Archive for 2007
So, I've decided to drink the video Kool Aid to wish you happy holidays and the best for 2008 as suggested by a couple of readers in the survey (if you haven't taken the survey yet, please do and you'll get a chance to win a US $30 gift certificate from Amazon) If you feel "jolly" today, tell us about your biggest hopes for 2008 and post your video to YouTube as a reply to this video (or email me the link to your YouTube video). I'll aggregate all the replies in a video playlist and will post it to the...
Read MoreWhile UMR will officially become MST on January 1st, the new website has just been launched and is now live at www.mst.edu (read my previous post about the topic). BEFORE AFTER This morning, I asked Andrew Careaga, director of communications at Missouri S&T, why they decided to do the switch today, just before the holiday break and how they planned to promote the redesigned website to target audiences: We wanted to take advantage of the break between semesters to give us the chance to test the redesign before we officially become Missouri S&T on Jan. 1. We have been promoting the new design internally...
Read MoreLast year, Eckerd College did a great and funny holiday video card targeted to prospective students and featuring its College President, Admissions and Financial Aid Dean and the Web Team, aka "The Web Dudes:" As Colin Fast from Red River College explained in an interview published in a previous post, Eckerd College's card was the inspiration for his institution's own online video card. This year, Eckerd College did it again with another video card designed as a sequel: In this "episode," President Eastman ends up in a very special holiday outfit I wonder who said College presidents were not the funny type?
As announced a couple of weeks ago on this blog, the new web design (and the logo) of the HighEdWeb Conference to be held in Springfield, MO in October will be created by the winner of a design competition open to higher ed web designers. The details of the competition have just been posted on the conference website: Submissions Include an HTML template file with all images, CSS, etc. in your zipped file. If you would like to include example content within the template, please use the 2007 conference web site as a resource. Your original conference logo needs to be submitted in vector...
Read MoreIt's that time of year again. With December come the snow (unless you read this post from California or even better Australia or New Zealand), the greeting cards and this blog's readers survey. Started in December 2005, this short survey has become a holiday tradition at collegewebeditor.com. Moreover, it's a way for you to provide feedback, suggestions, comments and... get a chance to win a US $30 gift certificate from Amazon. So, here's the deal: if you answer 10 very simple questions related to the way you use this blog, you'll get a chance to win the US $30 gift...
Read MoreSince my post about the holiday card of the University of Maryland got picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education's Campus Wired blog last week, I've received a few interesting pitches and links from universities and colleges (please, keep the good stuff coming) related to their web videos. This morning, Colin Fast, Communications Coordinator at Red River College of Applied Arts, Science & Technology as well as a regular reader of this blog emailed me a great pitch about his institution holiday video card: I know Maryland beat us to the punch this year, but I thought I’d pass along the...
Read MoreWith the increasing popularity of this niche blog (and it's not just my ego speaking, the web stats and Feedburner tell me that its readership has been increasing steadily) as well as my regular gig at University Business, I've started to receive more and more press releases and pitches from PR professionals. While a few are really good - more about a couple of these later this week, most of them end up in my deleted email folder. Fast. Very Fast. That's one of the reasons I accepted the invitation to have a look at Perfecting the Pitch: Creating Publicity Through Media...
Read MoreIt's your lucky day... Andrew Careaga at UMR (well, actually, Missouri S&T - starting January 1st, 2008) is looking for his right (actually, left) arm: I’m currently searching for an assistant director of communications to help us move forward as we make the transition from the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) to Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). The communications department coordinates all PR, marketing and branding for the campus, in consultation with several other internal groups. From my perspective, the ideal candidate will be someone who can manage the processes, work flow and staffing allocation for projects that involve small teams...
Read More'Tis the season to be jolly and... to send/email Holidays cards. This year, the University of Maryland has put a refreshing spin on the tradition with a 2-minute video featuring many students, staff and faculty members - and even Alum Connie Chung - gathering for a group holiday photo. Available on YouTube, the video can also be watched from a dedicated website: www.holidaygreeting.umd.edu with some bonus features including the resulting holiday group photo, a photo gallery and a time lapse video of the photo shoot. The video card can be emailed from YouTube (using their new Holiday Card feature) or from the...
