Archive for December, 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...
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