Managing information outside libraries

Throwing money at it

2009-10-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Generally it’s great to be offered money. Yet one of the trickiest questions for me to field is: “we’ve got £5000 to spend on the website by the end of this term; what should we do?”.

There are two reasons this is a tricky one for me.

The first is that I don’t think money will buy the things that will ultimately make the site better for users. The websites I look after are simply not as useful, clear and focused as they could be by a long stretch (although some are trying). Making them better involves a lot of time and a lot of effort – really thinking about what the site is for, reviewing everything that’s on it to make sure it should be there, editing each and every page so that it’s accomplishing a purpose, monitoring and evaluating and feeding back in and starting the cycle again – but not very much money at all. The offer to throw money at it feels at best like an attempt to take a shortcut through all the hard slog; at worst, like sidelining the site itself in favour of some whizzy new expensive gadget.

The second reason is that, with the current proliferation of free online services, I struggle to think of a single thing that we would want to do that we couldn’t at least try out for free. Sure, it’s nice to engage more with students, to book events online, to have forums and discussion groups; but we can use Facebook, Eventbrite, Google Groups to accomplish all this. And, yes, there’s something to be said for buying in a bespoke system: it’s likely to be more secure and more customisable, and it will reduce dependence on third party services. But that kind of system needs careful consideration, both in the choice of product and in what we want to do with it. At the moment we’re still exploring what we can do with our online provision, so I see more value in pilot schemes to try out a concept using free services than in buying in something we may never use.

Sadly, I mostly see sums of money being spent on bolt-on gadgets, usually, if I may be so cynical, something a director can get a name for bringing in. It’s not that I mind having the bolt-on, if for no other reason than that the publicity surrounding it will likely bring more traffic to the website.

But our websites are, at a very basic level, failing our users; and what they need is time, thought, and effort to change them. I wish people would stop trying to throw money at them.

Caveat Lector closes down

2009-07-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to hear, a while ago now, that Dorothea Salo, writer of the library blog Caveat Lector, has decided that Cav Lec is no longer the way for her to go.

I came to Cav Lec not so long ago; it got onto my radar when one of the library blogs I follow - possibly librarian.net - congratulated Dorothea on her Library Movers and Shakers award earlier this year. So I'm not a die-hard, I-was-there-when-the-first-post-came-out sort of reader; that blog and I were only really getting acquainted when it closed down. Nor is the topic of Cav Lec - open repositories - one that I have any particular thoughts about, professionally speaking.

Sometimes you meet someone who is a passionate, articulate expert about something you know nothing about. Someone you'd listen to all day, if you could; someone who brings their topic to life for you. That's what Cav Lec was for me. An unexpected tour of the engine room from the guy who's worked there man and boy; or, perhaps better, from the guy who pours his life into the machines knowing full well that the corporate suits who run the place don't get why the engine room's important.

Which was another thing I liked about Cav Lec - the current of anger running through it. In a world where half of us are too polite or careful to truly say what we think and the other half scream out their opinions with no real attempt to engage or persuade others, Dorothea was the rare exception. Points thought out, beautifully articulate, but no punches pulled: if something was wrong, it was, in so many words, just plain wrong.

Dorothea knows repositories; speaks out for them; draws you into them. From what she says, that's part of the problem with Cav Lec - she's ended up as sole figurehead for an area of the profession that desperately needs a community of advocates. I guess you get tired of shouting when yours is the only voice you can hear; and you begin to wonder if no one else is pitching in because you're shouting too loud.

Whatever her reasons, and for what it's worth, I'm gonna miss Caveat Lector. I'm still reading her stuff - she's got a new blog on e-research over at ScienceBlogs (The Book of Troogol). I'm sure it will be wonderful - but it won't be the same.

Marketing: not always the answer (or, don't put lipstick on a pig)

2009-07-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

I recently did some usability testing on the websites that I manage, and in each case asked someone from the website's department to come along, observe and take notes. If they observed any difficulties, they were to note them down, as well as any ideas they had for making improvements.

On one of the sites, users were having problems downloading the Access to Learning Fund (ALF) form. This form is not available through a text link like other forms on the same page. Instead, you click on an image of the form in the right-hand column of the page, and the form opens. My solution to the problem? Add in a text link to the form. The department staff member's solution? "Ensure that the profile of the ALF form is raised across the University, so that the form is immediately recognisable".

I see this a lot. Whenever I tell a department that some of their pages are not being used, or that only three links out of the fifty they have on their "useful websites" list have been clicked more than once, the answer is always "we'll do more marketing". Or "those pages should link from the main page"; or "we'll put different links at the top every week". If something is not working on a site, marketing is the answer.

