Archive for June, 2007
If you attended one of my sessions about Web 2.0, seen my presentation files or read my article published in the March issue of CASE's Currents, you might have a vague idea of where I'm going with the headline of this post. But, if you don't - here's just a quick excerpt from the initial draft of the piece I wrote for Currents: In 1964, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian professor of English Literature and a communication theorist wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In this book, he developed the theory that media have an impact on society beyond the content...
Read MoreJust a quick post to let everybody know that Joe Hice, Associate VP for Marketing and Public Relations at The University of Florida gave a great presentation today to kick off "Crisis Communication 2.0 Week," the first webinar series offered by Higher Ed Experts. Close to a hundred people were in attendance as several participants registered for groups (that's why HEE charges per connection and not per attendee) and everything went smoothly on the technical side of things with WebEx, my new web conferencing provider (I thought I should share the good news... as I did share the bad news a...
Read MoreIf most of your advertising budget is spent on newspaper and magazine ads, probably not. That is if JupiterResearch, an independent firm providing research to the online industry, is right. According to one of its recent reports, published last week, "Media Consumption Patterns: Online Vies with TV As Primary Medium," online users spend as much time online as they spend watching TV, while users under the age of 35 spend more time online than on TV. The press release also points out a mind-boggling fact about advertising spendings: Despite this trend, however, advertisers continue to spend disproportionately on print, with newspapers garnering...
Read MoreThis month, in my Internet Technologies column for University Business, I discuss what SecondLife, the 3-D virtual world, can offer to higher ed institutions. The best way to understand the possibilities of Second Life is to sign up for a free account. You just need to pick the name of your Second Life avatar (the first name is up to you, but the last name can only be selected from preset options in a drop-down menu), your date of birth (it will “validate” your adult status) and an email address on this registration page. Then, the SL client application needs to...
Read MoreQuick update and follow-up to my last post about the technical issues encountered at the free inaugural webinar yesterday. As I announced to all HEE registered members in an email yesterday, I'm committed to quality and want to provide the best possible experience to webinar attendees and presenters. As a result, I decided to make a big investment and signed a one-year contract with a new provider: WebEx, the market leader in web conferencing. WebEx supports several platforms (including Macs) and Internet browsers.
It's been about 2 hours since the first inaugural webinar of Higher Ed Experts ended. As I said to the attendees at the beginning of the webinar, this free session was also a "stress test" for the web conferencing application... and it succeeded in pushing my stress level to the roof. The whole webinar experience wasn't as good as planned (poor would probably be a better term) and I want to apologize to both presenters and the attendees for providing such a bad experience. Four different issues have been identified: The first presentation was done using HTML slides hosted on a server that wasn't...
Read MoreWhile more and more universities and colleges are looking into the opportunities offered by the third-party social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook or by private social networking applications offered by vendors, Elon University has chosen a DIY approach. Over the course of 4 months, a team of four built what now looks like a pretty good "Facebook clone," a social networking application including networks for students, faculty and staff members, alumni and parents: E², Elon's Town Square. I first heard about this interesting initiative about a month ago. David Morton, Elon's Web Manager, will be presenting a webinar on...
Read MoreI first read about Morse Code, the new blog authored by Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News & World Report behind the methodologies and surveys for the America's Best Colleges annual rankings, on Andrew Careaga's blog last Thursday. It appears that the blog was launched on May 15. As regular readers know, I was at a conference at that time, but I really got interested by this move from the publication in the midst of the traditional controversy around the way it ranks colleges and universities. This morning, I emailed Robert Morse to find out if he would...
Read MoreMy third UB column for 2007 is now available in the June issue as well as online: "A Second Life for Higher Education?" 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, feel free to email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com . I'll post the interviews I did for this column in the next few days.
I've been invited to present at Virginia's Community College Institutional Advancement and PR Peer Group Conference in Staunton, VA. I'm scheduled to present a 2-hour session tomorrow morning, but I came a day early to attend the keynote address by Dan Heath, co-author of the best selling book Made to Stickwho also blogs and seems to share my color choices ;-) In this age of viral marketing with social media and viral videos, this book (that I haven't read yet - but will definitely as I bought a signed copy today) looks like a very interesting read. In his keynote speech at lunch,...
Read MoreI'm currently working on a Google Ad campaign for my institution. The last Google ad campaign for the college's adult education programs was run in 2005. It was really successful for some programs (accelerated certification for teachers), less for others. As a result, it has been a while since I spend some quality time in the Google AdWords interface and... it shows as I didn't know Google was offering many more options than the regular text pay-per-click and image banner ads they did in 2005. Among the new formats you can use for your ads on Google or its network, the...
Read MoreA day after the initial deadline of May 31st, Doug Tschopp, the conference program chair of HighEdWebDev, announced the decision to extend the deadline to June 12. As I explained in my previous post, it's very simple to submit a presentation proposal for this great conference to be held on October 14-17 in Rochester, NY. You just need to prepare a short 200-word description of the session you'd like to present, pick the format (1-hour, 30-minute, poster or workshop sessions) and include your contact information as well as a short bio. Then, everything can be submitted online (just make sure your session...
Read MoreThere are just a few hours left to register for "How to go viral with your videos on YouTube: What makes a YouTube success?" - the free inaugural webinar offered by Higher Ed Experts to its registered members (463 at the time of this writing). HEE membership is open to professionals and executives working in higher ed institutions and it's free! If you qualify, you can register at www.higheredexperts.com/register. Once you've become a member, just register online for the free event. Registration will close at 1PM ET today (June 1st, 2007).
Lin Larson on 
Julie on 