Speaker Details

Chairs of Sessions


Marieke Guy is a research officer in the Community and Outreach Team at UKOLN. She has chaired IWMW for the last 4 years (with one short-break in which she had a baby!).

Marieke is currently working on a digital preservation guide for JISC. In the past she has been involved in many JISC and cultural heritage projects from the technical (Good APIs, ePrints, Subject Portals), to the not-so-technical (Web 2.0 workshops for museums, libraries and archives) and the in-between (JISC PoWR, NOF-digitise, Ariadne).

Marieke is UKOLN’s remote worker champion and last year won the Remote Worker of the year accolade. She has worked on a number of initiatives aimed specifically at remote workers and written several articles on remote working and related technologies. She maintains a blog entitled Ramblings of a Remote Worker.

Marieke is co-chair of the IWMW 2010 programme committee, chair of the opening session and gave the welcome talk with Brian Kelly.


Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus – a post funded by the JISC 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 has been involved with Web development activities since he helped to establish a Web service at the University of Leeds in January 1993 – probably the first institutional Web service in the UK.

Brian attended the first World Wide Web conference in Geneva in 1994. He has attended several of the conferences since then and has been involved in the programme committee on a number of occassions.

Brian’s interests include Web standards, Web accessibility, quality assurance for Web services and innovative Web developments, including collaborative Web tools. He has been involved with IWMW since the series started in 1997.

Brian is co-chair of the IWMW 2010 programme committee and gave the welcome talk with Marieke Guy. He also facilitated a parallel session entitled “Engagement, Impact, Value: Measuring and Maximising Impact Using the Social Web” and facilitated the workshop conclusions.


Miles Banbery is the Web Editor at the University of Kent. He manages the Web Content and Editorial Team within Communications & Development at the University of Kent.

Communications & Development’s remit covers internal communications, corporate publications (largely student recruitment support), congregations (graduation ceremonies) and events, alumni relations, press and media relations and development and fund raising.

Miles chaired the morning Session on day 3: Doing the Day Job.


Mike Ellis worked for 7 years as Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York. He now works for Eduserv, a Bath-based not-for-profit IT services organisation with a charitable mission to realise the benefits of ICT for learners and researchers. Mike’s interests are in UX, user generated content, ubiquitous computing and innovation and how to lever these for maximum benefit in cultural institutions.

Mike blogs about these things at Electronic Museum.

Mike chaired the morning Session on day 2: The Web in Interesting Times.


Mike Nolan is Head of Web Services at Edge Hill University where he is responsible for development of external Web sites and a portal service for staff and students.

Michael regularly posts about HE web development topics on the Edge Hill Web Services blog and is a regular participant (and hence speaker!) at BarCamps around the country.

Mike chaired the late morning Session on day 2: The Web in Difficult Times and co-faciliated a session on “Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web” with Mark Power.


Plenary Speakers

There were 11 plenary speakers listed below at the IWMW 2010 event. Note we aim to keep a record of gender balances at IWMW events in order to ensure that appropriate numbers of good female speakers and facilitators contribute to the event. At IWMW 2010 there were 9 male and 2 female plenary speakers.

Paul Boag has been working on the web since 1993. He is a user experience consultant for Headscape Ltd, a web design agency that he founded back in 2002. He typically works on large institutional websites including government agencies, higher education institutions and heritage organisations.

Paul also produces and hosts the longest running and popular web design podcast at boagworld.com. He is regularly speaker at workshops and conferences and writes for various publications.

Paul gave a plenary talk entitled “No money? No matter – Improve your website with next to no cash“.


Richard Brierton has been working in the web team at the University of Sheffield since 2003 – initially as a Web Developer, and since 2007 as head of the web team.

Since graduating with a degree in Multimedia Technology (video, animation, web etc), he has run through a wide-range of activities at the university – web development, design, usability, server setup and administration, improving resilience of systems, video streaming, collaboration tools plus a whole host of other things he cares not to mention. The team also spend a lot of time working with their Web Marketing team on cross-cutting work!

Current fads are creating an editor community; training up the web editor community; upgrading/replacing their CMS; increasing user support and buy-in, most of which he’ll be talking about at the conference.

Richard gave a plenary talk entitled “Replacement CMS – Getting it right and getting the buy-in“, part of the Doing the Day Job session.


