Archive for October, 2009

This year, several institutions have chosen to produce special videos to welcome freshmen on campus.

I’ve already written about “It’s Your Turn” from Missouri S&T, but today I’d like to share the video from Imperial College London in the UK.

At 3 minutes and 36 seconds, this video does a great job at presenting the institution, its history (that part actually is reminiscent of Missouri S&T video’s treatment), its academic programs, facilities and even main research projects.

So, just take the time to watch it, it’s really worth it.

This video was created and produced by Pamela Agar’s team at Imperial College. Pamela and her team members answered the following questions to give you a behind-the-scenes look.

1) What are the goal and target audience of this video? Why did you choose a video to reach this target audience?

At the start of each academic year, all new students attend presentations on their first day where senior staff and student representatives welcome them to Imperial and introduce the College. The staff involved in these presentations felt that they could be more fun and engaging, and so we were asked to produce a short film to open the presentations in an informative but unusual way.

We didn’t need to “sell” Imperial’s facilities to this audience of Freshers (Karine’s note: freshmen as we would say in the US) – they’ve already made the decision to come. So the film was much more about instilling a feeling of pride in our new students. We wanted to grab their attention and make them feel excited about the institution they are now part of. The scope of the film was vast – we were asked to try and cover the College’s history, past and present achievements and what new students can expect – all in less than four minutes! But using video and animation meant we could cover a lot visually as well as using the script.

2) How long did it take you to produce the video from start to finish? Can you describe a bit what kind of effort went into it?

From start to finish, we produced this in 2 weeks. After several initial brainstorms about how to approach the project, it took a couple of days to write and rewrite the script until it was short enough, without losing the desired content and messages. We also spent a day lining up the locations on campus, writing up the filming schedule and ensuring we had three students to star in the films – we used students in the College’s drama society. The film shoot itself took 1 day, and the video production team of two spent 3-4 days in post production. Our web designer developed the intro and in-video gfx and sound over 5-6 days.

In all, five people worked on the project – although not full time over the two weeks.

3) What tools (software, camera, etc.) did you use to create this video?

For the film elements, we used a Sony DVCAM and edited using Media100. Our web designer produced the graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator. The animations were programmed in Flash, exported as mov with embedded alpha channel. The “large” animation of the zooming map was done in After Effects. Sounds were then edited in WaveLab. All elements were assembled in Premiere and exported as one large mov.

4) Any interesting lessons learned in this project you’d like to share with the community?

I asked around the team about this question and one thing they said was that they found that Flash is a great tool for programming animations. The code can be easily re-used for any kind of object which in turn speeds up the production process when having to create loads of animations that follow the same pattern. And a technical thing they reported was that exporting from Flash with embedded alpha channel only works if the file format is QuickTime.

On a more general level, my (very obvious) lesson is don’t leave things to the last minute! We had a very busy summer producing a number of other projects, so left producing this Start of Session video until just a couple of weeks before the deadline. Leaving it until during the Summer vacation also meant it was harder to find students to star in the film as most were away from campus – we were very lucky we managed to find a great trio.

We didn’t leave much contingency time in case things went wrong, and so when our web designer came down with flu just as he was about to start work on the graphics almost ruined the project. Thankfully he managed to complete the project from his sick bed – that’s dedication!

Since I started this blog in February 2005 with its version 1.2, WordPress has become one of (probably the) best online publishing tool out there. Can you believe version 2.9 will be released in a couple of months?

Naturally, as higher ed print magazines have started to go digital or even paperless, more and more college editors choose WordPress to power the online version of their publications.

Swarthmore College Bulletin is a good example of this trend.

Swarthmore College Bulletin (October 2009)

That’s why I asked Nathan Stazewski, Web Multimedia Specialist at Swarthmore College’s Communications/News & Information Office, to answer a few questions about the online magazine and its WordPress implementation.

1) What design theme did you use?

We used the BranfordMagazine theme as a jumping off point and highly modified both the look and functionality. Since WordPress is really a blogging platform, the most difficult part was getting it to pull together content from a single issue. This was accomplished by setting each post’s “publish date” to be from the month of the appropriate issue (July 2009 magazine articles are all published with dates falling sometime in July 2009 even if we’re preparing them in June). Long story short, our theme’s custom coding is very specific to the way our magazine works.

2) How long did the implementation take?

Our implementation took around 4 months. Our Web Designer, Steve, worked on the look of the site and I worked on the backend.

3) What plugin do you use? Why?
The main plugins we use are:

• Akismet – This automatically deals with most spam comments.
• Lightbox – When you’re in an article and click on a photo, this is what makes them pop open with a nice effect.
• More-fields – This allows us to include extra information that WordPress doesn’t automatically ask for (such as Related Links, Illustrators, etc.)

I also built a custom plugin just for our particular needs so that it could check a magazine issue for possible problems before we make it live on the Internet.

4) What advice would you give colleagues creating an online version of a magazine using WordPress

If someone was looking to use WordPress as the backend for their magazine, I would definitely suggest they use the BranfordMagazine theme as a starting point. Also, this project wouldn’t have been possible without a PHP programmer and a great web designer. I think the fact that we had a programmer (myself) and a designer (Steve) really let us both work to our strengths which pushed out a much better product than if either one of us had to do the whole project ourselves.

Do YOU use WordPress for the online version of your magazine or newsletter?
Post your web address in the comments. I’m currently looking for other great examples and possibly more folks to interview.

Have you seen NC State’s Twitter page yet?

Launched last month, it aggregates all the official twitter accounts on a single easy-to-use web page.

NC State on Twitter – NC State University

It looks sharp and really user-friendly.

Wish you could have a similar page for your institution?

