Speaker and session details for Open Source Junction 3, 20-21 March 2012

by Gabriel Hanganu on 9 February 2012

Introduction

Below you will find more information about the speakers and sessions for the Open Source Junction 3 workshop

Sessions

Setting the scene - Sander van der Waal, slides

Billions of sensors in the Cloud - Open source, Cloud and Smart cities - Ajit Jaokar , slides

The vision of 50 billion connected devices by 2020 is widely accepted by the industry. However, we also know that current technical architectures cannot scale to such levels and thus, we have to explore new paradigms. This talk explores new architectures, challenges and paradigms for such a hyper connected world. We cover sensors, Open source, next generation web and new networking technologies such as white space networks. We bring these ideas together in a practical context of ‘Smart cities’ and discuss how such applications could work.

The Eduserv Education Cloud - state of play and opportunities for collaboration with projects exploring mobile technologies - Andy Powell, slides

The Eduserv Education Cloud builds on our experiences developing the HEFCE-funded UMF Cloud Pilot and offers compute and storage cloud IaaS for the higher and further education communities. This talk will cover what the service offers, our technology choices, and our current pricing models. It will outline how we see the infrastructure being used and look to future developments. Finally, it will suggest ways in which cloud infrastructure such as this might underpin projects exploring mobile technologies.

Sharing is good (interactive session)

With a few simple interactive games, Ross Gardler and Sander van der Waal will demonstrate why sharing is both scary and very rewarding at the same time. It will set the scene for how working together will lead to bigger results and that 1 + 1 + 1 > 3.

Deploying the first private cloud solution in UK higher education to support a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ scheme for students and staff - Alex Howe and Lisa Harrop, slides

This presentation will give an overview of ‘Access King’s Global Desktop’ project, a collaboration between King’s College London and Getronics. Implemented to support a new mobile working strategy within King’s College, the project involved migrating to a private cloud platform delivered over the JANET network - the first of its kind within the UK higher education sector. This move to the cloud has provided some 25,000 staff and students with an unparalleled user experience to mobile working, allowing them access to core applications, such as office tools, email, statistical packages and e-learning tools, from almost any device, from any location. The project received significant media coverage across national, public sector and trade publications, as well as interest from other Universities. Alex’s talk will describe the project background, key technologies adopted, main outcomes and follow-up plans.

Cloud4All: using the cloud to provide personalised access to computing devices - Ross Gardler, slides

While computing devices have highly customisable user interfaces, common configuration requirements such preferred input device, language, font, text size or colour have to be repeated on each device used. Cloud4All is an EU project that is working to create an open public infrastructure which defines a personal profile to be used to configure any device. The profile is stored in the cloud and retrieved by the user whenever they encounter a new device. This will give a consistent experience on personal and public devices, such as cash and ticket machines. It has additional benefits for accessibility for those with some form of impairment such as a disability or difficult physical location such as bright lighting. The project is working on defining the profile ontology and format, creating the cloud based infrastructure and protoyping applications that respond to profile-based configuration settings. Eventually developer tools will be created to provide easy access.

OpenDirective are part of the Cloud4all project consortium and their contribution includes the development of a prototype application. This application, Maavis, provides ultra simple access to cloud and local media or communications and is designed for use cases that include older people and those with dementia or other disabilities. The application is designed to adapt to specific user and platform needs. This talk introduces the concepts of cloud4all and the impact it will have on both cloud connected and offline computing devices.

Open Source Junction self-pitch (interactive session)

In this interactive session the delegates will have the opportunity to briefly pitch their interests to the other participants. This session will allow everyone to identify potential collaboration partners for the workshop and beyond. In the next interactive session participants have the opportunity to explore these new potential connections further.

Webinos-Cloud4All Connect session - Rowan Wilson

In this session we will examine the possibilities for interaction and cooperation between Webinos, an EU funded project aiming to deliver a platform for web applications across mobile, PC, home media (TV) and in-car devices and Cloud4All, another EU funded project which aims to use cloud technologies to activate appropriate accessibility functions in devices on a user by user basis. This session will be facilitated by OSS Watch.

Connecting with the cloud easily using PhoneGap - John Wards

Apache Cordova (incubating), previously known as PhoneGap, is an open source toolkit for building cross-platform mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It provides a common API for gaining uniform access to the device and browser features, without being tied to the use of GUI widgets or high- level access features.

We’ll explore the capabilities of Cordova, have a look at the current APIs, and the 3rd party tools and plugins available. We’ll then discuss the ability of Cordova based apps to interact with remote APIs to build rich interfaces, and while doing so discovering the pitfalls and issues that may crop up.

