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Mike Nolan (2009)

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 final morning session and facilitated the Developer's Lounge Show and Tell session.




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Brian Kelly (2009)

Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus - a post funded by the JISC and MLA 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's interests include Web standards, Web accessibility, quality assurance for Web services and innovative Web developments, including collaborative Web tools. Brian chaired the final day's workshop conclusions and facilitated a parallel session entitled "Using The Social Web To Maximise Access to Resources".




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Marieke Guy (2009)

Marieke Guy is a research officer in the Community and Outreach Team at UKOLN. She has recently worked on the Good APIs project, which aimed to provide JISC and the sector with information and advice on the factors that encourage use of APIs. Last year she was involved in the JISC PoWR (Preservation of Web Resources) project. Since returning to work after her third lot of maternity leave (!) Marieke has become a remote worker and is the remote worker champion at UKOLN. In this role 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.




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Ranjit Sidhu (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "'So what do you do exactly?' In challenging times justifying the roles of the web teams".




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Damian Steer (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "Mobile Web and Campus Assistant".




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Patrick Lauke (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "HTML5 (and friends)".




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Josef Lapka (2010)

Josef Lapka is a member of the Web Applications Team at Canterbury Christ Church University. Suraj will be giving a plenary talk entitled "StudentNET Portal", part of the Doing the Day Job session.




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James Lappin (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "The impact of SharePoint in Higher Education" with Peter Gilbert, part of the Doing the Day Job session.




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Suraj Kika (2010)

Suraj Kika is the CEO and founder of Jadu, a global CMS software vendor that specialises in enterprise web content management, transactional and search systems. Jadu has implemented for both Public and Private Sectors, Higher Education and NFP markets. After just seven years the company is one of the leading CMS vendors in the UK with aggressive growth across the globe. Suraj has shaped the functionality of Jadu CMS around enterprise 2.0 and social media, making Jadu one of the first CMS systems to deploy personalisation, blogging, social media, podcasting, image and video content management as standard features. Jadu recently announced the first CMS client for Twitter taking the micro blogging service into the enterprise for brand management and moderated publishing to social networks. The MyJadu API, a RESTful interface to the Jadu CMS, provides organisations with rapid interoperability and the ability to capitalize on their content and data through WebServices. Suraj started his career in publishing and then worked in graphic design and marketing before moving into online marketing and eCommerce development at Electrocomponents PLC. Suraj will be giving a plenary talk entitled "Social Networking", part of the Doing the Day Job session.




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Brian Kelly (2010)

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's interests include Web standards, Web accessibility, quality assurance for Web services and innovative Web developments, including collaborative Web tools. Brian is co-chair of the event and will be giving the welcome with Marieke Guy. He will also be facilitating a parallel session entitled "Engagement, Impact, Value: Measuring and Maximising Impact Using the Social Web".




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Marieke Guy (2010)

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 event and will be giving the welcome with Brian Kelly.




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Susan Farrell (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "Are web managers still needed when everyone is a web 'expert'?".




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Richard Brierton (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "Replacement CMS - Getting it right and getting the buy-in", part of the Doing the Day Job session.




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Paul Boag (2010)

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 will be giving a plenary talk entitled "No money? No matter - Improve your website with next to no cash".




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Nicholas Watson (2008)

Nicholas Watson is the media account manager for Corporate Projects for Learning and Teaching Solutions (LTS) - the media production arm of the Open University (OU). He is responsible for production of Open Educational Resources such as OpenLearn, iTunes U and YouTube. Nicholas facilitated a workshop on "Podcasting and iTunes U: Institutional Approaches to Scaleable Service" with Jeremy Speller. Nicholas can be contacted at n.watson@open.ac.uk




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David Sloan (2008)

David Sloan is Project lead of the University of Dundee's Digital Media Access Group, a research and consultancy unit specialising in accessibility of ICT to disabled and older people. He also runs the University's Web Accessibility Support Service, and has carried out several accessibility reviews of web authoring tools, including a content management system, VLE and e-assessment software. David facilitated a workshop on "The 'other' Accessibility Guidelines - the Importance of Authoring Tool Accessibility Evaluation in a Web 2.0 World".