Susan Farrell is a web consultant with a background in information science. Her career has spanned everything from abstracting and editing to website development and content management system implementations. Having spent the last few years as Head of Web and Portal Services at King’s College London, Susan set up her own company, Susan Farrell Consulting Ltd, in January 2010. The company specialises in helping clients to maximise the effectiveness of their web presence and does this by: developing and implementing web, digital and content strategies; driving website redesign and development projects; ensuring the optimum user experience through stakeholder engagement and user research; and aiming for high levels of usability through excellent content management.

Susan gained a BSc in Biology from Durham University many years ago, and an MSc in Information Science from Sheffield University almost as long ago, and certainly long before the web was even dreamed about!

Susan gave a plenary talk entitled “Are web managers still needed when everyone is a web ‘expert’?“.


Peter Gilbert is a SharePoint evangelist and “developer” working at UWE. He works in SharePoint technologies using C#, InfoPath, Skelta and blog about their good and bad points. In his “spare” time he is an artist and photographer and helps organise the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail as well as running other arts events throughout the year.

Peter gave a plenary talk entitled “The impact of SharePoint in Higher Education” with James Lappin, part of the Doing the Day Job session.


James Lappin is a records management consultant and trainer. He writes on records management topics for his blog Thinking Records.

James is the co-author of Northumbria University’s ‘Investigation into the use of SharePoint in UK Higher Education Institutions’ published in January 2010. He is an accredited trainer for the European Commission, for whom he provides records management training.

James obtained his MA in Archives and Records Management at UCL in 1994, after which he held records management roles at The National Archives, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and the Wellcome Trust. He worked as a consultant and trainer for TFPL between 2004 and 2008, before founding his company Thinking Records, at the start of 2009.

James gave a plenary talk entitled “The impact of SharePoint in Higher Education” with Peter Gilbert, part of the Doing the Day Job session.


Josef Lapka is a senior Web Applications Developer at Corporate Information Services at Canterbury Christ Church University. With a team of three .NET developers, Josef is responsible for all web application developments at the University. Josef started off as a DTP designer moving into web design and development before programming in .NET.

Josef gave a plenary talk entitled “StudentNET Portal“, part of the Doing the Day Job session.


Patrick Lauke works as Web Evangelist in the Developer Relations team at Opera Software ASA. In a previous life he worked as Web Editor for the University of Salford, where in 2003 he implemented one of the first thoroughly web standards based sites in the sector.

Patrick has been engaged in the discourse on standards and accessibility since early 2001 – regularly speaking at conferences and contributing to a variety of web development and accessibility related mailing lists and initiatives such as the Web Standards Project. Published works include a chapter in Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance, released by Friends of Ed in 2006, as well as various articles for .net magazine, where he sits on the advisory panel.

An outspoken accessibility and standards advocate, Patrick favours a pragmatic hands-on approach over purely theoretical, high-level discussions. “I’m an idealist by nature, but a pragmatist by trade. I’d never class myself as an expert and I certainly don’t have all the answers…I’m just an opinionated guy eager to find real world solutions ‘where the rubber meets the road’.”

His personal corner of the web can be found at http://www.splintered.co.uk.

Patrick gave a plenary talk entitled “HTML5 (and friends)“.


Chris Sexton is Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield.

Chris gave a plenary talk entitled “The Web in Turbulent Times “.


Jeremy Speller has been involved with the UCL Web presence since 1995. Having headed UCL Web Services for a number of years, Jeremy is now Director of Learning & Media Services which, along with the Web, covers AV, design, learning technology, multimedia and photography. Prior to becoming a full-time Web “operative”, Jeremy’s background was in planning and statistics at UCL and previously at the University of Birmingham. Way back when he ran the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme at what was then CVCP.

Jeremy gave a plenary talk entitled “It’s all gone horribly wrong: disaster communication in a crisis“.


Damian Steer is a senior technical researcher at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol. He is part of the Web Futures group, which focuses on the use of new web technologies in Higher Education. Web Futures has been particularly concerned with the semantic web / linked data, authorisation, the social web, and more recently mobile web technologies. Recent projects include: Research Revealed, which is examining the integration and exploitation of research information; Visualising China, an exploration of a historical photograph collection; and Mobile Campus Assistant, which makes existing campus-related information available to University of Bristol students via their location-aware smart phones.

Damian gave a plenary talk entitled “Mobile Web and Campus Assistant“.


