A centre of expertise in digital information management Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath,...
-
Upload
carrie-tolton -
Category
Documents
-
view
215 -
download
0
Transcript of A centre of expertise in digital information management Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath,...
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Brian KellyUKOLNUniversity of BathBath, UK
UKOLN is supported by:
Acceptable Use PolicyRecording this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.
Acceptable Use PolicyRecording this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/blogging-practices-jiscmrd-2011/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/blogging-practices-jiscmrd-2011/
Twitter:http://twitter.com/briankelly/
Email:[email protected]:http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Twitter:#jiscmrd
Blogging Practices To Support Project Work
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
22
You are free to:
copy, share, adapt or re-mix;
photograph, film or broadcast;
blog, live-blog or post video of
this presentation provided that:You attribute the work to its author and respect the rights and licences associated with its components.
Idea from Cameron Neylon
Slide Concept by Cameron Neylon, who has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights. This slide only CCZero.Social Media Icons adapted with permission from originals by Christopher Ross. Original images are available under GPL at:http://www.thisismyurl.com/free-downloads/15-free-speech-bubble-icons-for-popular-websites
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
About the UK Web Focus Blog
3
Intr
od
uct
ion
• Launched in Nov 2006
• 1,000 posts, 4,684 comments & over 385K views
• Runner-up in IT Professional Blogger of the Year Award
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
About You
How many are:• Regular bloggers• Occasional bloggers• Non-bloggers
Your interests:• What would you like to see addressed in
this session?
4
Intr
od
uct
ion
Your opportunity to shape the agenda
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
About This Session
1. Why have a blog?
2. What’s the purpose of your blog?
3. Who contributes?
4. What can go wrong?
5. How can you measure the blog’s success ?
6. What technical issues should I care about?
7. Howe do I ensure the content is usable?
8. How to maximise impact of the blog
9. What additional functionality can we exploit?
10.Managing the blog when the project is over
5
Intr
od
uct
ion
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Why Have a Blog?
Group Exercise:• List ~10 reasons why your project should
have a blog
Report back:• Each group to share three reasons for
having a blog• Please do not repeat reasons already
provided!
6
Wh
y B
log
?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Projects Must Blog!?Twitter/blog discussion in Feb 2009:• Projects may blog due
to peer pressure• If not done for right
reasons may be counter-productive
• Projects should be open (wider than blogging)
• Need to develop productive blogging culture
• No, project must blog!7
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Why Have a Blog?Possible Reasons
• We have to – it’s in the contact!• To disseminate• To speculate• To challenge• To encourage discussion• To use as a CMS for content• To ensure content can be viewed easily on
mobile devices• To produce RSS to facilitate reuse• To act as a CV• To provide a sandbox for experimentation• ….8
Wh
y B
log
?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Why Have a Blog?
Tip No. 1:
Ensure you (and your project team) know the reasons why you are providing a blog.
Note
This should be done for members of the project team and the funders
9
Wh
y B
log
?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What’s the Purpose of Your Blog?
The need to publish the blog’s purpose:• To help user’s understand what your blog
is about• To ensure blog authors (possibly
distributed) have a shared understanding• So your funders understand the purpose• So future evaluators /markers understand
the purpose • To help in the management of your blog• To measure the blog’s effectiveness in
achieving its intended purpose10
Wh
at i
s Y
ou
r B
log
Fo
r?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What’s the Purpose of Your Blog?
Summary:• Brief summary of top left corner of
UK Web Focus blog (visible from every page)
Detailed description:• Detailed summary on page linked to
from navigation bar
Covers:• Purpose• Audience• Policies• …
11
Wh
at i
s Y
ou
r B
log
Fo
r?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What’s the Purpose of Your Blog?
Things to consider:• Is the About
page about the blog or the project?
• Does the summary change about the project is over?
12
The About page for the JISC PoWR project was updated last week as the blog may have been regarded as the project.
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What’s the Purpose of Your Blog?
Tip No. 2:
Publish an About page for your blog which is:
Easily found Clarifies whether the information is about
the blog or the project Makes sense after the project is over
Note
This should be done for readers of your blog
13
Wh
at i
s Y
ou
r B
log
Fo
r?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
Email is for everyone and we (should) understand the context and the risks.
But blogs are a different environment
14
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
15
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
Starting a blog can be an intimidating experience …
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
16
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
… but so can writing a peer-reviewed paper
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
17
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
Some people are better at writing code
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
18
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
Whereas other can communicate complex ideas in visual ways
Visualisations produced by Tony Hirst
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
Which channels do you prefer? (choose 1)[Research papers] – [synthesis reports] – [blogs] – [briefing papers] – [marketing materials] – [code] – [visualisations]
Which communication channels are you happy to use? (choose all that apply)
Which communication channels do you try to avoid? (choose all that apply)
19
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
The Belbin Model
Blogging and the Belbin Model
20
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
Group Exercise:• Provide one (or two) statements
describing who will publish posts on your project blog
• What are the strengthens & weaknesses of your blog contributor policy?
