The web - because change happens

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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?