at IWMW 2007 in York

The final session of IWMW 2006 is report back from the discussion sessions about Collaboration. These should be summarised on the Wiki, so I won’t repeat it here.

I think one of the interesting things about the Institutional webmanager community is that it is very varied. There are people from many different backgrounds, and no clear ‘profession’. I’d contrast this with my library background – where a strong professional approach (formal qualifications, well established position in the education sector) forms a strong platform for cross-institutional collaboration.

I’m not sure this exists to the same extent with webmanagers. The IWMW is a great forum for communicating with peers – but I lack that contact for the rest of the year. It might be just me, but I think we need to change this, and see the profession establish itself with a clear identity.

The final session of IWMW 2006 is report back from the discussion sessions about Collaboration. These should be summarised on the Wiki, so I won’t repeat it here.

I think one of the interesting things about the Institutional webmanager community is that it is very varied. There are people from many different backgrounds, and no clear ‘profession’. I’d contrast this with my library background – where a strong professional approach (formal qualifications, well established position in the education sector) forms a strong platform for cross-institutional collaboration.

I’m not sure this exists to the same extent with webmanagers. The IWMW is a great forum for communicating with peers – but I lack that contact for the rest of the year. It might be just me, but I think we need to change this, and see the profession establish itself with a clear identity.

Andy Powell (previously of UKOLN, but now at Eduserv Foundation) is reflecting on 10 years of the institutional web.

His first point is that as he tried to research the ‘history’ of this community, he became aware that we were in danger of losing our community history, as much of it is in digital media, which is not necessarily being preserved.

Andy has a background in computing services at University of Bath, before becoming the first ‘webmaster’. In 1996 he moved to UKOLN and was involved in digital library projects, and cultural heritage stuff. He also advised JISC and the wider community about standards.

There have been a lot of changes in 10 years. But some things have not changed – “Change is inevitable except from the University of Bath’s vending machines” (John Kirremuir). But, we are still working towards how we use web in our teaching and learning.

Andy is running through a brief history of the web, and the community around it. He was unable to find the date for when ‘Alta Vista’ started (remember that? in the days before Google). Can’t find a date, but Ariadne issues 2 has an article comparing alta vista and lycos. (Found this timeline later)

Over 10 years, we have seen the development of a new profession of ‘webmaster’. Although this job title has gone out of vogue now (bit un-PC). Indeed, there doesn’t really seem to be a single job title for people involved in this area.

An example of information disappearing. Andy has mentioned ‘coloured books’ – found this difficult to track down as a reference. Finally found a definition.

Andy is now indicating some general trends:
from flat html files and static content, to xml, managed content with dynamic interface.
higher quality (X)HTML – largely driven by desire to make content more accessible
better integration with institutional branding
general recognition that end-user need varies widely. In particular it is better to move the content to the end-user, rather than to pull end-user into content via the Web user-interface – e.g. use of RSS for lists.
From static pages -> portals -> web 2.0

Andy is suggesting we have ‘moved through’ the portal phase. However, I don’t believe this to be true – but perhaps what we mean by portal has changed. Our portal at RHUL is a central place where students can interact with the college, and I do see this as a launch point for students.

Using external services – some risk here. The library community were are very early adopters of this kind of service approach (e.g. z39.50 as very early example – although turned out to be too difficult to implement and possibly ahead of it’s time). Now we are looking at light weight protocols to support rapid development (e.g. A9 Opensearch)

Andy is highlighting the influence that the Follett report had – it led to eLib, and informed the direction of JISC development. Andy notes that it is now difficult to find a copy of Follett – and the copy on the UKOLN site is actually corrupted and missing words! (I found a copy at University of Edinburgh on their Communications and Marketing pages for some reason)

Some things missing from the current view of the insitutional webmasters. e.g. OAI not mentioned at this conference – we need to engage with this. Why is their little (or no) discussion about e-learning in a group of University Institutional web managers? Isn’t learning what universities are about?

Anyway, JISC development agenda is possibly really a ‘digital library’ agenda. Much of it comes out of Follett directly. Webmanagers need to engage with this agenda.

Andy is saying that the focus of institutional webmanagers is more pragmatic. I think this makes sense – at this level webmanagers deal with the very day to day concerns – perhaps not having a chance to look above the parapet.

Soome interesting discussion at the end here about how the ‘institutional webmaster’ to help institution engage more widely in terms of the web. We need to get the ‘real world’ experience they have and years of experience in the web (e.g. usability?) to other areas – e.g. online research, insitutional repositories, e-learning etc.