As far as I can tell, there are two factors at play here. One is that people simply do not want to take down content that they have put up. If you suggest that underperforming pages ought to be deleted, people are going to look for ways in which the page can be given a new lease of life. The other is that focusing on making the website better and easier to use throughout - which, in general, does encourage traffic - is a hard slog, and not a particularly sexy hard slog at that. Much more fun to throw a load of money at a new, exciting marketing initiative than go through each and every page review it to make sure it's written to a clear purpose.

I use the following lines of reasoning a lot, to try and change minds:

You can't market everything
It is logically impossible to give every page in your site a prime position on your main page (unless you have a bare handful of pages, that is). So you will still need to decide what to highlight. And some pages will still be left behind. What can you do with those, except choose to improve them or to get rid of them?
Marketing is one-off and time-limited
Most marketing initiatives for web pages are one-off projects - a banner, a leaflet, posters, or a "feature" in a high-traffic part of the university website. These generate a burst of excitement, and can work really well for pages that are particularly relevant at a certain time of year: exam stress pages are a great example. But for most pages, you still need to find a way to transform the burst of excitement into long-term use.
Marketing can only lead the horse to water
Marketing can lead people to a particular page. But if that page is low-quality, difficult to get through, uninformative and untidy, you've wasted their time and your money.

In other words, whether or not you market your pages, it still pays to put in the effort to keep everything relevant, tidy, clear and purposeful, so that when your users find your pages - with the help of a marketing initiative or otherwise - they are able to use and appreciate them. Marketing is a valuable tool; but it is not the answer to your web use problems. If what you're marketing is not up to scratch, then even the best of marketing campaigns is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Four marketing blogs for information people

2009-07-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

Meredith Farkas wrote a post last April on marketing, and why library schools should teach it. It really struck a chord with me. I don't think I fully realised, until I started working in information, how little of my day I would spend on the work of managing information, and how much, instead, on selling my skills, marketing my service, and advocating on behalf of my users. Seriously, I think my time is split 80/20 between persuading people that something needs doing or that they should be paying attention to something that has been done, and actually doing stuff. On a good day.
I wasn't taught marketing at all in library school (unless perhaps there was a nod to it in our Management module); what little I know, I've picked up from my own reading.
Blogs in particular have been an amazingly valuable source of inspiration. The great thing about a blog is, it's not a humongous block of text you have to take in all at once. Posts are usually bite-size (or at least article-size) and, if you don't have time to read one, no worries, a new post will be along in a couple of days. That means I can tailor my professional development to suit my free and busy times. And on top of that, reading a number of blogs means I get a range of ideas and viewpoints; one marketing text is unlikely to deliver the same variety.
But enough about why I read blogs - if you need any more persuading read @ekcragg's excellent post on the topic. Without further ado, the marketing blogs that I have found useful (some are more web-related than others):

Seth Godin
I love this blog because the posts are daily, short, and almost unfailingly give me something to think about. Seth advocates the type of marketing where you develop relationships with your users, actually care about what they want, and generally try to be a good sort. He also attacks what to me are some of the failings of educational settings: the need to be everything to everyone, and the fear of doing something that no one else is doing.

Josh Klein web strategy
This one I read because the posts are more substantial, and tend to give solutions (or at least, methods) rather than just interesting thoughts. Josh's take on web content management is that the key ingredient is your passion about what you are writing; he is currently posting a series on writing a great blog.

Online marketing expert
In real life, James is the person who set me on the path to being a web content person; I've had many a latte with him while we discussed the ins and outs of good web practice. He is passionate about his job, and this comes across in his posts, which provide a good basic introduction to web/online marketing as well as the odd amusing rant :-).

Tom Fishburne
I like this one - which is a management blog, but has a lot to say about marketing - because as well as the (knowledgeable, insightful) post you get a funny little cartoon at the top for light relief.

Open Day liveblogging

2009-06-26T07:38:00.001-07:00

I was part of an experiment to liveblog our University undergraduate Open Day. If you're curious, this was the result. Some thoughts of mine follow, in no particular order; bear in mind that the project was not mine so I don't know what the background/constraints may have been.

Personally, I think that the finished liveblog has more than a bit of charm. It is, perhaps, a little long to go through in its entirety; perhaps the two days should have been separated. But it is a chatty and visual record of the Open Day, and gives people who did not attend - or those who couldn't get to everything - a flavour of what was going on around campus. It was made available during the day via plasma screens that were set up in the main display areas.

I realised today that I should have set up a second account to Twitter the Open Day from, rather than using @amelialuzzi. I don't usually separate work and play on Twitter, partly because I don't think they're incompatible and mostly because it stops me from writing anything I wouldn't want my employers reading. But spamming one's friends with a work event is never a good idea, so I set up a new account today. Many apologies for those who followed me through yesterday.

