How to educate your website stakeholders about your job in 2 seconds

Are you tired of explaining to your boss, her VP or the President what your job is all about?
Are you often asked by people on campus what can possibly keep you so busy all day and all year long?

Thanks to Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast, Humboldt State University Web Manager, you can stop explaining, resume your work and just forward a simple yet effective document to anybody curious to learn more about the job of a higher ed web pro.

As she explained on her personal blog, Andrea was invited to present at a conference in San Diego last week about “The Changing Role of the University Webmaster.” Below is this presentation abstract:

“As the Web becomes more and more crucial to key university functions, university Web sites are becoming increasingly complex. This complexity, coupled with rapidly changing technologies and large scale adoption of the Web as a major communication tool, has changed the field of university Web development in recent years. Webmasters must be focused on strategic planning and team building as well as the technical aspects of Web development, and must make significant efforts to keep abreast of progress within their field as well as the needs of their university. How the role of the university Webmaster has evolved, and some predictions about the future direction of university Web development will be examined.”

The slides of this presentation – mainly targeted to admission and marketing officers – are available under a Creative Commons License as a 23-page document. You can download the PDF file from Andrea’s blog and share it with anybody who doesn’t understand yet what you’re doing for a living.