WelchmanPierpoint

Web Governance for Your Organisation

Lisa Welchman — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:13:02 +0000

Event Link:

https://togetherlondon.com/events/masterclass#welchman

Event Date:

May 4, 2012

Event Location:

Together London Masterclass; London, UK

Qualifier:

Presents

Establishing Effective Leadership and Governance

Lisa Welchman — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:59:02 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.howto.gov/training/conferences/web-and-new-meda-2012/agenda

Event Date:

May 16, 2012

Event Location:

2012 Government Web & New Media Conference; Washington, DC

Qualifier:

Presents

Who Owns Your Website?

Lisa Welchman — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:57:00 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.cms-connected.com/Upcoming-Shows.aspx

Event Date:

March 14, 2012

Event Location:

CMS Connected News Show

Qualifier:

Discusses

Do the Right Thing: Web Governance for Your Organization

Lisa Welchman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:51:41 +0000

Event Link:

http://rosenfeldmedia.com/workshops/web-governance/

Event Date:

May 9, 2012

Event Location:

Rosenfeld Media Workshop; Washington, DC

Qualifier:

Presents

Webinar: Who Owns Your Website?

Lisa Welchman — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:23:38 +0000

Event Link:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/588179825

Event Date:

February 9, 2012

Event Location:

Webinar: Who Owns Your Website?

Qualifier:

Presents

Who Owns Your Website?

Lisa Welchman — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:18:57 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.webmanagersgroup.com/events/

Event Date:

January 19, 2012

Event Location:

Web Managers London Meet Up; London, UK

Qualifier:

Presents

How Does an Organization Manage Hundreds of Sites?

Lisa Welchman — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:07:17 +0000

Event Link:

http://gilbaneboston.com/conference_program.html#e11

Event Date:

December 1, 2011

Event Location:

Gilbane; Boston, MA

Qualifier:

Discusses

On All the Different "Web Governances" in the Universe

Lisa Welchman — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:46:31 +0000

Early this Fall I gave a talk at a Content Strategy Forum event in London. In the talk, I'm attempting to place content strategy within the context of Web Governance. I'm not sure I succeeded but I watched the video and though it was a pretty coherent expression of my current thought about web and digital governance. I hope it's useful and helpful.

Go Figure: Content Strategists Talking About WCM Systems

Lisa Welchman — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:25:07 +0000

The Content Strategy Forum Event in London wrapped up yesterday. It was a well run and interesting event-- great content. There were serious talks about the future of content strategy as a discipline. In the halls, however, I had talks with people who were still debating the validity of content strategy as a profession. Many don’t see it as something distinct from information architecture or other existing editorial roles. Certainly, some of the content strategy agenda seems warmed over from a lot of other disciplines. But, I think any conversation that centers on improving the quality of digital, is a good conversation. And, I certainly believe that new roles will evolve in the digital arena. Time will tell if "content strategist" is one of them. In any case, there were a lot of really smart and well-intentioned professionals in the room. I would have wanted to hear some more concrete talk about content strategy methodology, but perhaps that’s just my taste.

The biggest surprise to me was an emphasis on Web content management (WCM) systems and the notoriously bad user experience they provide for authors. In their talks, Karen McGrane and Cleve Gibbon both emphasized the importance of content-side digital stakeholders actively participating in WCM system deployments. I really wasn’t expecting that message from this event. In my experience, content folks have been generally negative about WCM deployments. Often they feel that WCM technology constrains (in a negative way) the possibilities of what can be delivered online. And, as Karen pointed out in her keynote “The way forward: what’s next for content strategy,” that the IT team selects WCM technology without understanding the content. True enough. But to IT’s defense, frequently, the content side of the organization have no idea what they are doing with the content either—no content strategy, no real information architecture, no component authoring strategy, etc. Also, content folks frequently do not understand the technical sophistication and complexity involved in actualizing their content visions. Cleve Gibbon’s talk “The Strategist and the Executioner” illuminated this dynamic well.

The lack of understanding and clarity on both sides of the IT/Content fence coupled with the business and cultural disconnect between these two sides of the organization has made for an interesting dynamic in-house and online (often referred to as “a mess”). I think this well-articulated awareness and opening of dialogue between these two key stakeholder communities is good and I hope it continues with some cross-pollination of speakers between technology and content/communications events in the future. The content folks have made their move. Hopefully technologist will step up to the collaboration table in a more determined fashion as well and the real future of digital can begin to take shape.