The tool we used - ScribbleLive - was impressive. Easily allowed us to add Twitter accounts to our event, which we only used to add our own accounts but could just as easily been used to find other people attending the event and add their tweets to the liveblog. Another nice touch is that you don't have to register with ScribbleLive to login on the site - you can just use your Twitter, Facebook, or OpenID login. Slight glitch when it turned out that the new Twitter account I set up to blog the second day wouldn't upload. But I got an impressively fast response from their support desk - all fixed in just over an hour.

If the project had a weakness, it was that we hadn't sorted out exactly what we were hoping to achieve and whom the liveblog was for. That's not surprising considering it had been set up as a chance to test a new technology. But it resulted in posts aimed at a mix of audiences. There were information posts - "this talk starts in 15 mins" - which were useful to people attending on the day but say nothing to people reading remotely or people reading after the fact. There were a range of photographs and tweets about cool stuff happening which have an all-audience appeal. And there were videos, which could only be accessed from the website, so would not have held much interest for people following on the plasma screens. We were running an information service and a marketing campaign as well as archiving the Open Day for people who did not attend; concentrating on just one of these aspects might have resulted in a tighter effort.

But maybe I'm being overly fussy here. Much of the charm in the liveblog comes from the fact that it represents a number of styles, points of view, and interests. I think each of us did a good job of finding things we were genuinely interested in, and putting that interest across. It worked very well as a team effort, and was a great experiment to take part in. I hope they let me do it again next time :-).

Professional identity outside the library

2009-05-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I chose the name "outside libraries" because of a feeling I had and still have about working in information: that it is really difficult to maintain an identity as an information professional when you're not working in a library. I've put off writing about this in favour of sharing my experience of web content management. But as I am now on the CILIP blog landscape, the criteria for which include that my blog "demonstrate an awareness of wider professional issues", it seems a good time to write about the issue I named the blog after.

I got into librarianship through a part-time job in one of the libraries at my University, which hired students to supervise the library out of office hours. Although I liked reading and, by extension, going to libraries, I wasn't then considering a career in the profession. And I might never have, except that I was offered a shift managing the counter during office hours to replace a member of staff one day a week. Once I started hanging out with librarians, I got a sense of the profession which went beyond - far beyond - the (frankly boring) tasks that it was my job to do. Librarians were not just expert cataloguers; they were advocates, helpers, educators. They stood for something, with a quiet determination that soon convinced me librarians were AWESOME and I wanted to be one.

Fast forward four years: I am in my second professional post, managing information in a university Careers Service. It's not a library, and at first I can't put my finger on the difference. Books? Check. Website? Check. Enquiries desk? Check. Cataloguing and classification? Check. I'm still using the same information management skills that I've been using all along. What I've lost is the sense that I stand for something and that people around me respect me for that. "Information", where I work, is something that you file and tidy - an admin task. Though I do my job well and am respected for doing so, it is respect for the person in the role, not for the role itself.

Forward another two years to my current post as a web content manager. In contrast to my previous workplace, my colleagues recognise the need for professional skills in my post. But the skills they think I am using are "web skills", a mix of technical savvy, fearlessness in the face of HTML, and expertise in tools such as Facebook. The content management side - which is the bulk of my work, and which uses the professional skills I have built up as a librarian - is barely noticed.

In my roles outside libraries, I have felt forced to choose between being a professional and being an information expert (aka librarian). Using my librarian skills meant I was classed and treated as admin; to be considered a professional, I have had to take a role where my information skills are overlooked. Though I still take personal pride in myself and my chosen profession - I still introduce myself to people as a librarian - it's difficult to maintain a sense that, as a member of that profession, I stand for something outside my immediate role.

I don't know how much of this stems from my job being an isolated information role, how much from the profession's focus on libraries as the place to manage information, how much on my personality and how much on the poor understanding the world has of information roles. I'd be interested to hear from others who work in information outside libraries.

Twitter - better than a conference

2009-04-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Along with @nearly_everyone_else, I have spent most of today glued to my monitor, following the #cilip2 tag on Twitter. In case you're not in the know, the key facts:

Twitter is a service that allows you to post your thoughts (a.k.a. "tweets") to the world, as long as you can get them into 140 characters.
Text in the format #keyword is used in tweets to tag them. There are a number of services that allow you to see all the tweets that have a specific tag.
CILIP is the library and information professional organisation.
Someone important at CILIP made the mistake of dismissing web 2.0, the whole profession went into uproar, CILIP have now got Phil Bradley and Brian Kelly a.k.a. important internet and information/library types to lead a discussion today on CILIP and web 2.0.
This discussion has the tag #cilip2 since the full stop in #cilip2.0 makes Twitter cry.