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Gareth Saunders (2008)

The Revd Gareth Saunders interests lie primarily in information architecture, XHTML, CSS, accessibility, usability and helping to make sure that people can find the information they are looking for. Gareth studied Divinity (Practical Theology and Christian Ethics) at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews; he then had jobs in a Borders textile mill and with homeless young people in London before returning to Scotland to complete a Masters at New College, University of Edinburgh and work as a Scottish Episcopalian priest in Inverness and Edinburgh. In 2006 Gareth made the seamless transition from full-time parish ministry to focus on the Web and Information Architecture: having pastoral care for Web users, if you like. He is a member of the Information Architecture Institute and is a regular blogger. Gareth facilitated a workshop on "Mind Mapping for Effective Content Management" with Stephen Evans.




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Andy Ramsden (2008)

Andy Ramsden has recently started as the Head of e-Learning at the University of Bath. In this capacity he is charged with contributing to both the strategic and operational aspects of elearning development at the Institution. In terms of his own research, his interests are in the effective uses of emergent technologies for teaching and learning. In particular, the use of Web 2.0 and mobile technologies on the learning and teaching landscape. He regularly presents and facilitates workshops on this and other topics with the UK. He also sits on the Steering Group of the nationally funded Podcasting for Pedagogical Purposes SIG. Many of his findings and reflections on the use of emergent technologies within Higher Education can be found on his mobile-learning blog. Andy facilitated a workshop on "Embracing Web 2.0 Technologies to Grease the Wheels of Team Cohesion" with Marieke Guy.




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Martin Poulter (2008)

Martin Poulter is the ICT Manager of the Economics Network, a Subject Centre of the HE Academy. Based at the University of Bristol, Martin runs Web sites aimed at Economics teaching staff, students and prospective students. He also runs the Ancient Geeks community blog . His academic interests are Philosophy and Psychology. Martin facilitated a workshop on "The Real Information Environment" with Kwansuree Jiamton.




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Mike Nolan (2008)

Mike Nolan is is Web Applications Project Manager at Edge Hill University where he leads the development team. Recent projects include a revamped corporate Web site and the university portal. Michael regularly posts about HE Web development topics on the Edge Hill Web Services blog. Mike facilitated a workshop on "Stuff what We're doing at Edge Hill University".




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Tom Natt (2008)

Tom Natt is a Web Developer working at the University of Bath. He has worked on a selection of institutional projects including wiki and instant messaging software and is currently looking at institutional repositories. In his free time he working on a selection of Web related open source projects. Tom facilitated a workshop on "What's the Point of having Developers in a Web 2.0 World?" with Phil Wilson.




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Kwansuree Jiamton (2008)

Kwansuree Jiamton is the ICT Manager at the Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre; part of the HE Academy. Working at King's College London since 2000, she has an active role in Web site development and interoperability, e-learning projects and strategic planning. Kwansuree facilitated a workshop on "The Real Information Environment" with Martin Poulter.




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Dan Jackson (2008)

Dan Jackson is the Web Team Leader at City University London. He is part of a small team responsible for the maintenance and development of the University Web site, CMS and related systems and applications. During his time at the University Dan has overseen a site redesign and an accessibility audit. He has over 7 years experience in Web development, and his interests include Web standards, usability, accessibility, client-side coding and PHP. Dan facilitated a workshop on "Coping with Forms: Implementing a Web Form Management Application".