Read MoreIt's always the season for website redesigns... Rice University (Houston, TX) launched its redesigned homepage last Saturday: The redesigned home page includes a calendar area to better promote university events, banner space for promoting top Rice stories and a cleaner design for easier navigation. Gateway pages for undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff deliver audience-targeted news and information at a glance. The new design provides a printer-friendly layout, a streamlined back-end process to allow for more timely posting of content and a separate design for a growing list of mobile devices, PDAs and smart phones. The pages meet compliance standards established by the World Wide...
Read MoreIf you a regular reader, you already know that the 2008 edition of the HighEdWeb conference will take place at Missouri State University in Springfield (MO) on October 5-8. However, what you might not know yet is that you'll soon get a chance to (re)design the conference website. Back in October, I emailed the conference committee with a couple of suggestions for next year including the following one: You might be able to create even more interest in the conference website months before the event by integrating the blog into it and giving it a "new "user-generated" design. Since the community has so...
Read MoreToday, Inside Higher Ed has a great well-researched and well-written piece about a trend that will change the face of IT departments on most campuses in a few years: "When emailed is outsourced." (Don't forget to share it with your IT folks!) In his article, Andy Guess, Mr. Technology at IHE, gives a very good overview of this trend and hints what's to come with the help of Adrian Sannier, CTO at ASU: Once colleges get used to the idea of allowing an outside technology firm to handle their e-mail services, there’s no telling what else they’ll be receptive to. Already, “software...
Read MoreTo celebrate Thanksgiving with all this blog readers based in the US, I've prepared a selection of YouTube videos featuring 10 college/university presidents in unusual situations -- i.e. they don't give a speech or read a welcome message. Here are the 10 university/colleges presidents listed by order of appearance: Allegheny College President, Dr. Richard Cook, on a motorcycle Butte College President, Dr. Diana Van Der Ploeg, throwing the first pitch of a baseball game Malone College President, Dr. Gary Streit, featured in a fun spot about the football season Oakwood College President, Dr. Delbert Baker, taking a dive in the swimming pool WITH his business...
Read MoreI've been trying for a while now to get in touch with the person in charge of higher education partnership at YouTube . So, when I saw that Obadiah Greenberg - who used to work at UC Berkeley - was scheduled to give a presentation at a conference in San Diego last week, I ask one of my favorite higher ed bloggers, Deanna Wolf, (who was attending this conference in sunny California) if she could prepare a short report about this talk for all of us. Here's what Deanna emailed me yesterday. On Friday, Nov. 9, Obadiah "Tarzan" Greenberg (Yes, that...
Read MoreThis has been a busy week in the social networking website world. Last Monday, a few days before the launch of the new Facebook features, Yahoo! launched a new social networking website targeted to college students and alums: Kickstart. Scott Gatz, Senior Director of Yahoo's Advanced Products, manages the Kickstart's team. Despite a busy week, Scott has taken the time to answer a few questions about this new website just for you (read the end of the interview for more information about the $25,000). 1) Your team has just launched Kickstart, a new social networking website for college students and...
Read MoreThat's the big question of the day with the launch of Facebook pages, a new feature of the popular social networking website introduced to Facebook users this morning on the company blog: You now have a way to connect with things you are passionate about. We've launched Facebook Pages, which are distinct, customized profiles designed for businesses, bands, celebrities and more to represent themselves on Facebook. And, here is how the new feature was introduced to businesses and other organizations now welcome (profiles have been reserved to individuals since the beginning) to "establish an interactive presence on Facebook:" Every Facebook Page is a...