1-on-1 mix and match (interactive session)

In this interactive session delegates will have an opportunity to explore potential collaborations with other participants based on who they had identified in the self-pitch session.

The business benefits of open source cloud platforms - Paul Fremantle

A lot of the focus on cloud has been purely economic: how can we share costs, utilize unused resources and leverage third-party resources. But the really interesting examples of cloud are where it goes beyond pure economics: where organizations are building new business models based on cloud.

In this session, Paul Fremantle, CTO and Co-Founder of WSO2, will explain the business benefits of cloud platforms, and look at where cloud can create new business opportunities. One of the key aspects is to understand what the real “Cloud Native” concepts and attributes are that differentiate cloud platforms from previous approaches. Paul will specifically address how companies, organisations and academic institutions can build a strategy for cloud adoption that addresses the realities of privacy issues, lock-in concerns and flexibility to move between clouds. In particular Paul will look at the relationship between Open Source and Cloud, and why open source is a key aspect of building a cloud strategy.

Aimed at IT managers, project managers, IT decision makers and department leaders, Paul’s talk will focus on real-world concerns and issues with cloud and open source.

Random business generator (interactive session)

Everybody is invited to get together with one or more persons they have met to brainstorm for a business idea using complementary skills. Next, we will get together with another group to explain the idea, expand where appropriate. Finally, groups report back to other parties offering suggestions about how it might be improved.

Using the cloud from above the clouds in low cost, high altitude science - Steven Johnston, slides

The ASTRA project aims to develop and test low cost platforms capable of delivering scientific instruments into the stratosphere (and recovering them). In this presentation we cover some of the previous ASTRA flights including the hardware, data communications and custom software applications required for stratospheric flights. For example, the utilisation of a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) datalogger with GSM communications and Windows Azure for backend processing. The concept of low cost commodity infrastructure has been extended to include .Net Gadgeteer, which originates from Microsoft Research Cambridge and is an open specification (both hardware and software) for electronic prototyping. This has enabled the ASTRA project to prove that rapid custom sensor deployments are possible whilst improving the number of supported sensors and improving data communication capabilities. The presentation will also touch upon the underlying collaboration between industry, academia and a startup; supporting the ASTRA project throughout.

Mini BarCamp (interactive session)

A BarCamp is a type of unconference where the participants decide what they want to talk about. We will set up mini version of this, allowing participants to have short, open conversational sessions about topics they want to explore further. Everybody is free to start their own discussion or move freely between conversations.

Offline Mobile Web Apps and the cloud - Andrew Betts, slides

HTML5 already includes features that allow the creation of web applications that function while offline. Features including application and resource caching along with local storage are widely implemented in mobile browsers. Apps such as Assanka’s FT touch web app clearly demonstrate this capability and provide a good user experience in conditions of intermittent or no network access. But how do such apps compare or work with the cloud in general? What are the tradeoffs? Should we care about HTML5 offline in the long term? Is the cloud good enough? If we should care, why should we?

Molly project Connect session - Sander van der Waal and Tim Fernando, slides

This session will show by practical example how open development works in practice. The Molly project originated from earlier funded projects at the University of Oxford, where it is used in the Mobile Oxford website. Now it’s an active open source project and it’s used by several universities, among which St. Georges University. We will explore how the open source project came about and how St.Georges became involved with the project and started using it as the basis for their own application.

You can’t make an OMELETTE without breaking any silos - Scott Wilson and Claudia Villalonga

The EU-funded OMELETTE project builds on several existing open source projects (Apache Wookie, Apache Rave, MyCocktail) to create an open mashup platform that draws upon telecommunications services to deliver mashups across multiple devices - from the service cloud to the personal device or the enterprise workspace. This involves working with some components and services that are completely open, and others that are highly proprietary such as particular telco SDKs and services that carry usage restrictions.

The project involves collaboration between developers based in universities with commercial developers; it also involves both closed development (whether open source or commercially-licensed) and open community development through ASF.

This creates some particular challenges - for example, how can you participate effectively within existing open communities which involve people with diverse requirements and viewpoints, rather than just forking or duplicating projects? How do you keep control of the project when critical activities often take place outside the consortium? Should open source products developed by the project also use an open community approach, or stay private? And how do you explain all this to management and project officers?