So what is Twitter doing for me in this context?

Firstly, I am able to follow the talks at CILIP 2.0, without an expensive trip down to London. A number of people who are actually there are tweeting as Phil and Brian speak, so I can get the main points of what is being said in real time. And because I am still able to do some work, and am not spending money on travel, my workplace fusses a lot less about my participation.

Secondly - in case you were wondering why video/audio isn't a better solution - I can discuss what is said with other participants, also in real time: if an interesting comment comes up, the discussion can start amongst us virtual participants in a way that it simply can't amongst real-life ones. I've heard it said, often, that the best bit of a conference is the bit where you end up talking to other participants in the hallway. Following #cilip2 on Twitter has had the feel of that.

Thirdly, and this is something that Twitter does exceptionally well, I can easily connect with any of the people talking about CILIP 2.0. It's as if, at a real-life conference, you could monitor all the conversations, decide which people you found most interesting, approach them without feeling you're interrupting something, have a chat, and then continue having those chats regularly when you are back in the workplace. I know it can happen, but, at least to me, rarely with more than one or two people per conference. Today, I think I've expanded my professional network by about 25%. And, granted, the ties aren't all that binding - but I now have a way of keeping an eye on what they're talking about, and engaging them when I feel I have something to add. It's a great starting point for building a more solid professional relationship.

Website and online - not the same thing

2009-03-23T05:28:00.001-07:00

I've heard quite a few service managers where I work say that they see the website as "a way of delivering our service 24/7 at any location". I don't think that can happen, because our website is a collection of static information, and the service that we deliver is an advice service with live advisers. The managers believe it can happen because they think that "the website" and "online" are the same thing.

Two points here. Firstly, a static information-based website will not allow you to deliver what your real-life staffed advice service does. Sure, if your staff are spending a lot of time answering questions like "what are your opening hours?" then a website will take some of the load off. But there are situations where people will want to talk to a real person, because they want the human contact.

And a good adviser can answer almost any question, even the subtle and complicated ones. The website shouldn't even be trying to do that. The most effective websites are geared towards top questions and tasks, and refer people with more particular needs to - you guessed it - a real person.

Secondly, "online" doesn't always mean the website. Facebook and Twitter are online. Skype's online. Instant messaging services are online. Our Virtual Learning Environment is online, as is the information portal that many students use to get to e-mail. E-mail's online, too. Delivering your service online should mean a lot more than adding content to your website.

You can deliver, online, a service that is very similar to your in-person staffed service. Catch is, you'll need to think about and staff the online service. You'll need to put someone on e-mail, or IM, or Facebook, or whatever means you are using to talk to people one-on-one. You can't just upload a bunch of information onto the website and hope it will be as good as an adviser.

On the bright side, using online tools - not just the website - you truly can begin to offer a service 24/7 and at a distance. And wasn't that what you wanted?

It's a website, not a place

2009-03-18T02:44:00.001-07:00

Most managers where I work believe that our website's purpose is to be a online copy of their physical service. This is, to me, a fundamental misunderstanding of what the web is for; and one which has wide-reaching consequences.

The prevailing metaphor at work is that of the website as, literally, a site: an extra location in which a service is delivered. Both managers and clients would expect a service to be the same whatever physical site it's delivered at; managers would also expect to have a large measure of control over the behaviour of users at a physical location. These expectations carry over to the web.

To ensure consistency of service across the "sites", any object that is present at a physical site must be put online; any information that would be given out by a staff member, likewise. When the department creates a poster, it's put online as a pdf: it's on the wall at a physical location, so must be "on the wall" at the online "location". Staff members may direct clients to other online resources; endless "our favourite links" pages are born so that the same resources may be ignored by legions of online users.

And managers expect users to be under their control online in the same way that they are at a physical location. A member of staff can direct a user to read information in a specific order, or to explore options other than the one they have set their mind on. On the web, this expectation results in paths through content that reflect the service's idea of how the information "should" be used, and in a tendency to put barriers in the way of users getting what they came for (I should stress that this is done with the best possible intentions).

My advice to managers: the website is not another location. It does not follow the same rules as physical locations. You can't control users in the same way, nor does it help you to try. Most importantly, people come to a website for very different reasons from those that send them to talk to a staff member. If you think of the website as just another location, you miss the key point: that websites are there to complement, not replace, your existing staffed services.