Using Web Analytics to Influence Executive Digital Sponsorship

Lisa Welchman — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 01:08:39 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.semphonic.com/xchange/2011/think-tank.aspx

Event Date:

September 12, 2011

Event Location:

X Change; San Diego, CA

Qualifier:

Presents

On All the Different "Web Goverances" in the Universe

Lisa Welchman — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 01:02:42 +0000

Event Link:

http://2011.csforum.eu/topics/business-models#welchman

Event Date:

September 5, 2011

Event Location:

The Content Strategy Forum; London, UK

Qualifier:

Presents

Webinar: Establishing a Web Council

Delia Konizeski — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:34:13 +0000

Type:

Presentation

In this recorded Webinar, Lisa Welchman discusses the reasons why organizations establish Web councils as well as the different types of councils that can be established.

Attachment	Size
2011-06-09 12.02 Establishing a Web Council.wmv	35.82 MB

Which Type of Web Council is Right for Your Organization?

Delia Konizeski — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:08:04 +0000

If it's on your to-do list to establish a Web Council in your organization or even revive a council that once met long ago, check out Lisa Welchman's latest recorded Webinar titled "Establishing a Web Council." It was a very popular webinar topic-- generating over 100 attendees and a myriad of questions from participants who want to establish a Web council, leverage an existing committee or revive a council from the past.

In the Webinar, Lisa details the three types of Web councils:

Strategy-Focused Web Council

A strategy-focused Web council has an agenda that considers these questions:

What is our organization’s philosophy and approach to digital?
What are our digital goals?
Are we organized to meet those goals?

Policy-Focused Web Council

A policy-focused Web council has an agenda that asks: "How do we minimize and manage the risk of doing business through digital channels?"

Product-Focused Web Council

If your Web council is product focused, their main task is to address this the quality question: "How do we produce and maintain the highest quality and most effective digital presence?"

What focus would your organization take? Share your comments.

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Webinar: Empires, Confederations, and Federations: 3 Styles of Organizational Web Governance

Lisa Welchman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:14:11 +0000

Event Link:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/854376072

Event Date:

July 14, 2011

Event Location:

Webinar: Empires, Confederations, and Federations: 3 Styles of Organizational Web Governance

Qualifier:

conducts

Webinar: Establishing a Web Council

Lisa Welchman — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:27:49 +0000

Event Link:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/459550041

Event Date:

June 9, 2011

Event Location:

Webinar: Establishing a Web Council

Qualifier:

Hosts

Establishing a Web Council

Lisa Welchman — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:11:08 +0000

This year we’ve been working a lot with large organizations that are trying to establish an organizational Web council. The impetus for establishing the council is usually one or both of the following: a desire to establish or enforce Web standards in order to raise Web site quality; or, the desire to collaborate with others in the organization who are also responsible for some aspect of Web or digital development. So, organizations are eager to get their “arms around this whole Web mess,” as one client put it. In working with these teams to establish their Web councils, a few themes have emerged and I thought I’d share a few of them. I’ll be giving a webinar on "Establishing a Web Council” on June 9, 2011 if you want to learn more or ask questions.

What is a Web Council?

Broadly speaking, an organizational Web Council or Web Board is established in order to help cut across organizational silos and support a more strategic and comprehensive approach to Web development. In the last year, there’s been a trend to pull together Web, social, and mobile into a Digital Council. While there are differences in execution tactics between the social, Web and mobile channels, the concerns which lead to the establishment of the council are usually similar—the primary concern being how to integrate these new channels with legacy business processes or how to replace the execution tactics of those processes with new, digitally enabled tactics. The configuration, agenda, and membership of the Web council varies from organization to organization and is tied closely with the organization's strategic view of digital channels and the maturity of the organization's Web operations.

A Web Council is Frequently Redundant

From my view, in a perfect organization, a Web or digital council would not be required. Most (not all) of the functions it serves can usually be embedded in already existing policy-making functions of the organization (like IT, Marketing, HR, Legal). And those areas where new policy need to be informed or created could be handled by a properly formed Web team. However, most organizations don’t have a mature enough corporate awareness of Web or Digital to support this best of all possible worlds scenario. So, for now it has to be drawn out and considered “special” in order to manage it into control. My hope would be that ten years from now we won’t need Web or Digital councils--- the functions these councils support would be integrated into the business at large and any executive (or staffer for that matter) would necessarily be savvy enough to naviate the organization through the physical and digital business world.

