Hi Everyone, I thought I'd ask if you wanted a computer guy at the meeting? (Also this I thought I'd try the discussion functionality, it should help alot)

I was hoping you would come - yes please

I am unable to make thge meeting but if I could just leave a quick summary of some of my views / ideas:

Target for Next GIRO:
I think it would be useful to build the wiki up to a “demonstration model” that could really display its potential at GIRO. This could be done by adding enough content to make it interesting by the time GIRO comes around. The simplest way to do this may be to choose a set of suitable topics and farm them out to working party members with each taking on one or two (or three!) and committing to building their topics into the wiki over the next 6 months or so. (As an alternative to “imposed” topics, working party members could be free to choose their own substitute topics). Otherwise time may pass very quickly with no progress. Someone will need to own the co-ordination of this.

Living WIKI:
It will be important to present it to GIRO as a living thing, not just a free fixed-content information-resource. We may need to come up with ideas for how to achieve this. i.e. how can we ensure that it takes off and grows once it is “released”. Potential Ideas

i) Allow an amount of formal CPD for having contributed to the wiki in a given year.

ii) At Professionalism Courses ask New Qualifiers to add one topic.

iii) Get The Actuary magazine to highlight new additions each month.

iv) Small prizes for best additions.

v) Include Casualty Society and other similar organizations

vi)Could we get the reserving manual up on the wiki at some point, this might bring more visitors.

vii) etc... …

R Application:
When we met in Blackpool, R was the hot topic. Do we still plan an R Tutorial or something similar? Again, someone would need to own the co-ordination of this, but probably even more-so than in the case of the wiki.

It may be that we just use the wiki to point visitors at the currently available R material on the net? And then possibly provide a few real R examples to let the visitor have a flavour of its capabilities? Again I think it would be best to farm these out to working party members.

Other GNU Software
We could also target a defined list of other GNU licence software like R, providing links to where to find it, how to use it and possibly some example applications?

The important thing will be to agree what we will do and get commitments to deliver. There's no point trying to do everything, just enough to prove the concept.

I have made a start on this, but will update people at the meeting. I'm sure someone will publish some minutes of the meeting on this Wiki.

Trevor's suggestion that a Wiki could be established to support the ICA working party that he was on was mentioned at today's General Insurance Board and received strong support. Early days, but I think there is some genuine interest in these tools!

The key thing in my view (I have some experience of knowledge management as it was called at Ernst and Young) is to have a focussed community of interest, who are interested in contributing and being constructive.

Then you need a few administrators/moderators, who can sort and filter and refine the interesting points that come out of the discussions, or set up the infrastructure so that the information come naturally. Personal favourates (nothing to do with actuarial stuff unfortunately) are WWW.civfanatic.com and www.boardgamegeek.com