Who are we ? Does this describe our domain ? Request for comments

[Craig Duncan]

Sorry for the long post, but I would really like your comments. Does
this describe who we are, what we do, and what our current concerns
are?

Craig

Web Group Domain Description – request for comments Oct 10, 2009

As we have evolved from just being generic web people, and the “web”
domain has evolved over the past 10 years, I thought I would try to
give a simple domain description to see if we recognise ourselves and
our community.

Generally this document refers to web related issues, but it also
includes many more general and related domains like communications and
general IM and KM.

Purpose of web systems:

Communication - a channel for the organisation to communicate purpose,
plans, activities, achievements and advocacy = branding

Domain specific information systems - online libraries and data
collections which serve a broader community of stakeholders

Web applications - interactive systems that serve both internal and
external clients - eg booking a meeting room

Social applications - web systems that are used to socialize, keep in
touch and share experiences, such as online communities, and social
networking applications

Question - where does the domain of web applications meet the related
domain of ERP?

Information channels:

Web systems are closely related and interact with other communication
channels, such as Email, RSS, person to person, MSM, and Print

Professional activities related to web systems:

Development of web systems requires a team with skill sets related to
strategy, visual design, user experience (IA, IxD, SD, BPE), content
management, writing and editing, technical implementation and team and
project management.

Traditional job titles:

Communications director
Artistic director
Manager
Project manager
Writer
Editor
Programmer
Graphic designer
Librarian
Producer

New and emerging job titles:

Web manager
Information architect
Interaction designer
Visual designer
Web editor
Web writer
Knowledge manager
Community facilitator
Business strategist / Analyst
Content strategist / Content manager
User researcher / Ethnographer
Usability expert
HTML developer
Technical architect
User experience manager

Closely related domains: library science, sociology, anthropology,
cognitive science, knowledge management, semiotics, linguistics

Role of community of practice of web professionals:

Distributed cognition - understanding the domain
Sharing of experience
Development of a collective identity
Naturalisation of terminology and concepts
Professionalisation of domain and creation of standards

Changes we are dealing with:

We serve to self serve - research librarians are replaced by search
engines

Unaccountable to accountable - M&E through analytics and business
intelligence is now easier and more accessible

Dancing bear to ballroom - systems are becoming more sophisticated and
so are expectations

Waterfall to Agile - project timelines are being split to shorter
sprints and working prototypes

Web design to service design - looking at the whole user experience
(like we used to)

Information management to knowledge management - including people and
process to improve strategic use of IM systems

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 - using collective input and intelligence to create
better systems - crowdsourcing

Control to management - taxonomies give way to folksonomies but do not
always produce the results we expect

Structured to unstructured information - where are wikis appropriate
and how to balance

Unrelated content to the Semantic web - developing ontologies and
relationships between items of information

Fixed to mobile - move towards phones as mobile computers and internet
devices

Manual to automated - IA is replacing humans for classification and
concept extraction

Publications to publication on demand - short run and local printing
from web systems is changing publication and distribution models

Document to multimedia - audio and video are replacing text

Static to algorithmic architecture – can the users rather than the IA
drive the information structure

Slow to fast - publication schedules and reaction times are reduced to
almost zero


Other issues to deal with:

Information overload
Spam and disinformation
Security – access control and phishing
Client relationship management
Digital divide
Accessibility
Politics of categorization
Boundary objects
Invisible web
Communicating IM and KM
Funding, staffing and training

[Jane Wallace]

Hi Craig,

Here’s a short response to a long detailed post. First thanks for
doing the hard part!

I think this is a huge space you are describing and I wonder if it
might be useful to segment out by access – inter, extra and intranet
especially related to ERP /ERM and other tangentially related systems.
I find the boundaries between these help me discuss with non-web
people in my organization and keep an appropriate, in my opinion,
distinction. This is helpful when decision time comes.

Related to this (sort of), I think we need also to be thinking about
change management (and managing expectations) as part of our
professional activities. One of our big tasks is evaluating what is
new and determining when/how to implement in our contexts. By
instigating and taking the lead in these discussions we place
ourselves in what I feel is the strategically appropriate place and at
the same time we professionalize our roles within our organizations.

This might also give us some food for thought when results are
published: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/survey2008/
(although I didn’t find the 2007 one all that interesting).

Any other thoughts out there on the subject?

Jane