Alec Couros and Graham Attwell have been paired together as co-keynotes at the PLE Conference in Barcelona, Spain, July 8-9. The organizers have asked us to do something different than a typical keynote, so we have been thinking about an unKeynote format. In keeping with the theme of the conference (PLEs), we’re hoping that individuals in our network would be willing to help us frame what this might look like.

On May 11, the kick-off workshop for using the people tagging demonstrator as part of operational activities has taken place. Jenny Bimrose from University of Warwick and Simone Braun and Andreas Schmidt from FZI have introduced the people tagging system to an enlarged group of ten personal advisors at Connexions Northumberland after it had been substantially improved as a result of the participatory design phase with a core group from Connexions Northumberland.

Last week, the project has presented its results of the second year to the review panel. This encompassed the results of the representative studies and their implications on the knowledge maturing model as well as the demonstrator development, which brings together conceptual advances, architecture and integration work, and formative evaluation. The whole team has put tremendous effort in the preparation of the meeting, particularly because it was a very early project review.

We are proud to announce that our associate partner network has grown with two new partners from Portugal:

• Multicert 
• Maisis Information Systems

Representatives from those companies will join the associate partner meeting on April 16 in Vienna.