Case Study - 16 April, 2011

Our topic for this month's session is Data & Information Visualisation, an area of growing relevance and interest within business and academia.

Time: 10am-5pm
Location: K-E003
Map & Details

Daniel Archambault, a researcher at Clique, is our guest lecturer. Daniel's lecture will be a primer on data visualisation - starting with the basics of how the human mind absorbs visual information, moving through the different data visualisation models and concluding with real-world applications.

Clique is a joint academic and industry research initiative focused on the research challenges in the analysis, modelling, visualisation and understanding of social and biological networks.a Science Foundation Ireland funded (SFI) Strategic Research Cluster focused on graph and network analysis and visualisation.

Clique is housed within UCD's Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL) (http://www.ucd.ie/casl).

--
Group presentations: as we are nearing the end of the semester, in order to allow you explore areas that are of particular interest to you, you may discuss any topic you wish (as a group or individually).

Time limits (so we can get through all groups):
- group: 10 minutes each
- individual: 2-3 minutes each

Case Study - 26 March, 2011

Liam Cronin of Microsoft, is presenting this month's session, starting at 10am in KE 3-008.

Topic(s)
Liam's presentation on Saturday will cover a variety of strategic technology topics relevant to Microsoft's business:

1) Introduction - Microsoft in Ireland
2) Cloud Computing & Windows Azure
3) Green IT
4) Openness at Microsoft
5) The Consumerization of IT

Speaker bio
Liam Cronin has 20 years experience working with Microsoft, starting in Localization in the European Development Centre. From 1997-2010, Liam was Academic Engagement Manager, which involved promoting the Imagine Cup, curriculum adaption and student/academic access to Microsoft software. In his current role as Compete & Open Source Lead, Liam is part of the Sales and Marketing/Developer Platform Evangelism (DPE) team building relationships with the Open Source community in Ireland and identifying what key competitors to Microsoft are delivering to Irish customers and partners. (You can find out more about Liam's work on his LinkedIn profile: "Liam C.")

Group mini-presentations - your choice...
1) "The Cloud - hot air or silver lining?"
OR...
2) Select a combination of topics. For example, "Technology in Ireland and what the future holds" or "KM and technology innovation", etc.
OR...
3) Choose a topic that reflects your area of interest

End: 16:30

Case Study sessions - 2010/11 (semester 2)

The dates for Case Study sessions this semester are:

26 February, 2011
26 March, 2011
16 April, 2011
7 May, 2011

I will give advance notice of the topics as soon as I have them.

Colman McMahon

Case Study session - 11 Dec, 2010

Hi folks,
Just a reminder about tomorrow's case study session that was postponed from last Saturday...

DIT Agenda: Knowledge Management in Drupal

Introduction
Brief Drupal background and introduction

Eating your own dog food v "ordering in"
- Tour of Acquia's Knowledgebase
- Comparison with commercial application also in use
- Challenges and successes at Acquia with knowledge sharing

Hands-on tour of KM tools in Drupal
- Taxonomy
- Workflow & Revision control
- Faceted search
- Node display
- Node Auto term
- Participation, commenting, flagging, community tagging
- Distribution and aggregation

Community
KM groups and projects in the Drupal community
- Who's working on it
- How to get involved

Interactive Demonstration
(this is the bit students will need laptops for)


Recap:

• 11 Dec, 2010
• 11AM
• Heather James & Drupal
• Bring laptop
  
• Groupwork: CMS's, intranets, portals, etc

POSTPONED - Case Study - 4 Dec, 2010

All college buildings will be closed on Saturday, 4 December 2010 due to the bad weather so unfortunately our session is POSTPONED.

I will let you know if/when this presentation can be rescheduled.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Case Study Presentation - 04 Dec, 2010

The final Case Study session for this semester is on Saturday morning at 11AM in KE3-008.

Our guest speaker is Heather James. Heather currently works for Acquia.com, the company founded by Drupal creator Dries Buytaert. Heather recently ran Ireland's DrupalCamp in Trinity College (http://www.drupalcampireland.org/).

Heather will be discussing Drupal, the open-source content management system. She will also be doing a side-by-side comparison with an a comparable system and showcasing a new KM system her company created. Finally, Heather will be demonstrating a new web tool for which you will need your laptops and DIT wifi login (please have laptops fully charged as there are very few plugs in the room).

The groupwork topic for the afternoon session will be on Content Management Systems, intranets, portals, publishing platforms, wikis, blogs, etc.

Weather: currently DIT Kevin Street is scheduled to be open on Saturday morning. Heather is taking the train from Sligo so she should be able to make it. If conditions deteriorate significantly, if the college is closed or if the trains are stopped the session will be postponed. Please check your email on Saturday morning for notifications. As of now, we're on...

To recap:

• 4 Dec, 2010
• 11AM
• Heather James & Drupal
• Bring laptop
• Groupwork: CMS's, intranets, portals, etc.
• Check email Sat morning!

Case Studies Presentation - 6 November, 2010

Details of our session for this coming Saturday, 6 November, 2010 starting at ***11AM ***.

