Brian Lantz, after a background in environmental and local politics in Arizona, came to London in 1975 to qualify as a librarian. Captivated by the dream of 'cycling Europe', he was lured by the brilliant summers in the latter half of the 70s into staying. He hung up his bicycle in 1982 after moving to Birmingham where he had risen through the ranks to Assistant Director of Information Services. His current role as 'Webmaster' focuses strongly on developing web based services to support marketing and teaching/learning at UCE. For his sins, he also created and runs the bookshop cum library supply services of UCE Books. Brian Lantz, University of Central England (UCE), gave a talk entitled "Dumbing Down".

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.

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"!

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.

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.

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.

Keith Doyle, University of Salford will facilitate this session. A small group of people are working towards setting up a peer group to share good practise and knowledge. In this session, there will be the opportunity for delegates working to develop University Intranets to share their thoughts on developments around intranets and portals. We will also discuss how the peer group could develop.

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 December 2005 the Web Development team at the University of Bath set up a departmental wiki where they could keep track of information. In this workshop Philip Wilson, University of Bath will explain the reasons for using a wiki, not just for education but for codifying knowledge and working practices in departments and how they can best be utilised so that it is used by everyone in the department, and how to stop it becoming an unmaintained silo of archaic data.

Andy Ramsden, Learning Technology Advisor, Learning Technology Support Service, University of Bristol and Paul Ayres, SOSIG Research Officer, ILRT will be looking at podcasts. The aim of this workshop is that by the end the participant will be able to answer the following five questions; 1) What is podcasting? 2) How do you create, distribute and subscribe to a podcast? 3) What is good practice in terms of designing and creating podcasts? 4) How might podcasts be effectively used in an educational context? 5) Where should people go for more information?

Debbie Nicholson, Web Support Officer, University of Essex will show how putting quality measures in place can prevent getting a brief for a Web design job that reads "not blue, a bit random, and not too Scottish". Don't laugh, this actually happened! This hands on session will get participants thinking about how they can introduce quality assurance procedures within the web design process. It will cover establishing a 'quality loop', creating measurable standards and will introduce ways to enable clients to be better informed about what they want from their new Web site.

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?

Rob Bristow, Information Services Manager, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol and Mark Lydon, i2a Consulting will look at Access Grid Node (AGN), an exciting area of development in communication within the academic, research and commercial worlds. Using open standards to transmit video and audio using IP Multicast networking, it is a type of video collaboration that allows a rich and immediate means of communicating with remote sites, while also being able to share presentations, data, complex visualizations and video. AGN is a technology that scales; from a single user node running with a Webcam on a laptop, up to a lecture theatre with multiple cameras and projectors. It also scales from one-to-one conversations to multi-site meetings, seminars and conferences.

Julie Allinson and Mahendra Mahey, UKOLN will give an overview of the current repository landscape, looking at the different types of repositories, their use within education and the range of issues relating to repositories, including cultural, social, legal, technical and policy considerations. Current JISC work in this area will be highlighted, focussing on how this work will contribute to raising quality standards in repository development, through interoperability and the use of open standards.

Stephanie Taylor has over fourteen years experience as an information professional. She is currently working on the JISC-funded Repository Support Project (RSP) which aims to assist academic institutions to develop a deployed network of inter-operable repositories for academic papers, learning materials and research data across the UK. The RSP delivers practical advice to English and Welsh HEI's regarding development, implementation and management of these repositories. Stephanie gave a plenary talk on "Institutional Repositories: Asset or Obstacle?".

Ewan McIntosh is a teacher and social media specialist based in the Edinburgh area. He advises on how social media can be harnessed for public service and education management and used to improve learning. His edu.blog shows how social software is not just a gimmick and can provide exciting opportunities for learning. Ewan gave a plenary talk on "Unleashing the Tribe".

Brian is UK Web Focus - a post funded by the JISC and MLA which provides advice and support to the UK Higher and Further Education communities and the museums, libraries and archives sector on Web issues. Brian is based at UKOLN. Brian's interests include Web standards, Web accessibility, quality assurance for Web services and innovative Web developments, including collaborative Web tools. Brian is a member of the IWMW 2008 organising committee.

The Web is changing. It is no longer a phenomenon but has integrated itself within our culture. However for those creating Web services times are far from stable. A wide range of Web-based applications continue to be developed, such as blogs, wikis, podcasting, social networking software, RSS feeds etc. The Semantic Web is still on the cards and now we have Web 2.0, an opportunity for a more sharing, more participative Web? Is it just hype? Will these progressions make any difference to the way in which we go about our work? What does Web 2.0 mean to the Institutional Web? This panel session offered three different perspectives on the potential of Web 2.0 within learning activities - the library perspective, the commercial perspective and the HE/FE perspective.

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.

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.

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

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