{"id":866,"date":"2010-07-12T15:31:59","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T14:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=866"},"modified":"2010-07-12T15:31:59","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T14:31:59","slug":"iwmw10-are-web-managers-still-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/07\/iwmw10-are-web-managers-still-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"IWMW10: Are web managers still needed&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Second plenary today is from Susan Farrell &#8211; asking &#8216;are web managers still needed when everyone is a web &#8220;expert&#8221;?&#8217;. Slides at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/iwmw\/farrell\">http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/iwmw\/farrell<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Susan asks &#8211; why web manager are not valued? Who are these &#8216;web experts&#8217;? Should we be looking at recognised qualifications? How do we show the value we add to the institution? She is thinking of the &#8216;softer&#8217; skills sides &#8211; writing for the web, metadata, search, user interface design etc.<\/p>\n<p>Susan asks what is the perception of &#8216;web people&#8217; &#8211; techies in a cellar? Are staff and students aware of what you do?<\/p>\n<p>Web professionals &#8211; similar to librarians? &#8230; but less respected Susan suggests:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Organising information<\/li>\n<li>Classification<\/li>\n<li>Cataloguing<\/li>\n<li>Updating users on new resources<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some issues Susan outlining:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>user research &amp; usability testing &#8211; difficult to get funding for this<\/li>\n<li>writing for the web &#8211; devolved responsibility can mean that web team can&#8217;t affect what is written<\/li>\n<li>SEO &#8211; not appreciated, but lots spent on &#8216;marketing&#8217; &#8211; but SEO is marketing, so why mismatch?<\/li>\n<li>Metadata &#8211; no-one interested (welcome to the library world)<\/li>\n<li>Information architecture &#8211; expectation that you can just change this to suit specific needs<\/li>\n<li>Search &#8211; expectation of good search experience &#8211; but<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Experience that &#8216;consultants know best&#8217; &#8211; often listen to consultants above local expertise.<\/p>\n<p>What is a &#8216;web professional&#8217;?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Need broad range of skills and experience<\/li>\n<li>Softer skills less recognised<\/li>\n<li>No set qualifications<\/li>\n<li>Skills being absorbed by other roles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[hmm &#8211; I struggle with this in the way that I struggle with the professional status of librarians. For me the key thing about the professional status of librarians is not skills or qualifications &#8211; these have changed over time and continue to change. However, the professional ethics are (and should be) more persistent &#8211; &#8216;Concern for the public good&#8217; and other principles listed at<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cilip.org.uk\/get-involved\/policy\/ethics\/pages\/principles.aspx\"> http:\/\/www.cilip.org.uk\/get-involved\/policy\/ethics\/pages\/principles.aspx<\/a> should be true no matter what the technology. So what do &#8216;web professionals&#8217; stand for?]<\/p>\n<p>Susan saying web professionals have to promote themselves to key audiences&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Susan asking do web professionals need a professional body?<\/p>\n<p>So &#8211; are web managers still needed when everyone is a web &#8216;expert&#8217;? Yes &#8211; but we need to promote ourselve and be part of the solution in our Institutions, not part of the overhead&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q &amp; A<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Q: Martin Moyne &#8211; is it that difficult to justify? Survey that says web site No 1 factor in overseas students making decisions<\/p>\n<p>A: But perhaps senior management don&#8217;t know that?<\/p>\n<p>Q: Careers advice &#8211; came across career advice on government site for web managers that said this was going to disappear as a career and suggested a move to finance!<\/p>\n<p>A: Perhaps this is where a professional body is needed &#8211; make a representation to government etc.<\/p>\n<p>Q: Brian Kelly &#8211; what do we need to do?<\/p>\n<p>A: \u00a0Perhaps not a generic thing &#8211; tuned to institution?<\/p>\n<p>Q: (from me) librarians have a set of professional ethics &#8211; do web managers &#8216;stand&#8217; for anything?<\/p>\n<p>A: perhaps to many routes to being a web manager to say there is a standard approach<\/p>\n<p>Q: Jeremy Speller &#8211; status can&#8217;t be gained overnight &#8211; takes along time<\/p>\n<p>A: True &#8211; but got to start somewhere<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Second plenary today is from Susan Farrell &#8211; asking &#8216;are web managers still needed when everyone is a web &#8220;expert&#8221;?&#8217;. Slides at http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/iwmw\/farrell Susan asks &#8211; why web manager are not valued? Who are these &#8216;web experts&#8217;? Should we be looking at recognised qualifications? How do we show the value we add to the institution? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-iwmw10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}