Web 2.0: Opportunity Or Threat For IT Support Staff?

Web 2.0: Opportunity Or Challenge For IT Support Staff? Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY Email [email_address] UKOLN is supported by: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/ucisa-sdg-2007/ Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of this talk, taking photographs, discussing the content using email, instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using ' ucisa-sdg-2007 ' tag Let’s use Gabbly pointing at www.ucisa.ac.uk for chat

About Me

Brian Kelly:

UK Web Focus: a Web advisory post based at UKOLN

Funded by JISC and MLA to advise HE/FE and cultural heritage sectors

Web enthusiast since Jan 1993

Committee member of UCISA TLIG/SDG and predecessor groups in 1980/90s

UKOLN:

National centre of expertise in digital information management

Located at the University of Bath

Contents

Introduction

Web 2.0 – An Opportunity

Web 2.0 - what you know

Technologies (blogs, wikis, RSS, comms)

Culture (openness, user-focus, always beta)

Web 2.0 – A Challenge

Institutional conservatism

Addressing the sceptics

Deployment Strategies

User focus; Information literacy; staff development

Safe experimentation; risk assessment / risk management

Where To From Here?

Doing it  Sharing experience

Avoiding risks of doing nothing

Context

Assumptions – you’re excited & terrified:

You’re all familiar with Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, RSS) & services (Flickr, YouTube, ..)

You’re excited by Web 2.0’s potential

You’re horrified that:

People are falling for the marketing hype

Easy-to-use apps will marginalise you

User-Generated Content will lead to deterioration in quality

…

Aim of this talk:

To explain why you should be excited

To explore how the concerns can be addressed

To outline how Web 2.0 can support and develop IT Support staff

IT Services Today

“ IT Services: Help Or Hindrance? ” talk:

At UCISA Management conference, Mar 2006

Web 2.0 is changing things – adapt or die!

Follow-up for EMUIT, Nov 2006 (& elsewhere):

“ Web 2.0 is changing things – adapt or die!”

We know – so tell us how to adapt!

Reflections:

Willingness to change (at various levels)

Conservatism (at various levels)

Need opportunities to try Web 2.0 things

IT Services possibly lagging behind Librarians (and museums?!)

Web 2.0 – You’ll Know This

What Is Web 2.0?

Marketing term (derived from observing 'patterns') rather than technical standards - “an attitude not a technology”

Web2MemeMap, Tim O’Reilly, 2005

Characteristics Of Web 2.0

Network as platform

Always beta

Clean URIs

Remix and mash-ups

Syndication (RSS)

Architecture of participation

Blogs & Wikis

Social networking

Social tagging (folksonomies)

Trust and openness

Web 2.0

Blogs (1)

Michael Webb’s blog at Newport College:

IT Service’s director

College’s Web 2.0 strategy decided after my talk at UCISA 2006

Lead from top

Sustainable: ~weekly post

Web 2.0 Strategy talk available at IWMW 2006 Web side (& Slideshare)

Video on Google Video

Using Web 2.0 http://blog.newport.ac.uk/blogs/michael/

Thoughts:1

Blogging is so mainstream that even senior managers do it

Are smaller colleges quicker to innovate?

Blogs (2)

John Dale’s blog at Warwick University:

E-lab’s head of development

Pioneer in providing student blogging service

Engages Warwick users in discussions

Talks about non-IT interests

Using Web 2.0 http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/johndale/

Thoughts:

IT staff can have a personal interests and talk about them

Yes students will swear on blogs – and the world doesn’t fall apart

Rapid respond to problems, rather than banning

Blogs (3)

In-Cider Knowledge blog:

Mark Sammons, Computing Officer at Edinburgh Univ

Posts about Firefox administration – and reflections on Web 2.0 stuff

An unofficial blog

Regular posting since Dec 2004!

Using Web 2.0 http://in-cider.spaces.live.com/

Thoughts:

IT staff will want to do good, even if the university doesn’t (yet) approve

Universities may take time to catch up: Edinburgh’s Web 2.0 action plan published on 31 May 2007 (ahead of yours?)

Wikis

Wetpaint wiki used for several UKOLN events:

Easy to set up & use

Free

But it’s externally-hosted?

Yes 

Avoids dependencies on busy IT staff

Usability proven by large nos. of users

Avoids techie ideologies

Using Web 2.0 http://sharing-made-simple-2007-06.wetpaint.com/

Thoughts:

Various access levels can be granted / various alerting tools

Easy-to-use collaboration working which minimises effort required – surely a no-brainer?

Communications - Chat

Gabbly:

A chat facility for your Web site in less than 30 seconds!

