As mentioned in a post on “IWMW 2019: Participants’ Feedback” we are publishing a series of posts on the IWMW blog about the IWMW 2019 event which took place on 25-27 June 2019 at the University of Greenwich. The first post described the overall feedback we received about the event. This post summarises the feedback received for the plenary sessions.
IWMW 2019: The Plenary Sessions
The IWMW 2019 event featured twelve plenary talks together with two plenary panel sessions, a series of short talks and lightning talks, together with the opening and closing talks.
The plenary sessions were grouped into a series of themes:
- Changing Times Across the Institution, the Sector … and for Future Audiences The opening session featured three plenary talks: Collective Genius – how to nurture a sustainable creative culture, Martyn Edwards, Swansea University; Deceptively Simple – Designing a voice experience for an audience that is still learning to speak, Paul Jackson, BBC Design & Engineering and Your big digital transformation project has been approved, now what?, Ayala Gordon, University of Southampton
- IWMW is A-Changin’! The second session featured one plenary talk: No, You Don’t Need a Website!, Gareth Edwards, University of Greenwich. This was followed by the first of several innovations at this year’s event: a series of short talks.
- Institutional Perspectives on Changing Times This session featured two plenary talks: What we Learnt from Rebuilding the University of Derby Website in 10 months, Rob Fowles & Peter Briers, University of Derby and Nick Buckingham, Deeson and Connecting your content: how to save time and improve content quality through structured content and taxonomy, Pamela Agar, St Georges, University of London. This was followed by the return of an innovation from last year’s event: a series of lightning talks.
- A Constant in Changing Times: Users! This session featured two plenary talks: Grassroots & Guerrillas: The Beginnings of a UX Revolution, Kat Husbands, University of Glasgow and So You Think You Know Accessibility, Oliver Emberton, Silktide.
- Beyond The Institution This session featured one plenary talk: How to train your content- so it doesn’t slow you down…, Alan Dargan, Terminalfour which was followed by a panel session on Supporting Institutions in Changing Times.
- Delivering Digital This session featured two plenary talks: Static Site Generators – Developing Websites in Low-resource Condition, Paul Walk, Antleaf and Developing Communities of Practice, Anna Radley, University of Greenwich, followed by a panel session which invited the audience to Ask Us Anything!
- Strategic Thinking This session featured a plenary talk om How to Turn a Web Strategy into Web Services, Jonathan Trout, University of Edinburgh followed by a session on Looking To The Future facilitated by the event co-chairs: Brian Kelly and Claire Gibbons.
Feedback for the Plenary Sessions
Over the 23 years the IWMW event has been running we have provided feedback to the individual plenary speakers. We are continuing to do that this year. In addition we are publishing this post which summarises the feedback we have received.
The three plenary speakers who received the highest evaluation scores (on a score of 1 for poor to 5 for excellent) were:
- Gareth Edwards, University of Greenwich for his talk on “No, You Don’t Need a Website!” which received an average rating of 4.75.
- Paul Jackson, BBC Design & Engineering for his talk on “Deceptively Simple – Designing a voice experience for an audience that is still learning to speak” which received an average rating of 4.74.
- Oliver Emberton, Silktide for his talk on “So You Think You Know Accessibility” which received an average rating of 4.66.
Comments of the plenary speakers
We will contact the plenary speakers and provide feedback on their talks. In this post we provide a brief summary of the comments received.
The comments received for Martyn Edwards, Swansea University for his talk on “Collective Genius – how to nurture a sustainable creative culture” included:
- Very very good talk to kick off the event!
- Enjoyed this. And I’ll be suggesting a Big Ideas group as part of our new ways of working at UoN.
- Very engaging and easy to listen to throughout the whole talk.
The comments received for Paul Jackson, BBC Design & Engineering for his talk on “Deceptively Simple – Designing a voice experience for an audience that is still learning to speak” included:
- Paul’s talk was extremely engaging and posits a future of using voice interaction in our web applications.
- Voice is something that will become much more prevalent so I found this a timely session
- Fascinating. First talk I’ve been to on voice recognition. Loved the baby
The comments received for Ayala Gordon, University of Southampton for her talk on “Your Big Digital Transformation Project Has Been Approved, Now What?” included:
- Fantastic and great to hear about the problems that are not always highlighted.
