of the methods employed are introduced in the following eprint and also explained on the #SxSC2 social media post.
Identifying communicator roles in Twitter
Tinati, Ramine, Carr, Leslie, Hall, Wendy and Bentwood, Jonny (2012) Identifying communicator roles in Twitter. In, Mining Social Network Dynamics (MSND 2012), Lyon, FR, 16 – 20 Apr 2012. 8pp. (Submitted). […]
Video showing evolving #de2012 tweet network by @raminetinati.
- Michael Yip, Nigel Shadbolt, Thanassis Tiropanis and Craig Webber. The Digital Underground Economy: A Social Network Approach to Understanding Cybercrime
- Charlie Hargood, Danius Michaelides, Mark Weal, Leanne Morrison and Lucy Yardley. Digital Interventions on and off Mobile Devices
- Mike Fraser, Peter Bennett, Jarrod Knibbe, Rosamund Davies, Martyn Dade-Robertson and Graeme Earl. Making Time: Defining Rhythms in Archaeological Research
Demo
- Jack Townsend, Jason Noble, Gail Taylor and Nigel Shadbolt Conveying Sustainability Challenges using Open Data
Other Web Science DTC students in attendance
You can follow the @sotonDE people attending Digital Futures 2012 via our DigitalFutures list.