IWMW blogs

Have you got your visitor guide yet? You’ll get one in your delegate pack and find it really useful for helping you find great places to visit in Sheffield. The guide has been created by Sheffield University and Eleven, who create the Our Favourite Places guide (lots of great photos – we published a post about it a while back).

Remember the guide is not the only way to find great venues in Sheffield. The Sheffield Web team have produced an interactive map which has drinking and dining establishments in Sheffield plotted on it. This map is also for use on mobile devices.

There is also a list of venues with geo-location information listed on the IWMW Social page.

So are we going to be sweltering or soaking? Well it looks like a little bit of both.

We’ve embedded the latest weather news from the BBC below for you to see what the 3 day forecast will be. You can click on More detailed weather to see the finer details.

Fingers crossed for rain while we’re working and sun while we’re not!

You must have a browser that supports iframes to view the BBC weather forecast

As might be expected many participants at IWMW events are following the IWMW Twitter account. We use this account to keep participants informed of news and developments. We have also set up auto-follow so that the iwmw account will automatically follow new followers (although we will unfollow those who aren’t directly involved in the IWMW event).  This will allow us to send direct messages (DMs) if there is need to do this (such usage is only envisaged in case of emergencies).

The links between the IWMW Twitter account and the followers will also enable us to evaluate and exploit the potential of new Twitter developments.

In our initial experiment we have used the paper.li service to create a daily newsletter based on links shared by IWMW and IWMW followers.   So if you visit the paper.li iwmw page you will see a page which has been generated based on the links which have been posted on the IWMW Twitter feed (typically, so far, links to blog posts and pages on the IWMW 2010 Web site).

But in addition it will also display content from links shared by our followers – and, as can be seen from the image, this provides a much more diverse range of content. As there is so much content which the paper.li service can analyse I was interested to note that it has started to auto-classify the contents of the posts, with headings such as Education, Technology and #mobile being featured (and shown in the top right hand content of the screen shot). I’ve also noticed that the advertisement on the page can be related to these headings.

We have also created  a paper.li page for the #iwmw10 event hashtag which displays the content of links which have been posted using this hashtag. Currently the page contains summaries of posts to the IWMW 2010 blog, but in the days prior to the event and during the event itself we might expect to see a greater range of content, including content from IWMW 2010 participants who are posting links related to the event.

Over the years in which we have been organising the IWMW series of events we have been pro-active in helping to support the Web management community – which has developed, I feel,  into an effective community of practice. I wonder whether seeing the resources which are being posted on Twitter will provide another way in which mutual areas of interest can be identified and, perhaps, contacts established?

I’ll be very interested to see how the contents of the auto-generated daily newsletters evolve over time – and especially over the period 12-14 July, during the three days of the IWMW 2010 event.

What is the IWMW event about?  Marieke Guy and Brian Kelly have given some thought to the event and reflected on how it has developed over the years.  In brief we feel that the IWMW event:

• Aims to be the premier event for members of institutional Web teams in UK higher education.
• Seeks to provide a forum for discussion, debate and sharing of best practices for supporting institutions in the provision of institutional Web services.
• Will ensure that institutions are well-positioned to exploit innovative developments which can enhance their services.
• Will provide a forum for JISC-funded developments to be shared across the community and for feedback to be obtained.
• Will provide a cost-effective national service for the Web management community in the UK higher education sector.

We will seek to achieve these objectives by:

• Providing an opportunity for innovative ideas and best practices to be shared across the sector.
• Maximising the outreach of the content and discussions at event through use of  ‘amplification’ technologies.
• Ensuring that we provide opportunities for user input and discussions at the event.
• Continuing to implement developments to support the event including remote attendee support, event amplification, use of social networking tools, access to appropriate data related to the event, etc.
• Ensuring feedback is systematically obtained.

Does that sound reasonable? We welcome your feedback and comments.

IWMW have been lucky enough to be able to offer a number of sponsored places for those who haven’t been able to secure institutional support for this year’s event. As we are all aware these are difficult economic times and the Higher Education sector is having to make significant cuts. The staff development fund is unfortunately one of the easier targets.

