Hi Rhiannon

In my time at the Science Museum / NMSI, I was part of Marketing, then
New Media, then a newly formed "Information Department". 

I suspect that any responses you get won't lead you to a consensus...

I'm not sure I have an opinion about which worked best. Certainly
autonomy seems the clearest route (ie. Having a distinct web
department), but having very strong links with each of these areas was
very important. Although it was frustrating for us changing areas all
the time, we ended up being extremely well connected, and that was
vital. So whatever you do, getting out there and evangelising about web,
increasing budgets, taking on staff who are multi-skilled and holistic
in their view about "what web can do" are the most important bits, and
probably transcends the importance of "location" of the web department.

In my experience, the best possible outputs happened when we were given
freedom to "do what we knew best" but with close working with various
departments. There are lots of classic problems with only working with
one area. If you follow the archetypes (and quite a lot of the time they
seem to be true): Marketing tend to be only interested in bums on seats;
IT don't understand content; Education understand content but not the
online medium; Curators are just somewhere completely disconnected when
it comes to online (or even talking to normal people at all...) :-)

Hope this help!

Mike



Mike Ellis
Solutions Architect

Eduserv 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Rhiannon Looseley
Sent: 28 April 2008 11:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Position of web people within an organisation

Dear all,

I know this has been a topic of conversation in the industry before but
I'm interested to find out where 'web people' sit within your
organisational structures. Are they part of marketing, an independent
department, part of IT, part of learning, exhibitions etc etc?   I
suppose feeding in to this, it would be interesting to know which
places, other than the 'big guns' even have their own dedicated web
people.

Feel free to reply off list if you think it's more appropriate.

Thanks a lot
Rhiannon Looseley



------------------------------------------------------------------------
------ 
Rhiannon Looseley
Web Officer
Tel: 020 7239 2588
Fax: 020 7239 2576 
 
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