MySource Matrix Section Name

Last Friday, Squiz held a seminar at Adam Street private members club (London) for Universities and Colleges who were looking to get more out of their web spend, specifically via the use of open source software.

At the session we discussed the work that we've done for institutions like Oxford and Greenwich University, and we also gave a thorough overview of our open source CMS, MySource Matrix.

This time, we also decided to change the format so as to allow for a more informal Q&A throughout.  We're very happy we did this, not just because we learned a bunch more about what folks are up to, but because people seemed to get so much more out of the session. 

So, we're gonna keep it this way and try to ensure that as well as a learning session, the seminars also become networking sessions to help like-minded people get together and chew the fat.  Watch this space for details on upcoming dates - Thursday October 26th is slated for the next one.

In terms of the feedback, we had good discussion around a number of areas.  I'll list them Q&A fashion as follows:

• How does Matrix scale?
  
  See our Matrix Architecture overview document on tried and tested methods for clients like Austereo and Future Publishing.
  
  
• How is Matrix best deployed to enable the roll out of multiple sub-sites in a single implementation?
  
  See this piece of Powerpoint sweetness for how we approach this question.  Golden rule:  write once, use/publish many!!
  
  
• What are the costs associated with a Matrix installation?
  
  None - for universities, not for profits and public sector clients, Matrix is FREE.  You do need to think about what to do with it once you've acquired the software though, so we recommend you read this white paper.
  
  
• Is it possible to publish a static version of a site with Matrix, to improve security/performance?
  
  Yes.  See this, page 5 to 8.  This implementation of Matrix enables a static version of the site to be published to a 'caching' server.  Other implementations (p 7) enable data to be written back to Matrix, so that user-generated content is possible.
  
  
• What does Matrix contain out of the box in terms of personalisation?
  
  See this page here for a quick overview, and this recent blog entry for hints and tips on how to do it properly.
  
  
• Can Matrix provide less skilled users with a simple editing interface?
  
  Yes.  See this eye-candy screenshot.  Look to the right of the screengrab and you'll see a cool little tool bar that provides content users with a basic set of tools to do things like create/edit a page, and add an image to the image library, etc.  If you'd like to know more about Matrix simple editing, then contact us! (warning - it rocks!)
  
  
• Is Matrix easy to use?
  
  Yes.  I used it to create this page and I'm an idiot.
  

In sum, it seems that most universities or colleges have similar concerns right now.  These can be (simplified and) listed as follows:

1. People are looking to (re)gain control of renegade departments who are publishing sites according to their own branding tastes, coding standards and technology bases.  Clearly this is not a good idea in terms of marketing or budget management.  Much of the work involved in publishing these sites is duplicated and therefore expensive. Further, if people are off doing their own thing then a university's overall brand proposition gets diluted - schizophrenic colour schemes, layouts, etc, all do nothing to enhance a sites standing with its public. 
   
   The simple answer of course is of course to introduce a CMS to do this.  However, in our experience we realise that a magic wand approach never works.  The reason anarchy exists in the first place is not because people are mad, but because they care too much about their web properties and so are loathe to give up control.  We usually find that a stealth approach is best - ie, set up a best practise organisation that's capable of supporting other departments/units and then go and evangelise the hell out of it (ie, tell people that they're not losing, but gaining control!).  This is exactly what Oxford University has done to great success.
   
   
2. People are looking to save cash. 
   
   The Simple answer to this one is to go the open source route.  (And here's one good reason why.)
   
   
3. People are looking to take a more content-driven approach to web sites.  In line with item 1) above, we had a number of good chats with progressive web managers who, once they had established a more tightly managed CMS, were looking to re-educate their production teams to start thinking about content first and foremost and web sites later.  This was great to hear!
   
   In a nutshell, we usually find that if organisations can do this, and get content contributors and administrators focusing on WHAT they're publishing rather than WHERE they're publishing to, then some magic can happen.  In practise this means setting up a CMS with enough clout to syndicate content from multiple sources, which in turn enables the devolution of content production and a more highly specialised and interesting web site. (ie, content feeds come from multiple departments in a timely manner and are pushed into the right sections of a web site to ensure that pages are always up to date and relevant to audience requirements.) 
   
   In addition with the right workflows applied, this ought to mean that web site production becomes less of an overhead - since content authors can be trained to focus purely on producing content (rather than authoring html), and web administrators focus on keeping things tight at the site level.  In a perfect world, this means that publishing a site becomes an enjoyable experience for people who are not necessarily trained as webmastering Jedi's.

That's all the feedback we have for now.  Thanks rto those who made it down last week - it was great too met you.  If you're interested in attending a future seminar session then please do get in touch.  Like I say, next is slated for Thursday October 26th.

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