This Friday (30th March 2007), we are holding a start-up meeting for the 6 new XCRI Mini Projects. Six projects have been funded: BoXCRIP (based at Bolton), MOVE-XCRI (led by the MOVE Lifelong Learning network), OCCAM (Open University), OXCRI (Oxford University), StaffsXCRI (Staffordshire University) and XCRI@MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University). The mini projects will run for 6 months, and are implementing XCRI CAP, the Course Advertising Profile for XCRI (the eXchanging Course Information schema).
The projects will be supported by the XCRI Support Team, consisting of Mark Stubbs, Scott Wilson, Ben Ryan and Vashti Zarach, with website assistance from Mark Power and Sam Easterby-Smith. The Support Project is scheduled to run for 2 years, and has been extremely busy since beginning this March. So far we have held a Support Team start up meeting, attended by GMSA (the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance), responded to lots of enquiries and interest about XCRI, dashed around the country meeting people (that’s mostly Mark Stubbs who urgently needs cloning!), worked on a validator (Ben Ryan) and aggregator (Scott Wilson), brainstormed user scenarios and began to set up the new XCRI website (Scott, Vashti, Mark Power and Sam), and planned an XCRI meeting for mini projects and general interested parties (mostly Vashti with help from all). Looks like we may have a busy year ahead!
The XCRI meeting, which is being hosted in Oxford by Sebastian Rahtz of Oxford University Computing Services, is being well attended. We have 28 people coming, including the Support Project Team, Sarah Davies from JISC, 14 project staff members, and 9 other people generally interested in being updated on XCRI.
A copy of the day’s agenda is below:
10.30am – 11.00am Teas and coffees
11.00am – 11.20am Intro to the Day: Vashti Zarach
What to expect from the day / Update on XCRI meetings, etc
11.20am – 11.40am XCRI Update: Mark Stubbs
Brief history of XCRI / Developments with XCRI / Interest from UK learning organizations, etc
11.40am – 12.00noon JISC Requirements: Sarah Davies
What JISC requires from the projects
12noon – 1.00pm Project Presentations: 6 Mini Projects
10 mins presentation time for each project
1.00pm – 2.00pm Lunch
2.00pm – 2.20pm XCRI Validator: Ben Ryan
2.20pm – 2.45pm XCRI Aggregator: Scott Wilson
Demo of the aggregator
2.45pm – 3.00pm Teas and coffees
3.00pm – 3.15pm XCRI.org: Scott Wilson and Vashti Zarach
Demo of the new website
3.15pm – 3.45pm XCRI Website discussion
Opportunity for the projects to discuss what they want from the website