On 4th May Marieke Napier attended the one-day Professional Web Management conference held at Guy’s Campus, Kings College, London. The event was organised as a joint venture by Gamut, the London Universities Web editors group and the Institute of Information Scientists [1]. It was aimed at experienced Web professionals from the higher education and government related sectors with the aim that people would work together to establish “a path for professional development”. A summary of the event follows.
The day got off to a usual London start with a number of underground lines closed and a fire in an underpass at Black Friars causing traffic delays. This combined effort resulted in us crawling our way to Guy’s campus in a taxi shared with four other late commuters. The taxi officials at Paddington were using the standstill to promote a new ‘Taxi Share’ scheme where people travelling to a similar part of London squeeze into a cab together. This seemed like a great idea, unfortunately it meant that we had to visit everyone else’s venue before arriving at our own. On our arrival Timothy O’Shea of Birbeck College was just finishing his welcome address.
The auditorium was reasonably full with just over a hundred delegates from Universities and government institutions all over the UK.
The key issue of the conference was that of the Web manager’s role in resolving conflicts. This in itself demonstrated the need for a professional body and point of reference. If there were one it would be easier for the community of Web professionals to share best practice, and to refer to a 'higher authority' when dealing with difficult, uncooperative or simply uncomprehending colleagues or senior academics. It would also be easier for Web mangers to support their case with reference to the best practice endorsed and published by their professional body.
Brian Kelly of UKOLN presented the first set of conflicting factors by considering standards for building Web sites.
The first part of Brian’s talk detailed the current standards models available today such as those offered by WC3 (World Wide Web Consortium) and the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). These standards, which follow through from HTML 1.0 to HTML 4.0 and CSS 2, have a number of limitations and WC3 is now pushing for the use of XML, a light weight version of SGML that throws away esoteric features and allows richer links and further usability. There are also important metadata standards which should be considered such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) and Dublin Core.
Brian then proceeded onto the more objective matter of the choice between standards and market place applications. It seems that Professional managers may well see the benefits of standards but often tend to go with what they see as the ‘easiest’ option. Brian outlined the pros and cons of using standards. Standards allow more freedom, interoperability and accessibility for your users. They avoid reliance on a software vendor. However there are difficulties in implementing standards such as the need for them to be resolved in a timely fashion and the problems in employing good PERL/C programmers on Academic salaries.
Brian suggested that the Professional Web manager should move away from authoring tools and form a strategy that allows them to be lead by standards not applications. Comments and questions from the audience concentrated on both the government and JISC’s position. It was pointed out that an e-government document has been published detailing standards and JISC have begun work on the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) and RDN (Resource Discovery Network) which both cover standards.
The second round of conflicting factors raised their ugly heads before we had even had coffee.
Josh Rubin, the strategist for mobility for Web design consultancy Razorfish, gave a presentation entitled ‘Vision. Tenacity. An intense desire to learn’. The talk covered how to get the most from teamwork and emphasised the need to be able to talk to your employees on both a technical and non-technical level. Josh concluded that good teamwork needs communication, consensus in the processes used for decision-making, collaboration, and understanding. He reminded us that we each needed to “eat our own dog food”. American speak for practice what you preach. Josh’s suggestions were intuitive and useful. However it was by what he failed to say that Josh raised a number of important issues.
The question and answer session lead to a very interesting discussion on ownership. A delegate noted that Josh had failed to cover the matter of where ownership lies. Josh suggested that within most companies the ownership of a Web site resulted in tug-of-war between marketing and IT. In his company a collaborative group with members from each discipline drove the site.
The discussion moved into consideration of who owns content and how can managers diplomatically deal with ownership? Members from the audience asked whether it was preferable to have an editor through whom all content passed or allow individual Web authors to log in and put content on the Web. The debate was intercepted by Timothy O’Shea who pointed out that academic pages should be controlled from the bottom up while prospectuses and corporate material should have a top down approach. It was pointed out by a member of the audience that such action could result in universities having three Websites: academic, personal and corporate.
Another audience member suggested that any higher education or government Web site is like a business in that it builds and promotes a brand. The use of students in publishing could result in a lack of control and deterioration in marketing of the brand. Someone else was quick to ask if a university Web site was created only as a marketing ploy or if learning ever played a part.
After coffee Ian Barnes, Web master at the British Council gave a very honest presentation on ‘Harnessing diversity to achieve consistency: the British Council experience’. His talk continued to consider the conflicts within a Website.
Ian introduced the British Council as an eclectic collection of businesses who each want to have their own identity. In this sense the British Council follows a similar format to a University. Ian joined the British Council three years ago and was given the task of designing a new brand-orientated Website. He felt that it was imperative for the initial designs to be given backing from the top. Especially when its layout was so dependant on a multitude of influences such as market profile, trends, culture and fashion as well as function.
The Web operation involved a complex hierarchy leading up from the content providers and 200 plus Web authors to the Web board. The pages were designed using a lowest common denominator approach to easily allow the Web authors to follow standards; they are very simple in terms of design. It was also felt to be important that the people within the organisation fully understood the Web site’s aim. The Web board used a carrot and stick approach, the carrot being the easy authoring system of templates and the stick being a punishment scheme for non-compliance. Senior management were assessed and scored on their areas of the Web site. The scores along with comments were published on the British Council Intranet allowing best practice to be shared.