Andy Powell (previously of UKOLN, but now at Eduserv Foundation) is reflecting on 10 years of the institutional web.

His first point is that as he tried to research the ‘history’ of this community, he became aware that we were in danger of losing our community history, as much of it is in digital media, which is not necessarily being preserved.

Andy has a background in computing services at University of Bath, before becoming the first ‘webmaster’. In 1996 he moved to UKOLN and was involved in digital library projects, and cultural heritage stuff. He also advised JISC and the wider community about standards.

There have been a lot of changes in 10 years. But some things have not changed – “Change is inevitable except from the University of Bath’s vending machines” (John Kirremuir). But, we are still working towards how we use web in our teaching and learning.

Andy is running through a brief history of the web, and the community around it. He was unable to find the date for when ‘Alta Vista’ started (remember that? in the days before Google). Can’t find a date, but Ariadne issues 2 has an article comparing alta vista and lycos. (Found this timeline later)

Over 10 years, we have seen the development of a new profession of ‘webmaster’. Although this job title has gone out of vogue now (bit un-PC). Indeed, there doesn’t really seem to be a single job title for people involved in this area.

An example of information disappearing. Andy has mentioned ‘coloured books’ – found this difficult to track down as a reference. Finally found a definition.

Andy is now indicating some general trends:
from flat html files and static content, to xml, managed content with dynamic interface.
higher quality (X)HTML – largely driven by desire to make content more accessible
better integration with institutional branding
general recognition that end-user need varies widely. In particular it is better to move the content to the end-user, rather than to pull end-user into content via the Web user-interface – e.g. use of RSS for lists.
From static pages -> portals -> web 2.0

Andy is suggesting we have ‘moved through’ the portal phase. However, I don’t believe this to be true – but perhaps what we mean by portal has changed. Our portal at RHUL is a central place where students can interact with the college, and I do see this as a launch point for students.

Using external services – some risk here. The library community were are very early adopters of this kind of service approach (e.g. z39.50 as very early example – although turned out to be too difficult to implement and possibly ahead of it’s time). Now we are looking at light weight protocols to support rapid development (e.g. A9 Opensearch)

Andy is highlighting the influence that the Follett report had – it led to eLib, and informed the direction of JISC development. Andy notes that it is now difficult to find a copy of Follett – and the copy on the UKOLN site is actually corrupted and missing words! (I found a copy at University of Edinburgh on their Communications and Marketing pages for some reason)

Some things missing from the current view of the insitutional webmasters. e.g. OAI not mentioned at this conference – we need to engage with this. Why is their little (or no) discussion about e-learning in a group of University Institutional web managers? Isn’t learning what universities are about?

Anyway, JISC development agenda is possibly really a ‘digital library’ agenda. Much of it comes out of Follett directly. Webmanagers need to engage with this agenda.

Andy is saying that the focus of institutional webmanagers is more pragmatic. I think this makes sense – at this level webmanagers deal with the very day to day concerns – perhaps not having a chance to look above the parapet.

Soome interesting discussion at the end here about how the ‘institutional webmaster’ to help institution engage more widely in terms of the web. We need to get the ‘real world’ experience they have and years of experience in the web (e.g. usability?) to other areas – e.g. online research, insitutional repositories, e-learning etc.

This morning we are starting with a debate (or possibly two presentations followed by a conversation as Miles Banbery has just suggested).

It seems a bit strange having this discussion. My impression is that the majority of institutions either have a WCMS, or want a WCMS – I wonder if there is a debate to be had?

First, Piero Tintori from ‘Terminal Four‘ (a web content management system). He is starting by a definition:

Web Content Management system is:

• Software automation of the tasks involved in publishing and managing content on a website
• A system that allows users update content on a website

He suggests that WCMS includes blogs, wikis and discussions boards.

Now Stephen Pope (Eduserv) is going to outline the benefits of a WCMS.

First of all, it gets rid of the ‘manual edit’ or ‘corporate cut and paste’. It allows the site manager to enforce standards across the website, and editorial control, with workflow, previews, versioning.

Typically a WCMS will include timed release of material, quality control (e.g. compelling alt tags, tidy html) and accountability (audit trail).

WCMS should allow the separation of content from presentation, granular security, rapid development.

Interestingly Steven Pope is suggesting that data should be stored in xml, and presentation in xslt. This sounds like reasonably good sense, but xslt is perhaps a challenge to existing web developers – someone who has traditionally worked in html may have a steep learning curve to get to grips with xslt (perhaps I’m underestimating people?)

