Bookings are now closed for the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007. If you would like to put your details on a mailing list please contact events@ukoln.ac.uk or a member of the organising committee [2007-06-01]

Alison Wildish has written a guest blog post for Brian Kelly's "UK Web Focus: Reflections On The Web" blog [2007-06-01]

Paul Boag has written a guest blog post for "Brian Kelly's UK Web Focus: Reflections On The Web" blog [2007-06-04]

Brenda Lowndes, University of Liverpool, gave a talk entitled "WWW / Database Integration".

After studying Applied Psychology and then Cognitive Science and Intelligent Computing, Stephen Emmott went on to lecture in both Artificial Intelligence and Psychology. After two academic years he ventured into the commercial world with jobs in the emerging 'New Media' industry: Easynet, Cyberia, Netmare and finally Webmedia where he spent his last year as project manager for Which? Online. He joined King's College London as Web Editor in September 1997 and is currently exploring content management using XML. Stephen gave a talk entitled "Events Online".

Paul Boag, from Headscape, considers how social participation is the cornerstone of the web 2.0 movement and has been spearheaded by sites such as digg.com. One of the underlying principles of these sites is that peer to peer recommendations carry more weight than those from either a search engine or from corporate advertising. The commercial sector has been quick to adopt this peer review mechanism with customer reviews and ratings. This talk proposes to explore how social participation can be applied to the process of recruiting new students and what lessons can be learnt from the approach adopted by the commercial sector. We will also look at what institutional barriers exist that prevent this approach and how these can be overcome.

Peter Reader, University of Bath explains that E-communications, e-marketing and social media are hot topics for university marketers and communicators, with old ideas of 'control' looking more and more unrealistic. Now the talk is of 'influence', viral marketing, students as customers, and of client management, with the web and web technologies seen increasingly as the university's most important marketing tools. So what are the challenges, and what are the issues with which marketers will face us? Expect more of "why" and "want" than of "how"!

Arthur Clune, Honeynet Project, discusses how attacks on Web servers, and internet connected devices in general have become both more common and more sophisticated in recent years. This talk will look at how people attack Web servers, and what they are hoping to gain from it, based on data from the Honeynet Project's deployment of Honeypot servers worldwide.

During Keith Doyle, Salford University talk, delegates will discover how, by taking the information architecture approach as their next step, they can improve the user experience and business benefits. Information architecture gives delegates a framework and benchmarks for managing web provision at an institutional level. This should be an engaging and entertaining talk which would help delegates decide whether a formal IA role is appropriate to their organisation. Helping delegates consider their institutional strategic approach: What is IA? How is the role covered at the moment? Should it be a specific post rather than something that's squeezed in with everything else we do?

Drew McLellan will talk about how every time non-semantic markup is used, a piece of data dies. Data was born to be shared. Discover how the use of semantic markup and microformats can obsolete common read-heavy APIs and can be paired with identity protocols and OpenID to provide casual APIs for the loosely coupled generation.

Jeff Barr, Amazon Web Services (Senior Manager, Web Services Evangelism) will discuss Amazon's approach to Web-scale computing. Using this new approach, developers can use Amazon's broad line of web services to rapidly and cost-effectively build scalable and flexible Web applications. Jeff will focus on Amazon's newest services, including the Simple Queue Service, the Simple Storage Service, and the Elastic Compute Cloud. The talk will include technical details and an overview of how the services are being used by customers all over the world.

Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services, Edge Hill University will talk about how Students are asking each other for help and advice rather than coming direct to our staff. These same students are advising our applicant community about University life and they're all doing it in an "informal" environment. These are all positive developments but it does mean we start to ask the question... if we're moving towards developing and nurturing students in these online communities and empowering them to help themselves, will we still need a "corporate" Web site in the future? Furthermore with the increase in "free" tools available such as email, file storage, blogs etc. - will Institutional systems be a thing of the past?

Steven Warburton will discuss how the notion of community continues to be recognised as a fundamental aspect within descriptions of shared human activity and group bonding. In his socio-cultural analysis of the work place Wenger defined a particular type of communion, which he termed a community of practice (CoP). The concept of a CoP has been somewhat abused in current literature yet it does provide valuable insights into how communities evolve, behave and sustain themselves. By elaborating dimensions of community such as shared practice, dialogue, legitimate peripheral participation and negotiation of boundaries, Wenger has provided a model that can be applied to a number of differing groups of activity. This talk will explore what we can draw from the work on CoPs, in terms of the role and identity of institutional web manager, one that is inseparable from a field of practice that remains dynamic, fluid and under constant negotiation.

Chris Young, Netskills, University of Newcastle and Paul Trueman, Netskills, University of Newcastle will be looking at accreditation systems. You may be new to a Web-role or you may be more experienced, with a set of useful skills. Either way, increasingly there is a need for recognised individual development and accreditation in order to progress in within your organisation and with your own career.

William Mackintosh, Web Manager, University of York and Damon Querry, Senior Web Development Officer, University of Newcastle upon Tyne will be looking at Search Technology within the University Environmen. The University of Newcastle upon Tyne has implemented a Google Search Appliance. The University of York is committed to the purchase of the Google Mini. The session will discuss the reasons for selecting these products and how they add value to an institution's Web site.

Duncan Davidson, Information Manager, University of Abertay Dundee and Donna Wilkinson, Information Specialist, University of Abertay Dundeed will look at their University's development plans, the related projects - University Portal and Information Architecture, where we have been, current work and the road ahead.

