it for tourism managers at unibg, italy

What Are We Doing Here?The UniBg 44111 2014-2015 lectures.Being Digital

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers#01 .:. Thursday, November 13, 2014

Roberto Peretta

Università degli studi di Bergamo. Area didattica di Lingue e Letterature straniereProgettazione e gestione dei sistemi turistici / Planning and Management of Tourism SystemsCentro Studi per il Turismo e l’Interpretazione del Territorio (CeSTIT)IfittItaly

What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalWhat are we talking about, today?

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. November 13, 2014

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1. Prerequisites, content, tasks, methodology, tools2. Final assessment, workshop3. The CeSTIT, our Research Center4. What does “digital” mean?5. Standards

What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalPrerequisites

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Prerequisites to these lectures are, as from the University website,1. English proficiency2. Systematic use of e-mail and web navigation3. Holding a personal Google+ account4. Passed a basic IT exam (… or demonstrate a comparable skill).

If you don’t feel like fulfilling these prerequisites, please do work hard to meet the standards as soon as possible!


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalContent, Tasks

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The content of these lectures is published in advance.(You find it in the relevant University of Bergamo webpage http://www.unibg.it/struttura/en_struttura.asp?corso=44111)

The main task of these lectures is sharing knowledge and skills on quality evaluation of tourism destination websites.

Yet, these lectures are also aimed at sharing consciousness on the current state of digital communication in tourism, as far as what we call here PMTS,i.e. Planning and Management of Tourism Systems, are concerned.

(Pay attention, please! These lectures do not specifically deal with management of tourism enterprises.)


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalMethodology, Quality, and Models

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Our methodology is based on lectures with presentations, web navigation, and shared discussions on the relevant topics.

In fact, on November 26 we will consider the concept of quality according to the ISO. At the end, on December 18, we will introduce a quality evaluation meta-model based on the good old, classical Loci.

We will use this quality evaluation meta-model to draw a quality evaluation model, hence a questionnaire to evaluate tourism destination websites.

By the way, what is “a model”? “In the most general sense, a model is anything used in any way to represent

anything else.” – Wikipedia, “Conceptual model”, 2012 “A conceptual model is the underlying belief structure held by a person about

how something works.” – Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity, 2011


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalNetworks, Tourism, and Professions

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On the day of our next meeting, we will begin seeing how we relate. Networks among computers, webpages, and people How networks behave – according to an influential phisicist Why a network model should be usefully assumed

Having stated that networks may be our approach, we will define our field. What is a “tourism website”? How many sorts of tourism websites are there? Can a taxonomy be drawn? And social networks? Beyond websites, is any wider web presence needed?

We will then consider what’s possibly the core of our problems. Quality – what it is, and how it can defined in terms of standards Professions – how fast the world is changing, and what you may expect to be

doing in the future at the crossroads of digital and tourism


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalMobile, Design, Data, and Research

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In December, we’ll begin to go in depth. We’ll be talking about Mobile – as smartphones and tablets are now more frequent than desktops Maps – as smartphones and tablets “know” where they are Data – or how digital messages, pieces of information, connections are

recorded and stored, and how crucial this has become.

Before assembling all this in our quality evaluation questionnaire, we’ll also need to address some other topics. People – because legal matters, like privacy and copyrights, are very relevant Analytics – or how to analyze what people do on line, and react accordingly Design – or how communication processes must be devised and planned Content – or what we tell, and what people tell us, through digital devices Academia – because we’re in a university, and the crossroads of digital and

tourism can be researched. Actually, they have been researched for decades.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalAvailable Tools: Evaluation Questionnaire

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Finally, we will have to put all this into practice.Our quality evaluation model for tourism destination websites will be available as a digital tool: an online questionnaire, which each of you is required to access and fill through the Web.

In short.1. Each of you will freely choose – after the lecture on December 18 – a

tourism destination website.2. Each of you will personally – before your assessment – evaluate the quality

of your chosen website on line.3. To perform your evaluations, our specific questionnaire will be published on

line at http://kiwimilano.it/dct/, a website run by your lecturer.4. To be allowed to access this specific questionnaire, you will have to provide

a UserID and a password of your choice.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalAvailable Tools: previous Evaluations

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Online evaluation questionnaires like this year’s have been usedby your lecturer’s students since 2007, though initially in Italian.In other words, all the quality evaluations of tourism destination websites provided since 2007 by your colleagues are still accessible.Feel free to consult them.

(A warning. Not all of the previous evaluations are top-quality. Nonetheless, skimming through them might be useful to help you understand what you are required to do with this form.)


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalAvailable Tools: Presentations

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As for the presentations like this – summarizing the contentof these lectures – they will be made available on line as pdf files at http://kiwimilano.it/dct/ (the same webpages as for the online evaluation questionnaire) on the day before each lecture.

Presentations like this correspond to the “Recommended online materials” mentioned in the 44111 programme published on the University website, and are public: no need of any UserIDs or passwords to read or download them.

These presentations are simply protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Italy License.(Don’t worry! On Tuesday, December 9, we will see what this means.)