In their talk, Scott Wilson (Univ. Bolton) and Claudia Villalonga (Logica) will showcase some of their work to date, and open up a discussion about commercial-academic collaboration and private-community project engagement in practice by sharing what they have learned about their experiences so far.

Mini BarCamp - Taking ideas to the next level(interactive session)

This session will also start of BarCamp style, but we would like to flesh out the better ones from the previous interactive sessions. Which of the ideas would be worth taking forward after the workshop?

Speakers

Andrew Betts

Andrew is a London based PHP and JavaScript developer, and founder of web technology firm Assanka, which developed the Financial Times’ HTML5 web app and was recently acquired by the FT. He’s been using web technologies for 12 years, building apps for publishers and finance companies. Andrew regularly presents talks to London web related groups, and conferences including the PHP UK Conference, Overtheair, BlackBerry DevCon and FrOSCon.

Tim Fernando

Tim is the technical project manager behind Mobile Oxford and a driver behind the open source Molly Project community. In addition to Mobile Oxford, he and his team of agile developers specialise in delivering geo-spatial and mobile software applications for external clients and have worked on varied projects from individual tracking systems to elephant tracking systems. Tim’s background comes from studying Computer Science at the University of Bristol and an absurd love of gadgets and how we, the humans, interact with them.

Paul Fremantle

Co-founder and currently CTO, Paul spearheads WSO2’s overall product strategy. His previous role at WSO2 was vice president of technical sales where he led the development of the groundbreaking WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus. He is currently co-chair of the OASIS Web Services Reliable eXchange Technical Committee, which is charged with creating the industry standard for reliable message exchange over SOAP.

Paul’s involvement in Open Source goes back to the original Apache SOAP project, where Paul donated code to enable access to Enterprise JavaBeans. He has also led IBM’s involvement in the Axis C/C++ project. He has published many articles, both on the Web and in traditional forms, and has spoken at numerous industry conferences, including ApacheCon, Colorado Software Summit, XML Europe, Software Architecture, and others. Paul has published two books: Building Web Services in Java, 2nd Edition, and The XML Files.

Paul has an MA in Mathematics and Philosophy and an MSc in Computation, both from Oxford University.

Ross Gardler

Ross is Vice President of Community Development at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and co-founder of OpenDirective, a new spinout from OSS Watch. Ross engages with and advises on community management in a wide range of projects, from newly funded short-term research and development projects, international educational and research collaborations, and open source spin-outs. Ross is also chair of TransferSummit, an open innovation conference focussing on the collaborative exploitation of intellectual property in software.

Lisa Harrop

Lisa Harrop has more than 20 years’ experience in the IT Industry. Having started her career as a Systems Engineer installing Computer Based Training systems to airlines all over the world, she now leads the Mobile & Collaboration practise at Getronics as a Managing Technical Architect. Responsible for developing new propositions at Getronics around Cloud Computing and Mobile Collaboration, Lisa played a key role as the Technical Design Architect in Getronics’s first client-private cloud deployment.

Alex Howe

Alex Howe is a Senior Solutions Architect at International ICT Solutions Provider, Getronics, and holds responsibility for the Getronics UK IaaS platform: Adaptive Hosting, as well as the Getronics UK Cloud Aggregation Services. Alex himself was key to the technical design and implementation of King’s private cloud service and has worked with a wide range of organisations to deliver variations of this cloud service. With over 14 years’ experience delivering IT solutions within a broad range of international market sectors, Alex has a deep technical knowledge combined with business experience. Today, Alex’s specialities focus around the definition, design and implementation of highly available, secure solutions, as well as the integration of Cloud and on-demand services into existing infrastructure, applications and business processes.

Ajit Jaokar

Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing and research company futuretext. His main areas of research include: Digital policy, Smart cities, Open systems including White space networks, The mobile web and wider applications of technology to humanity and open societies. His consulting activities include working with companies to define value propositions across the device, network, Web and Social networking stack spanning both technology and strategy. He has worked with a range of commercial and government organizations globally including The European Union, Telecoms Operators, Device manufacturers, social networking companies and security companies in strategic and visionary roles. In 2012 Ajit was appointed to the advisory board of the World Smart Capital program which relates to Smart cities. In 2009-2010 he was part of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet by the World Economic Forum. Ajit chairs Oxford University’s Next generation mobile applications panel and conducts courses at Oxford University on next generation networks including White space networks. Ajit’s thinking is widely followed in the industry, and his OpenGardens Blog was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide.