The Web Council as a Catalyst for Strategic Collaboration

Often, Web folks tell me that their senior executives don’t understand the Web. So, I suit up and go talk to these executives. To be honest, I haven’t found one executive that didn’t have a mature sense of the possibilities of the Web. So, what’s the deal here? The disconnect between organizational leadership and those responsible for Web execution is usually in the vacinity of one of two concerns. The first is that senior Web folks have not teed up a business case that resonates at the executive level. They might be running around shouting hyperbolic language about how important Web, mobile and social are but they haven’t actually taken the time to express their position with a cogent business case. The other thing we see is an assumption by executives that the Web folks are doing the best that they can—they are assuming they are already enabled to do their job to the best of their ability. They don’t have time to deal with the tactics of a content strategy or technology integration-- just as they don't deal with the tactics of many other things related to the day-to-day managmenet of the business.

So, both sides of the fence are waiting for the other side to lead. It’s frustrating to view this sort of standoff. Often, a well-seated Web Council can help address this disconnect and help bring to the surface the leadership deficits so that they can be addressed. Sometimes this is the council's most import function. I’ve seen Web councils last for 12 to 18 months and then disband not because they were dysfunctional or ineffective but because it had served its role as a catalyst for Web team and executive collaboration around the digital channel.

The Web Council Can’t Do Everything

When I speak at organizations, I talk a lot about Web production compression. I’m alluding to the jack of all trades/webmaster approach that is part of the Web management profession. It used to be that one person did everything for the organizational Web presence. You remember the magical webmaster in the corner. She designed web pages, wrote content, installed the web server software and re-indexed the search engine software and scoured server logs to glean analytics. We are still overcoming this idea that everything about Web production is consolidated and fast. So, when organizations try to organize a Web council, frequently they want this council to oversee or govern every aspect of Web at the organization. This is unrealistic. There are multiple layers to Web management and a digital council has a specific role to play. They are not a substitute for a proper organizational Web execution strategy which would address Web team budgeting and staffing.

Developing Web Standards is Not a Group Activity

I’ve overstated this intentionally. Even a year ago I wouldn’t have stated this as strongly; but, in practice we are noticing that collaborative standards development approach is slow and unreliable. There is value in getting all your core Web stakeholders in a room to discuss the organizational approach to digital but the authority for standards codification ought to be cleanly seated with people who are experts in whatever digital standards arena you are addressing. A collaborative standards development process can only work if all resources around the table actually have not just an organizational viewpoint but also a viewpoint informed by Web expertise. In practice, we find that most grass-roots formed Web councils are filled by folks with varying skill levels and expertise when it comes to Web. This dynamic is great for community building but not for decision making.

Hopefully, more organizations will be forming councils (if only temporarily) to help clarify the strategic direction of its digital presence. These councils can be an effective forums to work through Web site ownership debates and to begin maturing the organizational approach to Web operations. If you are interested in hearing more organizational Web councils, please feel free to listen in on our Webinar on June 9, 2011.

Image:

governance.jpg

Strategic Business Metrics for the Web

Lisa Welchman — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:00:47 +0000

Phil Kemelor just posted a good blog post on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Web. I like the post because Phil points out the historical background of KPIs and stresses that it's not just about Web site performance but also about Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for the business.

We find in practice that many Web Managers have their noses pressed up against the Web window and forget that the Web presence exists to support a larger organizational mission. If Web Teams are going to get mangement to take them seriously and give them the resources required to get the Web job done effectively and efficiently, then they are going to have to learn to quantify the value of the Web in a way that resonates with leadership (usually the holder of the purse strings). It's a good read. So, take a look.

Searching for Web Governance Keynote Address

Delia Konizeski — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:32:11 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.enterprisesearchsummit.com/Spring2011/Speakers/LisaWelchman.aspx

Event Date:

May 10, 2011

Event Location:

Enterprise Search Summit; New York, NY

Qualifier:

Delivers

Steven Sherkanowski, Vice President of Marketing, Ektron

ronnie — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:36:01 +0000

Your presentation was great! A number of people came up to me and said that your keynote presentation paid for the conference.

"Using Social Media to Improve Citizen Services & Engagement" Panel Discussion

Lisa Welchman — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:31:56 +0000

Event Link:

http://www.aiimexpo.com/conference-tracks/aiim-2011-pre-conference-workshops

Event Date:

March 21, 2011

Event Location:

AIIM Pre-Conference Workshop; Washington, DC

Qualifier:

Participates in