Hacking the University

In my previous post, I mentioned a small on-going project I have started to collect short interviews with developers working in universities. It is inspired by The Setup and relates to my interest in hacking in the academy. I hope that over time, it will provide a record of the people working in the developer community and add to the recognition of the work we do, how developers learn and how their working environment impacts upon their work and learning. Here’s the initial announcement I made at Dev8D. Please spread the word.

Calling all Developers working in Higher Education!

I’m setting up a site based on http://usesthis.com but focusing on Developers working in HE. It’s part of a research project I’m embarking on to understand how software developers (in universities) learn their craft.

It would be great if you could send me something. It will be published here http://hackingtheuniversity.net/ It shouldn’t take more than about 15 mins to write and about 5 mins to read (although longer is OK). Over time, I hope to compile a rich profile of developers who happen to work in universities.

How you answer is up to you; browse the site and read other people’s contributions. Alternatively, I’d be happy to accept something different, like this: http://why.usesthis.com/ You don’t need to hyperlink to your software and hardware. I will do that, in many cases automagically!

Here are my interview questions. If you don’t feel like writing, I’d happily accept an audio file to transcribe.

=======

Who are you, and what do you do?

foo

Who taught you how to do what you do?

bar

What tools do you use?

foo

Describe your dream working environment.

bar

========

I need a nice image of you, too, at least 500×335 pixels.

Thanks!
Joss
jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk