Facilitator
Andrew Alexander (ARCS)
Abstract
There has been a large trend towards internet based Social Network sites in the last few years. FaceBook has over 200 million active users, and more than half those use the site everyday. Sites like LiveJournal have over 20 million entries. Given their popularity as a social tool, are Social Networking sites useful for Researchers?
The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) is currently investigating a number of web based collaboration tools which can be used to help facilitate collaborative research. A recurrent request received by ARCS is for a "FaceBook for Research". ARCS is currently investigating what this means, and how it would be useful.
This BOF will look at the questions of What makes a good social networking site? Would social networking be useful for Researchers? And what functionality would make such a site useful?
About the facilitator
Andrew has spent the last 5 years working in the research and education sector. Prior to his role at ARCS, Andrew worked in the university sector for 2 years as a consultant on governance, technology management and business improvement issues. He obtained significant commercial experience as a Director of IT companies Ram Computers and Computer Guru and within the large corporate arena as Enterprise Development Manager at Commander and Senior Business Development Manager at Ipex.
He obtained his Masters in Technology Management from the University of Queensland and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors where he was admitted as a Fellow in 2005. He also holds qualifications in ITIL, Landesk and various management practices. He has a major interest in the areas of innovation development, knowledge management and organisational assessment where he continues to maintain his interest and contribute to the wider community.