IWMW blogs

Kevin Mears from the University of Glamorgan Web team has attended IWMW before, but this year can’t make it due to some restructuring that has been taking place in his department. It’s clear that a lot of people have been through this process and many more will do during the forthcoming year. Kevin has written a [...]

Squiz and Funnelback Search are looking forward to exhibiting at the IWMW once again this year. Last week, Squiz held a pre-IWMW seminar in London featuring a number of talks on Web Experience Management Solutions, including two case studies from universities which may be of interest to IWMW2011 blog readers. Daniel Jackson, Development Manager at City University , presented [...]

All attendees of this year’s IWMW have the chance to enter a competition to win a Kindle. Siteimprove are offering the prize as part of an effort to help raise the awareness in the potential to save money through having the best results possible on your website’s internal search engine. SearchImprove, Siteimprove’s hosted internal search engine, gives you [...]

This may be a bit late in the day considering how long Marieke has been asking us all to say something about our upcoming IWMW2011 sessions, but I’m afraid the allocated time for a particular “job” always gets lumped toward any actual event associated with it and it’s only this week I’ve got back on wavelength [...]

Alex Brannen, Director of Communications at the University of Reading, has written us a guest blog post introducing Reading, the University and the Digital Development team. ************* We’re looking forward to welcoming you all to Reading later this month. For those of you who don’t know us or the town – yes we are still officially [...]

Not enough time, not enough people, not enough budget . These were some of the major obstacles for institution web managers back in 2009, according to some research funded by Eduserv. At the time Andy Powell, our Research Programme Director, said:

“there appears to be a continued emphasis (particularly amongst senior members of higher education institutions) on using the web [...]

This year’s parallel is a follow up to the one I (Chris Gutteridge) gave last year entitled Looking at Linked Data . In March 2011, the University of Southampton launched the data.southampton.ac.uk service with some core datasets from the university. So has it been a success? Recently I got asked what the success criteria for the Open Data project was. [...]

As facilitator, I showed three university videos on YouTube. And then invited delegates to award cheers and boos. The first video got mixed reviews. I loved it and thought it spot on for the target audiences. Others disagreed. Opinions about the subsequent videos were pretty unanimous. Everyone at this barcamp had experience of commissioning online [...]

Amy Chamier gives us her summary of the plenary session: P2 “Are web managers still needed when everyone is a web ‘expert’?”, presented by Susan Farrell. ____________________ Will web managers be the first to go when public sector cuts bite? This was the unsettling question put to us by independent web consultant Susan Farrell. Susan, a former [...]

In the opening Plenary of IWMW 2010, Chris Sexton, Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield, explored the challenges that web and information services teams are facing. Chris’s talk looked at the challenges from the perspective of an IT Director and explained how they may lead to changes in the way [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

” 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 [...]

The JISC Greening Events  Project Greening Events is a small exploratory project funded under the JISC Greening ICT programme . It is investigating how to minimise the negative sustainability impacts of academically related events (such as conferences and seminars, training, administrative and project meetings, etc.) whilst gaining the maximum benefit from them. The two main objectives of [...]

At IWMW 2010 I ( Owen Stephens ) am running a workshop on mashups – ‘ FlashMash‘. The rather foolhardy aim of the session is to actually build a working mashup in the 90 minutes available. There’s no nice way of saying this, so I’ll just come right out with it In order to stand a fighting chance [...]

This blog entry is for people attending the Personal Contingency parallel session to share what they hope to get out of the session. The aim of this session is to explore key maxim’s that will help you prepare for a change of career or a change in your work situation. Whether you’re planning to change roles, [...]

Last year I ( Helen Sargan , Web Manager, University of Cambridge) ran a parallel session on choosing Plone for a CMS pilot ( Another step closer to a CMS – dallying with Plone ). This went ahead and the first site will be published shortly, with several more at pilot stage. If anyone is interested I can catch [...]

Sheffield has some great places to eat, drink and be merry…you just need to know where to look… Melissa Nisbett from Eleven has written a few lines introducing us to great places to go and to the Sheffield guide book they produce. All images courtesy of Nigel Barker Photography . Sheffield has a wealth of vintage, retro and antique [...]

The economic challenges faced by web managers in the HE sector are a key theme of this year’s IWMW. Providing effective website search can be a surprisingly efficient way to ensure that the results from your web investments are maximised and can even save you money. Offering fast and usable access to your online information ensures [...]

In these cash-strapped times, I believe any sensible Institution should be increasing their web professionals as they can provide many efficiencies and savings by web enabling processes and reducing printing costs (among other things). So do you find that you are less valued than you used to be or more? Are you seen as the [...]