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Claire Gibbons (2008)

Claire Gibbons is now the Web Manager for the University of Bradford (previously the Web Officer since September 2000), working within the department of Marketing and Communications, and responsible for the management of the University's new Web Team. Claire is responsible for the University's 'corporate Web' and works closely with departments and Schools to ensure consistency of University brand and message as well as compliance with standards and legislation, such as SENDA and the University's own Code of Practice for Web Based Materials. Claire is nearing the end of the Chartered Management Institute Diploma in Management - which has sparked her recent (and slightly obsessive) interest in organisational culture, 'people' and 'behaviours'. Claire has been a member of the Web CMS Project core team since October 2005. Claire facilitated a workshop on "Web CMS and University Web Teams Part II - the Never Ending Story?" with Russell Allen.




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Stephen Evans (2008)

Prior to becoming the University of St Andrews Web Manager, Stephen Evans was an IT manager and research scientist at Cambridge University, where he developed intranet and Web database applications for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) laboratory. During his research career he imaged the inside of a wide variety of objects including melons, strawberries and knees! While MRI was a fascinating technique, he gained more satisfaction from developing Web-based solutions to help others with their research. Steve is now responsible for the management and development of the University of St Andrews Web site. This includes managing the University's content management system. In addition, his role includes supporting and assisting all service Units and Schools with any Web related matters. His main interests are information architecture and developing solutions to enhance the ways the Web is used to organise and disseminate information. Stephen facilitated a workshop on "Mind Mapping for Effective Content Management" with Gareth Saunders.




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Paul Boag (2008)

Paul Boag describes himself as a user experience designer. He is a founding partner of Web design agency Headscape, runs the boagworld.com community for people who run Web sites, and is the author of many articles (for the likes of .net magazine and Think Vitamin). Paul is a charismatic and entertaining speaker (e.g. .net magazine podcast, Refresh06 and Web2Live). Paul has worked extensively in the higher education sector for clients such as; City University, Brunel University, JISC and the Universities of Portsmouth, Brighton, Southampton and Lancaster. Paul also has significant experience in running online communities and has done so as far back as 1995 when he was one of the original community leaders of geocities. He wrote his dissertation on virtual communities and the disabled back in 1994. Paul facilitated a workshop on "Battling Bureaucracy".




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Russell Allen (2008)

Russell Allen is the Project Manager for the University of Bradford's Portal and Web CMS projects. Russell has spent the last sixteen years as a project manager delivering non-succession funded IT innovation and development projects in both public and private sector organisations. Projects have included implementing the University of Sheffield's career management skills Web site, on-line remote training for under-employed graduates in recruitment agencies, setting up community IT resources via the government's UK Online programme and developing community engagement projects via the e-citizen and e-government programs. Funders have included HEFC, DFES, ESF, SRB and lottery funding. His current job at the University of Bradford is to deliver a Web CMS, amongst other things, as part of the University's e-strategy. Russell facilitated a workshop on "Web CMS and University Web Teams Part II - the Never Ending Story? with Claire Gibbons.




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Steven Warburton (2007)

Steven Warburton is an e-learning ICT manager at King's College London with a wealth of experience in the implementation and evaluation of learning technology within a variety of educational settings. He has managed both technical and pedagogically driven e-learning projects that have included work on personal publishing tools, social software, virtual learning environments, and the development of blended teaching programmes. Steven gave a plenary talk on "What does 'Community of Practice' mean for Institutional Web Managers?".




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Alison Wildish (2007)

Alison Wildish is Head of Web Services at Edge Hill University where, for the past seven years, she has led a team responsible for the development of the corporate Web site(s), intranet sites and Web services. Prior to joining Edge Hill, Alison was developing Web applications in the commercial sector. Alison has an active interest in the opportunities offered by personalisation and user owned technologies and gave a plenary talk on "Let the Students do the Talking...."




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Dr Miranda Stephenson (2007)

Dr Miranda Stephenson was heavily involved in establishing the National Science Learning Centre which is based on the University of York campus. Miranda welcomed delegates to the University of York at the start of the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 event.