Ranjit Sidhu (or SiD) is founder of statistics into Decisions (or SiD). Around 1998 Ranjit fell into the internet space whilst trying to run away from a career in law. Since then he has worked at several internet based companies, but has found his niche in analysis and helping clients understand what is going on in the internet ether and how to use that information to improve what they do.

Around 4 years ago he set up SiD, Statistics into Decisions in Sydney- since then the company has, happily, found a market for its basic ethos on making information relevant and something that can be used so much so that it now works with many top blue chip companies as well as governmental clients both in the UK and Australia. SiD’s second office is in Perth, Scotland.

Ranjit gave a plenary talk entitled “‘So what do you do exactly?’ In challenging times justifying the roles of the web teams“.

Workshop Facilitators

There were 24 workshop facilitators at the IWMW 2010 event listed below. Note that we aim to keep a record of gender balances at IWMW events in order to ensure that appropriate numbers of good female speakers and facilitators contribute to the event. At IWMW 2010 there were 21 male and 3 female workshop facilitators.

Relly Annett-Baker lives in Brighton with her husband and two small sons. As a result, she thrives on the sea air and can be guaranteed to stand on Lego at least once a day. As well as being the Content Strategist for Headscape, she is employed as live-in domestic staff by two cats who make editorial suggestions such as ‘I think it’s dinner time’. In between opening cans of Whiskas and writing for clients she frequently pens articles, argues on the Boagworld podcast and reads Japanese manga.

Relly facilitated a parallel session entitled “My superpower is content curation. What’s yours?“.


Peter Barnes is an analyst programmer working for It Services at the University of Reading. His main focus is introducing new web based systems, such as the recently launched institutional research repository: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk. Prior to working as a web developer he was an academic librarian based at Senate House, University of Reading and remains a key IT liaison and advisor for information managers and museum service staff at the University of Reading. Peter blogs at The Scruffian’s Tech Blog.

Peter facilitated a parallel session entitled “A Little Project Management Can Save a Lot of Fan Cleaning” with Matt Jukes.


Joanna Blackburn is the Web Marketing Manager for the University of Salford. Along with a small web and digital team, she is responsible for the management of the University’s website and provides advice and guidance to over 200 Salford University web authors. Joanna is also responsible for driving the institution’s web and digital communications strategy forward.
An advocate of using social media for corporate communications, she introduced the use of social media in her previous role at Manchester Metropolitan University, and is now building on her experience to demonstrate how these tools can be effectively used in a variety of areas within the University of Salford.

Joanna facilitated a parallel session entitled “‘Follow us on Twitter’…’Join our Facebook group’“.


Dr Thom Bunting works as Web Manager (e-Framework / Information Environment Technical Foundations) in the Software and Systems team at UKOLN. In this role he researches and evaluates innovative content management technologies, including the recent integration of RDFa within Drupal versions 6 and 7. Previously his work has included extensive leading-edge web management experience, within commercial and academic contexts.

Thom facilitated a parallel session entitled “RDFa from theory to practice” with Adrian Stevenson and Mark Dewey.


Ben Butchart is a senior software engineer with 12 years experience of web and distributed application development in both commercial and academic (research) environments. For the last 2 years Ben has worked for EDINA, where he heads up a team of 15 software engineers delivering geo spatial services for the HE/FE community. Recently, Ben lead the JISC ‘Digimap mobile scoping’ project, evaluating current trends and technologies relevant to delivering location based services with the Digimap platform.

Ben facilitated a parallel session entitled “Location Based Services Without the Cocoa” with Murray King.


Stuart Church is a user experience consultant based in Bristol, U.K. His consultancy, Pure Usability, has provided user research, design, training and strategy services for numerous public and private sector clients. These include JISC, HEFCE, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The University of Bristol, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, Marks and Spencer, E3 Media, Process Management International and Zircadian. In 2005, Stuart helped to set up and organise the Cambridge Usability Group before relocating to Bristol, where he is now helps to run the Bristol Usability Group.

Stuart facilitated a parallel session entitled “Usability and User Experience on a Shoestring“.


Mark Dewey is a Systems Developer in the Software and Systems Team at UKOLN.

Mark facilitated a parallel session entitled “RDFa from theory to practice” with Adrian Stevenson and Thom Bunting.


