The Digital Economy USRG at the University of Southampton established an advisory group in 2011 to help embed digital economy activities across faculties. In 2012, they plan to hold monthly networking lunch meetings, collaborate on funding bids, host workshops and conferences on digital literacy and new economic models, and launch a new linked data website. Challenges include raising awareness of multidisciplinary work, building their internal profile, and defining their remit at the university. They currently fund four projects related to web science, health informatics, data analysis, and digital preservation.

1. Digital Economy USRG
Graeme Earl and Lisa Harris
December 2011
Graeme.earl@soton.ac.uk @graemeearl
l.j.harris@soton.ac.uk @lisaharris

2. #sotonde

3. Achievements 2011
• Established Advisory Group to help embed DE activities
across all Faculties
• 8 monthly lunch networking meetings were held with a
range guest presenters (15-50 attendees)
• PhD students sponsored to attend London
events, Lancaster Summer School and DE All Hands
Conference
• DE host workshops and network building – proposals
submitted 30/11 for Communities and Culture sub
theme (Richard Giordano) and New Economic Models
(Lisa Harris)
• DE represented at UK and European events including
UK Govt e-infrastructure and IEEE eScience 2011 in
Stockholm

4. Plans for 2012
• Monthly lunch meetings scheduled to July 2012
• Collaborative bid for ERC for Image Science/MediaArt History funding with
WSA (Jan)
• Multi-Disciplinary Research Week (Feb)
– Contributions from Soton DE Funded Projects
– Create Your Campus
– Data management workshop activity (Datapool project)
– Speed dating
• Host DE programme Board meeting
• Integrate with teaching developments: Digital Literacy and Digital Humanities
for CIP/Web Sci BSc
• Collaboration with Work Futures and Energy USRGs
• Careers/employability event with FBL Centre for Strategic Innovation (March)
• Creative Industries/Digital Media Barcamp with CSI (May)
• Southampton/Brighton co-location seminar series with CSI
• Launch new linked data DE website
• Collaboration with new Centre for Technology and Educational Innovation
(CETI) to organise Digital Literacy (June) and PLE (July) Conferences

5. Challenges/Opportunities
• Raise multi-disciplinary work higher on Research
agendas
• Concentrate on building DE profile internally
• Capitalise on synergies generated from integrating DE-
related activities across the University
• Branding issues DE/WS
• Defining scope of our remit in the University
• Coping with flaws in multidisciplinary agenda, eg peer
review, vocabulary, differences in disciplinary practice
• Encourage closer links with teaching and student
employability

6. Current DE Funded Projects
• Web Science DTC: Wendy Hall (wh@ecs.soton.ac.uk), Cathy
Pope (cjp@soton.ac.uk), Les Carr
(lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk), Nigel Shadbolt
(nrs@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
•
• UBHave: Lucy Yardley (l.yardley@soton.ac.uk), Mark Weal
(mjw@ecs.soton.ac.uk) and Peter Smith (pws@soton.ac.uk)
•
• Coarse geometry and cohomology of large data sets: Jacek
Brodzki (jb32@soton.ac.uk), Joerge Fliege
(J.Fliege@soton.ac.uk) and Les Carr (lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
•
• PATINA: Graeme Earl (graeme.earl@soton.ac.uk) and Luc
Moreau (l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk)