Brian Kelly, UKOLN IWR Information Professional of the Year Resources bookmarked using ‘ucisa-2008-02' tag UKOLN is supported by: Communicating With Users Case Study: The UK Web Focus Blog http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/ workshops/ucisa-2008-02/ This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) About This Talk This talk describes the approaches taken in setting up the UK Web Focus blog and describes strategies for IT Service departments in using blogs for engaging with their user communities.
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Transcript
Brian Kelly, UKOLN
IWR Information Professional of the Year
Resources bookmarked using ‘ucisa-2008-02' tag Resources bookmarked using ‘ucisa-2008-02' tag
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
About This Talk
This talk describes the approaches taken in setting up the UK Web Focus blog and describes strategies for IT Service departments in using blogs for engaging with their user communities.
About This Talk
This talk describes the approaches taken in setting up the UK Web Focus blog and describes strategies for IT Service departments in using blogs for engaging with their user communities.
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Contents
• About Me
• The UK Web Focus Blog Setting Up The Blog Blog Policies Delivering The Blog Evaluation
• Blogs For IT Service Departments Who’s Doing It? A Vision
• Conclusions
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About My Past
Employment History• Initially employed in Computer Centre at
Loughborough University from 1984-90• Information Officer at University of Liverpool
(1990-91) and University of Leeds (1991-5)• Senior Trainer at Netskills (1995-6)• UK Web Focus at UKOLN, University of Bath from
1996-UCISA Involvement
• Committee member of IUCC IUIC, ISG, TLIG, SDG, … in 1980s and 1990s
• Speaker at UCISA Management Conference, 2004 and 2008 and various UCISA TLIG/SDG events
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About My Present
UK Web Focus:• Discovered the Web in Dec 1992• Web evangelist in 1993-4• Currently employed as UK Web Focus:
Highlighting innovations to community Encouraging take-up of best practices Building sustainable Web management
community Promoting use of Web 2.0 to support
institutional objectives Addressing barriers to innovation
How to transition from ‘skunkwork’ to embedded service:
Establish:• Blog policies • Scope of the blog• Target audience• Writing style• Procedures• Change control
UK Web Focus blog is written by an individual and has a conversational writing style. Feedback mechanisms and professional reputation helps to ensure suitability of contents.
UK Web Focus blog is written by an individual and has a conversational writing style. Feedback mechanisms and professional reputation helps to ensure suitability of contents.
About The Blog
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Blog Content
How Do You Get Content?
• Lots of things happening in Web 2.0!
• Read blogs from peers and contextualise
How Do You Make It Interesting?
• Aim to be a ‘thinker’ and not a ‘linker’ (there is a role for linkers, though)
• Engage in discussion (“X looks interesting, but it might mean Y. What do you think?”)
How Do You Find The Time?
• Blog posts related to other work activities – feedback improves quality of work
• Speculation (“thinking out loud”) provides opportunity to see if others have similar views
• Can I afford not to blog; not to engage with my users?
About The Blog
Blo
gs
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Measuring UsageUsage
• Steady growth in usage in first 6 months
• Views by RSS not measured (likely to be high)
• Views in other aggregated services also not measured
Links• Steady growth in nos. /
status of links by blog in first 6 months
• Dapper service used to visualise trends in Technorati statistics
About The Blog
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Evaluation
Survey in Aug/Sep provided very useful feedback and confirmed that blog is providing a valuable service
…
…
About The Blog
But what are the implications of these experiences for the wider community?
But what are the implications of these experiences for the wider community?
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Vision For IT Services
A number of senior managers use blogs
• Michael Webb, University of Wales, Newport
• John Dale, University of Warwick
• Mark Sammons, University of Edinburgh
and some blogs from support staff:
Shouldn’t IT Service departments be leading use of blogs at strategic & operational level, for engaging with users & sharing best practices?
Shouldn’t IT Service departments be leading use of blogs at strategic & operational level, for engaging with users & sharing best practices?