Ranjit Sidhu, founder of Statistics into Decisions (or SiD) who have sponsored the places explains the reasons behind this different approach to financial support:

“I first attended IWMW back in 2005 and then 2006, what I learn’t in those two events, from the talks and people, gave me an insight that was unique and could not be replicated by courses or books. I am hugely indebted to the IWMW for my own personal professional development and that is why I feel privileged that Statistics into Decisions is able to sponsor people to attend IWMW 2010“.

Those who have been awarded the sponsered places will be ‘helping out’ with some of back room work that goes on at IWMW such as blogging, videoing and interviewing delegates and writing up reviews of sessions. You will posibly see them out-and-about doing their stuff so we’d like to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves, say why they applied and what they hope to get out of the event.

Amy Chamier, Web Editor, Marketing & Development Unit, University of London

A small, specialist HE institution like mine can’t afford a large web team – there are only two of us. And so we rely heavily on the annual IWNW to keep in touch with the latest thinking and technology, and to learn from the experiences of more sophisticated members of the HE community. My particular contributions will be asking stupid questions (not too many I hope, but enough to give other delegates confidence to ask questions) and introducing people to other people (I like to talk to everyone and then make introductions where delegates have interests in common). I hope to run a Barcamp this year called “Distributed publishing? You can’t be serious”.

Keith Doyle, Extreme Usability

I’m looking forward to returning to the Institutional Web Management Workshop. Last time I attended was in York 2007, when I was Web Content Architect at the University of Salford. This time, I am about to set up a business called ‘Extreme Usability’. I am turning up to facilitate a workshop on Developing Your Personal Contingency Plan for people who are thinking of changing jobs or setting up their own business, having done both since working at Salford. Thanks to the sponsored place, I can attend the whole workshop, be an extra pair of hands for the organisers, and talk user experience with unsuspecting delegates!

Lynda Bewley, Web Content Editor, Birkbeck, University of London

My attendance will:

• Ensure that the current projects that I am working on benefit from an understanding of the latest challenges and trends in university web development
• Allow me to learn from the experiences of web teams who have worked on similar projects, and bring knowledge and cost-saving ideas back to Birkbeck
• Allow Birkbeck to manage as many elements as possible of these projects in-house, therefore saving on external consultancy costs
• Ensure that the communications team are up-to-date with technical trends and challenges in the sector
• Help my team to be able highlight/justify the importance of continuing to invest in our web presence during challenging times (the theme of the conference)

I hope to contribute:

• The perspective of a content editor
• Experience of leading re-launch projects at HE institutions
• Experience of developing a social media strategy and managing social media presences on an ongoing basis
• An awareness of the challenges of devolved editorial management

Owen Stephens, consultant and OU

I am very pleased and excited to running a workshop at IWMW2010 (FlashMash – Parallel Session A7). My current position as both a consultant, and a part-time employee of the largest University in the UK (the Open University) gives me an unusual perspective on the challenges facing those working in the HE sector, and I believe I have valuable insights I can share with other delegates through contribution to formal sessions and more informal networking throughout the conference.

I’m also keen to actively participate in the ‘amplified event’. My blogging for IWMW2010 would form both part of the amplified event and the record of the event which will continue to be a useful resource in the future.

In a previous role (2005-2007) I was responsible for web based services for a small university (Royal Holloway, University of London), including the institutional web site, the student portal, the VLE and a range of library systems. I am eager to hear from current practitioners what has changed since then, and also to see how the continued growth of the web has affected the way specialised services (such as the library and VLE) fit into the overall institutional web presence.

My experience at IWMW2010 is something I will share with colleagues at the Open University, both via my blog, and through local dissemination events.

Billy Fallows, Web Editor, College of Arts and Law, Birmingham

I attended last year’s IWMW in Colchester but was not able to attend this year’s event. I’d love to put my experience to use producing a series of video interviews with participants for your blog at this year’s event!

To coincide with IWMW 2010 and the recent interest from universities in SearchImprove (Siteimprove’s bespoke search engine) we are delighted to announce the SearchImprove University Introductory Offer. This offer is all about giving universities the chance to see how much control editors have over SearchImprove and the chance to take advantage of our limited period special pricing discounts made available only to universities!!