- inspiring and exhausting
- More big ideas, with welcome practical tips
The comments received for Gareth Edwards, University of Greenwich for his talk on “No, You Don’t Need a Website!” included:
- I am going to hand this set of slides to anyone demanding a website! Very entertaining and some useful tips for ‘handling’ tricky customers
- Gareth might be the best presenter of all time. How lucky are we to get to listen to him multiple years in a row!
- Very engaging and most of the audience have first hand experience of the travails that Gareth talked about.
The comments received for Rob Fowles & Peter Briers, University of Derby and Nick Buckingham, Deeson for their talk on “What we Learnt from Rebuilding the University of Derby Website in 10 months” included:
- Interesting talk and lots of good ideas implemented at Derby.
- very comprehensive but broken down so it was clear.
- These guys did great and a good example of how the conference is nurturing new speakers.
The comments received for Pamela Agar, St Georges, University of London for her talk on “Connecting your content: how to save time and improve content quality through structured content and taxonomy” included:
- Enjoyed hearing Pam talk as this is something we could really benefit from plus her examples were from research which is the area I do digital comms for
- Very interesting talk on a very important area that can sometimes be neglected
- Best of the conference. There is a silver bullet!
The comments received for Kat Husbands, University of Glasgow for her talk on “Grassroots & Guerrillas: The Beginnings of a UX Revolution” included:
- This for me was the best talk of the conference, and I loved the way Kat used data driven approaches to reorganise the structure of the staff page of her institution.
- Really great insight from Kat. Useful for me as someone hoping to be in a similar role this time next year.
- Nice to see a talk on how a single person can start to make a difference in a big institution.
The comments received for Oliver Emberton, Silktide for his talk on “So You Think You Know Accessibility” included:
- Excellent, thought provoking and terrifying in equal measures.
- Highlight of the conference for me – highlighting a lot of assumptions regarding accessibility, the new legislation, etc
- This was an absolutely brilliant plenary. Although I knew it was good and useful at the time, I didn’t quite appreciate its value until I went back to watch it on youtube. Our ITS web team have all watched it today, and it’s already given them the beginning of a strategy. Thank you for inviting Oliver!
The comments received for Alan Dargan, Terminalfour for his talk on “How to train your content- so it doesn’t slow you down…” included:
- Really good stuff – data driven
- Thoughtful observations on bloat. Well delivered.
- Also something we are considering at the moment so very timely
The comments received for Paul Walk, Antleaf University for his talk on “Static Site Generators – Developing Websites in Low-resource Condition” included:
- Always had an interest in using static site generators, in particular the Hugo framework, for institutional and personal websites. Love the way Paul talked honestly about the use of SSG’s.
- Really great talk.
- Really thought-provoking. Implications for website archivingz
The comments received for Anna Radley, University of Greenwich for her talk on “Developing Communities of Practice” included:
- Enjoyed hearing from someone outside our digital disciplines – let’s have more
- Good idea to have something different like this
- Although everyone always agrees with the idea this talk had ideas on how to actually make it stick in practice
The comments received for Jonathan Trout, University of Edinburgh for his talk on “How to Turn a Web Strategy into Web Services” included:
- One of the highlights for me! Really great talk and has helped give me some ideas about my progression and next steps in my career. In fact it would be great if he was on slack to talk to?!
- Loved this, an excellent way to finish off the conference on a high with an honest talk. It was refreshing to see that even the big institutions struggle. I appreciated the shout out from Jonathan as well.
- One of the best if not the best talks of the event in my view. Very relevant subject matter that was conveyed in a very humorous and honest fashion.
The comments received for Brian Kelly and Claire Gibbons, the IWMW 2019 co-chairs for the talk on “Looking To The Future” included:
- Brilliantly summed up the warmth and community of IWMW
- Good wrap up with a real note of positivity. Lovely to hear the forward planning extending beyond 2020 🙂
- You’ve got to love Brian and Claire – a brilliant double act, so passionate about IWMW!
The comments received for the panel session on “Supporting Institutions in Changing Times” included:
- Very lively and entertaining
- Some useful info on governance here.
- Entertaining but keeping speakers to 7 minutes was a tall order
The comments received for the panel session on “Ask Us Anything!” included:
- Great idea and very brave on the part of the panel!
- A really interesting session. Keith did well facilitating this. Nice range of questions on a variety of topics.
- This was great, honest and fun.
