A Q&A with David Phipps

David Phipps is Director of Research Services and Knowledge Exchange at York University and is responsible for leading ResearchImpact, one of the first research groups to adopt ORION's new O3 Collaboration and professional networking platform. David, an enthusiastic champion of the new service, answers questions about how ResearchImpact uses the sophisticated O3 service now available to ORION institutions at no cost as a new, value-added service.

"York has developed Canada's first knowledge mobilization (KM) unit that is fully integrated into the research infrastructure at the university," said Stan Shapson, Vice-President, Research and Innovation at York University. "Since the goal of the KM Unit is to foster collaboration between researchers, graduate students and their non-academic research collaborators, the social media tools offered by the O3 platform make this a natural fit for both York and ORION."

Why has ResearchImpact signed on to O3? How are you currently using or planning to use O3 to enhance the work of ResearchImpact?

The principal goal of ResearchImpact is to broker relationships between researchers, graduate students and their non academic research partners so that academic research and expertise can inform decisions about public policy and professional practice. Social media is an increasingly important tool for brokering relationships. The social media tools available in O3 support, but do not replace, the work of the knowledge brokers. These tools will also support research collaborations once they have formed.

What are some specific features of O3 that are of particular interest to ResearchImpact?

The main feature that is of interest is the breadth of tools available in the O3 platform. I am not aware of any other platform that has such a comprehensive set of social media tools. The document repository, the wiki and the messaging features are of special interest to us. Of particular utility is the ability to form groups in our ResearchImpact community and provide differential permissions to different parts of the community or to different documents and articles in the site.

What is the potential of O3 to improve knowledge mobilization (KM)?

Social media is a tool that helps networks increase transparency and trust between network members, thus enhancing the opportunity for collaboration. Our experience blogging and using Twitter has been very positive. Our experience with wikis is a little less extensive but holds promise depending on the social media comfort level of the community members.

Do you see a way for the O3 platform to positively impact the work of tech transfer offices at Ontario colleges and universities? If so, how?

Social media will be relevant to industry liaison. It will be less relevant to technology transfer (TT). Industry liaison is the brokering of research based relationships between university and industry and is based on the same principles as knowledge mobilization; therefore, for the reasons above, social media will be an important tool in the industry liaison tool kit. Some technology transfer offices undertake industry liaison but not many. Many more offices of industry liaison perform traditional technology transfer roles. Based on my attendance at the Alliance for Commercialization of Canadian Technologies (ACCT) Annual Meeting in Victoria two weeks ago, I think many more offices will want to move into an industry liaison space and may turn to O3 or other social media solutions to support their work as York's KM Unit has. (For more on the similarities and differences between TT and KM, visit my blog entry).

What has been your reaction so far of using O3?

Love the look and feel. Love the tools. The more we use it the more we rely on it. There is room for improvement on some of the applications and some of the functionality (and we're providing this user feedback) but this is a great start.

O3 is a platform built for the research and education community. What, in your opinion, would be the best outcome for how O3 is being used? Who would you like to see on O3?

The best outcome would be a large number of communities using O3 but then some meta communication/meta community occurring so that communities of similar interest have the opportunity to learn about each other and interact. If there is ghettoizing of the O3 communities (ie. isolation, silo-ing) then there will be a missed opportunity to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. This is happening already in York's O3 communities. Mobilizing Minds is a KM associated project co-lead by York and the University of Manitoba and the KM Unit at York was instrumental in getting Mobilizing Minds off the ground. The ResearchImpact community and the Mobilizing Minds community share members.

What added features would you like to see on O3, or how can it be improved to attract more researchers and educators to actively use it?

We are working with Gary Hilson, the O3 Community Manger, to introduce new features we'd like to see:

• Improved chat room: one where you are automatically signed in upon signing into O3 community; some greater signal that there is a chat involving you (like Tweet Deck alert).
  
  
• Ability to CC messages to community members; ability to send a message to an entire community membership at once.
  
  
• Blackberry interface would be a huge advantage
  

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

O3 is a web-based collaboration and professional networking service developed by and for Ontario's research and education community. Built on the IGLOO platform, it is the place where researchers, educators and students can connect to the minds and resources they need to work with faster and more effectively.

Learn more about O3 and ResearchImpact.



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