21
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Who Contributes to Your Blog?
Tip No. 3:
Since not everyone should blog but every project must have a blog …
Identify the good, keen bloggers Provide opportunities for reluctant bloggers Consider inviting guest bloggers to add
variety Provide blog profiles to be able to
differentiate different ‘voices’
22
Wh
o C
on
trib
ute
s?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Group Exercise:• What can go wrong with your blog?• Feel free to include:
Technical issues Content issues People issues Resourcing issues …
When Things Go Wrong
23
Wh
en T
hin
gs
Go
Wro
ng
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
When Blogs Break
24
Fatal error: Call to undefined method Arras_Widget_Tag_Cloud::WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud() in /opt/wordpress/wp-content/themes/arras-theme/library/widgets.php on line 328
blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/jisc-beg-dig-pres/
ProblemSpam comments spotted in blogBut blog not available?!
SolutionArras theme incompatible with upgraded PHP libraryBlog viewed on mobile device, with mobile theme enabledUpdated version of theme installed
Wh
en T
hin
gs
Go
Wro
ng
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Spam
25
Blog comments can attract spam:•Comment moderation is a barrier to people•You’ll need a spam filter•I try to delete spam daily
10 days of spam
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Managing Spam Comments
26
~0.5M spam comments in ~ 4 years (~4K legitimate comments)
Some legitimate comments may be trapped (& possibly retrieved).
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
When Things Go Wrong
Tip No. 4:
Things can go wrong, but planning can minimise problems
Spam filters Spam management policies Managing switch-off of your blog after
project ends
27
Wh
en T
hin
gs
Go
Wro
ng
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Group Exercise:• How should we measure the success of a
blog?• (Why do we need to measure the
success of a blog?)
Measuring Success
28
Mea
suri
ng
Su
cces
s
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Measuring SuccessIs this blog unsuccessful?
29
The purpose of the blog was informal note-keeping using a familiar, easy-to-use tool.
Should usage stats matter?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
There are needs to identify indications of success • Demonstrate value
to funders• Identify & learn
from effective & flawed strategies
• …
Measuring Success
30
Mea
suri
ng
Su
cces
s
Top 3% of all blogsTop 13% of technology blogs
According to Technorati Tony Hirst’s Ouseful.info blog is in:
• Top 3% of all blogs it has indexed • Top 13% of Technology blogs
based on index of > 1M blogs
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Comparison With PeersSearch Technorati for ‘jisc’ helps to spot blogs with high ranking:
• What can we learn from these?
• Can we help ensure JISC (outreach) blogs are highly ranked
31
Authority measures blog's standing & influence on scale of 0-1000 (high good).Ranking given for Technorati Authority of all sites (low good)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
WikioWikio also provides metrics for (registered) blogs
List of top technology blogs shown
32
Together with display of trends for ranking, nos. of posts, links and backlinks,
OUseful had peak at #18 in Nov 2008
What happened from Jun-Sep 2010?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Measuring Success
Tip No. 5:
Think about (easy) ways for measuring success of you blog
Note registering blog with Technorati & Wikio Is trivial to do May provide evidence of successful
strategies The value may be in the aggregation of JISC
blogs Funders understand that these don’t provide
league tables You’ll need to understand risks of not doing
this (which may be a legitimate decision)33
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Interoperability IssuesBK “What technical advice should I
give?”
TB “Don’t truncate RSS feeds!”
Context (for end users):
On the bus, catching up with RSS feeds on iPod Touch.
If text truncated I normally don’t see full post (and am likely to unsubscribe from such blogs)
34
Thanks to Amber Thomas for granting permission to share this example – she has updated her blog settings!
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Interoperability Issues
35
UKOLN’s Web Team Blog aggregator:• Harvests
posts for Web team blogs
• Allows them to understand their community
• Allows us to observe
Note that searches, auto-categorisation, etc. is based on RSS feed content. Restricted feed content = limited value.
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Interoperability Issues
Tip No. 6:
Provide a full RSS feed for your blog It’s trivial to do If you don’t:
Humans may not see full post, especially if they use offline devices
Software will not be able to harvest full post
36
Tec
hn
ical
Iss
ues
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Which Platform?
Which blogging platform should you use?• Wordpress.com: My choice. Limited
range of plugins.• Wordpress.org: Install locally; can install
wide range of plugins.• Blogger.com:
What else do people use?
37
Pla
tfo
rm I
ssu
es
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Platform Issues
Tip No. 7:
Several safe options available Wordpress.com or Blogger.com if no
in-house options available WordPress.org if
Wish to use wider range of plugins Technical expertise available Wish to consider use of WP as a technology
platform (see later)
May be advantages in using same platform as your peers
38
Pla
tfo
rm I
ssu
es
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Usability IssuesWho normally reads blog posts:
• On a mobile device• On desktop PC
39
My morning’s reading: posts viewed in mobile RSS client
Less clutter than Web browser view
But some features don’t work (Java, Flash, ..)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Interoperability can be achieved by writing style and links, with no technology needed
40
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
In a mobile world:• Which posts stands
out?