Keith Doyle worked in further and higher education for a total of 13 years. He has been Web Content Architect at the University of Salford and Web Master at Manchester College of Arts and Technology (now The Manchester College). Since leaving Salford in 2008, Keith has worked in the private sector, and is currently in the process of becoming self-employed. He has experience of working in a local authority, the banking sector, industry, of working as a contractor, and of setting up a VAT-registered limited company. Keith’s technical interests are in user experience – in particular in website navigation, information architecture and live user testing. Outside work, Keith spends time with his family, walking in the North York Moors, and enjoying music.

Keith facilitated a parallel session entitled “Developing Your Personal Contingency Plan: Beat The Panic“.


John Ennew is a Software Developer and Chartered Engineer working in the University of Kent Technical Services team. Since completing a Masters degree in systems engineering from Warwick in 2004 he has spent time working in both the public and private sectors developing technologies for the UK education sector. Project’s he has also developed at Kent include the University’s virtual learning environment, Moodle, and is currently working on integrating Kent’s other systems into it. Outside of work, John is an enthusiastic advocate of continuing professional development and organises events and activities for the Kent network of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

John facilitated a parallel session entitled “Inside the Pantheon: A Dreamweaver framework for managing dynamic content“.


Chris Goddard is Corporate Website Manager for the University of Lincoln. One of his current interests is the role of institutions and non-human actants in website design and management. He recently completed an MRes using this as a research topic.

Chris facilitated a parallel session entitled “WordPress beyond Blogging” with Joss Winn.


Chris Gutteridge has been running the Web Systems for the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, since 1997 and still isn’t bored. He is also lead developer of the award winning EPrints repository software, used by hundreds of organisations. He strongly believes that tedious work should be done by computers, not people.

Chris facilitated a parallel session entitled “Looking at Linked Data“.


Matthew Hoskins is Web Content Management Project Officer in the Web Team at the University of Leeds. He has had a long career in content publishing to drive a determination to bring what might be seen as ‘traditional’ discipline to the Web and welcomes the increasing professionalization of web content editorial practices. He is a Librarian and finds this to be complementary with his current duties. He has been based at Leeds for 5 years and previously was in Learning Resources at the University of Bedfordshire for 10 years.

Matthew facilitated a parallel session entitled “Taxonomy: Creating structure across content using metadata“.


Matt Jukes is a Programme Manager in the JISC Information Environment team. He is responsible for the Repositories Support Project (RSP) and and some of the Repositories Start-up and Enhancement projects. He also oversees the JISC IE Repository based at UKOLN and has a watching brief on IPR and Creative Commons for the team. He was previously a member of the JISC Communications team for almost five years and has also worked at ESRC and HEFCE in various digital manager roles (and briefly at Becta). He also spent a year as Head of Product Management at a Bristol based web start-up. You can see more information on his staff page or his personal page.

Matt facilitated a parallel session entitled “A Little Project Management Can Save a Lot of Fan Cleaning” with Peter Barnes.


Murray King is a is an experienced Java and C# developer with 15 years experience in object orientated design and development. He has programmed for a wide variety of business domains (scientific, engineering, retail, e-commerce, banking, healthcare) for both blue chip and small company clients. Murray was principal developer for the JISC ‘Digimap mobile scoping’ project and has previous experience developing location based mobile applications for the commercial market.

Murray facilitated a parallel session entitled “Location Based Services Without the Cocoa” with Ben Butchart.


Rich Kirk has worked in online marketing since 2006, starting out at companies in the FMCG and finance sectors before moving to Chameleon Net in December 2008. Chameleon Net is a leading digital agency based in Smithfield, London, core client areas cover NGOs, Universities and other HE centres.

Rich has worked on numerous search and social marketing / online PR projects for Chameleon Net’s clients, including Sense, RNID, Friends of the Earth, The University of East Anglia, Queen Mary University of London and more.

He has also been instrumental in helping Chameleon Net develop its paid search advertising, insight management, and multivariate testing offerings.

Rich has a BA (Hons) degree in History from Durham University, holds the CIM Professional Diploma and is both Google Adwords and Analytics accredited.

Rich facilitated a parallel session entitled “Getting Awesome Results from Data Visualisation“.


Mark Power is a researcher in Educational Technology at the University of Bolton. Based at the Institute for Educational Cybernetics, Mark has also been involved in supporting the work of JISC eLearning Programmes through the JISC Innovation Support Centre, CETIS.