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Peter Reader (2007)

Peter Reader is Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Bath; his current responsibilities include Web, media relations, marketing strategy and internal communications. Peter gave a plenary talk on "Marketing Man takes off his Tie: Customers, Communities and Communication".




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Drew McLellan (2007)

Drew McLellan has been hacking on the Web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he's spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now works as a Web Developer for Yahoo! Europe in London, UK. Drew gave a plenary talk on "Can Your Web Site Be Your API?".




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Brian Kelly (2007)

Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus - a post funded by the JISC and MLA 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 will be be participating in the panel session on "Dealing with the Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?" and facilitating a workshop session on "Building The Web Management Community" with Steven Warburton.




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Adam Hulme (2007)

Adam Hulme is an Account Manager for Maxsi. Maxsi are developers of eVisit Analyst, a range of advanced Web site analysis tools used by universities such as Northumbria and Exeter. Adam participated in the panel session on "Dealing with the Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?"




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John Harrison

John Harrison is the CEO of Maxsi. Maxsi are developers of eVisit Analyst, a range of advanced Web site analysis tools used by universities such as Northumbria and Exeter. John participated in the panel session on "Dealing with the Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?"




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Arthur Clune (2007)

Arthur Clune works at the University of York as an IT Security Specialist, but is also a member of the UK Honeynet Project. In the latter role he is involved in developing the Honeynet Project's "Honeymine" data analysis tool and in helping with other aspects of Honeynet development. In the past he has worked on simulations of Internet traffic, studies of road traffic and in pure mathematics. Arthur give a plenary talk on "Trends in Web Attacks".




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Paul Boag (2007)

Paul Boag describes himself as a user experience designer. He is a founding partner of Web design agency Headscape, runs the boagworld.com community for people who run Web sites, and is the author of many articles (for the likes of .net magazine and Think Vitamin). Paul is a charismatic and entertaining speaker (e.g. .net magazine podcast, Refresh06 and Web2Live). Paul has worked extensively in the higher education sector for clients such as City University, Brunel University, JISC and the Universities of Portsmouth, Brighton, Southampton and Lancaster. Paul also has significant experience in running online communities and has done so as far back as 1995 when he was one of the original community leaders of geocities. He wrote his dissertation on virtual communities and the disabled back in 1994. Paul gave a plenary talk on "Social Participation in Student Recruitment" and participated in the panel session on Dealing with the "Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?"




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Jeff Barr (2007)

Jeff Barr is the Senior Manager of Web Services Evangelism for Amazon Web Services. He manages a team consisting of himself and three other evangelists and their goal is to create excitment and awareness for the Amazon Web Services. While maintaining an intense schedule at work he still finds time to write for his personal blog and to enhance and maintain Syndic8, his 5 year old RSS Feed directory. Jeff gave a plenary talk on "Building Highly Scalable Web Applications".




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Isabel Allen (2007)

Isabel Allen, independent consultant, former head of eBusiness, Nottingham Trent University. Isabel participated in the panel session on "Dealing with the Commercial World: Saviour or Satan?"




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Unleashing the Tribe

Ewan McIntosh will be giving a Plenary Talk on Unleashing the Tribe. University and 'real life' are often seen as distinct entities by students, and employers. Outside academia huge changes in the way we interact and how knowledge is shared and analysed have been afoot for some time. A generation of Bebo Boomers are repeating the solidarity and participation witnessed by the baby boomers forty years ago. The net, gaming and mobile technologies are encouraging more collaboration across greater distances and cultures than ever before. Such stories should be encouraging rapid change in the nature of schooling. So what are the main routes down which educators could go and what are the main challenges to overcome?




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Institutional Repositories: Asset or Obstacle?

The Institutional Repository (IR) had a meteoric rise to fame. In a brief blaze of glory, it was heralded as the facilitator of a free exchange of information within the academic research community - a faster, cheaper and more effective way to conduct scholarly communications in the twenty-first century. Then, just as quickly, fame changed to infamy. The technology, the ownership, and the very ideal of the IR has been called into question by many and varied voices in the wider academic community and beyond. I would like to explore the really controversial aspects of the IR, and ask my audience to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, there was something useful there all along.