41
Note:• Growing importance
of personalised newspapers
• Need to stand out form the crowd
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Usability
Tip No. 9:
You can’t ignore mobile devices Even if you don’t read blogs on a mobile
device, your readers might Mobile usage will grow There are some simple techniques you can
use to enhance experiences on mobile device
42
Usa
bil
ity
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What About Twitter?Is Twitter:• Trivial & time-
wasting• Valuable for
rapid discussions with peers
• Useful for marketing
43
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Twitter Evidence (1)
44
URL Bit.ly/foo+ gives usage stats
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Twitter Evidence (2)What happened in June 2011 which caused spike for peer-reviewed paper on “Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access”
45
Probably:• A tweet on 17 June • A marketing opportunity
(Promote #UniWekk campaign on Twitter day)
• Use of popular hashtags
"Openness in HE: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access" paper on ways of exploiting openness: http://bit.ly/a9wglM #UniWeek #UniofBath
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
What About Twitter?
Tip No. 10:
You can’t ignore Twitter Build up your community (100-500
followers to ensure critical mass) Engage in relevant discussions Tweet about things you care about Tweet links you feel are useful
46
Tw
itte
r
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Commenting & LinkingMany blogs publish automated links to their posts
This illustrates benefits of citing posts
47
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Commenting & LinkingComments can be indicative of community building (but may be difficult on project blog)
48
You may prefer to be notified of comments:
• By email• In your RSS reader
You may also wish to have comments to blogs of interest in this way
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Comment on Other’s BlogsComment in response to post on Google Scholar Citations (& question on proactive use of service)
49
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Email MattersWhat if your users:• Are not into blogs• Don’t use RSS readers
Encourage them to sign up to an RSS to email subscription service e.g.
• Feedburner(93 subscribers to all posts)
• WordPress (85 subscribers)
50
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Comments, Links and Email
Tip No. 11:
Comments, links and email matter You can encourage comments by your
writing style (e.g. open questions Providing links to relevant resources helps
users in following ideas Providing links to blog posts can generate
traffic back to you blog Posts can be delivered by email (but you’ll
have to make it obvious how to do this)
51
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
You Are Not Alone!Work collaboratively:• You are not alone• You gain benefits by
sharing
Research360@Bath MRD blog plans covers:• Content for static
pages• Content for blog posts• …
52
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
You Are Not Alone!Research360@Bath MRD blog plans covers:• Content for sidebar• Target audience• …
Provided under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) licence
53
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Searching Across the Community
54
A Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) searches across (current) JISC MRD blogs
GCSE can be embedded in Web pages
Note should have OPML feeds to add blogs to RSS aggregators
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Browsing Across the Community
JISC RDM blogs added to Google Reader
Google Reader allows:• Browsing (shown)• Export of OPML file for import to other RSS tools
Compare this with the silos of conventional Web sites!
55
Produced by Jez Cope, Research360@Bath
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
You Are Part of a Community
Tip No. 12:
Don’t reinvent the wheel! Learn from what others are doing Share what you’re doing
56
Why not write a post about how you’ve implemented your blog? Other may find this useful, and they may be motivated to give you suggestions on enhancements
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Advanced Blogging
Blogs can provide:• Easy-to-use content management system• Tool for creating mobile-friendly content• Mechanism for getting feedback
But in addition:• Can manage semantic content• Content can be created by automated
processes• …
57
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Example from Southampton University
58
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
AnnotumAnnotums’s objectives are to develop:• A simple, robust,
easy-to-use authoring system to create and edit scholarly articles
• An editorial review and publishing system that can be used to submit, review, and publish scholarly articles
59
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
60
Joss Winn’s session on WordPress at IWMW 2010
If you’ve 6 mins to spare see the video:
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Blog Engine as a Platform
Tip No. 13:
A blog engine can be a powerful technology platform
61
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
It’s All Over Now!
62
The projects over – and was a great success But the blog:
• Is full of spam• Has out-of-date content• Has stopped working• Used as indicator of
poor dissemination for next call
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
IWMW 2011 blog
63
Calendar removed
Is this risky?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A Blog Isn’t Just For Xmas!
Tip No. 14:
Your project blog will still be relevant after the project is complete:
It can undermine future work if closure isn’t managed
It can demonstrate the value of previous work
64
See "Approaches To Archiving Professional Blogs Hosted In The Cloud“, iPres 2010, Kelly, B & Guy, M.<http://opus.bath.ac.uk/20327/>
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
ConclusionsYou should
• Document blog’s purpose• Provide an About page• Develop plans for content providers• Have a spam management policy• Consider ways of gathering metrics• Provide a full RSS feed• Ensure posts are usable on mobile devices• Encourage comments – and comment • Work collaboratively• Understand additional opportunities for blog platform• Manage the closure of your blog
65
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Questions
66