IWMW11 Conclusions and Reflections

In bringing IWMW11 to a close, Brian Kelly invited a number of web managers to share their experiences and reflect on what the event and the community had contributed to their professional practices…

Milly Shaw from the University of Sunderland described their recent experiments with student bloggers, who were encouraged to blog about university life as a way of demonstrating authentic university life to prospective students in their Lives Online project.

Claire Gibbon from the University of Bradford described her department’s efforts to make themselves known within the institution and the local community as expert advisors on social media, which has involved running social media surgeries for staff and local community groups to help bring them onto campus.

Duncan Ireland from the University of Strathclyde described the activities of the Scottish Regional Group, which has been meeting informally every 3-4 months as a result of bonds forged at previous IWMW events. They often meet to discuss specific topical issues and collect together just prior to or immediately after IWMW each year to help extend the conversations associated with the event.

Miles Banbery from the University of Kent described work at this year’s event which has led to the establishment of an ongoing collaborative document designed to pull together ideas about how to maximise institutional webmaster impact. The hope is that this will prove to be a valuable resource to the community going forward, and to which they can all contribute.

And finally, Christopher Gutteridge demonstrated what his team has been doing with cookie data for the catering department at the University of Southampton, showing what can be done with linked data. Their exploits are all documented at their department blog, which was inspired by previous IWMW events. Chris emphasised the need to encourage each other to blog more, especially by commenting.

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Brian drew attention to the new UK HE Web Professionals LinkedIn group that was started as a result of discussions at this year’s event, and the launch of the Institutional Web Team blog aggregator. Both of these things are designed to help support the community throughout the year so that the energy and ideas generated at IWMW11 are not lost when everyone returns to their day jobs.

With the event Twitter stream was a-buzz with discussion about the formation of further regional groups and collaborations, Brian and Marieke formally brought IWMW11 to a close.

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