Our guest speakers and topic for this presentation are:

Graham Manning and Andrei Grigoriev of SAP

SAP's “Live Enterprise” suite and its applications in industry

"Live Enterprise" is an event-driven, real-time business intelligence product developed in SAP's Dublin Development Centre.

Graham graduated from the MSc in Information Technology (DT230) in 2009 so it's great to have former alumni return and share their experience.

Case Study Presentation - 16 Oct, 2010

This week's Case Study session will start at 10am in KE3-008.

This session's topic is Open Source technology and will be delivered in three parts:

"Taking Small steps into the Open source community" - Laura Czajkowski
Laura Czajkowski, has been involved in the open source community in one way or another for the last 10 years. When in UL she studied Computer Systems and got involved with the Computer Society skynet and ran her first major conference. Since then she's gotten involved in the Ubuntu community here in Ireland and also internationally. For the past 4 years she has worked in Software Testing and documentation and is now moving to the UK to pursue a career in Open Source Advocacy as a project manager in Marketing.

"Open Source and you. All possibilities" - Andrea Magnorsky
Andrea Magnorsky is a professional software developer and has accrued many years of experience building solid applications. Looking for ways to improve code she came across Rails and the Castle stack, as well as many other open source frameworks Andrea is heavily involved in the organisation of Alt Net in Dublin.

"How open source software affects your business model" - Ana Nelson
Ana Nelson has a Ph.D in economics and currently works in financial
services as an analyst and software/systems developer. She has written
several open source projects and contributed to many more, and uses open
source every day in her work.

The three speakers met through Geek Girl Dinners, a group for women in IT.

Case Studies Presentation - 02 October, 2010

***Due to college registrations, the session will not start until 11:30AM.***

Title: "Voice Portal Applications and other Speech-driven Knowledge Systems"
Speaker: Robert Ross
Robert is currently an IRCSET Research Fellow in the AI Group at the Dublin Institute of Technology. In addition to working in academic and research institutes, Robert has also worked in a number of technology firms, including systems development at Silicon Software Systems in Dublin.
Start time: 11:30AM
Location: KE 3-008 (venue details)


Groupwork session
Start time: 14:00
Following the guest presentations, we will run a short groupwork session to synthesize and embed some of the topics presented by our two speakers.

Case Studies Presentation - 17 April, 2010

Hi folks,

Our guest speaker this month is John Hoey of Norkom (http://norkom.com).

John has a wealth of experience in the technology sector and will be providing a real-world case studies relating to both public and private industry.

The session will follow the usual format: 10:00-16:00 in KE3008, with John starting us off at 10am.

Case Studies Presentation - 27 March, 2010

Hi folks,

This session will feature two guest speakers followed by a group session.
As usual, we will be located in KE3-008 and commence at 10am.


Speaker: Michael Porter
Michael is a senior management consultant who has worked in healthcare, public sector and IT for over 20 years in the United States and Ireland.
Title: "Benefits Realisation - Aligning IT With Business Strategy and the Challenges and Facing IT Professionals" (provisional title)
Start time: 10:00


Speaker: Robert Ross
Robert is currently an IRCSET Research Fellow in the AI Group at the Dublin Institute of Technology. In addition to working in academic and research institutes, Robert has also worked in a number of technology firms, including systems development at Silicon Software Systems in Dublin.
Title: "Voice Portal Applications and other Speech-driven Knowledge Systems"
Start time: 13:30


Groupwork session
Start time: 15:00
Following the guest presentations, we will run a short groupwork session to synthesize and embed some of the topics presented by our two speakers.

Case Studies Presentation - 06 March, 2010

Hi folks,

Our guest speaker for the next Case Studies session will be Nazar Rasheed, on 6 March, 2010 at 10am in Room KE 3-008.

Nazar has a long career in the IT industry in Ireland and internationally. In 2008, Nazar took a sabbatical to complete an MSc in Healthcare Informatics at Trinity College Dublin. Before this Nazar's previous position was with Norkom Technologies in Dublin.

Nazar's presentation will focus on the practical benefits of IT, Rapid Application Development (RAD) and two real-world, healthcare case studies he was involved with.

Following Nazar's presentation, there will be a short demo by 4th Year student Liyu Ma (DT228 Computer Science). Liyu has created a software system that he hopes to get feeback on for his final year project: http://www.comp.dit.ie/dlawless/liyuma.

The afternoon session will consist of groupwork and peer presentations.

Case studies -location and facilities

Case Studies - Location & Facilities

College location:
Faculty of Science
Dublin Institute of Technology
Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Ireland
Tel: +353 1 402 4585


View Larger Map

Parking:
It is generally possible to park in the college on Saturday mornings.
Car park may be closed on graduation, open days, etc.

Room location:
KE 3-008 (3rd floor)
Take stairs from the main lobby. Turn right at 3rd floor, walk to the end of the corridor and the lecture theater is in on your right.

