Teased about having so much to say about Web 2.0 but not actually having a blog, Brian Kelly got cracking – so effectively that he won IWR’s Info Pro of the Year Award
Q. Who are you?
A. My job title is UK web focus. I’m based at UKOLN and located at the University of Bath. UKOLN advises and supports the higher and further education communities and cultural heritage organisations. I support those communities in making best use of the web, and for the past two years, as everybody will know, that has focused on Web 2.0.
Q. Where is your blog?
A. It is hosted on Wordpress.com (http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com). You can also follow my microblog on Twitter (http://twitter.com/briankelly).
Q. Describe your blog
A. It has several purposes including engagement with my user communities, dissemination about my activities, experimentation and thinking out loud. The blog reflects the work activities I am engaged in, including web accessibility, standards and Web 2.0.
Q. How long have you been blogging?
A. Since 1 November 2006; it was my 10th anniversary of working at UKOLN. A year later and the blog contained 264 posts and 1,045 comments. I post three to four times a week, with the occasional break for holidays.
Q. What started you blogging?
A. I took part in a Web 2.0 panel at the ILI 2006 conference. My fellow panellists – Paul Miller, Phil Bradley and Michael Stephens – teased me for being a prolific speaker on various aspects of Web 2.0 but not actually having a blog. Within a month, I’d launched my blog.
Q. Which bloggers do you watch, link to and why?
A. John Dale of the University of Warwick (http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/johndale) was a blogging pioneer in the UK university sector, and his blog illustrates how IT service managers can use blogs to engage with users. Another pioneer is the aptly named Michael Webb, whose blog provides “thoughts from IT and media service” at the University of Wales, Newport. His institution was probably the first in the UK HE sector to take a high profile Web 2.0 strategy. Relatively new is the University of London Computer Centre’s Da Blog (http://dablog.ulcc.ac.uk), which helps bring an understanding of digital preservation issues to a Web 2.0 environment.
Q. Do you comment on other blogs?
A. Absolutely. Initially this helped me get a feel for blogging etiquette and how to engage in discussions in the blogosphere. Now that my blog is well established I can spot the referrer links from bloggers commenting on my posts. Such alerting mechanisms enable me to engage in distributed conversations across the blogosphere. And my regular Technorati alerts for new blog posts containing search terms such as UKOLN or JISC help me to identify other discussions I may want to engage in. On a number of occasions I have spotted blog posts that have misinterpreted the contents of reports produced by colleagues in UKOLN. Being able to quickly spot and correct such posts can help prevent misunderstandings being propagated across the digital library community.
Q. How does your organisation benefit from your blog presence?
A. The blog played a significant role in the award I received (IWR’s Information Professional of the Year) at the Online Information 2007 conference. The award helps to highlight my work but also related activities across UKOLN. UKOLN has a high profile across the international digital library community as well as the educational and cultural heritage sector nationally. My blog has significant numbers of readers in the US, Canada and Australia, and helps to maintain
UKOLN’s presence across this international development community.
Q. Does your blog benefit your career?
A. Publishing posts on a regular basis can be very stimulating. I have to keep informed about new developments and have something relevant to contribute to debates on use of the web. And as my blog is open to comments, I also have a valuable feedback mechanism which gives me a better understanding of the topics I raise.
Q. What has happened to you solely because of blogging?
A. It helped me to win the IWR award. And I will shortly be running a blogging workshop at the
Museums and The Web 2008 conference in Canada. But the best thing was the invitation I received to give a plenary presentation at the National Digital Archives Program 2008 conference in Taiwan in March 2008.
Q. Which blogs do you read for fun?
A. I read, watch films, listen to music and go to the pub for fun! But I also use Twitter for informal discussions with my professional colleagues around the world. And I have found that my former colleague Pete Johnston has mastered that art of being witty in a mere 140 characters, as I described in a blog post (http://rurl.org/gie).
Q. What blogs in your sector do you trust?
A. There are a great many blogs that cover my areas of interest, including web standards, web
accessibility and Web 2.0 developments. I follow a number of blogs, but I also discover new blogs by following links to my blog, links included in comments on my blog, and in dynamic searches retrieved by my RSS reader. There’s a danger that relying on a small selection of trusted blog authors would lead to a sterile environment, and a failure to be open to new ideas and criticisms or current orthodoxies.
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