Institutional Web Managers Workshop 2008

I attended the institutional web managers workshop this year in Aberdeen and it was absolutely fantastic.  Anyone associated with web development in the Higher Education sector should attend this event.  The plenaries, parallel sessions, discussion groups and social events are all extremely useful in their own right but it’s the inspiration and sense of belonging that one feels during and after the conference I think makes the difference.

I was attending on behalf of the JISC to see where there may be any developments with regards to Business and Community Engagement.  One theme which stuck out above all, to me, was that of transparency through initiatives to open up our information allowing others to do what they feel with it.  We often have time to gather information and display it in a round-a-bout way so why not allow others to do the cool stuff?  From my point of view this would be particularly interesting with regards to allowing communities and businesses to take appropriate information and do what they feel with it.  More often than not information from various disparate sources mashing them up to create a much more purposeful service.

All of the resources from the event are available from the workshop website – http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2008/