Read MoreWould you share your crisis 'lite' website homepage with your colleagues in higher education? Since the Virginia Tech Tragedy, we all have been building/updating the web template to be used in case of a crisis or an emergency. By nature, these web templates can't be easily shared among different institutions. You don't want the general public to stumble on these by mistake. So, I got an idea that I shared with the members of Higher Ed Experts this morning. This online community is only open to people working in universities and colleges (not a member yet, sign up at www.higheredexperts.com/register), so it would...
Read MoreI met Jeff Kraus, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Relations at the Virginia Community College System, last June at the conference his organization held for Web and PR folks working in VA community colleges. I was invited to present at this conference by Susan Hayden, a regular reader. At that time, I spoke about Web 2.0, blogs and social networking websites (Check out the presentation slides in PDF). Two months ago, Jeff and his team launched a blog of their own, VA Higher Ed (while I did some minor consulting work on another VCCS internal blog, I haven't had any...
Read MoreMy sixth UB column for 2007 is now available in the November issue (it was scheduled for the December issue, but apparently my editor couldn't wait for an extra month -- maybe, it's because it's especially good ;-) as well as online: "10 Steps to Better Blogs" This article is a good summary of the presentation I gave at HighEdWebDev in Rochester a few weeks ago. If you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email. If you have any questions or feedback about the blog or the column,...
Read MoreBenchmarking is the name of the game in higher education. No matter the type of projects you plan to work on, you (or your boss) will always need to see what's done in others institutions. Website (re)designs are no exception to this rule, and that's why eduStyle, the website that aims to provide inspiration for campus web designers has become such a great resource for anybody involved in higher ed web design. I had the pleasure to meet the man behind eduStyle, Stewart Foss, at HighEdWebDev in Rochester earlier this month. Manager of Web Services at Grant MacEwan College, Stewart...
Read MoreThe University of Missouri-Rolla will change its name in 2 months, on January 1st, 2008. Officially started in January this year and supported by a dedicated blog, the transition to the new name, Missouri S&T, starts a new stage today with the launch of a new website "Hello, My Name is Missouri S&T" as announced in the official press release: The university's "hello" website , which launches on Thursday, Nov. 1, features video clips of UMR students, alumni, faculty and staff introducing themselves on camera. The subjects say "I am Missouri S&T" on camera – or, for videos of groups, "We...
Read MoreSomething big is happening. In several higher ed institutions across the country, some PR and News professionals have started to embrace the conversational age by launching real news blog inviting feedback from readers by publishing - moderated - comments In the past couple of weeks only, 3 new initiatives were launched in different institutions: News & Events Blog at Colgate University. Live Wire Blog at the University of Missouri-Columbia (via Andrew's blog) UMassOnline Blog from the distance learning division of the University of Massachusetts While these blogs aren't the first ones launched by institutions to invite comments (Visions: UMR Research & Name Change Conversations...
Read MoreAfter receiving a couple of emails asking for more time to register for this upcoming series offered by Higher Ed Experts, I've decided to postpone the registration deadline to this Friday. If you'd like to attend this 3-webinar series priced at only $150, you can register online at www.higheredexperts.com/podcasting.
A couple of months ago, Elliot Lopez, Project Manager for University Communications at the University of California, Davis created a survey about CMS (as in Content Management System) in higher education. Elliot just emailed me to let me know that the results including answers from 129 institutions have just been published on his team blog: Initial highlights include: Over 60% of respondents are in institutions currently using a Web CMS Institutions were more likely to employ open source or custom-developed solutions over proprietary/commercial systems Most instances of Web CMS systems are small, centralized deployments of under 40 sites and 40 or fewer total...
Read MoreReach 25 million people via podcasting??? Ok, there is a bit of marketing hype in the title of this post, but I got your attention - right? Besides, it's not all hype since this upcoming 3-webinar series by Higher Ed Experts includes a session about iTunes U, Apple's free audio and video streaming hosting service - with strings attached though - provided to some institutions such as MIT, Yale, Duke, Bowdoin College and NJIT. If there are some plans at your institution to start a podcasting program for marketing or academic purposes, this series scheduled on November 6, 7 and 8 will...
