A sponsors page containing details of the sponsorship packages available has now been set up. Interested parties should contact the organisers. [2006-08-24]

Information on members of the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 Advisory Group is now available [2006-10-23]

A search page for the IWMW 2007 site is now available. It uses a Google search box and a Google Coop Search Engine. [2006-12-11]

Information on the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 social events, the workshop dinner and a drinks reception at the National Railway Museum, are now available. [2007-03-26]

This year we are inviting IWMW 2007 participants to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies which may be of interest to IWMW 2007 participants. This could include mashups, use of multimedia, use of 3-D virtual environments or seamless access to content using technologies such as OpenID. [2007-05-24]

This year the wiki tool provided for delegates to try out is Wetpaint. Links to pages have been set up for all plenary talks, parallel sessions, discussion groups and the exhibition. You are also free to create any new areas of relevance. [2007-06-18]

Dave Lomas, University of Salford, gave a talk entitled "WebTools".

David Murie, University of Dundee, gave a talk entitled "Charisma or camel? A sociotechnical approach to Web redesign".

Victoria has worked at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory since 1989, and was one of the first pioneers of the web within the laboratory. She is currently corporate web manager, and departmental web manager, and is involved in a number of web-related projects including the DataWeb project to be described at the workshop. Victoria gave a talk entitled "DataWeb: Three worlds collide".

With the introduction of variable fees Universities have entered what education secretary Ruth Kelly called "a new era". Financial departments have had to find more creative ways to meet the sector's growing competitive demands and those working within universities have had to take a more business-like, customer-focused approach to many aspects of their work as they compete for students.

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.

This session will be run by Michael Day, DCC, UKOLN, Maureen Pennock, DCC, UKOLN and Lizzie Richmond, University Archivist, University of Bath. Institutional Web sites have become an increasingly important tool for disseminating key institutional information to and between staff, students, researchers and the general public. They are widely recognised as key front-office mechanisms for the communication of important information, but the long-term survival of Web site resources and data with non-transient or enduring value is often overridden by the short-term benefits of on-the-fly Web site management. As a result, even institutions with Web site archiving policies can find themselves falling victim to the so-called digital dark ages and fail to preserve valuable information.

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.

Paul Trueman, Netskills, University of Newcastle will be facilitating this session. Web services technology provides the opportunity to integrate applications and business functionality in to existing Web enabled VLEs. A Web service exposes business functionality by both consuming and producing data in XML format. Future online learning environments may be fully developed and maintained using a web services infrastructure. Web services solutions as yet still need to reach their full potential; particularly in the academic sector. In this session Paul will demonstrate potential uses of web services to support e-Learning and present guidelines on how to consider making best use of this emerging technology.

David Burden, Managing Director, DADENLIMITED and Marieke Guy, UKOLN will consider questions like: Can chatbots make sites more accessible or do they break fundamental usability rules? Do users like them, or find them irritating or even patronising? Are they the next best thing or a 5 minute wonder? Can they really benefit the education sector? Can a chatbot ever really learn?

David Hyett is Head of Information & Records Management at the British Antarctic Survey. When he's not pushing back the frontiers of science and exploring new lands in the Antarctic, he manages information projects both across BAS and its parent organisation NERC. He has direct responsibility in BAS for Web, archives, data management and library services. David gave a plenary talk on "Web 2.0 - Whatever Happened to Web 1.0?".

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?

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

IWMW 1: Running An Institutional Web Service, held at Kings College London on 16-17 July 1997