Martin Hawksey, JISC CETIS
Tony Hirst, The Open University, UK

Clay Shirky popularised the notion of cognitive surplus to characterise creative (and often collaborative creative) acts done in folks’ free time. We characterise the use of cognitive surplus capacity as a form of play – in part because it’s intrinsically motivated, but also because it is typically based around creative acts.  

In this session we highlight some examples of how we 'play' with Google products as part of our work exploring how we can extracting meaning from data and improve productivity. Tools we will show you include: using Google Refine and Fusion Tables for processing and visualising data ; and using Google Spreadsheets/Apps Scripts to create personal productivity workflows.

For more information, please see Martin Hawkey's blog