Steven Johnston

Dr. Steven Johnston is a senior research fellow at the University of Southampton Faculty of Engineering and the Environment. He was the lead architect in CFMS, demonstrating – in partnership with Microsoft, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and MBDA – how novel software-plus-services approaches can significantly improve productivity for scientists and engineers. Steven has extensive experience with cloud-computing architectures exploiting cloud-compute capabilities for Space Situational Awareness (Clouds in Space) and high altitude ballooning (ASTRA). He is currently an outreach program manager for the Microsoft .Net Gadgeteer project, which is an open-source platform for creating custom electronic devices using a wide variety of hardware modules using a powerful programming environment.

Andy Powell

Andy is Research Programme Director at Eduserv where he contributes to the development of the Eduserv Community Cloud Infrastructure and is responsible for specifying and delivering a programme of internal and external research and standards-making activities. His primary areas of interest include: cloud infrastructure, metadata, the Semantic Web and Linked Data; repositories, research data, resource discovery and scholarly communication; identity and access management; learning, and the social Web.

Sebastian Rahtz

Sebastian is the reason OSS Watch is OSS Watch. He wrote the original bid for what was, initially, a very small pilot advisory service funded by JISC. He had the vision for what OSS Watch might become in time, and gathered the team that has helped bring that vision to fruition.

Sebastian’s involvement with free and open source software goes back to the late 1980’s as a developer in the community around the TeX typesetting system, on which he has published widely. He maintained an open source TeX distribution for ten years, and a variety of TeX-related packages. He is now an active member of the XML and XSLT communities, most importantly as one of the technical leads for the Text Encoding Initiative in which he serves on the Board of Directors and Technical Council. He is currently leading the Information and Support group at the Oxford University Computing Services department.

Claudia Villalonga

Claudia is a senior consultant and leads the technical team at the R&D department of Logica Spain. Claudia will pursue her PhD at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in Spring 2012. Her PhD Thesis ‘Opportunistic Information Retrieval in the Real World Internet - Architecture, Methods and Models’ was develloped in collaboration with SAP Research Center in Zurich, where she worked from April 2008 to September 2011.

Claudia received her Telecommunications Engineering degree by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, in 2006. She wrote her Master Thesis at NEC Laboratories Europe in Heidelberg (Germany) under the title ‘A Proxy based Solution for the Local Discovery of Self Promoting Services’. After finishing her Master Thesis, she continued her work at NEC Laboratories Europe for two years. Claudia has taken part in the IST FP6 European Projects Mobilife, MAGNET Beyond and SPICE, and the ICT FP7 European project SENSEI.

Sander van der Waal

Sander joined OSS Watch in 2009 as a software developer, mainly working on the project registry Simal and providing technical advice to academic open source projects. In June 2011 Sander became manager of OSS Watch. Sander is excited about helping software projects to take advantage of all the benefits that open development can bring. He is also interested in helping academic projects engage with the commercial sector and working across these boundaries. Before joining OSS Watch, Sander had a career as a Java Software Engineer within commercial software companies. This experience has proved useful in advising academic projects on how to engage with the business sector. He regularly presents on the best practices of open development at events and is involved in the organisation of workshops and conferences such as OSS Watch’s Open Source Junction and TransferSummit.

John Wards

John is Technical Director of White October, an Oxford based digital agency. He is a highly experienced web developer with a history in PHP and currently exploring the complexities of JavaScript client and server side.

John is also a technical conference organiser, with his first conference jQuery UK selling out in weeks and receiving rave reviews from attendees, speakers and sponsors.

Rowan Wilson

Rowan Wilson has worked in IT since 1996, and has been active in internet development since its early years. Working within the University Computing Services in Oxford since 2001 Rowan has worked in supporting academic research and development in the Arts and Humanities through the work of the Oxford Text Archive. More recently, Rowan has become the licensing specialist within the JISC-funded free and open source software (FOSS) advisory service OSS Watch, helping academic developers choose licensing and sustainability models for their works and unpicking problematic FOSS reuse issues where they occur. Rowan was also instrumental in creating the Creative Commons-licensed Open Educational Resources podcasting project at Oxford known as OpenSpires, which has released over 1,000 Oxford lectures for redistribution and reuse.

Scott Wilson

Scott is Assistant Director of CETIS, the JISC’s innovation support centre for interoperability and standards in the UK Higher and Further Education sectors. As well as working on Apache Wookie (Incubating), Scott is a contributor to W3C, the Open Web Foundation, CEN and other standards organisations. Prior to working in CETIS, Scott worked in the commercial software sector, in areas such as CRM, business intelligence and criminal intelligence.