RSS output

Much potential:

Just-in-time comms

Multiple discussions in lecture theatres

…

Using Web 2.0 http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/ workshops/archivists-2007-06/gabbly/

Thoughts:

We could do this in our VLE; using MSN, IRC, … But:

Access issues; ID issues; usability issues, …

Communications - Skype

Skype:

Easy-to-use

Users love it

Approaches to concerns:

Bath Univ banned on Resnet in response to users concerns, but removed restriction recently

Manchester Univ. bought technology to provide a quality Skype service for its users

Oxford Univ provided user education on best practices for configuring software

Using Web 2.0

Uses:

Explore non-technical issues

Just-in-time accessibility

Green agenda (do you have one?)

Softer Aspects of Web 2.0

Web 2.0: Always beta

Services that change & develop

Reflects life, reflects learning

Web 2.0: Openness

Open standards, open source, open access, open culture

Underpins education and research

Web 2.0: User-focussed, trust

Users are what we’re about

Society expects us to deliver educated citizens, who can exploit their learning for benefit of society

Web 2.0 Softer aspects of Web 2.0 characterise key aspects of higher education and the role of the University system

Web 2.0 and IT Support Staff

We have seen:

Benefits of Web 2.0 to users

Relationships between Web 2.0 and higher education

We’ll now explore how:

Web 2.0 is changing user communities’ views of IT

Web 2.0 is changing nature of IT support

Web 2.0 can enhance career development for IT support staff

Web 2.0 and Users

What if:

Applications are easy to develop

Applications are easy to deploy

Facebook seems to have “disposable apps”

Try it, use it, dump it, replace it

And what if data is also disposable:

The use was the purpose

I don’t care about preservation

I need to forget my past

Web 2.0 and Users

“ Embracing Constraints”

We must ensure:

Application work on all browsers

Comply with accessibility guidelines

Data can be imported & exported

But Cities I’ve Visited:

Works well for me (places I’ve spoken at)

Quick data input (AJAX)

No data export (yet?)

Doesn’t work in Opera (yet?)

What if this is good enough for the individual user?

“ Technology: Stuff that Doesn’t Quite Work”

IT has always been a technology

Stuff that works:

Radio; TV; phone; consumer goods; …

What if IT does work: good news or bad?

Reduced need for training

Learn from your mates

Peer-support

Diversity of choice for consumers, not imposition of supported solution

Selection:

Functionality

Interoperability

Colour / coolness

Web 2.0 and Users

Role of IT Services

Will IT Services be needed in the future?

Yes – if we embrace the future and are seen to enhance it

No – if we are seen to fight it and justify yesterday’s norms

Yer, but no, but yer, but – of course it’s more complex than that!

And we’ve been through radical changes in the past:

Demise of mainframe

PC revolution (standalone then networked)

Demise of Computer Board

Distributed staff

Web 1.0

IT has changed HEIs; so it will change IT Services

Web 2.0 and IT Support

IT Services Director 2.0

Michael Nowlan, Director, TCD:

“ Any time I am talking about innovative or disruptive technologies, I refer to your talk [at UCISA 2006].

My mantras are now:

Yes before No

Allow before disallow

Open rather than closed

Connect to the network on a device-agnostic basis”

Would an IT Director at a UK University say this? Are we behind the Irish? And if so, why? http://wmv.heanet.ie/heanet/ conference2005/nowlan.wmv

Opportunities: IT Development

Web 2.0 technologies are providing an opportunity to:

Simplify & democratise development work

Develop valuable service for out users

Enhance status of our institution

Why haven’t we all got a Google map of our campus?

http://northumbria.ac.uk/browse/radius5/ http://northumbria.ac.uk/browse/ unimapper/?view=Standard

Opportunities: Integration

There’s a need to:

Integrate information from disparate sources:

Institutional blog aggregation

Discipline-based aggregation

Just-in-case harvesting

…

Librarians are starting to do the advocacy – but we can do the techie stuff!

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/planet/ OSS Watch use Planet to aggregate feeds from related services. Bath Univ do likewise for institutional feeds.

Opportunities: Competitions

Funding for 2 year projects can be dangerous (try to do too much)

Innovation competition at IWMW 2007:

Encourage lightweight development

Could use tools such as Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, …

Could create a mashup, a YouTube video, …

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/ workshops/webmaster-2007/competition/ Note UK Museums & Web conf is hosting a mashup developers day today. Should UCISA catch up and organise something similar?

Opportunities: Collaboration

Email is dying; social networks are growing

So let’s use SNs to support collaborative work:

Facebook group to explore potential prior to IWMW 2007 event

Note need active participants (Americans/Australians?)

http://www.facebook.com/… Email is dying! See UK Web Focus blog post Let’s help kill it off – or engage with the technologies are users want to use.