Siteimprove will be hosting barcamps to introduce some of the features of SearchImprove, and also our quality assurance tool SiteCheck, which has been our most popular tool with universities in recent months. Don’t forget to check the timetable to make sure you don’t miss out on these!!

Just like last year’s event in Essex, Siteimprove will have a stand to welcome all visitors that are interested in learning a little more about us and how we can make website management easier. There will also of course be a big box of chocolates so any hungry delegates should make their way over to us promptly!

IWMW 2010 promises to be a really exciting event and another great chance to learn more about the educational markets and its individual needs.

We look forward to meeting with you all next week!

Gary Rowntree (gary.rowntree@siteimprove.co.uk)

Cerri Mac (cerri.mac@siteimprove.co.uk)

Site Confidence is pleased to offer a day of load testing as a great prize for the IWMW prize draw. The winner will benefit from Site Confidence’s external load testing services for websites and web applications. No costly software or hardware implementation is required, nor major training courses. Our commitment to the winner will include:

• Pre-project preparation – our consultant will check requirements and success factors to ensure a positive outcome is achieved.
• Scripts – working with you, we will prepare and test the scripts in the journey through the site to be used for the load test.
• Test Day – the testing portal will be opened to test and re-test as many times as required in the day, allowing tests and fixes to be made “live”.
• Training and support – we will train staff to enable as much self-help as possible and during the test day, we remain on hand at the end of a phone, if needed.
• Test Results – the results are clear and detailed in the testing portal and will remain available for reference for the following 12 months.

The benefit for the winner of this prize will be a thoroughly checked site for capacity limits and weaknesses, so that problems can be quickly identified and corrections made. The confidence gained from having this knowledge prior to a launch is invaluable, as is the assurance of a successful launch.

We wish the best of luck to all delegates and look forward to working with the winner!

The IWMW events have always sought to provide an opportunity for experimentation  on various aspects with emerging new Web technologies.  In the past couple of years we have encouraged use of Twitter to support discussions at the event. Whilst the use of a Twitter event back channel  may no longer be regarded as innovative (although the event may provide an opportunity for those who haven’t yet used Twitter to explore its potential)  the use of semantic tweets is a relatively new concept.

I first came across the concept of using lightly structured tweets to support an event at the WWW 2010 conference in a paper on “Real-time #SemanticWeb in <= 140 chars” (available in PDF format) presented by Joshua Shinavier in the Linked Data on the Web 2010 workshop.  Joshua provided a demonstration of use of this approach at the conference. As he has described his demonstration is “based on TwitLogic, an aggregating service capable of collecting user-contributed semantic nanotations from Twitter“.

He provided the following summary of how to use the service at the Linked Data on the Web workshop which was co-located with the WWW 2010 conference (for which the conference hashtags were #ldow2010 and #www2010)

… open up your favorite Twitter client to write down whatever you want to say about this WWW 2010 conference, or about any subevents of it. As a LOD enthusiast, you might want to tweet about this LDOW workshop:

#LDOW2010 (part of #www2010) is about to start, expecting a bunch of great presentations!

You migt also want to tweet about a particular talk:

Next will be @joshsh talking about #TwitLogic (see http://bit.ly/aOnQb7). #ldow10 (ie #ldow2010)

TwitLogic understands your tweet, extracts the embeded structured data, processes them to generate RDF streams and finally, your tweets appear in our demo, becoming part of the real-time view of the LDOW workshop!

Joshua has kindly agreed that his service can be used to aggregated the #iwmw10 tweets, thus provided a Linked Data representation of the discussions on the Twitter back channel at this year’s event.