Ian explained that initially the site was very popular but recently there has been competition from ‘virtual brands’. Deviations have begun to spring up and the people creating these Web sites argue that their group is a distinct business model and that the British Council corporate style is of no use to them. A rogue Web site that has been very successful is the Football Nation site. Recently there has been an acceptance that the corporate brand does not work for some of the smaller groups and the British Council has been forced to adopt a new strategy. Efforts are now being made to make the corporate brand subversive.
Allowing variance after the creation of well-standardised Website could be seen as the professional Web manager’s nightmare. The Question and Answer session discussed the inaugural need for managing with an iron fist. Ian pointed out that a lot of rubbish went under the name of design and being stricter initially had meant that they could remove the shackles later on.
Peter Griffith of the Home Office gave the next presentation on ‘Staffing the service: the Web team’. The talk turned out to be a brief history of Web Management with a view to looking forward. Peter discussed the survey carried out on delegates prior to the conference, which provided a statistic of an average of 2.2 people per Web team. He pointed out that with so few people in a Web team it was necessary to find employees who have a little bit of technical, managerial and editorial blood in them. Later a member of the audience noted that job adverts are possibly so vague because we need people with so many skills; maybe we are just being optimistic. However Peter saw the days of the generalist Web master as coming to an end with a need for greater specialism around the corner. His reasons for this are the growing technical complexity of sites, the increasing number of contributors and a growth in outsourcing.
Peter’s advice on management was that bureaucracy and hierarchy are stifling. Team style management works; team skills may vary and so a Web manager should let people complement each other. People are a valuable asset. With the Web industry growing at an near exponential rate Peter felt that it was necessary to talk about how you get your staff to stay put. The answer is a positive environment and exciting projects. There was a lot of nudging and throat clearing in the audience from Web professionals sat next to their bosses. However Peter pointed out that people will continue to move no matter how great their place of work is so it is always important to attempt to capture knowledge.
After lunch David Smith from the department of Health continued the best practice theme and spoke about the ‘Role of a successful Web manager.’ He began by amusing us with his 10 Web management commandments. His unwritten rule being “what you need to be a good Web manager is a briefcase full of money and a baseball bat”.
David’s key points were about dealing with the content held on the site. Suggestions were given such as avoiding make your site an organisational chart. He also spoke about the key Web publishing policies such as maintaining style guides, registering with search engines, considering disabled access and publicity.
One area that David clearly feels very strongly about is Web enforcement. He discussed methods for cracking down on people who create renegade Web sites or pages that do not fit on in your organisation. These included making sure that you had access to the organ grinders i.e. get the directors on your side. He also suggested that Web managers arm themselves with knowledge of legal impediments such as the government guidelines.
Melanie Goody of KPMG unfortunately had to drop out of the conference and was replaced at less than 24 hours' notice by Una Byrne of Diageo plc. Una, who did very well given her lack of preparation time, discussed the merger of several Intranet and Web sites for Diageo. She talked about drawing standards together. Melanie also mentioned online teaching and brought the area of e-commerce up for the first time. These new areas are currently very embryonic but Melanie suggested looking at the work of the ALT (Association for Learning Technology) for best practice.
Geoff Ryman from the Cabinet Office was the final speaker of the day; his presentation was on ‘Benchmarking excellence’. Geoff talked about the recent reform of government Websites. In the past there had been a lack of clear goals with many government Websites not even sure why they were there. The Web revolution had caused a rush to get online and initially there had been a lack of resources for government Websites. Web managers had reprinted old information leaving the sites stale and with a lack of bespoke content.
Geoff mentioned how between the years 1994 and 1996 people had realised that Web sites reached the citizens directly bypassing the media. This has made a big difference when new policy is released. For example during implementation of the revised national curriculum a reporter had misquoted the government with ‘new curriculum drops Shakespeare’. The Web site allowed the government to crush this rumour early on.
The government needs to reach as many people as possible with its Web site, not just press and politicians. Apparently 50% (CCTA) of people who visit government Web sites have their graphics turned off. Current government Web site users don’t want pretty pictures; they are concerned with content.
Recently the government has begun the move towards a federal model. The new goal is a ‘joined up’ government. Audits have been done on 30 key sites and new guidelines released. A new media team has been set up along with a performance and innovation unit. The aim is to improve on use of XML, summaries, examples, use of frames, DTV, and metadata (Dublin core). There is also going to be an attempt to create a central pool of user statistics and a UK gateway is being built to that uses the governmental databases.
Timothy O’Shea summed up the conference by saying that he felt several interesting points had been brought up during the day. Many of the debates had shown there to be to be a great deal of consensus in the industry and all Professional Web managers should now work together to face the conflicting factors in Web site design today.
From an outsider's perspective the day seemed to have been very successful. It appears the true Professional Web managers role is to arbitrate the Ying and the Yang resulting in a balanced and well-constructed Web site. Let’s hope there is a little bit of Zen in your Professional Web manager.
or contact owner-gamut@fig.cc.kcl.ac.uk
Marieke Napier
Information Officer
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath
England
BA2 7AY
URL: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Email: m.napier@ukoln.ac.uk
Marieke is editor of Exploit Interactive and Cultivate Interactive Web magazines.
For citation purposes:
Marieke Napier, "Zen and the Art of Professional Web Management",
Exploit Interactive, issue 6, 26th June 2000
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue6/pwm/>
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