Books on my desk #1 - The elements of style

2009-03-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

Title: The elements of style (illustrated 4th edition)
Author: Strunk, White and Kalman (illustrations)

Description: Style guide originally written to encourage good essay-writing in American university students. Contains reminders of good grammar and usage (for American English), guidelines for good form in writing, and a section on developing style.

Review: Packs more punch in a smaller space than any writing guide I've read - and entertaining too. Sample gems:

"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."

"Rather, very, little, pretty - these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words."

This has been my desk-top writing guide for years; it stays fresh and relevant even after being re-read till the spine breaks. The illustrations are slightly odd - pretty pastel colours which lull you into believing the book to be similarly wishy-washy. It's anything but.

Why it's on my desk: It's not specifically aimed at web writing, but it turns out that web writing and clear, high-quality essay writing have a lot in common. "Avoid fancy words", "Be clear!", "Put yourself in the background": all of these and more apply to writing for the web just as much as they do to writing an essay.

Things I've learned that make life easier #3: Work with people, not computers

2009-02-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

It's very tempting as a web-person to get caught up in the minutiae of coding. Even if you are, like me, a web content manager, whose job only tangentially has anything at all to do with code, you're still likely to spend a lot of your day working on behind-the-scenes aspects of the site such as navigation tweaks and new features.

This is possibly the comfort zone for you, and it's definitely the comfort zone for your managers. They hired you because they didn't feel up to taking on the web and, more often than should happen, this is because they equate "web" with "computer code stuff" and "computer code" with "scary". So they want to see you at your computer screen, solving all the computer-based "stuff" they hired you to deal with.

If you let the computer be the main place you are, you lose three things:

You lose control of strategy
If you sit at a computer doing techie things, everyone assumes you're a techie. And while there's absolutely no shame in being a techie, the sad fact is that they're the kind of people that people only consult when they run into problems. In other words, if you want to take part in the talks that go on *before* problems arise - i.e. the more strategy-related discussions - you need to get away from the computer.
You lose sight of your site's users
Everyone knows that the only way to get your site right is to involve users. Whether you do this by proper full-on usability testing, focus groups to gather requirements, informal chats, or all of the above, you're going to need to leave the computer to do it. And since user testing is best done often, you're going to spend significant time away from the screen to do it effectively.
You lose the chance to advocate
Almost without a doubt you know more about proper web content management than your managers - that's why they hired you after all. If nothing else, you're going to have a pretty clear set of ideas about how you want to see the site developing. What better way to make sure your message spreads than to tell people face-to-face? Time away from the computer works doubly well in this case: it gives you time to be with people, and also means you're not irrevocably associated in their minds with scary computer stuff.

What is it for?

2009-02-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

A few brief thoughts - and I claim no generic rightness or indeed completeness for them - on what I thinks some of the web 2.0 things I'm familiar with are and are not for.

Facebook
For:

Finding out what people are doing when you haven't seen them for years and don't actually ever want to see them in real life again;
Keeping abreast of what people are doing in their day-to-day lives, and commenting on it;
Creating an online image of yourself, whether you are an individual or an organisation - the groups you belong to, the apps that you add all serve as badges;
Setting up and promoting events.

Not for:

Group discussions. Even though it has forum-style functionalities, it's amazing to me how comparatively few group discussions happen on Facebook. I reckon it's because of the third point above - belonging to a group on Facebook is more about wearing a badge than being part of a community.

Blogs
For:

Getting your opinion out there - either as a post, or as a comment on someone else's post;
Writing about stuff you're genuinely interested in;
Discussion with other people who are interested in the same stuff - as you gain audience and people start interacting with you and each other on the blog, you'll end up with at least some community discussion.

Not for:

Promoting your organisation generically - people look for a more genuine, personal view on a blog;

Twitter
For:

Alerting people to stuff - events, news, a new blog post;
Finding out what people are saying about you/your organisation;
Keeping people abreast of your current thoughts/interests/ideas - Twitter seems to be a more ideas-sharing community than Facebook, search me why;
Getting to know new people.

Not for:

Actually I'm not sure about this one, it seems to do everything :-). I guess it's not for anything you can't say in 140 words.

Wikis
For:

Projects you have in common with a group of people, where everyone has a contribution to make and everyone is happy with the idea of editing a common document to achieve this;
Projects where you want to tap into "common wisdom" and, crucially, have given others the motivation, tools, understanding and structure to contribute.

Not for:

Making your department look cool because they have a wiki;
Putting some pages up and hoping someone else will do the work of sorting them out for you. You'd be surprised how unlikely it is that another user will even correct a typo on your page unless they know why they're helping you out.

I think I'm running out of ideas here, but I'd welcome further thoughts/comments.

