IWMW 2018 Sketchnotes
So another year rolls by and another edition of IWMW has come and gone.
The theme this year was ‘Streamlining Digital’ but I’m not entirely sure how accurate a portrayal of the event it was. I thought it was a particularly strong event on the human side of creating great products, with outstanding talks from experienced and proven managers about how personally difficult it can be to press on in the face your own self-doubt and stress. The openess really set the tone for the event. There were interesting case studies around the particular bumps in the road that institutions with very different characteristics face - essentially all trying to reach the promised land of hard working, engaging content and trying to create processes and practices to achieve that. In tandem with those talks were also great reminders about the central role great, creative content plays in achieving the outcomes we want. Talks that send people away all fired up to do great work. I was also pleased that there were a couple of talks about the nitty gritty of tools and techniques for getting work done.
Personal Experiences
This year’s edition provided a personal and unexpected highlight for me. The organisers have always been good at trying innovative ideas and formats, so this year the idea of lightning talks was given a go. The idea was to get some volunteers to get up and talk to the whole crowd for 5mins on any subject of their choosing. Being a member of the organising committee, when it looked like we might need some fallback in case volunteers weren’t forthcoming I said I’d give it a go despite a pretty strong aversion to public speaking.
Update - The video of my Lightning Talk is now available so you can see for yourself.
Predictably enough, it then occupied my mind intermittently, with the faint idea that I could always back out. Fortunately for me, Alison’s talk and lots of encouraging people got me over the hump so I went and talked for 5 mins about why drawing is good for you and everyone should give it a go. By the end of that long 5 minutes the jelly in my legs eased, my voice began to lose it’s quiver and I actually started to enjoy it. It was a revelation for me; made possible by the community of my peers. People came up and said lovely things afterwards (and on twitter), which I guess meant I did ok. The format was a great fit for such a supportive and friendly conference.
Masterclasses and Workshops
An often unheralded part of this conference are the workshops and masterclasses, where people really workd hard to both deliver and participate. I went to a Workshop on Design Sprints, and a Masterclass on Digital Training. Both were really well run, had enthusisatic participation and sent me away with a list of concrete things to do.
External highlights
Talking of concrete it was special pleasure to have an early morning wander to take in some of the concrete highlights of a Plateglass University campus, as I’ve recently been reading about in the fantastic Raw Concrete.
Whilst I’m tenously linking things it’s worth mentioning the sponsors and suppliers who came, some of whom I met. It is so good to be able to have good honest conversations (often about nothing to do with Web stuff) where there’s no subtext of selling. The ‘externals’ at this conference reall seem to buy in to the no hard sell ethos and it’s all the better for it.
Intentions into actions
As I was coming to write up in more detail how I plan to take what I’ve learnt and turn into actions on my geeky todo list I remembered a simple but effective idea I noticed on the University of Edinburgh’s Website Programme Blog - which was to have a heading similar to ‘What I’ll put into practice’ and then write it. Something to refer back to and check.
So here goes a few.
- Create Lesson Plan for Training
- Organise some kind of Design Sprint
It was tempting to write a ton of vague aspirational things, but on reflection that tends to create a pretty punishing list of unachievables that then make you feel bad about not meeeting them - So the talks about mental health and wellbeing are sinking in too!
IWMW18-megan-mcfarlane-mike-mcconnell
One for the people in the audience hungry for detail about good tools to do something that will be increasingly important for Universities as they up their competitive games. It was nice to have a meaty talk with plenty of detail about tools alongside how they are important.
IWMW18-keith-macdonald
Another case study about content. There was a consistent theme emerging of content out of control, lack of expertise across the org added to the very unique needs of such a federated University. Got a big thumbs up from me for the
IWMW18-jenni-taylor
Big finish for the conference with a cracking talk, ending the conference on a nicely evangelistic note. Also loved the way that it wasn’t just an exhortation, but there were examples of Jenni and her team putting their own advice into practice.
IWMW18-ayala-gordon-padma-gillen
Another good exposition of real world work, and the challenges along the way. Even though there are teams doing lots of similar transformation exercises, there’s always unique little things that come out of these. I particularly liked
IWMW18-Panel
Interesting perpectives on this panel. This conference has always been great for having sponsors that are a million miles away from a hard sell, and a few came and gave their advice on how to work with external people. Treating suppliers like people and making some effort to include them in a meaningful way means you actually get more out of the whole relationship. Who knew?
IWMW18-gareth-edwards
I was looking forward to Gareth’s talk based on the topic and the knowledge that he is one of those strange people that don’t seem to get nervous and actively enjoys public speaking. He didn’t disappoint.
IWMW18-dave-musson
This tour around some great content really got me scribbling down things to go and catch up on, steall and try. Dave even managed to make me reconsider my boredom with Campus shots of Buildings. And the advice about Press Releases was very pertinent.
IWMW18-andrew-millar
Andrew’s opening bit about the severe panic attack that he experienced was a great way in to one of the conference highlights. If you saw his talk last year, you’ll understand that Andrew and his team at Dundee have been doing tons of great work, and perhaps this talk showed a little of the personal cost of such demanding work.
IWMW18-chris-scott-jane-van-de-ban
Chris and Jane’s talk about the use of customer journeys at Birbeck was a qualiity case study that I enjoyed mainly because it showed just how layered and hard it is to accurately model people’s behaviours onto a pretty unique organisation. It’s a wonder people manage to work this stuff out and make change happen. Birbeck and Headscape seem to have made a pretty good fist of it.
IWMW18-alison-kerwin
Alison’s talk was a great way to kick off the conference. As a well known and respected leader in multiple Web roles across multiple institutions, her personal insight into the difficulties often come with the territory of making change happen The open admissions that she found presenting hard, introversion challenging and mental health issues hard to talk about really seemed to resonate with the audience.