Shared challenges, shared solutions: inside UCISA's Web Services Community Day

What a day. UCISA's Web Services Community Day 2026 took place on 9 July at Leeds Trinity University's City Campus, under the theme "Shared Challenges, Shared Solutions." UCISA (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) organised the event: a room full of people swapping honest stories about what's actually hard, not just showing off wins. Zengenti were there as sponsors, and I'm glad we were.

This was the Web Services Community's first in-person Community Day, building on a webinar series the group's been quietly running for a while.

It's also got some longer history behind it. For over two decades, the UK HE web community had a home in the Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW), started by Brian Kelly back in 1997 and run every year until 2019, when the pandemic got in the way of plans to keep it going. Its absence left a real gap. So this felt like the start of something new: a fresh gathering picking up where IWMW left off, giving web and content people a shared space again.

There's a new committee behind it too, ready to take it forward: Rob Fowles (University of Birmingham), Claire Gibbons (Leeds Trinity University), James Peach (University for the Creative Arts), Paddy Callagan (Leeds Trinity University), and Lauren Tormey (University of Edinburgh).

The day mixed full talks, two lightning talks, a panel session, and a Lean Coffee breakout where attendees picked their own topics. Just the right balance for a community finding its feet again in person: enough structure to guarantee good content, enough open space for the room's own questions to come out.

The Lean Coffee session was a real highlight for me. Lauren Tormey kicked it off, then we split into four breakout groups with facilitators. The format was simple: jot down topics on Post-its, vote on what to tackle, then talk through them in short timed rounds.

The topics people wrote down said a lot about where everyone's head is at: AI tooling, how web teams should pivot for it, governance across multiple sites, SEO tips, KPIs for website performance, tackling a rebuild with a small team, biggest wins of the year. Way better than sitting through someone else's agenda.

Leeds Trinity's City Campus was a lovely venue too, and on a warm July day, I was very grateful for the air conditioning. We were well fed throughout: breakfast, lunch, tea and coffee breaks. The lemon drizzle was a clear favourite.

I was up too, with a talk called "Doing More with Less: Using AI to Scale Content Quality." It grew out of something I've been focused on in my own work lately: looking at the regular, repetitive tasks in my day-to-day and finding ways to make them more efficient.

The talk took that idea to content teams, walking through a set of skills that help you spot which processes can be simplified, so you can put your attention where it actually needs to go. It all came together in a set of skills that HE teams can use for themselves, share with others, and contribute back to, up on GitHub at github.com/contensis/he-content-skills for any institution to fork and adapt.

Two talks in particular stuck with me.

Lauren Tormey, Senior Content Designer at the University of Edinburgh, focused her talk on building a content playbook through a workshop that brings more consistency, understanding, and shared knowledge to the content decisions a team makes. She walked through a format for bringing content teams together: get everyone in a room to talk through a topic, use Miro to collaborate, and build up a shared backlog and a playbook that everyone can reference when they need to.

Dean Hale, Enterprise Applications Manager at the University of Sunderland, showed us how his team built a process for reviewing personal statements using AI, with guardrails in place to keep it free of bias and genuinely trustworthy. What impressed the room was the level of thought that had gone into it:

• The time it saved in the long run
• A more thorough process with far less fatigue for a small team
• An honest look at where the approach could still be improved

If you were there, let's keep talking. Get in touch with us at Zengenti.

And if you want to try the framework yourself, go grab the he-content-skills repo on GitHub and fork it for your team.

One more thing: I know the Web Services committee is on the lookout for another member. If that sounds like it could be you, reach out to one of the committee named above.

I had a genuinely great time at this one, and I'm already looking forward to next year.