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The Tangled Web is but a Fleeting Dream ... but then again...

James Currall will be giving a Plenary Talk on The Tangled Web is but a Fleeting Dream ... but then again... "Just a quick phone call to ask you if you could set up something to archive the University Web site, it should be pretty straight-forward for someone with your technical know-how." It is only a matter of time before someone in "Corporate Communications", the " Freedom of Information Office" or some similar department comes to you with this sort of request. How would you (have you) react(ed) to it? Many acres of virtual text have been penned on the subject of Web archiving (a fair proportion of them no longer available because the sites no longer exist:-) One of the major problems, which is well illustrated by the Wikipedia article on the subject, is that most authors have concentrated almost entirely on "How?" to do it and the (technical) difficulties that arise. The speaker will argue that "How?" is the least of your problems. What is your institutional web site for and what purpose is archiving it supposed to serve. To put it another way, the questions: "What?", "Why?", "When?" and "Where?" come well before deciding if the "Who?" is you, or trying to determine "How?". As usual Currall asks awkward questions and never seems to provide any useful answers, just turning seemingly simple problems in complex, issue-strewn minefields. He hasn't written the talk yet, but you can be sure that it will raise some very fundamental issues and give you something serious to think about and discuss and aside from manufacturing Shakespearean quotes, will probably quote from the most read book in the English Language, although you might feel the need to check that he isn't just making it up!




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Institutional Responses to Emergent Technologies - What JISC is Doing

Rob Bristow, JISC as Programme Manager for e-Administration gives a plenary talk on Institutional Responses to Emergent Technologies - What JISC is Doing. As users of all sorts become more familiar with new technologies (including both Web 2.0 type software tools and user-owned devices) and become used to, and expectant of, managing their own data through 'self-service' applications and systems, questions are asked of institutions as to how they will respond to these new demands. JISC has been investigating this area through strands within its e-Learning and Users and Innovation programmes which have been focussed in the main on the learners' and users' experience. JISC has recently funded a further series of projects that address the way that institutions are responding to these new challenges, looking at organisational policies, practice and strategies, as well as funding pilot projects that demonstrate actual institutional responses. This work is in its early stages but the scope of the responses to the call for projects and some of the early results of the landscape study will provide some interesting real life information about institutional responses from across the sector. This talk will describe the work that JISC is doing and relate it to the Institutional Web Manager world.




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Look Who's Talking Now...

Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services, University of Bath follows up her plenary talk from last year entitled "Let the students do the talking..." which stimulated lot of debate. She spoke of my experiences at Edge Hill University and the success she'd had as a result of a more 'open' approach to Web content and services. In general the community were encouraged by our approach and many claimed to find it inspiring yet others, from the larger and research-led Universities, suggested "... it all sounds very good but Edge Hill is a new University so it HAS to focus on marketing... it's different for us". So twelve months on and now sitting on the other side of the fence, working in a research-led institution at the University of Bath, She will reflect on her previous talk and report on whether or not her approach and vision has changed. She'll be answering the questions many of you wish to ask: Is it just 'easier' to get things done in a new University? Should your vision for the web be dictated by the type of institution you are? Having moved to a research-led University is she now eating her words?




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Web 2.0 - Whatever Happened to Web 1.0?

David Hyett, Head of Information and Records Management, British Antarctic Survey gives a plenary talk on Web 2.0 - Whatever Happened to Web 1.0? At the start of the redevelopment of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) external Web site, there was initial enthusiasm for "Web 2.0" with many stakeholders using the term without actually knowing what it meant. Fancy, interactive interfaces, are no substitute for good information architecture, good navigation and good content - all of which should be underpinned by understanding the user and their goals. The session will look at how the Web 2.0 concept can be interpreted and will argue that it should be used with caution. Web 2.0 by any definition is likely to have its place within an organisation's Web strategy but should only be considered once we've got Web 1.0 right! And let's now forget about "Usability 2.0" and "Accessibility 2.0" either! The experience and lessons learned by BAS will be highlighted.




