I had the unenviable task of chairing the Learning Interoperability Framework Europe (LIFE) discussion booklet. On the whole, I believe the session went reasonably well, indeed Frans Van Asche, said it had been the most successful EUN discussion around these themes. It did strike me that there were a number of EU ministry policy advisers present and I guess many understood very little of what we were talking about (confirmed by a discussion with a french colleague at the end of the event). I tried to encourage questioning with limited success, I’m sure many present were embarrassed to ask even “simple” questions.http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/interoperability/developments/life_final_roadmap.htm

Reflecting on this issue, we do need to reflect on the on the language and vocabulary we use when addressing  this kind of (mixed) audience, we need to engage more people in the general discussion.

Overall I enjoyed the conferenc and manged to have meaningful discussions (round the watercooler ) with many European colleagues ( Including one of the commisioners).

I was fortunate to be invited to a two day meeting at the NCSL (National College of School Leadership) in Nottingham og the jisc and HEA to discuss future collaboration between the two organisations.

What became clear to me during the meeting is that there is considerable exisitng joint activity and that just mapping the two organisations activitiies and in the case of JISC programmes would prove a very worthwhile exercise. Two new posts are to be created, one in each instituion , who will act in a “ liason ” type role.

On a personal note I much valued meeting various HEA people , particularuily those in the subject Centres and I found John Robertson’s notion of JISC being top down programme driven and HEA horizontal discipline driven very useful in understanding the roles of the organisations.

It will be interesting to see how this may develop over the coming months