Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008:
The Great Debate
IWMW 2008 Home Page

About The Workshop

The Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2008) was held the University of Aberdeen from Tuesday 22^nd to Thursday 24^th July 2008.

The IWMW event provides an opportunity for those involved in the provision of institutional Web services to hear about institutional case studies, national initiatives and emerging technologies and to actively participate in a number of parallel sessions.

The Institutional Web Management Workshop series are organised by UKOLN in order to support members of institutional Web management teams within the UK Higher and Further Educational communities and related organisations.

This Year's Theme

The theme for the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008 was "The Great Debate".

The Web management community is increasingly working in an environment in which users are making significant use of Web 2.0 services. We need to ask:

• How does the availability of services by Web 2.0 companies affect the existing provision of institutional Web services?
• Are Web 2.0 services a distraction to traditional, well-managed high quality Web resources or do they signal the direction for in-house development activities?
• Are Web 2.0 companies and others in a position to provide a credible and sustainable alternative to institutional services?
• Has the vision of the "network as the computer" arrived, providing users with choice in their selection of services?
• How is the role of the institutional Web manager changing?
• What does this debate tell us about the role of the higher educational institution in a globally networked environment?

These are issues our institutions are currently facing. And it seems there may be disagreements within the Web management community regarding the benefits and risks associated with use of a distributed portfolio of services.

This year's institutional Web management workshop will encourage a debate on how we see the future of our community and the services we manage and provide.

Follow-Up

Although the event is now over, there are various resources available which will allow participants and non-participants to follow-up on the various talks, sessions, etc. which took place at IWMW 2008. In particular please note:

• The slides of the plenary talks, workshop sessions, etc which have been tagged 'iwmw2008' on Slideshare
• The iwmw2008 tweets
• Flickr photos (tagged with 'IWMW2008')
• Technorati search for IWMW2008, including blog posts, etc.

Please note that a workshop report is available in Ariadne Web Magazine.