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Web 2.0 and Brand: Theory and Practice

Helen Aspell, Head of Digital Marketing, University of Southampton and James Souttar, Precedent give a plenary talk on Web 2.0 and Brand: Theory and Practice. There are thousands of Web 2.0 technologies available online right now, from Twitter to Second Life, all with tangible marketing benefits but not necessarily to every organisation or audience. In the current climate of Web 2.0, marketers are being expected to prove their understanding of new technologies and demonstrate how their brand is using and responding to the changing environment by incorporating social media into their digital strategies. This challenge is particularly acute in large, devolved organisations such as universities where technology decisions are often made at arms' length from the marketing function by IT teams or individual departments, neither of whom may consider the implications that building an online presence in Web 2.0 may have on an audience's perception of the organisation's brand. During the talk, Aspell and Souttar will outline how the changing landscape of digital technologies will shape the agenda of brand development in the future. This will include the principles of branding in the modern age with its application and embracing of Web 2.0 technologies. Moving from theory into practice, the reference will be the re-brand of University of Southampton with isoton used to demonstrate how Web 2.0 technologies can reflect and enhance an institution's brand.




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Science in the You Tube Age

Cameron Neylon, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory gives a plenary talk on how Web Based Tools are Enabling Open Research Practice. Communication of data, results, and models is at the centre of research science. Yet while our understanding of our surroundings across a wide range of research disciplines has been transformed in the last 20 - 50 years the means of that communication remains trapped within the now centuries old convention of the published research paper (and the traditional stand and deliver presentation). In the initial phase of the development of the World Wide Web publishing practises remained fundamentally the same with the printed page being transferred online but remaining in fundamentally the same format. The advent of user-centred Web-based tools for information gathering, publishing, social networking, and collaborative working has challenged traditional models of publishing and archival. These tools have an enormous potential to make scientific communication more effective, timely and comprehensive. Examples of such approaches include tools for sharing of data and technique protocols via wikis, image, and video sharing sites, collaborative authoring of research papers using online office suites and discussion of the published literature, research practise, and the life challenges associated with a research career through blogs. The availability of these tools is also associated with a growing interest in some sectors of the academic research community in adopting more 'open' approaches to research practice. The logical extreme of this 'Web 2.0' based open approach is to make the researcher's laboratory notebook freely available online or even to carry out the preparation of a research grant in public. While examples of the application of these approaches in academic research are currently limited they nonetheless raise serious questions about the future of both the traditional format of research publication and of peer review in its current form. Responses to the advocacy of 'Open Science' therefore, understandably, run the gamut from fanatical support, through amused tolerance, to derision and, in some cases, extreme hostility. In this talk I will discuss examples of Web-based and Open Science practices, including the experience of adopting these approaches within my research group, the state and usefulness of tools available to support these approaches, and the current position and future prospects of the Open Science community more generally.




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Remote Control? Managing Remote Work Requests in a Changed Workforce




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Littler Lightbulb: October Appellate Roundup

This Littler Lightbulb highlights some of the more significant employment law developments in federal courts of appeal in the last month.

Ninth Circuit Reinstates Law Prohibiting Discrimination in Healthcare Settings Based on Vaccination Status




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A Majority of Alaskans Appear to Have Approved a Paid Sick Leave Ballot Measure

  • New statewide paid sick leave law would take effect on July 1, 2025.
  • Although there is no designated carryover or balance caps, the law would allow employers to limit annual accrual and use to either 40 or 56 hours, depending on employer size.
  • Employees are entitled to use paid sick leave as it is accrued.