For your convenience, presentations like this are also published on SlideShare.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalAvailable Tools: Google+ Circle

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To supply information, ask questions and provide answers,a dedicated Google+ circle is available, under a personal Google account of your lecturer.This circle is called IT for Tourism Managers 2014-2015, and can be reached by Google account holders at https://plus.google.com/+RobertoPeretta/.

If you wonder why chosing a social network rather than the e-mail to keep in touch, it is because sharing news, questions and answers through a social network is easier: basically, it’s a one-to-many relationship, rather than a one-to-one.If you also wonder why chosing Google+ rather than Facebook, it is because every social network may be used differently, and your lecturer uses Facebook for non-academic purposes.Moreover, Google+ is more easily manageable in terms of privacy.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalFinal Assessment

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Your final assessment, starting from January 2015, is going to be nothing more than a chat between your lecturer and yourself.During that chat, we may happen to discuss your website evaluation, which you must complete before the assessment.

Don’t underestimate that chat by any means.

The final assessment will provide the opportunity to test whether you will have properly understood the content of these lectures– all of the content of these lectures!


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalWorkshop

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As previously mentioned, a workshop run by your lecturer is scheduled this year, dealing with digital communication of regional destinations.

You won’t be able to attend this workshop, as it has been specifically designed for students in their second year – here at Planning and Management of Tourism Systems.

The workshop’s results are anyway going to be published, and accessible by anyone interested.

Presentations of previous workshops run by your lecturer are available on the CeSTIT webpages, and some directly from the IT for Tourism Managers webpage at the University of Bergamo website:http://www.unibg.it/struttura/en_struttura.asp?corso=44111


What Are We Doing Here? Being Digital

What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalThe CeSTIT, our Research Center

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Your lecturer belongs to the managing board of CeSTIT, or Centro Studi per il Turismo e l’Interpretazione del Territorio, directed by Professor Roberta Garibaldi, an economist.

The CeSTIT is an official research center from the Università degli studi di Bergamo (or in short – as you know – UniBg).Unfortunately, most CeSTIT initiatives andpublications are held and published in Italian.

So are the CeSTIT webpages athttp://www.unibg.it/turismo/


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalThe CeSTIT webpages at the UniBg website

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Those of you who can read Italian can therefore access the http://www.unibg.it/turismo/ webpages, to come to know what we did and are doing.For instance, on March 14 and 15, 2014 a CeSTIT conference was held in Bergamo, on Cultural Tourism in Europe.


OK. Now, let’s see a bit what “digital” means…

What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalWhat does “digital” mean?

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Digital derives from the Latin word Digitus, meaning finger.In short, digital is what can be represented with numbers, which can be counted with fingers.Digital is opposed to analogue, which is related to what is not countable: what cannot be considered within a discrete set of elements.Digital refers therefore to discrete mathematics, working with a finite set of elements,while what is analogue is modeled by the continuum, that is mathematics dealing with infinite elements (countable or uncountable).


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalA real wave, and a digital wave

17UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. November 13, 2014

What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalMechanical vs. Digital Watches

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A mechanical watch is analogue inasmuch as the position of each of its three hands (hours, minutes and seconds) can represent any of the infinite points forming the circle of the watch itself – points that cannot be numbered.In a digital watch, instead, only the figures which make up hours, minutes and seconds are usually represented – only the 86,400 moments (24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds) making up the seconds of a day.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalPhotographs and Pixels

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A traditional photograph (a photograph based on a chemical film) consists of an infinite number of points in an infinite range of colours.A chemical photograph can be digitized (scanned, for instance) and then translated into a digital photo when its surface is represented as divided into a discrete number of “points” (usually small squares or rectangles called pixels),each of which reproduces onlyone colour in an available rangeof 16,777,216 (a combinationof 256 shades of red, 256 of greenand 256 of blue – according to thewidely used RGB colour model).


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalWaves and Bits

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Many technologies rely on digital to reproduce a wave (a sound or a light wave) that was originally analog.A modem – as those now currently used for fast ADSL connections – converts an analog sound signal that can be sent through telephone wires into a digital signal, of the sort requested by computers or other electronic devices working by bits (0/1).


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalBits and Bytes

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A bit (a contraction of binary digit) is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states.These may be the two stable states of a flip-flop, two positions of an electrical switch, two distinct voltage or current levels allowed by a circuit, two distinct levels of light intensity, two directions of magnetization or polarization, etc.

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits.Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer architectures.


What Are We Doing Here? Being Digital“Being digital” as a 1995 book

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“I am optimistic by nature. However, every technology or gift of science has a dark side. Being digital is no exception.The next decade [1995-2005] will see cases of intellectual-property abuse and invasion of our privacy. We will experience digital vandalism, software piracy, and data thievery.

Worst of all, we will witness the loss of many jobs. […]We are not waiting on any invention. It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each generation will become more digital than the preceding one.The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young. Nothing could make me happier.”— Nicholas Negroponte, MIT


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalIs digital richer or poorer than analogue?

