We have made great strides in the web community here on campus. I decided to write a proposal to speak at the HighEdWeb conference on the topic so I have been reflecting on how the community has grown and how we can continue to grow the FIU web community.
Proposal
Here is the proposal I wrote and I now look at it as a manifesto of sorts of how to create a great web culture on campus:
Do you have lots of web people on your campus? Feel like there are no cohesive bonds? Even in our siloed higher ed culture, it just takes a small dedicated group to rally the troops.
We will explore how to build community on a campus through various different approaches including creating a university web group to provide leadership, idea exchange and learning opportunities for web professionals and others around campus. Work to create collaborative web policies that will enable people to do things following best practices. Create a culture of open data so people will embrace the use of central tools. Blog about the state of web on campus and keep an open and continued dialogue. Provide campus thought leadership and advise executives on major decisions. Create collaborative spaces where people from different teams can work to solve common problems on campus. Build campus wide tools that leverage and produce open source software and have open planning sessions with community members. Have coffee talks with community members to provide advice, be an advocate or simply lend a friendly ear. Do work pro-bono to help people with their goals that will also advance campus goals. Look outside of campus to leverage local tech and entrepreneurship. And last but not least look to the national communities UwebD, BlogHighEd, HigherEDLive, eduStyle etc. and our friendly peer institutions to provide solutions and best practices for campus.
We must recognize that no one person is able to accomplish a better web on campus or community, therefore we must be open to a plan that encourages networking, cooperative relationships with others outside the campus, and implementation of practices that may reach our goal of a simple “better web on campus.”
Uweb
To add here is the mission statement I created in my first week here on campus when I was looking to start the University Web Group (Uweb)
University Web Group (Uweb) is an organization open to all web designers, developers, etc who use the web as part of their role with Florida International University. We encourage you to join regardless of your web knowledge or the amount of your job that is committed to working with the web.
Uweb seeks to create a collaborative web community for FIU, to exchange ideas, resources and best practices. We also seek to provide development in the form of online assistance and seminars.
Call to action
My call to action is two fold
- What would you add to this action list
- Who’s coming with me
I would love to hear the thoughts of people outside the FIU community as well.