Transcript MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/events/social-web-leeds-2009/
Embedding Use of the
Social Web in Your Institution
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath, UK
Email:
[email protected]
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/briankelly/
About
This talk reviews some of the
barriers to effective use of Social
Web services and suggests
approaches to embedding its use.
Blog:
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
UKOLN is supported by:
A centre of expertise in digital information management
This work is licensed under a AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence
(but note caveat) www.ukoln.ac.uk
Contents
Challenges to embedding use of the Social Web:
Motivation
• I’m unconvinced
Outputs from today
• I don’t know where to start
Institutional Barriers
• IT Services/Comms policies
• Sustainability/interoperability/legal/ … concerns
Sustainability Barriers
• Metrics
• Managing closure
Other Barriers
• To be identified in breakout groups
A centre of expertise in digital information management
2
www.ukoln.ac.uk
The 1 – 9 – 90 Challenge
Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to
Contribute
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never
contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users
account for almost all the action. (Jakob Neilson, Oct 2006)
Potential Benefits:
• Globalisation
• Cross-fertilisation
• Unexpected benefits
• Maximising impact
Potential Dangers:
• Globalisation
• Mono-culture
• Unexpected dangers
• Loss of impact
Remember that Social Web services improve as the numbers of
users increase. The safe in-house solution may fail due to a lack of
aA centre
sustainable
community.
of expertise
in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
3
Motivation
Motivating Action
Implementing Change
• Need champions – is that you?
Are You Convinced?
• One aim of today – providing examples of benefits
• Need further convincing: read more examples
(e.g. http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/)
Where to Start?
• Too many opportunities!
• Suggestions:
 Exploit personal or institutional interests/priorities
 Don’t feel pressured into activities
 Go for the low-hanging fruit
A centre of expertise in digital information management
4
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Motivation
The Personal RSS Reader
My personal Netvibes page
Note Netvibes videos clips
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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Low-hanging
fruit:
Netvibes with tabs
for:
• Your services
• Other people’s
information
about your
services
• Key agencies in
your area
• Your areas of
interest
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Motivation
The Public RSS Page
My public Netvibes page
A centre of expertise in digital information management
6
Low-hanging
fruit:
Netvibes with
public tabs for:
• Your services
• Other people’s
information
about your
services
• Key agencies in
your area
• Your areas of
interest
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Motivation
Twitter Is An Option
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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Twitter can provide
tangible benefits:
• Engaging in
discussions at
events
• Remote
participation at
events
• Finding our what
they’re saying
about you
Note you don’t need
to say what you had
www.ukoln.ac.uk
for breakfast!
Institutional Barriers
Understanding The
Institutional Barriers
What are the barriers?
• IT Services says no!
• Comms department says no!
• Legal department says no!
What we need to do:
• Gain a better & more detailed
understanding of concerns
• Seek to address concerns
• Move towards a more risk-taking culture
A centre of expertise in digital information management
8
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Institutional Barriers
9
Examples of Barriers
Some examples:
• Access to services blocked
• Access to services blocked at peak hours
Responding:
• Gain an understanding of reasons why and
develop response
e.g.
• Service blocked at peak hours indicates a
network bandwidth concern
• General block could be due to (a) access to
illegal content; (b) staff wasting time;
…
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Institutional Barriers
Subverting the Barriers
Example:
• “Can’t have a wiki; user-generated content
may include spelling mistakes. This will
bring council into disrepute”
Understanding Purpose:
• Wiki was to support teenager reading
group
Politics:
• Need to ensure council achieves its social
inclusion & widening participation targets
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Institutional Barriers
It’s Too Risky!
Story
Council blocks Twitter due to “A
squirrel could run rings around
journalist” tweet (meant to be
private message)
Parallel
Email message sent to list
rather than individual.
Email service suspended
How To Respond
Expect strange response and
plan accordingly
A centre of expertise in digital information management
11
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Have a (Lightweight) Policy
Mosman Council
(Australia) provides
good example of a
lightweight policy
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Institutional Barriers
13
Risk Management
JISC infoNet Risk Management infoKit:
“In education, as in any other environment, you can’t
decide not to take risks: that simply isn’t an option in
today’s world. All of us take risks and it’s a question of
which risks we take”
Examples of people who are likely to be adverse stakeholders:
• People who fear loss of their jobs
• People who will require re-training
• People who may be moved to a different department /
team
• People .. required to commit resources to the project
• People who fear loss of control over a function or
resources
• People who will have to do their job in a different way
• People who will have to carry out new or additional
functions
• ofPeople
havemanagement
to use a new technology
A centre
expertise inwho
digitalwill
information
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A Risks &Opportunities Framework
Biases
• Critical friends
• Application to
existing
services
• Application to
in-house
development
•…
Intended
Purpose
Benefits
Risks
Missed Opps.
