Digital Economy Network presentation

Editor's Notes

1. Last year at this meeting I presented a project idea I had worked up with several colleagues at Lancaster, that would involve 10 PhD students from across the Digital Economy Network CDTs to Tiree, a small island in the Inner Hebrides for just under a week.   Our plan had two parts 1. To do something that explored how people in remote places engage with technology and how we might talk about this in relation to their values and those of the technologies they do or don’t use 2. To establish a temporary research community that developed researcher’s skills in working on cross-disciplinary research projects and to allow us some slow time out to reflect on our usual hyper-connected lives in a less connected environment. The Call: - Putting the call together was tricky. Tiree is a remote place, it doesn’t take all that long to get there, a 4 four ferry crossing from Oban or an hour’s flight from Glasgow, but once you are there you hardly have a phone connection- if you stand on your tip-toes on the cliffs at the end of the island facing Coll, the next island along that has a 4G mast, you may get a whisper of occasional 3G. The broadband connections are flaky at best, with fibre set to reach the island soon, but having to use the existing, rather shaky, infrastructure. So it was important that participants were able to come and be in a remote place, to really be there for a week and to take part in a project that would remain quite vague until we arrived. - The call set out the project aims and we invited people to apply who shared our values and we managed to attract nine incredibly interesting, passionate and enthusiastic people. -The quotes of the following slides were taken either from the report I compiled shorty after we returned home, or the three month reflection document I am just putting together.
2. There are so many brilliant quotes produced by everyone over the course of our reflections, so it has been really hard to choose only a few words from each person. They were: Myself. My main concern in taking 10 people to Tiree was that someone might enjoy the solitude a little too much and decide not to return home. Tiree did have one hermit once. Or that someone might get lost, which is a little tricky on Tiree.
3. Delvin, from Open Lab At Newcastle University “The project had the right balance between meticulous planning and creativity gone wild
4. Justin from Highwire at Lancaster We were able to overcome the typical group processes... To undertake a powerful joint process of discovery
5. Judit, from Horizon at Nottingham University Tiree helped me imagine and motivated me to think about ways in which my research can help me engage with on-going societal challenges and different communities
6. Joe, from Highwire. In a phone box on Tiree: Me: Hello Caller: Hi, can you tell me about the cat internet? Me: well, I know that the cats on Tiree only get 2G at one end of the island
7. Vanessa, from Highwire I think I grew a bit as a person while I was on Tiree
8. Peter, Horizon The experience demonstrated how research should and can be conducted with people in places, distant from universities, publications and academia
9. Hanne, Horizon Knowing that I am not entirely alone with my PhD related struggles was greatly comforting for me.
10. Johanna from Web Science at Southampton Tiree made me more willing to participate in experiences that were not directly related to my PhD but developed me as a fledgling researcher
11. Matt, from Horizon It was infectious to see the enthusiasm that people brought when allowed moderately structured freedom to try something new
12. One of reasons for travelling to Tiree when we did was to take part in the Tiree Techwave, held in March and October each year. It was started by Professor Alan Dix, who is widely known and respected in the HCI community, and Graham Dean, who is part of Highwire at Lancaster During the reflection session on the final day I asked the question “what would you like to take back with you from Tiree” and many people answered “Alan Dix”. We were lucky as researchers, and students, to be able to spend quality time with Alan, who has vast experience in research, but also supervising PhDs and acting as internal and external examiner, so we also drew on his experiences and gained valuable insights into what we should, and in particular, what we shouldn’t, include in our dissertations and in the viva itself. For me personally I think this was one of the highlights and certainly something that will remain with me, partly due to the fact that it involved a very lengthy anecdote, part of which involved Alan lying on the floor for quite some time pretending to be dead.    But collectively, I think the whole group agreed that spending time with Alan, who is one of those quite rare professors who is incredibly generous with his time and willing to impart advice, but who is also still incredibly passionate about this subject, and many others besides. The Tiree Techwave is pretty much, Alan. When we came back I asked Alan to reflect on the project and he said the following: “Visiting researchers went away with an appreciation of the practical and social realities of life in a remote community, both its joys and also its hardships. I hope this is valuable to them, but moreover, if islands and remote mainland communities are to survive, the digital economy must be a central part of that sustainable future.” “There is an inestimable value in the intangible that projects like this provide to the morale of a community, when conducted sensitively and appropriately.”
13. Before we went, Justin and I had conversations with Alan about projects that might be suitable for us to work on while there. He mentioned that the island council had recently purchased the ten old BT telephone boxes and were thinking of future uses, which we immediately saw as a project that had great potential. This was also a way of including and working with a group of Product Design undergraduates from Cardiff Met University who were attending the Techwave. Cardiff attend every event and the teaching staff were keen to introduce their students to post-graduate research and the concept of cross-disciplinary working. So the phone boxes were to be the focus of one project, with a vague idea that we would think about future uses, some of which might involve technology, some of which might not. The details were left until we arrived on the island. I’ll come onto that project more in the next slide. Also prior to travelling to Tiree, Johanna from Southampton and myself had been in conversation about our research in general, in that both of us are exploring open data and how it is currently used, its situatedness in cities and how data literacy might be developed. We were keen to collaborate but it was only when we arrived in Tiree that the idea of the data walk emerged. This is a method that is being explored by Alison Powell at LSE, but also similar to a concept I am developing in my own research, that thinks about rural or remote areas and data, rather than cities.    Having the opportunity to develop what is essentially ad-hoc research is rare, but that was one of the fundamental aims of the project, of establishing our temporary research community.   In doing so we were able to respond to the place and its people, although limited in what we might achieve by time and resources. We weren’t able to visit Tiree before the project started, so didn’t get to know the place and the islanders until we arrived. That was certainly a limitation, but one we expected and have reflected upon since we returned. A walk felt like an ideal activity, partly to get to know the island more but also because the weather was stunning. Tiree gets the most hours of sunshine per year in the UK, but it also gets a lot of wind and sideways rain, so it felt appropriate that we get outside and make the most of the sunshine. We sent groups off at intervals, with instructions to walk for 45 minutes and then return, but all groups got completely distracted by Alan and ended up on the beach, I think we were all around an hour late back. Before people set off we asked them to consider what data was, what it means in a remote place like Tiree, what data they could get hold of, what data they couldn’t and what data would be useful for them to have. Our questions explored what data really means in a remote place like Tiree, and underpins the work Johanna and I are both doing that seeks to challenge dominant rhetorics of open data and it use, for example in hackathons or within smart cities. We asked people to record their thoughts in any way they liked, through drawings, notes, photographs or videos. We then gathered back at the rural centre and discussed our thoughts and findings. One important theme concerned the scarcity of data – if there is no mobile signal, how might data be collected and then re-used, or in a place like Tiree how much data is collected about the environment or the people who live there and how is that re-used. It was a really interesting way of exploring a new methodology, particularly for Johanna who had started off doing an entirely management based PhD but has now adapted her methods to take in alternative approaches. We are working together on several papers and have submitted an abstract to the data publics conference at Lancaster in March.
