March 28th, 2008 — Web
The March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting was held yesterday at the National Library of Australia, covering topics of wikis and collaboration.
GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies
The first speaker was Brian Stonebridge from the Department of Finance and Deregulation, who talked about GovDex. GovDex is a resource developed by government agencies to promote interoperability and collaboration within Government. It provides governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to when developing information services. GovDex can be used by all levels of Government (federal, state and local) and provides the facility to have private and public sites. Most GovDex sites are currently private.
GovDex is currently secured to IN-CONFIDENCE level of security, with PROTECTED security planned for GovDex 2. GovDex is built on the Confluence platform.
Brian and his team member Rita provided some examples of the use of GoxDex. One was the Five Nationals Collaboration Workspace, which provides collaboration for meetings between five Governments around the world. Another example is the Australian Government ICT Standards Interest Group, which is used to establish the Australian Government position on OOXML (a hot topic!).
Kate from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts also presented a GovDex site that they’re currently using for incoming Graduates for both DEWHA and Department of Climate Change. The site is used to keep in touch with the incoming Graduates who are often spread around Australia (I reckon that there are quite a few overseas enjoying a holiday before starting work!). The site provides information about Canberra, the Department, HR information, training information etc. She provided a lot of positive feedback about GovDex but also mentioned that the uptake hasn’t been as good as expected.
If you’re wondering why there hasn’t been any big announcements of GovDex, the reason is that the Department of Finance and Deregulation has done a soft launch rather than take a big bang approach. They’re still checking for scalability issues and ironing out some usability issues with the user interface. What I found particularly interesting was Brian’s comment that he expects to see a bigger uptake of collaboration tools under our new Government. It’s interesting to see the influence of culture from top down when it comes to collaborating within and between agencies and departments. It might still take a while for it to filter across federal Government but it’s definitely encouraging.
Wikis at work
The next speaker was Michele Huston, the Director of Web Publishing at the National Library of Australia. She presented a case study on the implementation of wikis at the NLA. Michele stated that libraries, rather than being as starting point for information access like it was in the days before this prevalent use of the internet, are now just one of many nodes of information. This results in exploring new ways of managing knowledge. Hence the interest in wikis as a new way of managing information.
Wikis in the NLA have been in existence for about two years although it’s picked up a lot more popularity through out the Library over the past year. They are also using Confluence as the technological platform which had features additional to the ‘standard wiki’, such as access control, a WYSIWYG (which was a key requirement from NLA) and the ability to post news items. The wiki started with two projects and was exposed to the rest of the Library via one particular project.
Library users liked the wikis and have been using it across a range of things including IT documentation, rosters, processes etc. They liked the flexibility, freedom and trust that came with a wiki. It’s not all roses though. There are some issues with the user interface, scalability, and the wiki also provides another spot to store documents. In addition, the same elements (flexibility, freedom and trust) that they liked were also the same elements that they didn’t like due to the feelings of uncertainty of some users. Michele also mentioned that what hasn’t worked is archiving of documents and publishing workflows.
What I found really interesting is the culture of trust within the NLA. There wasn’t much governance around wikis. All staff can request a wiki and all staff can edit any of the wikis. Michele has found that staff were more comfortable exploring, creating content and making edits in their own wiki space, rather than one big overall organisational wiki. She has also found that no matter how messy the content may look, staff do go back to clean it up later on
So is it a success? Michele states that it depends upon how you define success. They currently have 88 wikis which have been implemented over the past two years. The take-up within the organisation has been great. To me, it definitely sounds like a success.
Trust
So the question is whether a wiki will work in your organisation. There are many factors that will influence the success of wikis within the workspace but one of the key ones for me is trust. For wikis to work, you need to trust your staff. This is often much harder in the Government space but as long as you trust your staff to do the right thing (i.e. treat your staff like adults), this will go a long way in fostering a collaborative working environment.
March 26th, 2008 — Conferences, CSS, User experience, Web
There’s a good range of excellent web events coming up shortly and I’m proud to announce it here (despite being a bit behind the foot, as these events have officially launched some time ago).
Website user experience & CSS workshop
The first is the Website user experience & CSS workshop run by my friends Donna Maurer and Russ Weakley. They are both experienced teachers and trainers – I attended one of Russ’ CSS workshops a few years ago and it was excellent and Donna is one of the most experienced Information Architects in the world.
This is a hands-on workshop where you will will learn to build detailed websites layouts from the ground up – starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.
The workshops will be held in four cities:
- Canberra – Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April
- Melbourne – Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April
- Sydney – Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April
- Brisbane – Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May
More information and registration can be done over at http://www.maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/
Web Directions South Government
Brought to you by the same folks who run the excellent Web Directions conferences, Web Directions South Government (Gov08) will be held in Canberra on 19 and 20 May. Gov08 will be a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment.
The line-up of speakers look great. If the past Web Directions are anything to go by then this is sure to be yet another great conference.
More information is available at http://gov08.webdirections.org/
Web Directions UX08
Also brought to you the same folks who run the Web Directions conferences, Web Directions UX08 is a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on concepts, technologies and techniques for building great user experiences on the web.
More information is available at http://ux08.webdirections.org/
BarCamp Canberra
I’ve announced it in an earlier post – BarCamp Canberra is happening 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008 at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.