The web - because change happens

2009-01-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

A feature of the web: it changes, all the time and fast. Things on the web are flexible. New stuff emerges as if from nowhere, stuff you were counting on using disappears to be replaced by the next great thing. There's no resting on laurels: today's innovative approach is next month's tired old design.

So what can you do? I reckon three things:

Keep your eyes and ears open
For the web more than for traditional media, you really need to get a sense of how the landscape is changing. These days there are plenty of ways to do this, from having your professional journal of choice in your RSS feeds to reading blogs from other people in your profession. If you keep your eyes and ears open you'll not only being able to spot the next trend: over time you'll also build a sense of which new things are just fads and which are here to stay - at least for a while.
Focus on the job, not the tool.
Good service. A sense of community. Being comfortable using what you offer. If you ask users what they want from a site, those are the sorts of things they come up with. Very rarely will they say "I want a site to have a Facebook, a wiki and three blogs".
Social media - and indeed, any other feature of your website - are only tools you use to give the users what they want. We tend to focus too much on our toolboxes; to worry that this hammer is going to be obsolete soon, or that we can't proceed further until we have a full set of tools made of the latest alloy. Ultimately, though, our users don't care if we used a hammer or a saw, so long as that roof they wanted has been built.
Use the medium's flexibility
The great thing about the web is, it's pretty easy to change the stuff you put on it. There's a lot more scope for "running it up the flagpole and seeing who salutes", as the truly obnoxious management phrase goes.
In other words, you don't need to spend months crafting the perfect feature. Put something out there, review it often, and change it if it's not doing what you (or more importantly your users) want. The web lets you change things fast and often - use that power.
As a corollary to this, you may need to eliminate technology, or more likely procedures, that get in the way of making swift changes to what you offer on the web.

Facebook - creating an environment you can trust

2009-01-12T04:08:00.001-08:00

Facebook puzzles managers. It's clearly a great chance to reach a greater audience in a cool new way. But, they will ask you, how can I control what goes on in my Facebook group so that it doesn't get out of hand?

The natural instinct of managers will be to want draconian measures to ensure that the page only gets used exactly in the way they envision. But that doesn't work on Facebook.

Part and parcel of Facebook is that it allows you to create a social environment that people come to, voluntarily, to be themselves and do their "thing". And that means that you have to have a basic level of trust in the people you interact with, as well as in the "ruggedness" of the environment.

Imagine you're at a party where the host is forever moving from one guest to another, asking this one to be careful of the glass ornaments, that one not to talk about politics to other guests because it's boring, a third to eat over a napkin and not drop crumbs on the carpet. Everything you do seems to make the host twitch in dismay. Good party? Not likely.

Now imagine the difference if the host has put away all the breakables, trusts people to manage their own conversations, and accepts a few crumbs on the carpet as the price you pay for the joy of celebrating with friends. He has a couple of house rules which he makes guests politely aware of, and he keeps a careful eye out in case things go wrong; but he interferes as little as possible and just lets his guests get on with enjoying the party.

That's the atmosphere you aim to create on Facebook. There's nothing wrong with laying down a couple of simple rules - no bullying, no inappropriate images. Indeed, making ground rules clear may be a step in creating a "rugged" environment, one that you can trust not to be broken. And of course you need to keep a careful eye out for behaviour that may be inappropriate and threatening, and be ready to intervene if necessary.

But if you start managing the conversations, dictating what can and can't be done, and pulling the carpet out from under people who are simply doing what they want without harm to anyone else, then you are missing out on the social atmosphere that Facebook is meant to create. If you want to do Facebook right, trust it, lighten up, and for goodness sake stop staring at the crumbs on the carpet.

Things I've learned that make life easier #2: Challenge complacency

2009-01-12T03:04:00.000-08:00

Part and parcel of not putting things right straight away is making sure people realise that there is something to put right. Managers, especially those who aren't web-savvy, can get mighty complacent about their website, particularly if it isn't being used for e-commerce (there's something about that bottom line that draws managers' attention straight to the fact that nothing is happening on the site).

You'll naturally feel uncomfortable telling them straight out that their website isn't doing its job. Kindness and politeness dictate that you highlight the positive, to avoid hurting feelings. If you have less status than these managers in the organisational hierarchy, it may feel like career suicide to tell them that they are wrong (that said, if you're in a place where expressing a professional opinion is career suicide, change organisation).

But if you let people be complacent about what's wrong, there is no chance at all that they will give you the time, resources and attention to put it right. So unless you intend to labour away alone and in obscurity on improvements that people don't see the need for and may actively resist, you need to find a way to highlight the negative.

