"It sounds as a blessing..." was the first line of an email I received and who's sender was today in my office to discuss his ideas for the department website. After agreeing on what has been discussed here so far he made some new remarks about the STAFF section. The right word would be FACULTY instead of STAFF. This is how it is done oversees. This is also the way it is done at Nyenrode University at the Faculty of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. On the other hand, the university of Twente, Department of Management lacks such a Faculty&Staff section completely. Unlike MU both universities have integrated all their departments and research institutes into their CMS.
Besides this rather banal discussion more relevant information surfaced quickly. One or two persons in the department should work on the department website and keep it up to date. One for updating information, the second for adding and building pages for special occasions. That Faculty and Staff should be able to update their profile pages via a webform is not new. How to implement it another topic. But having a website with a login and a page where people update their own information is definitely in. A guide for event pages and overall consistency was being asked for as well.
A third topic concerned the private web space under (http://www.personeel.unimaas.nl/) which every faculty member can start building his own presence. This requires a lot of technical know how and expertise that few possess. The university of Amsterdam, Faculty of Law provides its members instead of just web space an easy to use, good looking website with a uniform appearance. This makes it easy also for people with little HTML skills to maintain a fairly attractive website. Instead of using a home-brew application I would propose to utilize Researchgate.net which offers the same functionality. What do you think?
Another talk I had yesterday interrelates with the one I had today. Most people confuse marketing with communication as if this is all it is about. It is obviously not, but marketing plays an important role. Since Commerce took over the world wide web since the end of the 90's it became its main vehicle. As far as the UM website as an instrument to communicate its services and products to an audience is concerned it differs little from f.e www.apple.com. But unlike Apple Inc., MU is more interested in creating a replica of its internal procedures and organisational structure than it is to engage with its audience. An attempt to integrate Departments is just the next step into the same direction.
Now, from the perspective of a department there are numerous ways to engage with your audience. You can use Social Media, weblogs, podcasts, videocasts, wikis, customer relations ship management systems (mentioned in the first or second post here) and many more. The argument that no policy is in place distracts from the fact that one can set the example that if successful others will follow. In this way a department can become driver of innovation rather than its victim. Coming back from a meeting about SBE's internal branding strategy leaves no doubt about the "rebellious" and "forward looking" self image people here have of themselves. Instead of waiting for a policy to come along, one can experiment and discuss results. But not even this is happening here. (I can be wrong, so please let me know if you do!) The costs of communication are lower than ever before in human history and many take advantage of it. The same is true for the production of digital content in general. The "domestication of the web" by everybody creates an environment not anticipated yet here at the university. But whatever strategy is embraced it will not change the fact that students nowadays are internalizing the services they carry around in their mobile phones which connect them to everybody instantaneous.
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