Nokia Data Gathering university collaboration

Project Objective

The objective of our university collaboration program is to create university partnerships that can stimulate innovation, build local capacity and increase community participation around data gathering solutions and data gathering projects. The aim for Nokia and the universities is to share technology and expertise in technology and training.

We are looking to attract developers, entrepreneurs and innovators to our projects who are keen to make their mark on a high profile open source project. It is also interesting to bring data gathering to a multi-disciplinary environment like a university, which will allow our programs to cross-pollinate with diverse areas of knowledge and understanding.

Project Description

Nokia Data Gathering university collaboration includes typically two main elements: development co-operation and training.

Development: Nokia Data Gathering works on six monthly cycle. After we make a software release we start planning ahead for the next one with a road-mapping meeting. At this meeting we present a number of ‘blueprint’ specifications, which show technically how some requested feature might be implemented. After this meeting, which is held at the participating university, the participants finalize the selection of new features to be included in the next release.

Training: Nokia Data Gathering team can run training sessions at the university. The goal of the training is to make the collaborating university and students confident enough in the solution to take responsibility for the delivery of one or more of the blueprint specifications of their choice for the next release. In the best case, this gives the collaborating University rights to ”own” the release. To demonstrate how this might work here is an imaginary example from our Nokia Data Gathering program. Our release notes might read something like ‘Nokia Data Gathering 2.11, codenamed Agile Amahuaca was released in collaboration with the University of <insert university name>. It also gives the university the opportunity to publish research papers on the technologies involved in the collaboration in respected journals and publications

Project Scope

This is an outline of the road mapping and training sessions:

• A Road-mapping Meeting (Usually 1 day).

• Feature Specification (Blueprint) discussions

• Training at the university

• An overview of the selected program

• Getting Started

• Setting Up and Developing Features

• Timetable (Operations Management)

• Field Implementation and Trials of the Feature (if appropriate)

• Presentation of Field Results (if appropriate)

Student Preparation.

It is expected that participating students will have familiarized themselves with the specific technologies used in the particular open source program. This can involve registering to the appropriate project mailing list, to the project home on Forum Nokia, reading background documentation or just simply downloading and installing the application.

Communication

There is flexibility on the day-to-day running of the program. The following snippet of how this can work in practice was taken during our preparations for the Nokia Data Gathering 3.04 road-mapping meeting run at the University of Nairobi.

A small working group was initiated at the School of Computing & Informatics as soon as the semester started. Students were invited to the road-mapping meeting with further training and technology transfer undertaken afterwards to familiarise staff and students with the software and with the operational methodology used. The collaboration took place at our computing lab where this working group will be based. If it is appropriate the development can run in two-week cycles. In this scenario we schedule a voice conference planning meeting and then a review and retrospective meeting follows two weeks later. This continues until the feature blueprint is completed. If this method of operation is not convenient for any reason we can discuss alternative methods for development.

It is important here to stress the flexibility of our approach. We want our programs to be compatible with the existing University culture and will customize our programs accordingly. In some cases the university can act as a training provider for other Nokia Data Gathering users or just opt to use the solution for their own research purposes.

Current partner universities

• ​Seton Hall - Center for Mobile Research and Social Change
• University of Nairobi - School of Computing and Informatics
• ​FUCAPI Mobile Development Center

Useful Links

• ​Forum Nokia for universities
• ​Nokia Research Center open innovation page, listing universities with tight partnership.

Contact

Ian Lawrence (root at ianlawrence.info)