The Web in Turbulent Times

This week it's the Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW2010) which we're proud to be hosting here at Sheffield. It's taking place in our new conference facilities at The Edge, with all technical support provided by our department. The network team are making sure the wireless facilities will cope - with over 170 delegates, many with more than one device - we've put in extra access points to up the number of connections we can cope with. The IT Support team are on hand to make sure people can connect OK to eduroam - they had a steady stream of people to help, mainly those running XP or where their host institution hadn't configured eduroam in the same way we have - aka correctly :-).

The web team had created the web pages, including an interactive map of local pubs and places of interest (mainly pubs). Technical services had set up the live video stream, including keeping an eye on server and network capacity as we peaked at 93 connections today. And last, but definitely not least, our teaching technologies team had set up all of the AV equipment, including twitterwalls on the plasma screens, cameras, microphones and lecture capture software to record the sessions. A good team effort, and everything worked well on the first day - thanks to everyone involved.

I was there to give the opening plenary session - the theme of the conference is The Web in Turbulent Times, and I decided to set the scene by giving a personal view as an IT director of what I thought the turbulent times were, and how they might affect the way we operate. The problem I had with writing it was deciding what challenges to include and what to leave out, but hope it ended up a a reasonably balanced viewpoint.

As well as being streamed live, all the plenary talks, including mine, are available here soon after they've finished.