Claire Spencer [HREF1], Web Design Manager, Web Design Team, Information Services, [HREF2] , Level 2 258 Queensberry Street, The University of Melbourne [HREF3], Victoria, 3010. spencerc@unimelb.edu.au
As of April 2007, Technorati (a world known blogging service) is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and we're seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That's about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.
In response to a growing need, we decided to develop an "informal blogging and wiki offering".
This paper describes the process we used for setting up two new prototype web services, as part of a new web publishing approach at the University of Melbourne.
Guiding the service design was the requirement to keep all related costs to a minimum, yet still provide a quality offering.
We used the same process for both applications- EVALUATE, DEFINE, DEVELOP, LAUNCH.
Increasingly, we were asked by academic staff, collaborative research groups, and marketing groups whether we knew of any good wiki or blog applications that a) we personally use, and b) we would think about making centrally available.
In most cases, staff knew how the applications worked, but they were concerned about the safety and consistency of their content. They didn’t want to risk putting University information onto an application hosted outside the University, unless a central area was responsible for the management of the service and the safe-keeping of their information.
Anyone and everyone who could get their hands on a blog, either had already done so, or were starting to approach our central IT area (Information Services, ‘IS’) requesting that we set one up for them.
The following examples are a mix of both centrally supported and independently set-up blogs at Melbourne.
The wiki take-up was noticeably slower in comparison to blog registration. This is because the application hasn’t been as readily promoted. We plan to promote the application as an alternative to share-drives, emails with word attachments (‘tracking changes’) and the cursory face to face meeting.
It’s a low-cost “self-subscribe” blog or wiki that allows users to have a fully functioning site ready to go within 48 hours. Additionally, everything from set up, design, hosting, IT support is all taken care of with the one package.
We purchased a licence for the Confluence wiki, and registered for a WordPressMU blog. We then charged based on hosting, design and amount of users. We charge a $200 flat fee for hosting, set-up, and IT Support, with one standard template. If there are additional design requirements, we charge $80 per hour.
The service we provide includes access to templates, technical support and hosting. This is a little different to an external service provider as we also provide usability and content advice for new users. This makes the price seem both reasonable and value-for-money. In comparison to normal static web-publishing costs, it is very cheap.
It was important to define the applications we would use and why. Then we needed to define the process for self-registering so that it was easy to do and was even easier for our IT area to support.
Blogs: We chose WordPress MU, mainly because it was already being used effectively in the University.
Wikis: We chose Confluence as a result of running an internal department demo which proved its usefulness. We then purchased a licence for multiple users.
Once we confirmed the application we would use, we had to create a ‘repeatable, scalable service offering’ for both. This included the following:
We decided to provide this information on double sided A4 fact sheets . The Web Design Team then made sure to take the sheets to meetings and to promote them via our website.
Developing the service included four specific tasks:
For our wiki instance, we had purchased a license that enables us to tier the amount of users- per- registration with groups starting at 25 users going up to 100 users. We scale the service cost based on the amount of space used and licences purchased.
The blog self-registration allows users to go to the website, http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au and register for a blog. An account is created by our technical staff, and then the user needs to log in and begin the blog-creation process.
We set up both services initially for our “early adopter” groups, Marketing and Communications and Information Services. These groups are now using a combination of blogs and wikis for their collaborative publishing.
Both services are in prototype stage. We are yet to promote the services throughout the university. The launch stage will include the managing, promoting and maintaining of the service.
The University of Melbourne uses a service catalogue to promote all Information Services. We are currently finalising content for both services.
We promote the new services via our team site, www.web.unimelb.edu.au and via our web-forum mailing list which is sent out to over 200 web managers at the University.
Whenever we meet with new clients we always take copies of our A4 Fact sheets, and leave a few behind for them to pass on. We have found that the simplicity and plain language of the fact sheets has been a really big turning point in how our clients perceive us. They no longer treat our team as “techies” as we refuse to use the “techie vernacular”.
Part of creating a new service means we need to be able to support it. We have worked with the Service Desk to make sure that blog and wiki related called are logged to our service group (via an Incident Management Application called Remedy). We also make sure that in the footer of both application templates there is a link to blog-info@unimelb.edu.au and wiki-info@unimelb.edu.au.
Complaints, suggestion, improvements are then discussed in our team meetings and we schedule improvements around existing work.
The process of creating a service is never easy, what we have learned so far is that the success of the service is entirely dependant on our ability to control the offering and measure the results. We plan on doing a "take-up" audit six months after we do promotions. This will demonstrate whether the services are being used and whether our users think it was a good idea.
Blog usage April 2007: Technorati CEO David SiFry http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html