In previous IWMWs sessions have focussed on issues such as: Should we buy or build our CMS? Which CMS should we implement? How do we implement our CMS? How can we measure the impact of our CMS Implementation? And how do we address The CMS Challenge? But last year it was claimed that "There is no such thing as a silver bullet" and that a CMS will not solve all your problems. Has the CMS bubble bust? Has content management become content mis-management? In the light of new approaches, such as Web 2.0, and new 'ways of doing things' is there a feeling of disillusionment with 'ye old CMS'? Or does a CMS remain the backbone of a good institutional Web site? In this debate you will hear the arguments for and against content management systems and will have an opportunity to express your views.

Andy Powell gave a talk about how it goes without saying that the Web has changed significantly over the last 10 years and that institutional Web sites have changed with it - just use the Wayback Machine to look back at your own site in 1996 to see what I mean. Such changes have not simply been in terms of style and substance but also in terms of how we expect to interact with, use and re-use the content and services being made available to us. In short, the Web has changed us and the way we learn and work. This talk will look back over the last 10 years and highlight some of the key technical, social, political and legal changes that have taken place and the impact these have had on the institutional Web sites we deliver now and will deliver into the future.

Randy Metcalfe, OSS Watch and Brian Kelly, UKOLN gave a plenary on openess and the Web manager. Openness appears to be all the rage: open standards for interoperability, open source for software development and deployment, and open content for sharing knowledge. What brings these phenomena together is a commitment to openness. But how do colleges and universities engage with openness? And more particularly, what does it mean for institutional Web managers.

Ranjit Sidhu from Nedstat gave a talk about how after discussions with various people in the education sector it became clear that there was a requirement for some industry wide statistics about Web site activity. These Sector Statistics will provide organisations, specifically universities, with a means of benchmarking the performance of their Web site.

Kate Forbes-Pitt, Systems Manager, Web Services, London School of Economics will talk about aims aims to problematise the document, asking the following questions: what is a document? How does it impart information to its reader? Can it be replicated on screen? It proposes answers using the arguments of Hughes and King (1993) who contend that the document is a layered social artifact that exists to 'wrap' content. This 'wrapping' provides the reader with the knowledge they need in order to apply social rules to their reading of the document, and so become able to interpret its content. Some information systems writers argue that the need for social knowledge in a task negates the possibility of its automation. Following the logic of this argument, delivering a document (a container of rule) through the existing set of social rules that govern Web interaction, means that the full function of the electronically reproduced document becomes masked or confused. At best this makes the role of the document superfluous to its content, making the content difficult to interpret. At worst it makes the content incomprehensible to the user. This raises a further question: what purpose is served by reproducing documents online? Following from the above arguments, it is possible to argue that 'pure' content, rather than the imitation of printed paper, is likely to be a more successful way of imparting information through the Web.

Universities undertake research through a mesh of partnerships, collaborations and contractual relationships. Major research funding bodies, such as government departments, are increasingly encouraging their contractors to adopt formal quality assurance standards - such as ISO 9001:2000. If you haven't come across this already, you are likely to see it very soon! In this talk John Gilbey, Institute QA Manager, IGER discussed the impact of quality standards on the way Web resources - internal and external - are defined, delivered, managed and reviewed in academic environments. An over-view of the quality requirement is presented, along with some pragmatic suggestions to help you deal with it.

Michael Webb, IT and Media Services Head, University of Wales, Newport gave a talk about how Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way our staff and students (potential, current and past) relate to one another and our Universities. Embracing these technologies provides a great opportunity to enhance the University experience, but also presents a number of risks and challenges. So how do Universities develop a strategic approach to embracing Web 2.0?

Chris Scott from Headscape gave a talk on "Real World Emerging Technologies". Falling University entries and top-up fees have contributed to a step-change in the operational environment for the HE sector. This change has resulted in an acute pressure on institutions to innovate for success. This presentation will explore some opportunities for institutions to capitalise on new and emerging web technologies in response to such changes. While there is much hype about Web 2.0, there are some genuine opportunities for straightforward applications of Web 2.0 technologies in institutions that are low risk and low cost, and have potential for significant returns if they are introduced and managed correctly and the right people are involved.

IWMW 15 Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011: Responding to Change held at the University of Reading on 26-27 July 2011

IWMW 14 Institutional Web Management Workshop 2010: The Web in Turbulent Times held at the University of Sheffield on 12-14 July 2010

IWMW 13: Institutional Web Management 2009, held at the University of Essex on 28-30 July 2009

IWMW 12: Institutional Web Management 2008: The Great Debate, held at the University of Aberdeen on 22-24 July 2008

IWMW 11: Institutional Web Management 2007: Next Steps for the Web Management Community, held at the University of York on 16-18 July 2007

IWMW 10: Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005: Quality Matters, held at the University of Bath on 14-16 June 2006

IWMW 9: Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005: Whose Web Is It Anyway?, held at the University of Manchester on 6-8 July 2005

IWMW 8: Institutional Web Management Workshop 2004: Transforming The Organisation, held at the University of Birmingham on 27-29 June 2004

IWMW 7: Institutional Web Management Workshop 2003: Supporting Our Users, held at the University of Kent at Canterbury on 11-13 June 2003

IWMW 6: Institutional Web Management Workshop 2002: The Pervasive Web, held at the University of Strathclyde on 18-20 June 2002

IWMW 5: Institutional Web Management Workshop: Organising Chaos, held at Queen's University Belfast on 25-27 June 2001

IWMW 4: Institutional Web Management: The Joined-Up Web, held at the University of Bath on 6-8 September 2000

IWMW 3: Institutional Web Management: The New Steps, held at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9 September 1999

IWMW 2: Institutional Web Management Workshop, held at Newcastle University on 15-17 September 1998