IWMW and sharing what we're up to

I was away for a few days last week at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011 conference (IWMW) , where lots of like-minded web folk from universities around the country get together to share experiences and ideas.



As ever, there were some interesting presentations and workshops (videos are online) but the stand-out benefit of attending was once again the conversations with colleagues at other universities that happen between sessions and in the bar in the evening. Of course, being an annual conference means there can be a lot to catch up on, so it was great to see a couple of outcomes this year which should help keep us in touch more regularly.

Regional meetups

There was a resurgence of interest this year in resurrecting some of the local web meetups that have happened in the past but, with the exception of the Scottish web folk, seem to have largely fizzled out. Between a few of us University folk in Yorkshire, we're hopeful that we might manage a local get together before too long.

A higher-ed blog aggregator

Since getting together in person is always going to be a once-in-a-while activity, the surprise unveiling of an institutional web teams blog aggregator was great to see. It should help all of us discover what one another are up to on an ongoing basis.

I've probably got RSS feeds for most HE web teams pouring into Google Reader already, but this makes them much more visible, saves me having to discover new blogs myself (I can use a single feed from here to pick up everything) and adds a handy search feature.

Hopefully the increased visibility will inspire both us and others to post more frequently!

Can you attend a conference without physically being there? Thoughts on IWMW 2010 as a remote attendee

Dan recently blogged about his experience at IWMW this year, so I thought I'd share my experience of the event as someone who wasn't physically there, but was instead following the action remotely.

Being a conference for web folk, it should come as no surprise that it makes extensive use of technology as a way of amplifying the conference experience. The have been live video streams of the talks as far back as 2007, and "backchannel" discussion on Twitter before most people even knew what Twitter was.

On the first day of the event I fired up the live video stream with the aim of watching the opening session. But then the phone rang, and I missed most of that. And then I got called into a meeting. And then something on the website broke that needed fixing urgently. This was a common theme over the three days of the event - I was able to catch the odd bit of a session here and there, but didn't manage to watch anything all the way through.

In spite of the interruptions, I was dipping into the Twitter stream of posts tagged with #iwmw10 as often as I could, which was giving me a good idea of  the key messages from each of the sessions, and how the physical audience were responding to them. As well as being streamed, videos of the talks have been made available to watch on-demand - now all I need is to find some time to actually watch them.

It's obviously not as good as being there in person - a lot of the benefit of being at a conference comes from the discussions that happen outside of the talks (and usually after a few drinks), and there's that pesky thing called the day job that keeps getting in the way. But in times when not everyone can afford to spend three days out of the office, it's not a bad substitute.

Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010

I spent three days out of the office last week at the Institutional Web Management Workshop in Sheffield. The conference theme was 'The Web in turbulent times' and though it sounded a bit gloomy (and indeed started that way when we were asked to look around and ponder who would be out of a job in 12 months - see from the 13th minute of the video), there were lots of positive ideas and opportunities being discussed.

There are videos and presentation slides online so I'll not go over the sessions, but I recommend taking a look. In particular, Paul Boag made great points about viewing a tightening of belts as an opportunity to assert web team authority over sprawling sites - something that seemed to strike a chord with lots of delegates. Paul's slides are available, but if you've got the time then the video of his talk is well worth watching.

In the final session Brian Kelly implored university web teams to blog more (and he's written a blog post on the same matter). I certainly enjoy and value reading what other universities are up to and hopefully this blog is of interest to colleagues both at York and elsewhere. However, I've been guilty for a long time of being 'too busy' to contribute. One of my IWMW resolutions this year is therefore to do my bit and contribute regularly to the 7500 posts that Brian reckons the HE community could produce each year. Hopefully I'll find something interesting to say...