Archive for October, 2007
Something 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.
This morning I really wanted to attend two sessions scheduled at the same time: Jay Collier's presentation and the panel discussion about crisis communications and technology. So, when I saw Josh Tysiachney from Allegheny College in the "Social Applications and Content" room, I asked him if he could do me a big favor and blog Jay's session. Josh stood up to the challenge and became a guest blogger on the fly. This is Josh's post Jay Collier from Bates College provided an informative session on why it is important for higher ed web professionals to be aware of what's being said...
Read MoreSo, I gave my presentation about my 12-step program to better blogging and managed to turn it into some kind of stand-up comedy act this afternoon at HighEdWebDev as Vista - loaded on the laptop made available to the presenters by the organizers (note to self and tip for all of you: if you have your laptop, use it) - started to go through my slides... automatically. At the beginning, I wondered if it was some kind of cool feature (yeah, I know, "cool feature" with a Microsoft product - what was I thinking?) bringing up the next slide on an...
Read MoreMartine Lafleur, one of this year's guest bloggers, covered the session presented by Doug Ruschman from Xavier University: "Making the Case for Resources for Web Services. This is Martine's first post. Doug Ruschman from Xavier University made a solid case for resources for web services in his presentation this afternoon. Drawing from his own experience: the web services team at Xavier went, in just two years, from a "two guys shop" to a team of 9 people. And, he is still hiring... Today, the web services team at Xavier is a major asset supporting the university initiatives. How did he do...
Read MoreWant to watch the recording of this session? It's available for free as a screencast to people working in universities or colleges at www.higheredexperts.com/highedwebdev ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dimitri Glazkov, one of this year's guest bloggers, covered the session about the Facebook Platform presented by Mike Richwalsky and Josh Tysiachney, the Allegheny College Web Team. This is Dimitri's first post. Presented by Mike Richwalsky and Josh Tysiachney from Allegheny College, this session was definitely a bleeding edge affair. Mike and Josh represent a small fraction of colleges that actually use Facebook. Not only that, they also build Facebook applications, and this, no doubt earns them...
Read MoreSeth Meranda, one this year's guest bloggers, sat in this session presented by Matt Herzberger from the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. This is Seth's first post. Matt started his presentation with The Machine is US/ing Us. Where to Start To begin with, Matt gave a quick review of major social media tools, including MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, Wikipedia and del.icio.us. In addition, he discussed the importance of knowing what exists about your institution on these sites. You can’t control these, however as a marketer and developer you should be aware of the conversations taking...
Read MoreJonathan Steffens, one of this year's guest bloggers, sat this morning in the first session presented by Lori Packer from the University of Rochester: "These Kids Today: Testing Usability with parents and incoming students." This is Jonathan's first HighEdWebDev post. Lori Packer of the University of Rochester, began HEWD with hat trick as committee organizers, conference social director (kicking off with geektastic IPOD War Social last night) and headlining the inaugural presentation for the Usability, Accessibility, & Design track at HEWD. To paint you the picture, it is standing room only – higher ed professionals sit Indian style around...
Read MoreThe first session I attended this morning was presented by Karen M. Hackett and Jim Leous from Penn State University. Both explained how the ITS department at Penn State has moved into the "communication age" (my words, not theirs) by adopting the very disruptive approach of "radical transparency." While IT departments usually are known to work on/fix things without communicating a lot, Penn ITS has realized how crucial communications can be... especially when things don't work anymore. As a result, they've started to embrace this new approach switching from secrecy to transparency, communicating early and often and using new technologies such as blogs,...
Read MoreGeorge Cook, national (sales?) engineer, gave the conference keynote speech: The Read/Write Web. He shared his views on web trends vs. personal outcomes - i.e. how technology brings value to the user: Live, Sharing, Interactive and Media-Rich. In the first part of his presentation, he managed to plug screenshots or mentions of iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iTunes U, Safari ("the smart browser that works with the iPhone") as well as Leopard (Apple next operating system). Cook also talked a lot about Twitter, sharing screenshots on several occasions (Does this mean that Apple plan to buy Twitter? ;-). Before making his official sales pitch about all...
Read MoreBesides the usual conference blogging -- with the help of my dear guest bloggers --, I'm going to try to post short updates using Twitter at www.twitter.com/karinejoly to find what's going on in Rochester.
Several weeks ago, I asked if a few of you would blog some of the sessions they plan to attend at HighEdWebDev in Rochester next week (starting Monday, actually) and I’m happy to report that 4 fine higher ed professionals have answered my call. This year, I'm going to Rochester to present, network, meet potential speakers for Higher Ed Experts' future webinar series and... blog. The help is definitely welcome :-) So, let me introduce this year’s HighEdWebDev guest bloggers (in alphabetical order): Dimitri Glazkov CTO at Estrada CMS, Dimitri described himself as a “Web standards and semantic markup junkie.” He also organizes...
Read MoreMy fifth UB column for 2007 is now available in the October issue as well as online: "Demand Print or Print On Demand?" For a reason unknown to me, the online resource box of the column is offered as a graphic file instead of the usual link list. So, here are these links for your convenience: “The State of Print and Electronic Publications in Higher Ed” Survey - Executive Summary The University of Dallas – Viewbook and search brochure The University of Texas - Scoop The University of Missouri-Columbia Grad Catalog UF ET. Extras Dix & Eaton ar360 If you are a University Business reader...
Read MoreThere's still time for your institution to sign up and you don't even need a campus in SL to participate. As of today, the following 20 institutions have expressed interest in participating in this virtual college fair organized on the Teen Grid of SL: Front Range Community College, Colorado Bradley University, Illinois Florida State University Montana State University University of Kentucky Johnson and Wales University North Carolina University of North Carolina at Pembroke Central Piedmont Community College North Carolina San Jose State University California DePaul University Illinois Palm Beach Atlantic University Florida Vassar College New York Beach College California University of Oxford UK Bowling Green State University OH University of Southern Queensland AU Queensland University of Technology AU Monash...
Read MoreSo, I've played a bit with Photoshop and added a few Higher Ed Experts' little guys to the logo of HighEdWebDev, the great conference for higher ed web folks taking place on October 14-17 in Rochester, NY. Why would I do that? Well, first because I don't get a chance to play with Photoshop so much anymore. More seriously, I thought it would be a neat way to announce something I'm very excited about: the HighEdWebDev Webinar Series. Back in July, I suggested the idea to Doug Tschopp, HighEdWebDev's Conference Program Chair I interview every year about the conference. Doug talked...
Read MoreSocial Networking Website Week kicked off yesterday with Fred Stutzman's session followed by a great Q&A with the audience. A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Nora Barnes presented the very interesting results of a study she conducted this year about the use of social media in admissions offices. I posted about her research in June, but the presentation she gave for the first installment of "30 minutes with a Higher Ed Expert" definitely provided much more details about the results of this survey of 450 institutions. Well, the good news is that if you're interested by these findings and work in...
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