More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampCanberra
BarCamp Sydney
BarCamp Sydney is happening 9am-5.30pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 April 2008 (the weekend before School Holidays) at the Roundhouse at UNSW, Anzac Parade.
More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney
Canberra Web Standard Group
Canberra Web Standards Group is happening tomorrow! We have two interesting topics covering GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies, and Wikis at work and it’s FREE.
More information and registration can be done at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=150
IA Cocktail Hour
Another free event for the Information Architects (IA) community and those interested in this space. This will be held tomorrow straight after Web Standards Group meeting.
More information can be found at http://iacanberra.org/2008/03/26/ia-cocktail-hour-27-march-2008/
March 8th, 2008 — Conferences, Web
I’ve always watched the various BarCamps around the world with envy, wishing that I could be part of the exciting unconference environment. So I’m excited that BarCamp Canberra is finally happening! For those new to the concepts of BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:
An international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.
Here are the details of the event:
- Who? Anyone who is interested in technology, the Internet and related topics. We have room for 60ish people, so bring your colleagues.
- What? A good opportunity to share ideas and projects and to work with like-minded individuals.
- When? 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008
- Where? BarCampCanberra will be held at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.
- Website? The BarCampCanberra blog is located at: www.barcampcanberra.org/blog. Updated information about the event will be posted there.
BarCamps are only as good as those that help to be part of the sharing and collaborative knowledge sharing environment. So don’t be shy. It’s free to register for the event and there’s an Upcoming event for it too.
I’m looking at presenting something related to accessibility and/or along the lines of user experience related subjects (thinking about users when designing a product/website/webapp). We’ll see how it goes with timing of our garage sale and house renovations!
December 11th, 2007 — General, Web
For those of you in Canberra, the Canberra Web-blast is happening tomorrow night. It’s free to come along with free drinks and free food…plus lots of door prizes!
So what is Web-blast? It’s a huge end-of-year party for the web community – bringing together web designers, web project managers, interface designers, information architects and other web professionals. Join a range of Canberra’s web communities and celebrate the end of year in style.
What: Canberra Web-blast 07
When: Wednesday 12 December 2007
Time: 5pm onwards
Where: SMS Management and Technology, Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit, Canberra
Drinks: Free
Food: Free finger food provided
If you’re not in Canberra, Sydney is also celebrating Web Blast (although I’ve heard that tickets are all gone…).
The Canberra details are also up at Upcoming.org as Canberra WebBlast and you can follow event announcements on twitter.
October 4th, 2007 — Accessibility, Web
My thanks to Max Design for highlighting the recent court ruling in California regarding the accessibility of Target Corporation’s website.
A federal district court judge issued two landmark decisions on the 2nd of October in a nationwide class action against Target Corporation.
The first decision involved the court certifying the case as a class action on behalf of blind Internet users throughout the country under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition to violating the ADA, the suit charges that Target has also violated two Californian civil rights statutes: the California Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Disabled Persons Act.
In the second decision, the court stated that websites such as target.com are required by California law to be accessible.
For more information:
This is a step in the right direction, although it’s sad that it has to get to this stage before action is taken by the big corporations. Remember, accessibility is best done proactively – not reactively.
August 19th, 2007 — Web
Photo credit: FullCodePress
FullCodePress is finally over! It was a very close call, but congratulations to the Code Blacks who won the inaugural FullCodePress competition with their website for the Grampian’s disAbility Advocacy Association.
I was really fortunate to work with an absolutely fantastic Aussie team where we produced The Ripple Effect website for a bunch of absolutely well deserving and fantastic clients. I love the true collaborative nature of our work, with the lovely Laura and Emily (our clients) spending quality time with us through out the design and development process.
It was a very fun, rewarding, and yes, exhausting experience. Both teams did really well in producing two great websites in such a challenging time frame.
Many thanks to the organisers for a very well run event, the judges, sponsors (Google, Adobe, Sitepoint, Red Square, and Mort Bay Communications), supporters and volunteers who made this stuff all happen.
You can check out all the goss and hot action on the FullCodePress Twitter feed, Flickr and YouTube.
Time to hit the sack as I need to catch up on some valuable sleep time!
August 16th, 2007 — Web
There’s only two more sleeps until FullCodePress! It will be held on Saturday 18th to Sunday 19th August, at CityGate Central Hotel, 169-179 Thomas Street, Sydney.
People are welcomed to come along and watch. For more details, check out the Where, when and how… news announcement.
August 7th, 2007 — Law and politics, Web
In an effort to appeal to the web savvy voters of Australia, Kevin Rudd, the Labor Leader, has launched his new website Kevin07 today. In addition to the website, Kevin Rudd also has a blog, facebook account, MySpace account and a YouTube account.
Opinions aside about the suitability of this candidate for the Aussie Prime Minister role, it does show that this politician (or at least his advisors) is aware of the implications of social networks by the way he has created accounts on the key social networking sites, rather than just concentrating on one social network (like MySpace). This strategy follows a similar one taken by the US politicians.
On a technical note after a very quick skim through the homepage, KEVIN07:
- validates to XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
- No major accessibility errors when checked with the WAVE tool.
- Passes Section 508 via automated checks using Cynthia Says.
- Doesn’t quite meet colour contrast checks in two spots (but the rest is ok), according to the AccessColor tool.
- Website is readable and content is in a logical order when CSS is turned off (no sign of tables for layout!).
It’s not the prettiest website and there’s some areas for improvement but overall, it’s not bad.