In order to provide the initial content for the service I have tweeted the following factual sumamries about the event. Initially I described the event using a syntax which should be understandable by both humans and software:

The Web site for #iwmw10  (homepage http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2010/)

I then provided links between the various plenary talks,the speakers and the details on the Web site:

Welcome session at #iwmw10 is by @mariekeguy and @briankelly #P0 (homepage http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2010/talks/welcome/)

Welcome session #P0 (partof #iwmw10)

Biographical details for @briankelly  (homepage http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2010/speakers/#kelly) #iwmw10

Plenary talk #P1 by @cloggingchris (homepage http://iwmw.ukoln.ac.uk/iwmw2010/talks/sexton/) (partof #iwmw10)

I also provided links to my interests and key resources:

Blog for @briankelly (homepage http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/) #iwmw10

@briankelly is based at UKOLN (hompage  http://ww.ukoln.ac.uk/) #iwmw10

Interests of @briankelly (studies Web2.0) (studies Standards) (studies Accessibility) #iwmw10

Joshua’s software processes tweets containing the #iwmw10, analyses the tweets and parses the structure and stores this Linked Data in RDF.  A Linked Data visualisation tool can then be used to browse through this structured resource.

If you would like to join in, you can post your tweets with the #iwmw2010 using the syntax defined in the Syntax Convention and illustrated above. Note that the Twitter aggregation software is following Twitter users which are listed on the iwmw10facilitator, iwmw10facilitator or iwmw10participant (or iwmw10remote) list – so if you wish your event tweets to be included as semantic tweets please let us know so that we can add you to the appropriate group.

Our intention is to provide a demonstration of the results on the final morning of the IWMW 2010 even, between 11:30 and 12:30 on Wednesday 14 July.

Warning: the idea for this session is blatantly stolen from Nick DeNardis’ EDU Checkup. Blame him!

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”
– John 8:7

So that’d be me then?!

I’ve run this session at a couple of previous barcamps and it seems to have gone down reasonably well (based on the fact I’ve got out of the room alive) so I figured it was worth suggesting for IWMW 2010.

The idea is simple – as many short website reviews as you can cram into a 30 minute session.  In the past I’ve used the same basic format as EDU Checkup:

• 10 second test: show then hide the homepage then try to remember as much as possible.
• ~5 minute review: surf around the site looking for things of interest – as Roy Walker would say, “say what you see”.
• Ratings: scores out of 100 for design, content and code.

Unlike Nick’s podcasts, Slate My Website is filmed in front of a live studio audience which allows for mob mentality! At each stage everyone in the session can chip in their feedback.

The reviews are voluntary (although Phil Wilson did suggest a spinning wheel in case volunteers aren’t forthcoming!) and at some point the tables are turned against the main reviewer to make sure it’s “fair”.

So what do you think of the idea? I was planning to run it myself but I’m likely to be quite busy next Tuesday so if someone would like to volunteer to do the main reviews then that’d be great – I have slides prepared for it and everything!

“Linked data” is the buzz word of the hour, and apparently the government are using it on data.gov.uk, but what the hell is it and why would a university web manager need to know about it? There’s plenty of technical documentation already, but very little explanation for people who don’t read XML for fun.

Linked data is a way to make your data easy for other people to work with, and easy to integrate with other people’s data. Publishing some of your data in this way doesn’t just make things easier for people outside your organisation, but also inside. Some good examples are your (public) staff contact database, your university structure, projects & publications.

There’s a whole bunch of scary issues, such as data protection, licenses and so forth, but there is also some very low hanging fruit. For example, publishing the room & building of every academics office would be hugely controversial, but just publishing the list of buildings at your organisation, with name, number, campus, lat, long & primary inhabitants would be a hugely useful resource which would require very little effort to keep up to date. Let a student mash that up with their timetable and you’ve got an iPhone app that shows freshers when their next lecture is and points them in the right direction!

For good Linked Data, good design of URIs is vital. A URI usually looks like a URL, but often identifies concepts beyond the scope of web pages, such as people (http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248) or the concept of income tax (http://dbpedia.org/resource/Income_tax). In our session on Looking at Linked Data we’ll be covering a bit of best practice on URL/URI design which will help you be ready for the next years of the web. Sir Tim calls them “cool URIs”: http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/

Hopefully you’ll also learn the difference between URLs and URIs in a way which won’t give you a headache

- Christopher Gutteridge & Nick Gibbins