Last week, JISC put on its Innovation Forum at Keele University. Bringing together projects from across programme areas, the Innovation Forum showcased JISC’s investments from e-Learning to Development and Innovation and e-Infrastructures.

The mixture of people who do not normally come together provided fertile ground for discussions and for exploring synergies between projects in different programmes. In the sessions on barriers to the take-up of technologies, for example, we explore the community enagement work done in the e-Infrastructure programme but also the issues around wider adoption of institutional repositories amongst UK researchers. Most researchers agree that repositories are a good idea and that they should be valuable for maximising the dissemination of research outputs but when it comes to actually contributing, many researchers face barriers such as uncertainty about copyright issues or are simply too busy to sit down and get their publications data organised.

The Innovation Forum also featured a marketplace where programmes and projects showcased their work, again providing a valuable opportunity for networking and exploring possible collaborations. Volunteer bloggers created a lasting record of the event that complements the usual collection of slides and includes the questions asked during the session. Sessions were also audio-recorded and I am keen to listen to come of the presentations again, especially Neil Chue Hong’s talk about software economics and communities.