• Sharing
experiences
• Learning from
successes
& failures
• Tackling biases
•…
Risk
MInimisation
Evidence
•“Time To Stop Doing and Start
Thinking: A Framework For
Exploiting Web 2.0 Services”,
Museums & the Web 2009
A centre of expertise in digital information management conference
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Costs
14
Subjective factors
Using The Framework
Twitter for individuals Organisational Fb Page
Community
support
Rapid
feedback
Intended
Purpose
Marketing
events,…
Benefits
Large
audiences
Risks
Justify ROI
Org. brand
Communitybuilding
Low?
Missed Opps.
Risk
MInimisation
Evidence
Ownership,
privacy, lock-in
Marketing
opportunity
Low?
Costs
Note personal
biases!
Use
of approach in two scenarios: use of Twitter & Facebook
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
15
Sustainability
Beyond The Pilot
You’ve:
• Made use of Social Web services yourself
• Met like-minded colleagues and shared
best practices
• Gathered anecdotes of the benefits
Now you want to ensure:
• The services are sustainable
• The services will continue if you leave
• The services will continue if funding and
political circumstances change
A centre of expertise in digital information management
16
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Metrics
“There are lies,
damned lies and Web
statistics”
Dangers:
• Failure to grasp
complexities
(caching, false hits,
robots, …)
• Inappropriate
comparison
Rather than a single Web site usage statistics, there’s
a
need
to understand
a diversity
A centre
of expertise
in digital information
management of metrics
www.ukoln.ac.uk
17
Blog Statistics
Blog statistics for
UK Web Focus
blog
Average 250
visits/day in 2009
But how meaningful is this? What about:
• RSS readers?
• Email readers?
The tension: desire to enhance end user
experience through increased RSS
takeup
vsmanagement
need to report on usage
stats
A centre of expertise in digital
information
www.ukoln.ac.uk
18
Sustainability
Email Statistics
Statistics on email
delivery of blog posts
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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Remember that
digital resources
can now be
accessed in a
variety of ways:
• Web access
• RSS
• Email
• On Google
•…
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Hidden Dangers
“When Peregrines Come To Town”
Derby Museum and Art Gallery
provided v. popular Social Web
services about nesting peregrine
“So great were webstats submitted
under “Best Value Performance
Indicators” the Audit Commission
questioned their veracity. After
much high level debate they
declared our figures unsuitable for
reflecting website usages by
museums.”
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Institutional Barriers
Tail Wagging the Dog
“It was suggested that this decision might put
viability of the project into question. I feared this
could be a case of the statistics-gathering tail
wagging the audience-focussed dog. But
common sense prevailed and we’ve since been
fully supported in our work, especially so after
being able to demonstrate that we draw many
thousands more visitors into our main websites
each summer and that our project contributes
towards some of our authority’s Corporate
Priorities, too”
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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Note importance of stories
rather then www.ukoln.ac.uk
just number
But Statistics Can Be Useful
Statistics can help
to identify
successful
strategies for
engaging with user
communities e.g.
potential of Twitter
A centre of expertise in digital information management
22
www.ukoln.ac.uk
But Statistics Can Be Useful
Statistics can help
to identify
successful
strategies for
engaging with user
communities e.g.
potential of Twitter
1,759 followers; 1,392 following
3,460 followers; 2,365 following
622 followers; 329 following
156 followers;132 following
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Sustainability
Termination of Services
Individual (blog policies)
Blog published by Aline Hayes, Assistant Director SLS/Director
of Info ASystems
& Technology, Sheffield Hallam University
centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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Sustainability
25
Termination of Services
Policies For This Blog
This blog is hosted by Sheffield Hallam University,
therefore the content of this blog belongs to them
and remains theirs in the event that I either cease to
contribute to this blog, or leave the University.
Policies for the use of &inclusion of Twitter Feeds
The content of any Twitter feed relates to a mix of
work and personal matters. … Staff who choose to
follow me on Twitter are assumed to be happy that I
may follow them in return … I reserve the right to
treat the Twitter id Aline_Hayes as mine & not the
property of SHU
Having a simple policy on your use of Social Web
canin be
to your users & clarify
issues
Aservices
centre of expertise
digitalbeneficial
information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Sustainability
It’s Not Just The Social Web
What is the future
for public sector
services after the
General Election?
Observer, 6 Dec 2009
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With expectation
of decreased
funding, surely
now is the time to
use the Cloud
service?
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Sustainability
Culture Grid
Collections Trust (CT) are developing the Culture Grid
– an architecture for managing cultural resources
whilst allowing integration with Social Web services
But what of the risks associated with the Culture Grid?
There’s a need to apply a risk analysis to publiclyservices
Afunded
centre of expertise
in digitaltoo.
information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
27
Conclusions
To conclude:
• The Social Web is here to stay
• The early mainstream users are
demonstrating value and developing best
practices
• There are risks – but these are risks which
need to be assessed and managed
• There are also risks in doing nothing!
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Questions?
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