In a couple of weeks' time I'll be one of the plenary speakers at this year's Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2013). My talk is called The Inside-Out University. It's about how we adapt to a new world where publications, research data and educational resources are open by default, and the catalytic role of the web community. Read on for more... NB: Last call for IWMW bookings is Monday June 17th!

[Picture credit: CC BY-NC-SA from IWMW 2011 blog]

Here's the abstract for my talk:

It's a truism that Universities are going through a period of enormous change. This talk will focus on one particular development - the move to being "open by default", in which the web community will play a key enabling role.

There are many practical considerations around opening up institutional information such as course data, educational resources and research datasets. Until recently these might typically have been considered to be "private" to the institution or even the individual academic, and our systems and services have tended to be constructed on this basis.

Being open by default also has a lot to do with changing the institutional culture so that we are used to working more broadly and deeply with external partners. These include service providers, consumers of the information that we are making open, and facilitators such as the Open Data Institute.

In this talk I will look at some examples from Loughborough University including our recent Jisc projects on Open Course Data and Business and Community Engagement. I will also use crowdsourcing to solicit feedback from the community on their own experiences of the open access transition, and fold these into the talk.

To find out more about the Institutional Web Management Workshop and view this year's conference programme, please see the IWMW 2013 website. It's a packed programme, and there are lots of interesting speakers.

If you're wondering where the "Inside Out University" comes from, this has its origins with Lorcan Dempsey's seminal work reconceptualizing the Library for our new era. Lorcan's slides from the recent BOBCATSSS symposium in Ankara are embedded below:

The Inside Out Library, from Lorcan Dempsey

We have heard a lot of scary stuff lately about Internet surveillance and potential abuses of power and market share, which I will be blogging about separately in the near future. I was going to link directly to the BOBCATSSS website from this post, but it looks like they may be having some problems right now (per below).

For me the Chrome malware warning is a great example of the trade-offs that we make in an increasingly connected world, and the benefits we (sometimes!) receive in return. This is a topic which I will be returning to in my IWMW talk.

Now, I'll close with a quote from the Irish author Seán O’Faoláin that Lorcan highlights in his presentation:

People should think not so much of the books that have gone into the National Library but rather of the books that have come out of it.

I'd like to invite you, my readers, to find a pithy way to extend this beyond the Library to the University and its role in society.  Have a go by leaving a comment on this post, and I'll feature the best/most interesting/most amusing responses at IWMW.