Room facilities:
The room is an amphitheater-style lecture hall with seating for approx 80.
There is a podium, built-in projector and screen.
Internet access is available (network cable and/or WiFi).
On cold days it can get chilly.

Food & Beverage:
The college canteen is closed on Saturdays.
There are many shops, restaurants and cafes on Wexford Street a few minutes walk away (turn right out front gate of college, towards Stephen's Green direction).

Case Studies Presentation - 13 Feb, 2010

Hi Folks,

We'll be starting Semester 2 Case Study module this Saturday, 13 February, 2010 at 10am (Room KE 3-008).

I just got confirmation from our speakers and it promises to be a very interesting session. Three members of the Open Source Software community in Ireland will be coming in to discuss open source software from strategic and technical perspectives.

• Laura Czajkowski

Founder of OSSBarCamp, Laura will start the session with an introduction to OSS, the Ubuntu Community and how to get involved.
- Laura Czajkowski's blog

• Patrick O’Connor & Paul O’Malley,

Patrick and Paul will give a presentation entitled, "How to teach your boss to FLOSS" (demonstrating the value of contributing to and using FLOSS in your organisation and then how to successfully integrate FLOSS practices into your organisation’s IT).
- Patrick O'Connor's blog
- FLOSS on Wikipedia

• Declan McGrath

Declan will finish off the session with a presentation on Ruby, OSS Development and OSS in Ireland

I recommend you do some preparation before the session researching current trends within open source software and give some consideration as to how it might be exploited within your organisations, pros/cons, etc., and furthermore, how OSS could be relevant to your dissertation. There will be ample opportunity for discussion and debate.

As this is our first day back, we will not be doing an afternoon session.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Regards,
Colman

Case Studies Assignment - hard copies

Apologies for this late direction, but hard copies of your assignment work are required for correction purposes.

There is a printer available to all students in the MSc room in Aungier Street, #3030.


Individual Assignment - hard copy collection
I will be at the canteen in Kevin Street on Thursday, 17 December from 18:30-19:00.
Alternatively, assignments can be left with Deirdre Lawless in her office on Tuesday, 15 December from 18.00-18.30.
***UPDATE***
You may also post it to me if you wish to save a trip:
Colman McMahon,
6 Gardiner Place,
Dublin 1.

Personal Portfolio - hard copy collection
Please bring to session on Saturday, 9 January, 2010
KE 3-008, 10AM

Group Presentations - hard copy collection
Please bring to session on Saturday, 9 January, 2010
1 print-out, per group
KE 3-008, 10AM

If you have any questions, please contact me: cajmcmahon[at]gmail.com
Colman

Case Study Presentation - 05 Dec, 2009

Graham Manning, a recent graduate of the MSc in Information Technology (DT230/210), will be joined by colleagues from SAP to give a presentation on:

SAP “Live Enterprise”
An event-driven, real-time business intelligence product, and its applications in industry.

This suite was developed in SAP's Dublin Development Centre.

• The session will begin at 11AM in KE 3-008.
• After lunch we will convene in the smaller setting of room KA3-020 (A320) in the Annex Building.

Case Study Assignment - semester 1, 2009-10

The Case Study assignment for semester 1 (2009-10) is now available in the module's shared folder on Google:

Case Studies Module Shared Folder - Assignment Semester 1

In the afternoon session of November 7, we will have an opportunity to discuss the whole assignment, assign groups and start on a portion of the work.

If you have any questions before then, please post them as comments to this blog post so everyone can share the information.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on November 7th.

Case Study Presentation - Nov 7, 2009

Colin Mooney will be our guest speaker starting at 10am on November 7, 2009. The title of Colin's presentation is:

"Wikis in Knowledge Management: Enabling Effective Collaboration"

This presentation has relevance for both IT and KM areas. Colin implemented a KM-oriented project for his organisation's business within an IT framework.

Colin studied IT as an undergrad DIT, Kevin Street. He completed an MSc in Computing (Knowledge Management) in October 2009. He is currently studying for a second masters degree in Operations & Technology Management at Dublin City University.

Colin is a keen communicator on technology subject and maintains a lively blog at: Extacit.blogspot.com.

Google Docs - downloading Powerpoint files

There appears to be a glitch downloading Powerpoint files. It should be possible to go to "Open" and then Download"...


However, instead of fully opening, the word "Loading..." shows and nothing else happens:


If anyone's got a fix, please share.

For the time being, here's a workaround using a slightly different method:

Click to open the Powerpoint file you wish to download:

Click on "Menu" on the lower, right corner:


Click on the File name:

When the presentation comes up, click on "Actions" then "Download as PPT"


Like I say, if anyone's got a better method, please pass it along.

Case Studies - extra session - Nov 28

We're including an extra date for a case study presentation to ensure full module content.

Date: November 28, 2009
Time: 10am
Speaker: Rory O'Connor
Topic: Software Process Improvement

There will also be an afternoon session on this date. Details of this will follow soon. Just so you're aware it'll be a full day.

As usual, all comments, observations, feedback, etc. are welcome.

Colman
cajmcmahon[at]gmail.com