AMSU web development team: meeting one: ideas, ideas and more ideas

pad ready for amsu web ideas

In December I volunteered myself for the Association of Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU) web development team – with a healthy shove in the right direction from Jaki Booth (trustee of AMSU). It’s a voluntary position and there’s three of us altogether who will be meeting to help AMSU develop its web presences and putting our plans into action. It’s a voluntary position.

I travelled down to Birmingham on Thursday 29th January not really sure what to expect. I knew there was a rough agenda ahead of us (discuss how crap AMSU’s old website had been, what was happening with the NUS Extranet and AMSU and potentially discuss some new ideas). Arrived at Birmingham City University Students’ Union to join in the #bcutweetup and then my fellow volunteers arrived on the AMSU web development team.

The first is Andy Parsons, chief executive at Loughborough Students’ Union, and the other is John Wordsworth, representation and democracy manager at Exeter Guild. So north, south and centre were combining to see if our collected minds could figure out the best way for AMSU to progress on the web.

The laptops were flipped open, the wireless eventually connected (I was borrowing Jaki’s laptop) and Andy fired up his ace MindMap sofware (John and I massively impressed by this, no wonder Loughboroguh is consistently rated as one of the top Union’s in the UK!).

We started out by describing what we thought AMSU itself should be – a place for all staff in Students’ Unions, not just general managers/chief executives – to find resources and the opportunity to explore new ideas and share best practice.

We discussed what we were up to at our respective unions with respect to the web, and it was amazing all the stuff that’s going on (from John handcoding an elections voting system at Exeter, to me starting work on an elections interactive facebook application and Andy enjoying the benefits of Warwick Union’s MSL system).

andy parsons fires up the mindmap

Down to the nitty gritty and it was decided that we needed to go open source with a lot of AMSU stuff. There are some AMSU gems that we needed to keep from the old web presences, such as the resource library, jobs sections and agenda magazine. But we needed to expand the content around these – for example getting the resource library tagged up to allow easy searching, moving agenda magazine to more of a blog format and making the jobs section easily searchable.

The topic of digital literacy came up again, and we discussed how AMSU could have a role to play in helping Students’ Unions to understand how web 2.0 tools can be used to improve the organisation and how it operates.

We came away buzzing with loads of great ideas to really push AMSU forward and allow it to re-connect with a lot of its members. We’ll be working up our ideas ready for an online meeting (we’re going to try meeting via Skype) in February and then a further meeting in March to investigate the MSL system that now powers the content management system of the new AMSU site.

It was a great experience to bounce ideas around with John and Andy and I’m looking forward to working on the project over the coming months.

#bcutweetup – a chance to meet fellow twitter users, from Birmingham and digital literacy was the hot topic

I took part in my first tweetup on Thursday. It was a short meeting (as I had to go to another one) but it was a great experience.

I was down in Birmingham to meet up with AMSU colleagues to work on their new web presence, but I’d arranged to arrive a bit earlier than needed and attend the Birmingham City University Tweetup. It was held in Cafe Direct at Birmingham City University Students’ Union – thanks to Jaki Booth (@parboo).

For those not familiar with a Tweetup it’s where users arrange via twitter to meet up at a set location, agree a rough agenda and then have discussions about those topics. All the while, the ideas, discussions, thoughts, arguments, are all documented by those attending via twitter – by simply posting up tweets and tagging them with the Tweetup indicator e.g. #bcutweetup.

If you run search.twitter for #bcutweetup you’ll find some of the things suggested and discussed.

The focus of the discussion while I was there was around digital literacy. Digital literacy is teaching people about the web, the tools and the possibilities – opening their eyes not just to web 2.0 but starting with the basics like using websites to access information.

Those attending seemed committed to improving digital literacy at BCU and not just for students, but for staff as well. There seemed to be a trend that a lot of staff were more digitally literate, or willing to try, than students were.

It’s an interesting concept, digital literacy. I think that web 2.0 has the potential to boost a students employability and also improve a staff member/lecturers ability to work or teach – by sharing more and entering into a dialogue with students that creates a shared knowledgebase.

I’m going to take the concept of digital literacy away and build some thoughts up on it, as I can see it becoming a hot topic over the next few years as broadband access is increased, super fast broadband becomes the norm and particularly in universities – if you’re not digitally literate you are going to struggle.