While interested in many areas of the use of technology in learning, Mark’s focus is now on the rapidly evolving and expanding area of mobile technology and how best to utilise this to deliver institutional services, learning and the relationship between a user’s mobile technology and how it can join up personal learning environments with institutionally controlled systems.

Mark facilitated a parallel session entitled “Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web” with Mike Nolan.


Alan Paull is an information management consultant for APS Ltd. He works with education providers and course information collecting organisations across the country, advising on XCRI implementation, in addition to briefing DCSF and other partners.

Alan facilitated a parallel session entitled “Course advertising and XCRI” with Scott Wilson.


Andy Ramsden took up the role of head of e-learning in February 2008, after being the VLE Operational Manager and Learning Technology Advisor at the University of Bristol. His current interests lie in re-visiting how technology can be effectively used to enhance the learning experience in face to face teaching, factoring in the mobile dimension, and personal learning environments. At the same time re-thinking the staff development model to ensure the introduction of technology enhanced learning initiatives is effective and sustainable. This includes understanding how we might use technology to enhance our staff development models.

Andy facilitated a parallel session entitled “Designing, developing and testing a location aware learning activity using QR Codes “.


Helen Sargan has been slogging away at the Web in Cambridge for as long as it has been around. She has a lively time managing the Web requirements of both the Computing Service and the wider University, and acting as a hub for advice for the other Web managers in the University (which amounts to several hundreds).

Helen facilitated a parallel session entitled “Stylesheets for mobile/smartphones“.


Dave Stanley is Web Marketing Manager at the University of Sheffield. He has worked in web marketing in the education sector for over 12 years with previous roles at City & Guilds and the Department for Education and Employment. During his seven years at Sheffield he has managed the roll out of the content management system throughout the University and the introduction of the visual identity across the website. During 2008 he spent 11 months as the acting head of marketing for the University. More recently his role has moved away from web and is now focused on developing corporate marketing strategies.

Dave facilitated a parallel session entitled “Sheffield Made Us – using social media to engage students in the university brand“.


Owen Stephens has 15 years experience working in Library and IT services within the Higher Education sector. As well as a strong technical background, he has been on the management team of the library services of two leading UK Universities (Royal Holloway, University of London and Imperial College London), and has been responsible for a number of innovative projects at both and institutional and national levels. Owen founded the ‘Mashed Library’ events in the UK “bringing together interested people and doing interesting stuff with libraries and technology”.

Owen facilitated a parallel session entitled “FlashMash“.


Adrian Stevenson is a project manager and technical researcher at UKOLN. He has managed the highly successful SWORD project since May 2008 and also manages the JISC Information Environment Technical Review project. Adrian represents UKOLN and JISC on various activities including Linked Data and the Semantic Web, and standards such as OAI-ORE and SWORD. Adrian has a long-standing interest in Linked Data, having presented on the subject on many occasions.

Adrian has also worked for the Learning Technology Services Team at the University of Manchester, and MIMAS, a national data centre based at the University of Manchester, on the JISC-funded JORUM project (2002-2005). Prior to this he was a Web Developer for Multimedia Services at Leeds Metropolitan University (2001-2002) and the Web Editor at King’s College London (2000-2001). Adrian first studied Economics and later Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Following this he became a professional guitarist in a number of bands based in London, as well as a Sound Engineer for a number of independent artists including My Bloody Valentine.

Adrian facilitated a parallel session entitled “RDFa from theory to practice” with Thom Bunting and Mark Dewey.


Scott Wilson works for CETIS. He was initially responsible for turning the CETIS site into THE portal for learning technology standards. Scott is an Assistant Director of CETIS, and has a special interest in standards for infrastructure and enterprise integration.

Scott facilitated a parallel session entitled “Course advertising and XCRI” with Alan Paull.


Joss Winn focusses on how technology can be used in Higher Education; working with both staff and students on the use of technology for research, teaching and learning.

Currently, his time is spent running JISC-funded projects, supporting the use of WordPress at the university and running the Lincoln Academic Commons, a hub for open source and open access related projects. His research interests include the idea of the ‘Commons’ and the impacts of an energy crisis and carbon reduction legislation on Higher Education Institutions.

Joss facilitated a parallel session entitled “WordPress beyond Blogging” with Chris Goddard.