Kerry Webb Blog

You might think that there’d be no difficulty in finding pointers to good resources for learning about Web Design and similar topics.  After all, it’s all on the Web, isn’t it?  Well, it is and it isn’t.  It’s not too hard to do a search and find a site that appears to have lots of useful information, but the difficulty is getting an assessment of how good or useful it is.  I needed something like this recently for the people at work faced with the daunting task of setting up and maintaining a site, usually with no formal training.  So I happened across the WaSP InterAct site and was quite impressed.  It’s very well organised and you can drill down from the overall curriculum through learning modules to details of subject outlines, assignments and resources.

I try not to be too controversial in this little space, but occasionally I find it necessary to remind my readers that what you see here are my own views and not those of ALIA or any other employer I may have from time to time.  Of course I can’t entirely divorce my views from the decisions that I might make or recommend in my day job, but I just felt you’d like to know.

These thoughts arise mostly because of my experiences at yesterday’s Public Sphere event organised by Senator Kate Lundy’s office.  It had high ideals and though there were a lot of good ideas expressed, the day fell far short of what it could have achieved.  I wrote in a previous post about her first Public Sphere, which I experienced through Twitter.  For this one, I was there in person, and it was not a good experience.

Consider a full day, with 33 speakers given 15 minutes each and the inevitable overruns and no time for group discussion, and you’ll see how it could have been done a lot better.  They also had a Twitter feed displayed on a screen at the front of the room, but that wasn’t too impressive either.  We had “Hi there” tweets from one person in the room to another, the occasional “I’m sitting behind you” and a few troll tweets from the audience out in the Twitterverse.  Then there were many instances of three or four people in the room tweeting to announce the next speaker and his topic.  There’s still much to learn.

The star turn of the day though was the announcement of the Commonwealth Government’s 2.0 Taskforce.  I seem to be the only person asking “what’s the fuss?”  The world is forging ahead on actually doing good Government 2.0 things, and all we can do is set up a Taskforce?

But, I repeat, these are my thoughts and mine alone.  No one else would have them.

There have been a few interesting comments recently about how Web 2.0 services can have trouble meeting the sort of requirements that most systems must conform to, particularly relating to records management activities.  One place where you’ll find these discussions is in the series of podcasts produced by Northumbria University (although they really do need to do something about the recording volume).  Another is in that darling of the eGovistas, the Obama administration.  It seems that initiatives such as the Paperwork Reduction Act sit quite uneasily with Government 2.0 concepts.

Anyone interested in Web communications can learn a lot from the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.  It’s only part-way through of course, but from the submissions and the transcript of the hearings, there’s a lot to learn.  The one that caught my eye today was the transcript of proceedings on 16 June, which gives an idea of what’s being discussed.  You can also search the submissions by keyword, and that can show that there are those people quite anxious to promote their particular causes - not always related to the bushfires.

OK, Web 2.0 trendsetters, here’s a new (but quite useful) site to while the time away.  Wordnik is a dictionary built from existing sources and added to by contributors, and contains more than 1.7 million words so far.  It not only gives the meaning of the word that you’re looking for, but there are examples of its use - presumably from something like Google Books or the Web or from contributors.  And the fun bit: it tells you how many times a particular word has been searched for.  It took me a few tries to get one that hadn’t been extracted so far.

I reported on Kate Lundy’s first Public Sphere event a few weeks ago.  She’s having another one on 22 June on the general issue of Government 2.0 (or Open Gov for short, but that isn’t necessarily the same thing.  Aaah, semantics!)  I’ll be there, so I’ll be able to report back - not online, but with a considered view after the event.

I’m all for experimenting with Web projects - especially those with the 2.0 label - and moving right along if they don’t work, but here’s a timely reminder from Liana Evans about setting goals for these activities.  Because if you don’t know where you want to go, how do you know if you got there or not?

The big problem with Google last week had a couple of serious consequences.  First, many of their cloud computing applications were unreachable, but more unexpectedly, many other sites that rely on Google Analytics to gather their statistics were also unusable.  Looks like it’s time for a re-evaluation of many of the monster’s services.

Here’s a plug for the Chat with a Librarian service.  I needed to track down a review that was said to have appeared in Library Journal, but not being a subscriber couldn’t search the database.  My request to the service was fielded by a librarian from Cessnock who after a couple of pertinent questions was able to show that the words used in the review could not be found.  Which was what I had expected.  Thank you Cessnock.

There was a program on ABC Radio National yesterday (Future Tense on May 14) talking about the future of conferences.  I found a lot to agree with what they were saying - and a few points where I wasn’t prepared to go along with them.  One issue where I had divided feelings was about people tweeting during a conference session.  They seemed to be saying that if you’re prepared to tweet about a presentation you should have the guts to stand up and ask a question at the end of the session.  Well, yes .. and no.  We all have the choice about whether we raise a question at the time or talk it over later with our friends.  And while I can see some benefit in providing a running commentary for the people who can’t be there, it’s another thing when you have half the audience with their heads down, hammering away at their laptops.  I raised this concern with one of the organisers of a forthcoming conference, and he looked puzzled.  “Well, you can’t expect people to keep engaged for a whole day” was his response. You can, you know.