Read MoreIf you couldn't make it to Rochester last week for HighEdWebDev, I've got good news for you: you can watch 3 of the presentations (including the best of the conference by popular vote) given at the conference courtesy of the conference committee, the presenters and Higher Ed Experts (yours truly) for... free! You'll need to be a HEE member (free membership is open to you if you work in a higher ed institution at www.higheredexperts.com/register) and to register online. For more information, visit www.higheredexperts.com/highedwebdev As you've figured it out by reading the title of this post, this free webinar series will help you...
Read MoreWhat a great conference! This was the first time I managed to attend (and present at) HighEdWebDev in Rochester, and this was really time and money well spent. The organizers did a great job at planning and organizing the whole event (although a lapel microphone would have been a great addition for the "soft-spoken" presenters like me -- not everybody can be a 6-foot guy with a big voice) As you've been able to see this year's guest bloggers managed to post about most of the 13 sessions we scheduled to be blogged -- even before the end of the conference --...
Read MoreThe conference is now over, but Dimitri, one of this year’s guest bloggers has sent a few more posts about interesting sessions including this presentation about WordPress. Drew Geraets and Thomas Knoll wanted something lightweight, flexible, and easy to implement when they ventured on building their new site. Their CMS was bulky and not friendly enough to carry the project. So they turned to Wordpress. The result is the beautiful Freshly Squeezed, a student blogger site. With an extra plug-in or two (freely available from Wordpress Codex), they were able to afford just the right amount of control over the bloggers,...
Read MoreThe conference is now over, but Dimitri, one of this year's guest bloggers has sent a few more posts about interesting sessions including this presentation by another guest blogger, Seth Meranda, and his colleagues from UNL. What happens when you bring open source philosophy to your campus redesign? Success, according to the team presentation by University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Bob, two Aarons, Brett, and my fellow guest-blogger Seth delivered a sizzling-hot recipe at this year's conference: take one part chancellor's buy-in, one part spirit of collaboration, commonly found in open-source projects, and one part stoic patience. Gently fold in elbow grease, and...
Read MoreYesterday morning, Beck Tench of Duke University lead an engaging presentation on new alternatives in strategic planning for the web. The session was covered by Jonathan Steffens. This is his third post. Beck begins the presentation posing a question: “what makes a user experience compelling” and humbly admits that she does not have the answer, but that doesn’t stop her from unloading an arsenal of tools and techniques to enable you and your institution to find out. Beck then wastes no time in breaking down these techniques, starting with to approach the theory of classifying ideas and concepts. To best illustrate...
Read MoreMonday afternoon, a trio of presenters from Missouri State University (Stacey, Sara, & Amy ) stood before a packed room to discuss a topic breaking in University publication offices across Higher Education: "Unifying Print and Web Publications." Jonathan Steffens covered this session. This is his second post. MSU was given the task of merging print and web protocols for a Public Affairs conference that they sponsored between multiple Universities. They break it down simply as a process shown as: Client ----> Publications ------> Web Services They followed by outlining the lessons they each learned throughout the creation of the...
Read MoreMark Heiman from Carleton College presented a session titled "Social Networking Software: Meeting the Expectations of the MySpace Generation." The presentation was covered by one of this year's guest blogger. This is Martine Lafleur's second post. Mark Heiman’s presentation kept me on my toes with great graphics, just the right touch of cynicism and good storytelling (not just slide reading). Here is the story: After hearing from their Alumni service the dreaded words: "we are meeting with vendors" to add interaction capabilities to the web site, the web team at Carleton College pleaded to have time to evaluate the project before anything...
Read MoreThis year's conference isn't over yet, but the organizers have just announced (just after Mike Dame's keynote at lunch) that the 2008 edition will take place on October 5-8, 2008 (the date is still tentative - they said though) at Missouri University State in Springfield, MO. The really good news is that the Internet connection should be better next year, because universities definitely do a better job than hotels when it comes to connectivity for web conferences.
Lin Larson on 
Julie on 