The Integration Challenge

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The Integration Challenge

• Bringing Web Management Systems Together

Eric Behrens Swarthmore College
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Web Archaeology

• Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the
  sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not
  where they are going they merely want to know
  where everyone else has been.
• --Jim Bishop

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The ltAngle Bracketgt Age

• The creation of the initial hierarchy of
  interrelated pages
• Focused on content presentation/distribution
• Essentially libertarian
• Big challenges were user training, design, and
  organizational buy-in.
• Emblematic tool is the WYSIWYG HTML editor
• Emblematic product is a department home page

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The Submit Button Age

• Scripting dynamic content development
• Focused on information transactions
• Essentially bureaucratic/administrative
• Big challenges were meeting client demand,
  technical staff recruitment/retention, ROI,
  scalability
• Emblematic tool is Cold Fusion
• Emblematic product is online registration

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The Age of Industrialization

• Proliferation of commercial and open source
  applications to manage and manipulate general or
  specialized content databases on the web
• Answering scalability
• Essentially egalitarian
• Big challenges include funding, project
  management, customization and integration
• Emblematic tool is Blackboard Learning System
  (with developer APIs)
• Emblematic end-user project is a Blog

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Blackboard, WebCT, Sakai
Presentation
Ingeniux, RedDot, .NET
WWW
Portal(s)
Course Management
ContentDM, Luna Insight, DSpace
Information Management Systems
Content Management
Digital Asset Management
End-user Administrative Applications
Library Management
Information Infrastructure
One-Card/ Commerce
ERP
Directory Services
Scheduling
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The Challenges At Hand
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Strategic Planning vs. Reactive Thinking

• Integration requires strategic planning
• Adapting to the flavors-of-the-month and
  disruptive technologies
• Responding appropriately to distracting ideas
• Importance vs. urgency

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Communication

• Connecting projects to core mission(s) for senior
  staff and other decision makers
• Few aware of full extent of project relationships
  interdependencies
• Disagreement, competition (What? Never.)
• Marketing before or after implementation?

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Staff

• Job splintering
• Sharing the load
• Alignment of the stars stars
• Retention and/or knowledge transfer

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Best of Breed vs. Single Vendor

• Maximizing the value of web management systems
• Risk scenarios
• Vendor lock
• Customization lock
• Opportunity Cost
• The finality of product selection.

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A Very Little Advice

• Strategic planning takes time
• Strategic planning takes place at and between
  multiple layers of organization
• Our institutions rely on our stewardship
• A lot of small goods can equal excellence
• Wait for the Ideal? Speed/agility are also
  virtues
• Mind the store

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Now for the pep talk
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Go, team, go!
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Fight, Fight for the inner light,Kill, Little
Quakers, Kill!
-Traditional Swarthmore cheer