On Facebook

Enhancing my development:

My peers have:

Joined Library 2.0 group

Installed Splashcast

Sharing papers using Scribd

Providing access to blogs

My university’s interests:

10,000+ students on Bath network!

Market research

Exploiting Facebook platform

…

Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Maybe. Perhaps we should be ‘embracing constraints’ in our work

Opportunities: UCISA

What can UCISA groups do?

Document Sharing Archive :

Creative Commons

Metadata

Distributed searching

Search interfaces

Scraping

…

http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/TLIG/ docs/docshare.htm Shouldn’t UCISA be leading in developing best practices for using WiFi at events? http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/ TLIG/docs/handbook/

Info/Training Handbooks:

Wiki for updates

Syndicated content

Use of del.icio.us

…

Opportunities: Staff Development

How do you learn how to use new tools & how they’re being used?

Watch video clips on YouTube

Download Podcasts

Note:

US librarians seem ahead of us

Why doesn’t UCISA SDG respond!

Note: Use Google Video for videos longer than 10 mins. And why aren’t you recording / videoing talks at UCISA conferences?

Web 2.0 Backlash

When significant new things appear:

Enthusiasts / early adopters predict a transformation of society

Sceptics outline the limitations & deficiencies

There’s a need to:

Promote the benefits to the wider community (esp. those willing to try if convinced of benefits)

Be realistic and recognise limitations

Address inappropriate criticisms

Web 2.0: It’s a silly name. It’s just a marketing term. There are lots of poor Web 2.0 services. There wasn’t a Web 1.0. What follows it? It does have a marketing aspect – and that’s OK. It isn’t formally defined – it describes a pattern of related usage. There will be poor (and good) Web 2.0 services – just like anything else. Any usage will arrive at a follow-up term. Deployment Challenges

Takeup Of New Technologies

The Gartner curve

Developers Rising expectations Trough of despair Service plateau Enterprise software Large budgets … Early adopters

Chasm

Failure to go beyond developers & early adopters (cf Gopher)

Need for:

Advocacy

Listening to users

Addressing concerns

Deployment strategies

…

Beware The IT Fundamentalists

We need to avoid simplistic solutions to the complexities:

Open Standards Fundamentalist: we just need XML

Open Source Fundamentalist: we just need Linux

Vendor Fundamentalist: we must use next version of our enterprise system (and you must fit in with this)

Accessibility Fundamentalist: we must do WAI WCAG

User Fundamentalist: must do whatever users want

Legal Fundamentalist: it breaches copyright, …

Ownership Fundamentalist: must own everything we use

Perfectionist : It doesn't do everything, so we'll do nothing

Simplistic Developer : I've developed a perfect solution – I don't care if it doesn't run in the real world

Web 2.0 : It’s new; its cool!

IT Services Barrier

The Librarian Fundamentalists

Librarians:

Think they know better than the user e.g. they don't like people using Google Scholar; they should use Web of Knowledge (who cares that users find it easier to use Google Scholar & finds references they need that way?)

Think that users should be forced to learn Boolean searching & other formal search techniques because this is good for them (despite Sheffield's study).

Don't want the users to search for themselves (cf folksonomies) because they won't get it right.

They still want to classify the entire Web - despite the fact that users don't use their lists of Web links.

Want services to be perfect before they release them to users. They are uneasy with the concept of 'forever beta' (they don't believe that users have the ability to figure things out themselves and work around the bugs).

Library Barrier

Deployment Strategies

Interested in using Web 2.0 in your organisation?

Worried about corporate inertia, power struggles, etc?

There’s a need for a deployment strategy:

Addressing business needs

Low-hanging fruits

Encouraging the enthusiasts

Gain experience of the browser tools – and see what you’re missing!

Staff training & development

Address areas you feel comfortable with

Risk management strategies

“ Embracing constraints”

Avoiding missed opportunity costs

…

Deployment Challenges But what if you ignore all of this?

Memo From Next Year (1)

From : VC, University of Poppleton

Topic : IT Conservatism

Date : 21 June 2008

The University SMT has been alerted that some depts. Are still using the so-called Web 1.0 / classic Web.

Although devolved decision-making allows depts to do this, the University requires annual IT strategy returns to address the following risks this entails:

Dangers to student recruitment : as current students inform 6 th formers using Facebook of our views

Revolting students : The University wishes to avoid the mistakes made at other Universities in which Facebook has been banned, leading to a severe backlash (at a time when we are seeking to incrase student fees)

Memo From Next Year (2)