15 15-17 September, 1998 Starting at 1.30pm
University of Newcastle Newcastle upon Tyne
Tickets were £120 (no accommodation included) Event over

About The Workshop

A workshop aimed at staff involved in running institutional Web services was held at Newcastle University from 15-17 September 1998.

The workshop covered a range of topics of interest to members of Web management teams including Web design, accessibility, metadata, information flow models, publishing policies, database integration, Web server management, new Web technologies, Web tools, etc.

The workshop consisted of a mixture of presentations, discussion groups, demonstrations and some hands-on sessions. The majority of the speakers are experienced Web practioners from the higher education community, who are aware of the issues and concerns of this community.

One half-day session was devoted to parallel sessions in which certain key web topics (Web Design, Metadata and Web Server Management and Management Issues) were discussed in more depth.

The workshop was aimed at people involved in running institutional Web services, including University “Webmasters” and Web editors, Web designers, information specialists and policy makers. The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to share common problems, experiences and solutions.

The workshop was run jointly by UK Web Focus and Netskills. Netskills kindly provided administrative support and the local facilities as well as input into the workshop programme.

Note that this workshop was the second national workshop organised by UK Web Focus. The first, titled Running an Institutional Web Service was held at King’s College London in July 1997.

Notes

This was the second in the IWMW event series.

The two scheduled opening speakers informed the event organiser that they could not attend on the morning of the first day! This meant that the other speakers on the first day were given more time for their talks. The two missing speakers were both from the commercial sector, and had been invited in order to provide engagement with the commercial sector at the event. However as a consequence of their non-appearance,  in following years the event focussed on sharing best practices by members of the institutional web management community.

Workshop Topics

The following topics were covered at the workshop.

Plenary Talks

The following plenary talks were given.

  1. ‘Dumbing Down’ – making the UCE Website more accessible by Brian Lantz, UCE.
  2. Does Web Content Grow on Trees? by Andrew Aird, Goldsmiths College.
  3. Publishing And Devolving Maintenance of a Prospectus by Paul Browning, University of Bristol.
  4. DataWeb: Three Worlds Collide by Victoria Marshall, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
  5. Information Management and the Institutional Website – Promoting and Supporting Organisational Change by Jon Wallis, Wolverhampton University .
  6. “He left the course 3 months ago?”: Web-based front-ends to student databases by Nick Gould, University of Manchester.
  7. Events Online by Stephen Emmott, King’s College London.
  8. The Use of Online Databases to Manage Student Support and Learning by Terry Brown, University of Newcastle.
  9. Deploying New Web Technologies by Brian Kelly, UKOLN.
  10. The DISinHE Centre, Accessibility and the Web by Paul Booth, DISinHE.
  11. Publish and be Damned? – Freedom, Responsibility and AUP by Colin Work, University of Southampton.
  12. The British Council on the Web: An Overview by Paul Squires, British Council

Parallel Sessions

The following parallel workshop sessions were given. Note that these sessions lasted for 4 hours.

  1. Metadata Management
    facilitated by Andy Powell & Brian Kelly
  2. Web Server Management
    facilitated by Andrew Cormack and Helen Varley Sargan
  3. Institutional Web Design
    facilitated by Andrew Aird
  4. Web Tools
    facilitated by Dave Hartland & Dave Lomas
  5. Management Issues
    facilitated by Colin Work & Damon Querry

Evaluation

Brian Kelly wrote a report on the IWMW 1998 event held in Newcastle which was published on 19 September 1998 in the Ariadne ejournal.

The article provided the following feedback on the event:

  • “Brilliant! Useful, informative, friendly. Superlatives are appropriate. I want to come to the next one. We should have at least one a year.”
  • “Well-organised. Presentations were really interesting and useful. I really appreciated the parallel sessions. “
  • “Renewed my enthusiasm for the Web”
  • “Well worth attending. It was useful to have the opportunity to discuss problems I thought were unique to my institution and to hear what is going on within the community. I also learnt more about web developments which I just do not have the time to find out about while at work.”
  • “Really useful – it gave me a great deal of enthusiasm & confidence in my job! (It’s easy to get demoralised when trying to face all these web issues in relative isolation).”

Event Summary

Location: University of Newcastle

Date: 15-17 September 1998

Length: 3 days

Cost (including 1 night accommodation): £120

No. of plenary talks: 12

No. of plenary speakers: 12

Gender ratios: 11 M (92%) and 1 F (8%)

No. of workshop sessions: 5

No. of workshop facilitators: 9

Gender ratios: 8 M (89%) and 1 F (11%)

No. of participants: 100

Total length of sessions: 3.5+(3.5+3.5)+4=14.5 hours

Delegate contact time: 14.5*100 = 1,450 delegate hours