Web stats are great for this. When you can show managers a wealth of intuitively-presented data about their site, it's usually easy enough to challenge their complacency. So your site has a lot of hits - have you seen the high bounce rate? You're sure people are accomplishing specific tasks - want to check that? Oh, surprise, they're not. If you have a poor site and enough data, something negative will show up - with any luck, something the managers can spot for themselves.

Highlighting the negative doesn't mean being impolite, or even superior and condescending. If you have the data to back you up, and use the politest tone you can muster to present your issues, the conversation may even be remembered as vaguely positive. Just remember: panic about the web will mean more resources for you - don't be afraid to cause it.

Genius in writing

2009-01-05T11:16:00.000-08:00

One fantasy author I read has a habit of ending each of his books with an Author's Note, which I usually avoid because it's inevitably a whinge about how the world is so unfair and no one recognises the true genius of his work. Due to an unexpected lack of reading material, I read one of his Notes today; and sure enough, he was whinging about critics and their lack of undestanding. His books are more than just a fairly readable plot; they have a *deep* and *subtle* layer which illustrates important points about his worldview, and that makes them *genius*.

Well, no, sorry, it doesn't. Genius - in fiction at least - isn't when reading gives me insight into your worldview. It's when it gives me insight into mine; when your words give form to something in my mind, capturing it for me so that I can understand myself better.

This principle translates to the web. Don't spend pages telling me what's great about what you do, or explaining the deep and subtle genius of your product; I truly don't care (and anyway, if it's so great and genius-like, can't it speak for itself?). Make your website about me.

At a basic level, this means telling me what you can do for me - simply, and on the clear understanding that my needs are *way* more important than yours. Give me the freedom to make up my own mind about you and your product. And, if you really want to be subtle, make it seem as if the website is reading my mind, putting what was in my head into concrete clickable form.

How to do this? Make me (or others like me) a part of everything you do. Find out what I like, what I respond to, what I want to do on your site. Find out what makes me happy, and see if you can give me it - for free (and I mean no strings attached - if I have to sign up for it, it's not free even if I'm not paying a penny). The only way you'll get that "read-your-mind" feel is if you make your users needs and wants the primary drivers for your website.

Now that's genius.

The shop metaphor

2008-12-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

It's generally difficult to get points about web management across to people who are not web experts themselves - and that, unfortunately, likely includes all the people with any kind of power over the web in your institution. Whether you're dealing with complete novices ("Can you explain what you mean by 'home page'?") or with power users who have latched on to a particular concept as the solution to all things web ("But having more pages will help our search engine optimisation!"), you'll find it distressingly difficult put across what you *mean* when you talk about the web.

That's where metaphors come in useful. If you relate the web to something more familiar, and then get people to think about that instead, suddenly the expressions of confusion or of mulish determination are replaced by - joy! - understanding . Unless you're dealing with complete idiots (and I haven't yet).

The metaphor I find myself using most is that of a shop. People understand shopping. They know that shops are there to sell stuff, and that people go there to get what they want and then get out. All of which makes this a great metaphor for a website.

Sample uses:

Case for collecting web stats beyond "how many hits did we get on our site": say we have a shop; measuring hits is like measuring how many people look at the shop window. There's some use to it, but what we really want to know is how many people came in, and how many bought something.
Reducing use of explanatory text: if you ask the shopkeeper where something is, do you want him to tell you, or do you want him to spend five minutes telling you why the thing you want is so great?
Calling things what they are: which makes you think less, an aisle called "tea and coffee", or one called "variety of hot beverages"?

I'm sure you can come up with your own exampes, and I am equally sure that my metaphor breaks down at some point. But I haven't found that point yet!

Any advances on good web metaphors to use?

Things I've learned that make life easier #1: Don't put things right - yet

2008-12-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

When you're dealing with information, it's easy to focus on the job at hand. You're the information expert, after all, and chances are that, from your perspective, *everyone* else is doing information the wrong way. Heck, leave out "from your perspective".
It's very easy to want to put things right, straight away. So you feel you've made a difference. Out of a sense of professional pride. In self-preservation - you're the one who gets the stick if someone else realises how rubbish the information is.

Resist that urge.

If you start putting things right straight away, three things will happen. One, you will find that putting things right is a *lot* more work than you would have ever thought possible. Two, it will be difficult to get help for the stuff you need help with, because no one sees there is a problem. Three, you will get nothing like the recognition you deserve for the work that you do.

At the start of a new job, take some time to get to know the problems that are there. Write lists, critiques, action plans; anything that will document the work that needs doing in a way that your managers can appreciate. Depending on the environment you're working in, you may have months, weeks or days to do this in - but make sure you do it. And make sure, before you start putting things right, that your managers are aware of what you're going to put right, how much work it is, and what help you will need.