Piero is now back, outlining what life is like without a WCMS. You spend times making minor changes (that the end user can’t do themselves), fixing broken links, restructuring the site map. The central web team can become a ‘typing pool’ which has to do all the webpage changes.

Corporate Governance is something that WCMS can help with – a record of your website through different versions, and an audit trail of what is going on.

Now Iain Middleton from Robert Gordon. He is going to challenge some of the hype around WMCS. He is starting by saying that there is a lot of mythology around WCMS, and there can be many misconceptions about how a WCMS can help the organisation.

He is noting that there can be tendency to implement a WCMS rather than concentrating on the content management process. If there is not a good process, and your users are not engaged with the process, then you will fail in the implementation of the CMS.

He is now outlining 4 ‘myths’ related to CMS.

Myth 1 – the IT solution: So – typically, ‘management’ see the web as an IT problem – and implement an ‘IT solution’ – however, many of the problems are people or process problems.

Myth 2 – enabling the content owners: He is outlining how a CMS does not enable content owners. CMS does not grant users with editorial or writing skills. He says your content owners ‘will break’ your CMS – illegal images (copyright), low quality etc.

Myth 3 – Global changes: you can’t easily make global changes with a CMS. The institution may change structure

Myth 4 – saving money: CMS costs money – not saves it. There are setup costs, staffing costs, ongoing costs, no end in sight – no exit strategy (very difficult to change vendors)

So – what is the solution. Well – you’ve got to look at the following.

CMS is a Huge paradigm shift. There are lots of new things, processes, technologies – this is a big change management challenge.

You need to understand who the clients are, think about how they are going to become effective writers and publishers, you have to introduce quality control audit etc.

So – in conclusion. CMS does not deliver many of the purported benefits. The solution involves people, processes and (last and least) technology.

This was an excellent summary of the issues around introducing WCMS, and food for thought.

Finally in this session Iain Middleton (Robert Gordon). Outlining their experience the aims were to make it easy for users to publish to the web, and introduce a corporate look and feel. He notes that ‘reskinning’ the web site – alledgedly easy with a CMS, was a year long process – not an easy thing to do.

A rejoinder from Piero (the CMS vendor) – he agrees that CMS is not a silver bullet. He would say – WCMS can take away some of the tedious tasks related to Web management – but your organisation has to be ready for it.

A straw poll of the audience finds us generally in favour of CMS and believing it will solve a lot of our problems…

This morning we are starting with a debate (or possibly two presentations followed by a conversation as Miles Banbery has just suggested).

It seems a bit strange having this discussion. My impression is that the majority of institutions either have a WCMS, or want a WCMS – I wonder if there is a debate to be had?

First, Piero Tintori from ‘Terminal Four‘ (a web content management system). He is starting by a definition:

Web Content Management system is:

• Software automation of the tasks involved in publishing and managing content on a website
• A system that allows users update content on a website

He suggests that WCMS includes blogs, wikis and discussions boards.

Now Stephen Pope (Eduserv) is going to outline the benefits of a WCMS.

First of all, it gets rid of the ‘manual edit’ or ‘corporate cut and paste’. It allows the site manager to enforce standards across the website, and editorial control, with workflow, previews, versioning.

Typically a WCMS will include timed release of material, quality control (e.g. compelling alt tags, tidy html) and accountability (audit trail).

WCMS should allow the separation of content from presentation, granular security, rapid development.

Interestingly Steven Pope is suggesting that data should be stored in xml, and presentation in xslt. This sounds like reasonably good sense, but xslt is perhaps a challenge to existing web developers – someone who has traditionally worked in html may have a steep learning curve to get to grips with xslt (perhaps I’m underestimating people?)

Piero is now back, outlining what life is like without a WCMS. You spend times making minor changes (that the end user can’t do themselves), fixing broken links, restructuring the site map. The central web team can become a ‘typing pool’ which has to do all the webpage changes.

Corporate Governance is something that WCMS can help with – a record of your website through different versions, and an audit trail of what is going on.

Now Iain Middleton from Robert Gordon. He is going to challenge some of the hype around WMCS. He is starting by saying that there is a lot of mythology around WCMS, and there can be many misconceptions about how a WCMS can help the organisation.

He is noting that there can be tendency to implement a WCMS rather than concentrating on the content management process. If there is not a good process, and your users are not engaged with the process, then you will fail in the implementation of the CMS.

He is now outlining 4 ‘myths’ related to CMS.

Myth 1 – the IT solution: So – typically, ‘management’ see the web as an IT problem – and implement an ‘IT solution’ – however, many of the problems are people or process problems.

