Well, who’d have thought it? Aberdeen was hot, sunny and beautiful!
Alison, Tom and I got back to the south-west some time after midnight having spent a few days in Aberdeen at IWMW 2008. Alison’s already summed up the event and Ewan’s excellent keynote talk (even if it was last!) in a previous post so here’s what I came away with:
Firstly, nothing can replace the face-to-face experience of talking to other people doing a similar job elsewhere. I know it’s a cliché to even say it these days, but although forums, mailing lists and blogs can play a part, nothing beats chatting over a drink. Ewan mentioned something similar when he spoke about getting into lecture halls to see exactly what was being taught and how – do we really expect to be able to deliver an effective service when we don’t engage with our own audience as closely as possible (and that doesn’t include YouTube videos!) ?
A revelation for me was putting what we’re doing at Bath into a national context. It’s always hard to tell from within the institution, where you have no larger frame of reference, quite how well we’re performing and what the comparitive level for our service provision is – having spoken to a number of people I’d probably put us somewhere in the middle of the pack but it would be great to set some real leads – more on this in a bit.
Tom and I ran a nintey-minute parallel session where we tried to get a feel for the kinds of activities web services teams are involved in and tried to emphasise the use of third-party services both inside and outside the firewall to alleviate our workload and allow us to focus on more specialist software for target groups within the institution. We were hoping to generate a little more discussion but it was tough given that most people were exhausted from the previous day’s exertions! The conversation we did have seemed to back up our suspicions, suggesting that institutional web teams might have to reposition to target multiple vertical markets inside the university rather than the traditional horizontal market.
There also seemed to be general agreement that since web software is now a commodity the quality of our offerings will have to go up in order to make to make it attractive to our audience, in particular making sure we use the ever-improving web toolkits for producing targetted web applications in a very short time frame (days rather than weeks or months). This was reflected in a discussion of the outsourcing of email to companies like Microsoft live@edu and Google Apps for Education and comparing that to our own services. Revisiting Mike Ellis’ talk he seems to have found the perfect quote from Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music: “Losers wish for scarcity. Winners leverage scale.” – the days of scarcity on the web are well over, scale is here to stay – how do we adapt?
My colleagues and I returned from Aberdeen in the early hours of this morning after several days talking, thinking and twittering about the web.
It was great to spend a few days away from the office and it gave us an opportunity to reflect on what we’re doing in a new environment with some kindred spirits.
The highlight of the event was undoubtedly listening to Ewan Mcintosh deliver his keynote speech “Unleashing the Tribe“. Many of us go to the event and talk about things we’re doing in our own Universities but it was great to hear real examples of how social participation has changed the way people interact. The talk was really inspiring and gave me lots of food for thought.
Ewan confirmed my belief that the new generation give little thought to their professional identity which made me realise we need to step up a gear when it comes to educating our students. I’ve already delivered a presentation on this as part of our Web Sessions but I’m sure I’ll be looking at ways we could work with our SU to spread the message even further.
I also found Paul Boag’s “Battling Bureaucracy” parallel session extremely useful. Paul gave some expert tips about getting your message across and ensuring everyone has a voice which I’ll certainly take onboard.
As for me…
I spoke about my experiences moving from Edge Hill University to the University of Bath. It was great to get feedback from colleagues in other Universities similar to Bath and to reflect on how the fundamentals of managing a website are largely the same regardless of size, position and goal. We all wish to provide a seamless and valuable user experience and whether we’re focused on recruitment or research we want to ensure users get to the information they want quickly and with no pain.
Later today Tom Natt, Phil Wilson and myself will set off for Aberdeen to attend the annual Institutional Web Managers Workshop (organised by our colleagues in UKOLN).
I have been attending the event since 2001 and it’s always a good opportunity to catch up with colleagues across the HE sector to compare stories, be inspired and to generally talk about the web.
I recall Peter Reader (former Director of Marketing and Communications at Bath) attending last year and talking of a merger between the Computing and Marketing web teams but I would never have envisaged I’d be heading up that team twelve months on.
Following a talk I gave last July I’ve been asked to return to reflect on my views/experiences in managing web teams in two very different Universities. Formerly the Head of Web Services at Edge Hill University, I’ll be talking about my experiences thus far and answering the question “have my views about how to use the web changed now I’m in a research-led institution?”
As usual slides are available on slideshare and further information can be found on the UKOLN website.
I’m not the only one putting myself in the spotlight this year. Colleagues Tom and Phil will be delivering a workshop session entitled “What’s the Point of having Developers in a Web 2.0 World?” which looks set to be interesting. Selfishly I only hope they can find a point as I’d like to keep them both on the team!
The workshop has a great line up this year. It looks set to be interesting and sufficiently controversial so I’m looking forward to lots of food for thought!
Several weeks ago we advertised a talk about RSS and Atom feeds in the real world. This talk was cancelled due to illness. Now it is back. As before, it is brief look at news feeds in web pages, how they can be used to change our internet reading habits and why this is a good idea. As before it is aimed all web users with practical demonstrations to allow anyone leaving the session to start reading feeds immediately. The only thing that has changed is the time and place. So join us for a gentle ride through the world of RSS feeds: Wednesday 16th July at 12:15 in 3W3.7.
Last week (27th June) Lizzie Richmond (our University Archivist, Records Manager, and FOI Co-ordinator) and I delivered a Case Study at the JISC – Preservation of Web Resources workshop.
We were asked by our colleagues at UKOLN (who organised the event) to deliver a brief talk detailing our approach to preserving web resources at the University. Our initial reaction was that we had little to say. Lizzie’s remit lies with the paper records and I am responsible for managing our website – ensuring it meets the needs of our users. Neither of us felt web preservation was something we had expertise in nor the time (and for me the inclination) to fully explore this.
Web preservation was something we could see as being useful (in the future) but I think we both felt it wasn’t a priority.
That said we agreed to present a case study and spent some time discussing what little we did and what potentially we could do.
The outcome was very interesting.
Simply discussing preservation (from both sides of the fence) taught us a lot. We discovered the risks involved in simply side-lining it; the potential gap in University history and the benefits of embedding preservation into our digital strategy. We felt it was something worth doing but like many of the other attendees at the workshop we had more questions than answers; what to store, how to store, the list goes on…
So is it something we should make time for? Yes I believe it is.
Fortunately the PoWR project looks to explore these issues further and deliver some advice and guidance to the HE community. Web preservation is never going to be top of a Web Managers agenda (in my opinion) but it should BE on the agenda… and for me that’s progress!
Firstly, nothing can replace the face-to-face experience of talking to other people doing a similar job elsewhere. I know it’s a cliché to even say it these days, but although forums, mailing lists and blogs can play a part, nothing beats chatting over a drink. Ewan mentioned something similar when he spoke about getting into lecture halls to see exactly what was being taught and how – do we really expect to be able to deliver an effective service when we don’t engage with our own audience as closely as possible (and that doesn’t include YouTube videos!) ?