First day at conference

2008-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Conference is very exciting. Yesterday's sessions were not vastly great - one was a sales pitch for a product, and the other was fairly technical on the DLHE survey, which I don't have a hand in running. But what's great is being around a load of other people who do the same work you do, and being able to have totally random conversations but also talk about work stuff without feeling like you're imposing on others for "talking shop". Since I get most of my ideas sorted out in my head by bouncing them off other people, it's a great atmosphere to be in.

And because of the wiki, I already knew a few names so I had no trouble finding people to talk to. Just for that it's worth having done it. Which is just as well, because I have a feeling that with all the good will in the world it will die a death after the conference - I can't see people signing up after the conference even if we do have some of the presenters updating their pages. We'll see.

One gripe: a conference about the impact of technology, and you don't arrange for conferece-goers to have wi-fi access in the conference areas?

A few things I learned from setting up a wiki

2008-06-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

Bringing together the learning points of my foray into wiki creation and administration (note: I'm (clearly) not an expert or anything, so my learning points may not necessarily be examples of absolute best practice):

If you need to compare wiki platforms, you could do far far worse than consult WikiMatrix. This tool lets you compare your choices from roughly 100 platforms across a range of attributes. It even has a handy Wiki Choice Wizard which helps you narrow down your choices.
If you're going to make test wikis, create them as test wikis and give them test names! You will inevitably find that you want to experiment with settings, and for certain fundamental settings (e.g. whether it's a business or individual wiki) you can't do so without deleting the wiki and starting over. For some services, PBwiki amongst them, once you delete a wiki the name becomes unavailable forever; so if you need to delete your test wiki, you don't want it carrying the name you were going to use for the real one!
Make sure you get in touch with any relevant Marketing and Communications or IT people to check that your wiki does not contravene their web marketing policy. This could be within your institution or, as was the case with me, within the organisation running the conference the wiki was for. Some talk beforehand about what you can and can't do will save you the hassle of re-writing later.
Consider giving freedom of writing access to your wiki. My wiki requires people to e-mail me (the administrator) to enable writing access, and it's turned out to be a real barrier to people editing and adding pages. Also, it's been extra work for me administering this aspect of the wiki (though I have enjoyed getting in touch with new users).
Don't just assume people will get in touch on the wiki - offer them reasons to interact with others, and make it easy for them to do so. I added a "Travelling together" page to the wiki to encourage users to club together for cab rides from the closest train station - it's been quite popular! I also added a template for creating a personal profile page.
Participate yourself if you want others to (that probably goes without saying). Comment, write, and add, and others will soon follow your example!

I could probably write a deal more, but for now, that's all, folks!

Creating a wiki - details of the process

2008-06-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

I'm going to a Careers Information and Employer Liaison conference next week, the topic of which is the impact of technology on our roles in careers. Given the topic, I had assumed there would be some sort of conference wiki along the lines of this one, and I was looking forward to contributing to it and getting to know some of the conference attendees beforehand.
I asked, and there wasn't one, and you can see where this is going. You are reading the blog of the administrator for the conference wiki. Admire it.

Setting up the wiki wasn't too difficult. By far the hardest part was choosing what platform to host it on - I was basically looking for a free, web-hosted product with no adverts and the ability to make the wiki editable only by people who signed up. I looked at quite a few platforms and created test wikis in three, and in the end decided on PBwiki. I wouldn't say it was perfect, but then, a lot of the extras that would have been nice are in the paid edition, and I guess they have a right to charge for the extra functionality.

Then came writing the content. How much to write? What would interest people? How much time could I realistically afford to spend on the wiki? How could I encourage people to add their own content? I know I haven't got the answers completely right, but I guess it's a learning experience. I thought of things I would find useful pre-conference, and tried to get those going - e.g. a page to arrange to travel with others, and personal profile pages for people to introduce themselves. Others may add their own pages, though this close to the conference I think that's unlikely.

I interrupted work on the wiki when I was told that the Marketing and Communications people of the organisation running the conference wanted a word with me. Cue nightmare visions of wiki being taken down because not brand-compliant. Fortunately, they turned out to be really nice people who just wanted to make sure that I was linking to their site where appropriate rather than duplicating content. I did take down a few pages I had written - but it could have been so much worse. That'll teach me not to check with people!

Now I'm at the stage of encouraging people onto the wiki. Ideally this process would have started earlier - the wiki was only really ready to be advertised about a week before the conference starts. But you take what you can get. I have e-mailed conference goers to alert them to the wiki; the e-mail gives them some idea what they can do that would benefit them. I am also building in the option to use the wiki after the conference for post-session discussions and networking. Fingers crossed!