Myth 2 – enabling the content owners: He is outlining how a CMS does not enable content owners. CMS does not grant users with editorial or writing skills. He says your content owners ‘will break’ your CMS – illegal images (copyright), low quality etc.

Myth 3 – Global changes: you can’t easily make global changes with a CMS. The institution may change structure

Myth 4 – saving money: CMS costs money – not saves it. There are setup costs, staffing costs, ongoing costs, no end in sight – no exit strategy (very difficult to change vendors)

So – what is the solution. Well – you’ve got to look at the following.

CMS is a Huge paradigm shift. There are lots of new things, processes, technologies – this is a big change management challenge.

You need to understand who the clients are, think about how they are going to become effective writers and publishers, you have to introduce quality control audit etc.

So – in conclusion. CMS does not deliver many of the purported benefits. The solution involves people, processes and (last and least) technology.

This was an excellent summary of the issues around introducing WCMS, and food for thought.

Finally in this session Iain Middleton (Robert Gordon). Outlining their experience the aims were to make it easy for users to publish to the web, and introduce a corporate look and feel. He notes that ‘reskinning’ the web site – alledgedly easy with a CMS, was a year long process – not an easy thing to do.

A rejoinder from Piero (the CMS vendor) – he agrees that CMS is not a silver bullet. He would say – WCMS can take away some of the tedious tasks related to Web management – but your organisation has to be ready for it.

A straw poll of the audience finds us generally in favour of CMS and believing it will solve a lot of our problems…

OK – really practical session here. SMIL (Synchronized Media Integration Language – pronounced smile) is a markup language designed to present multiple media files together. SMIL presentations can integrate audio and video with images, test or many other media type.

The syntax and structure is similar to HTML, and the current version is SMIL 2.1 (released Dec 2005).

Some examples are a presentation by Stephen Emmott or presentation by Molly Holzschalg – you’ll need Quicktime or Realplayer to view these.

We are going to put together a presentation based on a set of slides from last years IWMW and an MP3 recording of the session.

Creating a SMIL presentation:

First you need to have some media to put together into a presentation. So – perhaps starting by recording some audio.

Then you need some software to edit the audio. We are going to use Audacity.

The kind of processing you need to do is:

Slide change timings (if you are synching with a slide presentation)
Editing
Equalisation
Amplification
Pitch change
Volume compression
Flitering (e.g. Noise reduction by Steinberg Cleanup)
File Compression (typically to mp3)

If you are wanting to combine powerpoint slides and an mp3 recording, you’ll need to export the powerpoint slides as graphics (powerpoint has an option to do this as jpegs or pngs)

Then you are ready to create the SMIL file. This has a <head> tag containing information about the appearance of the playback window. Then there is a <body> tag which contains information about what media (files) you want to play, and (where necessary) how long you want each file to be displayed (for the slide images).

I need to play around with this a bit more – we’ve done an example, but might try to do something of my own to put online later.

OK – really practical session here. SMIL (Synchronized Media Integration Language – pronounced smile) is a markup language designed to present multiple media files together. SMIL presentations can integrate audio and video with images, test or many other media type.

The syntax and structure is similar to HTML, and the current version is SMIL 2.1 (released Dec 2005).

Some examples are a presentation by Stephen Emmott or presentation by Molly Holzschalg – you’ll need Quicktime or Realplayer to view these.

We are going to put together a presentation based on a set of slides from last years IWMW and an MP3 recording of the session.

Creating a SMIL presentation:

First you need to have some media to put together into a presentation. So – perhaps starting by recording some audio.

Then you need some software to edit the audio. We are going to use Audacity.

The kind of processing you need to do is:

Slide change timings (if you are synching with a slide presentation)
Editing
Equalisation
Amplification
Pitch change
Volume compression
Flitering (e.g. Noise reduction by Steinberg Cleanup)
File Compression (typically to mp3)

If you are wanting to combine powerpoint slides and an mp3 recording, you’ll need to export the powerpoint slides as graphics (powerpoint has an option to do this as jpegs or pngs)

Then you are ready to create the SMIL file. This has a <head> tag containing information about the appearance of the playback window. Then there is a <body> tag which contains information about what media (files) you want to play, and (where necessary) how long you want each file to be displayed (for the slide images).

I need to play around with this a bit more – we’ve done an example, but might try to do something of my own to put online later.

Wireless access has been much more reliable this afternoon – perhaps because I had missed part of the configuration when I did the setup this morning (oops)