2012 Events

• 2 March 2012: Joint VIDaaS/DataFlow Workshop
  This workshop will feature demonstrations of various Cloud-based research data management tools being developed in Oxford. There will be break-out sessions in the afternoon for user-focused and more technically-oriented delegates.

2011 Events

• 4 November 2011: Workshop: Turning your web and software ideas into a business
  Do you have entrepreneurial ideas in the web/ software/social media/IT space? The Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Isis Innovation are running a joint workshop for students and researchers interested in developing their ideas into a business. (09:45 to 12:45 Said Business School)

• 21-27 May 2011: Artweeks at OUCS
  Artweeks is the UK's biggest open studio event with more than 500 free exhibitions across the whole of the county. Amazing art is available to view or buy in a huge variety of different locations. This year OUCS invites you to enjoy a range of beautiful and inspiring pieces within the department's converted Victorian houses. Thanks to our generous sponsors, Clipper and G and D's, we also have a selection of free gifts to give away each day! So join us for Artweeks at OUCS, it's free and everyone's invited.

• Ongoing throughout 2011: Courses in IT from the OUCS IT Learning Programme
  The IT Learning Programme offers courses in all aspects of computing to University staff and students. From office software to web design and numerical data management - you are sure to find a course that meets your needs.

2010 Events

• 22 July 2010: Data Management Training for the Humanities
  How will institutions meet the growing requirements for training in the management of research data within humanities research? Explore the answer to this issue and discover further research data management training at the 'SUDAMIH' workshop.

• 16 June 2010: Digital Curation 101 Lite: How to Manage Research Data
  (Please note - Registration is now closed as the event has reached capacity.)
  A workshop to help you manage data in your research more effectively
  On Wednesday 16th June 2010 the Digital Curation Centre and the UK Data Archive will be running a workshop at Oxford University Computing Services focused on tools and methods to manage research data more effectively. In addition, it is designed to help researchers and those who support researchers to develop sound data management and curation plans, especially in the light of the growing requirement by Research Councils and funding bodies for evidence of appropriate provision for data management and curation in grant funding applications.

  This event results from work undertaken by the Office of the Director of IT over the last two years, including the project: Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management. During the course of this project, interviews were conducted to explore current data management practices and to identify the key requirements that researchers would find useful in managing their data more effectively. The current SUDAMIH and EIDCSR projects, which are concerned with data management and data curation in two specific research areas, have developed directly from this work.

  The workshop on 16th June will provide an introduction to digital curation of research data, the range of activities and roles that should be considered when planning and implementing new projects, and an overview of tools that can assist with curation activities.

  Registration for this event is through the Digital Curation Centre's (DCC) website.

2009 Events

• 15 July 2009: ICT Forum Conference 2009, Said Business School,

• 22 May 2009: Groupware update for ITSS staff

• 28 April 2009: Web Publishing: Essentials of creating web pages
  If you are not sure about HTML and how to create web pages - join the OUCS web course for beginners and learn how to create simple web pages, how to organise content for readability and accessibility and how to add simple styles to improve the presentation of your web page.

• 6 April 2009: Find Funding with ResearchResearch.com
  Join the OUCS course to explore ResearchResearch.com and find out how it can help to find funding for your research.

• 26 January 2009: The Future of the Internet: What's keeping Cisco engineers awake at night
  The Office of the Director of IT and the ICT Forum invite all University IT support staff to register for this event at: ITSS Booking. The session which starts at 2 pm will be chaired by Cisco's Jane Butler, a Senior Director in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer. This Office leads Cisco's Global Consulting team which is comprised of senior technologists involved in all aspects of large public and private networks, in driving the direction of many future designs, architectures and the adoption of new technologies. The team also contribute to global policy and standards initiatives with bodies such as ITU, IEEE, IETF, ISOC. Jane is Chair of the Field Distinguished Engineers of Cisco, leading product innovation and pre-sales activities in the field. She is also deeply involved in the development of the Internet in countries where its use is just beginning: ensuring young network engineers are trained and new public IP networks are established. Jane is a Fellow of the IET, a Chartered Engineer in the Engineering Council and has an Honours Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

  The first talk will be given by Fred Baker, a Cisco Fellow and ex-IETF chair. Fred gives the following statement to describe his talk:
  "Research networks have been deploying IPv6 for several years, as have application platforms from Sun, Apple, the open source community, and now Microsoft. With the prospect of allocating the last IPv4 address looming in the near future, first and second tier ISPs are also making strong steps toward IPv6 deployment. But there are issues with that deployment, and goals that were set for the next generation internet protocol when it was being designed that have to be solved operationally as well as in the protocol; while there is active discussion in these areas, they cannot be described as "solved problems"; they are better described in terms of the collision between business and research. This talk will therefore address the coexistence and eventual transition from IPv4 to IPv6, and the issues related to multihoming and route scaling that will need to be solved in the process."

  The second talk will be given by Klaas Wierenga, a consulting engineer in the office of the CTO at Cisco. The talk focuses on mobility, security and identity management). Klass's talk will focus on the issues described in the following statement:
  "The Mobile Internet: Users have become increasingly mobile in the sense that they expect to be able to access their resources wherever and whenever they want to. In order to support, in a scalable way, the users that connect to the Internet using a wide variety of devices and often while on the move, a number of problems need to be addressed. Important issues are device independence, session continuity, identity, (federated) access control and privacy."

  The session will break for tea and coffee until 4.30 pm and then Jane will chair a Question and Answer session from 4.30 pm to 5.30 pm.
  This event is filling up fast so if you want to attend please book without delay!

2008 Events

• 15 October 2008: Groupware Project Launch and Signing of the 'Letter of Understanding' with Microsoft
  The Groupware Project was successfully launched on 15 October by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, and Gordon Frazer, MD Microsoft UK. More than 150 members of the University attended the event to find out how the Groupware service will enable our staff and students to communicate and collaborate using email, online calendars, shared documents and workspaces of all kinds.

• 11-13 September 2008: Oxford eResearch Conference 2008 Oxford University
  This multi-disciplinary, international conference on e-Research was organised by a consortium of research projects in association with the journal: Information Communication and Society (iCS). The conference sought to stimulate and inform multi-disciplinary research on the development, use and implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs), like the Internet, in shaping research across the disciplines. It brought together research from key e-Research projects from around the world examining the role of the Internet, Web and the Grid in research.
  Professor Paul Jeffreys, Director of IT, presented on the 'Century of Information Research Strategy', the slides are available in PDF (312 KB).

• 13 June 2008: ODIT Workshop: Research Data Management, Said Business School, Oxford University
  The workshop is organised under the umbrella of the Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management project. The overall aim of the workshop is to hear examples of good and interesting practice, from Oxford and elsewhere, with respect to the use of digital repository services at various points in the research lifecycle, and from the perspective of various discipline areas. The event is designed for Oxford researchers to learn about best practice in research data management across disciplines and to encourage discussion.

• 18-20 June 2008 NCeSS: 4th International Conference on e-Social Science Manchester Conference Centre
  The conference brought together leading international representatives of the social science, e Infrastructure/cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities in order to improve mutual awareness, understanding and instigate coordinated activities to accelerate research, development and deployment of powerful, new research methods and tools for the social sciences and beyond.

• 19 March 2008: Conference - "Towards Low Carbon ICT" Oxford University/JISC
  The University of Oxford hosted the 'Towards Low Carbon ICT' conference to stimulate discussion on the practical measures that can be taken to build ICT services that both reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and mitigate the effects that higher energy prices will have on our institutions.

• 17-18 March 2008: Conference - "From computers to ubiquitous computing, by 2020" The Royal Society.
  This event was led by Professor Marta Kwiatkowska (Oxford University), Professor Tom Rodden and Professor Vladimiro Sassone. The convergence of wireless networks with new sensing technologies and devices has started to embed computers into our everyday life. This meeting considered this shift to 'Ubiquitous Computing' as an interdisciplinary grand challenge affecting all aspects of computer science that has massive implications for how we might reason about, build and experience computer systems with considerable issues for society.

• 19 February 2008: ODIT Seminar - "Emerging future issues and technologies for IT Services" (PDF 32KB ) by Professor Mark J Clark.
  Professor Mark Clark presented a seminar at the University of Oxford on 19 February 2008 (from 10:00 to 12:00 in the ISIS Lecture Room, Oxford University Computing Services). This was truly a thought-provoking session which explored the future of IT for the University and for the world. Professor Clark's seminar included a break-out session within which the audience were asked to consider questions such as: "The date is 2015, what skills and management functions will be required by the University's IT Director?"