14. On the day after the data walk, Vanessa put together an activity involving the phone boxes. Inspired by the activity of freefall writing, where you just write, we all set off to spend an hour with a phone box. Our task was to just spend an hour in or near the box, thinking about what it meant to be a phone box on Tiree, or how it might be used in the future and to create our own individual response to the box and its location. It was an activity completely embraced by every member of the group, with responses including a poem, a haiku, mock-ups of potential uses, and reflections both written and drawn. Joe spent an hour talking to people, he had tweeted the number of the phone box and told people to call…so they did. Hence the comment about the cat internet. While we did that the undergraduate Product Design students from Cardiff set off to look at the boxes and think about future uses. Surprisingly, the digital economy PhD students mostly came up with analogue uses, while the design students, who we expected to make models and mock-ups came up largely with digital solutions for the boxes. The activity enabled us to spend a whole hour in one place, considering and getting to know the phone box. My phone box was in a spectacular location in a bay, and had been used as a nest by a bird. There are no trees on Tiree, but there is a mythical wood, so birds have to find alternative places to nest. I thought about turning the phone boxes into mini nature reserves and wrote a poem. On the final day we presented our ideas to islanders, there was a fantastic turn out and a really great discussion about the future of the boxes, a growing movement over here as well as on Tiree. In particular Rhoda, who oversaw the purchase of the boxes has been really keen to develop our ideas further, the impact of which formed the basis for a Telling Tales of Engagement application between all of the DEN CDTs involved in this project. The activity pushed some of the group in terms of alternative research methodologies, but as we all trusted one another there was a real openness within the group so we managed to work through it and everyone embraced the activity. It was also great that one of the islanders went and spent an hour with a phone box themselves and after we returned, Vanessa had a response to the message she had left in one of the boxes.
15. As the quotes on the previous slides suggest, everyone had a unique experience on Tiree and we all came away with different things. Themes that came out of the small amount of analysis I have done after the project relate to trust, and in turn, openness. That is, if members of the group feel they are trusted and trust others, they are more likely to be open and explore research methods they haven’t tried before. At one point when we were discussing the phone box freefall there was some tension between research approaches, but these were swiftly ironed out by talking through the benefits of trying a new approach. That participant fully embraced spending an hour with their phone box and has really opened up to considering alternative research approaches. What made us able to trust each other? No idea. We seemed to get exactly the right balance of personalities. Enough people to make things happen, enough to stand back and offer advice and support, and enough to offer creative approaches and somehow it just worked. We learned that it is possible to create just enough scaffolding that enables creativity to emerge and for something of value to be created. I must admit, it was quite scary having only a vague plan of what we might do when we flew in to Tiree. I was also concerned about whether the group would gel or not, but we did, and the group were all amazing. We wanted to create enough space for people who don’t always want to be surrounded by others, but in the end we all spent a lot of time together, through choice not coercion. We left the itinerary relatively free, apart from the Data Walk, the Phone box Freefall, the evening social events and the final reflection and presentation sessions. But stuff happened during those gaps, in fact the walks to the magical ringing stone, or getting stuck for what seemed like hours behind some cows (Tiree has single track roads) were the times when ‘stuff’ also happened. It is those spaces inbetween that conferences and workshops don’t afford, with what feels like pressure to socialise or network. A comment that came from many participants was that they hardly talked in depth about their PhDs with other group members, but in turn their research has been strengthened, whether that was through having some downtime, or through talking about other stuff, the stuff we often don’t feel we have time or opportunity to talk through with others, things that don’t quite make sense to us. Nothing was really off-limits on Tiree. We all acknowledged we share research approaches and we all had an interest in some aspect of digital technology and place in some way. Our similarities outweighed our differences, and when those differences arose we knew we could be open about them and talk them through with others. Above all though, I think we all learned that Tiree is a unique and special place. Part of that is down to Alan and the other islanders, and partly down to the rugged and remote beauty of the island. You have no other choice than engage with the place, to move around it in a particular way and be in it in a particular way. From my personal experience of being involved in organising this project I would say think big, think beyond workshops and conferences. While we all need workshops and conferences and we need experience of organising and attending them, projects such as this give you something else to experience, something that hopefully sticks out when you look back at your time as a PhD student. Finally, we would all like to thank Felicia for being so crucial to the organisation of the project and to the Digital Economy Network for funding it and enabling us to have such a unique experience that has certainly enriched our PhD experiences.