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A few socially relevant consequences: Communication Technologies (modems, broad band, wireless...) Information sharing (the Internet, the Web, mobile phones...) Email and social network posts (sent and received through the Internet) Music (Mp3, iTunes...) Photography (Kodak no longer manufactures chemical films) Satellite televisionIs digital a revolution?Yes! Digital has changed our lives.Nonetheless, digital is innerly poorer than analogueinasmuch as it conveys a simplified message.(This, by the way, may imply that digital communication is invariably poorer than personal communication.Let’s not forget it, when communicating through the Internet.)


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalThe real thing is better…

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The best way to communicate is meeting someone in person. When you call her/him through a videophone (or Skype) you miss at least the

physical context around her/him. When you call her/him on the phone, you miss the physical context, and you

don’t see her/him. When you send her/him an e-mail message, you miss the physical context, you

don’t see her/him, and you don’t know when and where she/he will read. When you send her/him a text message, you miss the physical context, you

don’t see her/him, you don’t know when and where she/he will read, and you must keep it short.

When post something on the Web, you miss the physical context, you don’t see your audience, you don’t know when and where your audience will read, you must keep it short, and you don’t know – or know little of – your audience.

Let’s not forget all this, when communicating through the Internet!


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalStandards

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As any other widespread technology, digital technologies comply with standards.But what’s a standard?


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalThe ISO

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When you think of standards you should think of different electric plugs in different countries, of electric tension (voltage), or octanes in gasoline… International standards are standards developed by international standards

organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use, worldwide.

The most prominent organisation is the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO.

International standards is one way of overcoming technical barriers in international commerce caused by differences among technical regulations and standards developed independently and separately by each nation, national standards organisation, or company.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalDe Jure and De Facto Standards

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As you should already know, some technology standards that are particularly relevant to our lectures – like the html, WAP, or Bluetooth – are official standards, internationally recognized.(WAP was even the result of a joint, previously planned effort among several companies, like Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft, Oracle, Vodafone, and Telefónica).We can consider those standards as de jure standards.Sometimes, however, standards exist de facto. They are widely adopted, though no official agreement has been reached about them.This is, for instance, the case of the portable document format, or pdf, developed by Adobe Systems Inc.Another de facto standard, for multimedia distribution on the Web, is the Flash platform, now owned by Adobe, but originally developed by Macromedia.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalHtml, and the W3C

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The most important language standard in our field is the html: the HyperText Markup Language, the language of the Web.It was devised by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory.From the year 2000, the html is an application of the International StandardISO 8879W3C.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)is an international community that developsopen standards to ensure the long-term growthof the Web.

The W3C is made up of member organizations,both from private companies and the academia.

<html><head><title>The webpages’s title,on the top in the browser</title></head><body>The webpage’s content:what we’re telling the world,and the browser shows.</body></html>


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalHttp, Ftp, TCP/IP…

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Aside from languages, another basic component of the digital world are protocols. Talking about the Web, Tim Berners-Lee invented both its language, the html, and its protocol, the http.The acronym http means HyperText Transfer Protocol, that is the protocol to exchange or transfer hypertext.Another frequently used protocol it the ftp, or file transfer protocol, a standard network protocol used to transfer computer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet.The TCP/IP itself is a combination of protocols. Its most important protocols, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), were the first networking protocols defined in the Internet standard.

Generally speaking, a protocol is a system of digital rules for data exchange within or between computers.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalTim Berners-Lee

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http://www.w3.org/

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. His specifications of URIs, http and html were refined as web technology spread.



What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalTechnologies

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There’s something very important to understand – in depth.Behind all the perceived magic of the Web, Google, Facebook, Skype, the iPhones or the like, there’s technology. A lot of different technologies, frequently combined.(Ok… There’s a lot of marketing, too...)What we perceive as friendly chats, angry posts, poisonous gossip, a picture of our dog, a short message of love from our partner, a video from New York on Facebook, voice instructions on how to reach a place while driving, an instant cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, are technologies.They are not magic. They are chips, antennas, codes, monitors, keyboards, earphones, standards, patents, digital languages and protocols…They mimic human behaviours. Or, rather, some humans have designed them in order to let us humans communicate differently.But they are technologies. Someone knows how they work. You should know, too.


What Are We Doing Here? Being DigitalChannels

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One last word you’re expected to become familiar with in the digital world – if you aren’t already – is channels.To put it according to Wikipedia, a “Communication channel is a transmission medium, e.g. a wire, or a multiplexed connection, e.g. a radio channel, used to convey an information signal from a sender to a receiver”.A less technical term than “languages” or “protocols”, “channels” commonly refers to the opportunity that a digital content can be distributed through different media to different audiences.If you shoot a video, for instance, your content can be delivered as a mastered CD sent through snail mail, an mpeg or wmv file attached to an e-mail message, an uploaded YouTube file, or a proper movie seen at home through a tv network or by a specific audience in a movie theater.

The same digital content can be distributed through a lot of channels.



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Now, thanks for your attention

Do you have any questions your lecturer might answer right now?

Please remember to keep in touch through our Google+ circle, https://plus.google.com/+RobertoPeretta/

BTW – Just in case, my e-mail address is [email protected] and my Skype id is roberto.peretta

Questions?


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