Managed to break away last week to attend the SCA (strategic content alliance) JISC forum in Cardiff, this forum was only recently  pointed out to us as something worth looking into, and it proved to be an interesting insight into some of the activities and issues surrounding public sector concerns and content / information sharing.

Presentations from JISC on their collections activity, Naomi Korn gave a passionate view on IPR issues, barriers and bridges, coupled with an interesting view on business views from CITI banks Chris Oakely-White, where all well received.

But my attention was grabbed by Chris Batts work on audience analysis, from what I understand he (and his team) have been looking at how the audiences for the main parties in the SCA overlap and how this offers opportunities for sharing and reuse of content to enrich their experience as well as helping the organisations in question. there is a follow up workshop later this month to discuss this which I am going try and attend.

Finally breakout groups where asked to discuss business models (with Chris Oakely-White) and standards with Brian Kelly from UKOLN and  UK Web Focus ( blogg ) in which I discussed the issues with ever changing standards and how, whilst they are essential for development practices, they also add to the complexity of building and maintaining a compliant service.

All in all it was an interesting trip across the bridge, picked up a few interesting pointers to follow up....and an excellent lunch, which is always nice.