In line with this year’s theme of “All the user needs” we invite OR2019 attendees to take an active role in addressing those needs through the 2019 Ideas Challenge.
How can we best support, engage and interact with our users?
As the Call for Proposals notes “Repository services are developed and maintained for the benefit of their users. In a global digital research environment this requires interoperable services designed around user needs.”
This year’s Ideas Challenge is focused around how repositories can best support, engage and interact with our users [and not all users are human!] across a range of categories including:
- Understanding user needs and user experience
- Discovery, use and impact
- Repositories – evolution or revolution?
- Supporting open scholarship and cultural heritage
- Open and sustainable
- Policies, licensing and the law
- How can metadata and standards help our users?
- Repositories and global knowledge
The Ideas Challenge is an opportunity to collaborate with your peers, share innovative ideas and reflect on the different ways repositories can interact with users.
What do you need to do?
In a small team, propose an idea that is focused on user needs. This should be presentable to the conference in a four-slide, three minute presentation, outlining:
- Who you are: team members, institutions and category
- What the user need is and why it’s valuable to solve
- What the solution is and what specific technologies could be used
- A one-slide mock-up of the solution
The challenge is open to everyone (except Ideas Challenge co-chairs and judges), and presentations will be made to the conference during in the Ideas Challenge session, after lunch at 1:30pm on Thursday, June 13th.
Ideas will be judged using the following criteria:
- How effectively does support the user(s) needs (its VALUE)
- Whether it could be developed within 5 person-days (its FEASIBILITY)
- How loud the audience claps following the presentation (its WOW-FACTOR)
Bonus points will be awarded to teams that include a mix of roles:
- Developers
- Non-developers
- People who have never worked together before
- Use of clear, jargon free language – that a user would understand
Prizes will be awarded in the closing plenary session on Thursday afternoon, but more importantly you will have the opportunity to join the ranks of past Open Repositories Challenge Winners.
Start the discussions in the run-up to the conference using the Twitter hashtag #OR2019Challenge.
Ideas Challenge Rules
- Entries should come from teams of at least two people.
- The entries should be presented in person at OR2019 by at least one team member.
- Only one entry per team.
- No person may be in more than one team.
- Slides must be complete and submitted by 12 noon on Thursday, June 13th. Entries can be made using the online entry form
https://forms.gle/6yYhQP7PeUNUC4QF9
with a link to the presentation. They can also be e-mailed to the Ideas Challenge co-chairs. - Your mock-up should be rough-and-ready.
- Writing code is discouraged; your submission is limited to your 4-slide presentation:
- Who you are: team members, institutions and category
- What the user need is and why it’s valuable to solve
- What the solution is and what specific technologies could be used
- A one-slide mock-up of the solution
- Participants must ensure that entries do not in any way infringe copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.
Presentations and Judging
All ideas will be presented in the Ideas Challenge session, after lunch at 1:30pm on Thursday, June 13th. Ideas will be judged by a panel of peer judges using the OR2019 Ideas Challenge Score Sheet. Challenge winners will be announced during the OR2019 closing plenary session.
For More Information
For enquiries and to send completed slide decks, please contact the Ideas Challenge Co-Chairs, Sarah Molloy and William J Nixon at s.h.molloy[AT]qmul.ac.uk and william.nixon[AT]glasgow.ac.uk
Ideas Challenge Co-chairs:
Sarah Molloy
Research Support Manager
Queen Mary University of London
William J Nixon
Assistant Director, Academic Engagement & Digital Library
University of Glasgow