Perhaps the IWMW is enough

Hi, my name is Chris, I'm the website Manager at the University of Lincoln. One thing that has struck me at the annual IWMW is the diversity of the people who attend; technical, design, management, marketing, even an academic from the OU. Every university seems to manage its web presence slightly differently.

I suggested this session to start a conversation about what qualifies someone to manage a university website? I wasn’t actually looking for an answer, the reason I wanted to ask this was because I feel, that because of our diversity, we suffer a slight lack of collective credibility in the eyes of academia – I may just be paranoid!Unfortunately the session was just starting to get going when we ran out of time, by the time everyone had found their way to the room, 10 minutes was a squeeze and I had already gone on a rant. However, there seemed to be a consensus that due to the diversity of people and range of tasks it may not be possible to actually have any specific academic qualification. One suggestion (I cant remember who made it, sorry) was that we should maybe have a professional body with some form of accreditation.

In retrospect I feel that maybe our strength lies in our diversity, and that if we were to be institutionalised in any form we would have to ensure that this would not be damaged. Perhaps the IWMW, once a year, is enough in itself!