I'm inclined to agree with Janet. And I think it's clear that mailing lists
such as this are mostly used for queries, and not for sharing ideas, plans,
etc. However I appreciate that there can be resource implications in
writing longer blog posts. A compromise may be an email Blog interface such
as posterous.com.

For example I am currently processing the IWMW 2008 prize-winning Wim-A-Way
Video. I have uploaded video of Wim-A-Way song to YouTube and blogged about
it. Have now got lyrics (in PowerPoint) and will sync video with lyrics on
VCasmo.
Discovered I will need video on Google Video to do this, though.

Or, you can read the text I've written above on my posterous blog
http://briankelly.posterous.com/

So there can be very little resource implications for writing blog post, and
you get the benefits of cool URIs and an RSS feed. You also aren't
intruding in people's email folders by creating content in a more passive
but also more reusable way.

A possible middle ground, perhaps.

Brian

--------------------------------
Brian Kelly
UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, UK, BA2 7AY
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +44 1225 383943
Web site: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/


 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Managing an institutional web site
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Janet McKnight
> Sent: 29 July 2008 10:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Why don't more university web teams blog?
>
> On Tue 29 Jul 2008, Sebastian Rahtz
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Mark Horrocks wrote:
> > > So, to turn the question on its head, who thinks that they could
> > >benefit from reading another web team's blog?
> > >
> > Some benefit, yes. Benefit enough to justify the effort?
> probably not.
>
> It depends what sort of benefit you're looking for. I don't
> expect to find a web-team blog which is so gripping that I
> can't bear to miss a single post; I *do* hope that the more
> web teams blog about their work, the more chance there is
> that I'll find something useful/relevant when googling for
> ideas or solutions.
>
> > Do you care that I just upgraded my master set of XSL stylesheets,
> > thereby fixing an error that had caused PDF renderings to have an
> > unnecessary title page?
>
> Of course :-) and if you put it on the web somewhere, then
> when somebody who *isn't* lucky enough to work in a
> department full of XSL gurus searches for that problem,
> there's a chance they'll find your post and be saved a lot of
> stress. See also obscure TeX hacks, weird Javascript errors,
> etc. Everything (useful) any of us has ever posted to the
> team mailing list could have equally been posted to a 'team
> blog', and might have benefited a few more people; ditto the
> links, suggestions, etc that people post to this mailing list!
>
> There's also the internal benefit -- there are people in the
> University and in the department who might be interested to
> see a little more of what we're doing. OTOH of course they
> might think we're a load of timewasters if they think all
> we're doing is blogging... :-}
>
> I think there's a feeling that a 'blog' has to involve
> sustained pieces of writing, well-crafted prose, etc; when
> really all it needs to be is "I was wrestling with [some
> problem] and found [some neat
> solution]: [lines of code, config, whatever]" -- or "we've
> been looking into [some new technology] and these are a few
> of the thoughts we've had so far".
>
> --
> Janet McKnight
> Information Services, Oxford University Computing Services
> 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN / Tel: +44 1865 273213
>