Well, stop dreaming and send a thank-you email to the nice folks at NC State as they have decided to open-source the code powering their neat Twitter page.

But, before downloading the code, take a minute to read the short interview I conducted with Jason Austin, Senior Solutions Implementation Engineer NCSU – OIT – Outreach Technology (that’s a nice long title), about NC State Twitter page.

1) How long did it take to create this page?

From concept to design to implementation, we had 4 staff members in two departments working on it for about a week on and off. It wasn’t terribly labor intensive, just took some initiative and coordination to get it done. It started as one of those “Hey, we should make a page where all the campus twitter accounts are listed so people can find organizations they might want to follow.” Next thing we knew, we were working on a design and had the basic site up quickly. After the site went live, we began getting requests from other universities for the code, so we decided to package it up and distribute it.

2) What kind of traffic do you get on this page? Have you seen an increase in followers for the NC state Twitter accounts?

The page itself doesn’t get an overwhelming amount of traffic yet.
It’s had more than 5,000 visits so far, which is pretty good considering we’ve only advertised on Twitter and Facebook. The site isn’t linked prominently from the main university site yet, but we’re planning to promote it much more on the university home page and throughout the Web presence very soon.

The RSS feed of all the tweets probably gets the most activity because it allows people to stay up with real-time happenings on campus from all the twitter feeds and don’t have to actually follow all the accounts. That feed is part of our growing mobile site as well.

The real result is looking at the number of followers from the accounts listed on the page. The page has provided a great resource to put users in touch with on-campus groups and increase their relevant followers (not just spam). Our campus news account (@NCStateNews) now has more than 1,500 followers. It was closer to 1,000 before the site launched just over a month ago.

We should also note that putting this aggregate together has encouraged other organizations to start using twitter. We now have over 60 organizations using Twitter for all kinds of communications.
The site takes all of those feeds, puts them in a simple context, and gives a great sense of what’s happening at NC State right now.

3) What are the technical requirements to run your code for this page?

The code is based on PHP 5 and uses the Twitter API wrapper provided by the Zend Framework. No internal database is used at all. The accounts and tweets all come directly from the twitter API.

After Bates College last month, Duke University unveiled its new homepage on October 1st.

The last design was done in 2006 and had definitely a Google-ish kind of look.

Duke Homepage (2006)

With the new design Duke’s homepage look and feel is less unique, but it is definitely more user- and content-friendly. Stories – told through text, photos and videos – are a big part of this new homepage (like for Bates).

Home | Duke University (2009)

What is also great about this new homepage is that it is running on the open source CMS, Drupal and was mostly developed internally. Ben Riseling from the Office of News and Communication, Samantha Earp from the Office of IT and Blyth Morrell of Duke Web Services oversaw the technical development and deployment of the new site.

You can read more about the redesign in the press release about the redesign launch or the blog set up to keep the community informed about this project.

Ben Riseling was kind enough to answer the few questions I had about the redesign.

1) How long did the whole process took and how did you approach this redesign?
The whole process, from strategy/planning to design to build and launch took 9 months. Duke’s new VP for Public Affairs, Michael Schoenfeld, and also new Director for Brand Strategy, Denise Haviland, set the initial goal that the new site should visually align itself with the branding standards set by our undergraduate admissions viewbooks. Mike also made very clear that we needed to deliver dynamic content, utilizing our many news and event feeds effectively while also showcasing our growing number of videos.

We knew we wanted to utilize internal resources more than in the past and, from the start, involved our central IT office in all levels of planning. Aside from that we followed the traditional route of gathering strategic needs of the university, creating functional requirements and then making design and technical decisions to meet our needs. Despite this being one of the most complex sites we’ve built everything went so smoothly.

2) Duke has already done a lot of work with WordPress, why did you choose Drupal over WP for this implementation?

The main reason we chose Drupal is that it met the functional requirements for the proposed site perfectly. Drupal is also used widely across Duke and supported by our central IT office. Creating editorially rich sub pages was a key deliverable for the new site and Drupal gives you the flexibility to build pages as distinct sites. We knew we wanted to port over our existing Arts and Research sites as new secondary pages for Duke.edu and wanted to leave the door open to expand other sub pages in the future.

WordPress has proven to be a very flexible platform for many types of sites but we had experienced some challenges in how that tool handles everything as a distinct piece of content with a unique url.
Customizing with new plugins then created challenges of backwards compatibility when addressing critical security patches. We still use WordPress and WordPress MU for many sites at Duke but, again, Drupal met both the functional and technical needs for this new site and has proven to be very easy to use.

3) Some of the main navigation tabs directs to differently branded websites, don’t you think it might be confusing for a first-time visitor?

Can you or should you develop a unified visual brand across every unit of a higher ed institution? We pursued the alternative track of duplicating content and links to services on Duke-branded sub pages and this was a resource drain while also not meeting the need of the first-time visitors who really just wanted to find a doctor or clinic or purchase basketball tickets.

The majority of first-time web traffic comes directly from search engines and visitors are entering sites from the basement window vs. the front door, right? Our user testing with incoming freshman has certainly confirmed this trend at Duke. One approach we’ve developed is our expandable brand bar which can be easily added to a site and unobtrusively lend that extension of Duke’s brand. It is safe to say that this is an ongoing conversation at Duke.

Brand Bar | Duke University Spotlights |

Brand Bar – screenshot

Last week, I attended the rehearsal of Dave Olsen‘s webinars on how to create a mobile website for your university in 24 hours or less.

And, I’m happy to report that he has really done a lot of work to make the implementation of MIT Mobile Web very easy through the integration of some Google services. In just a few edits, you can get a mobile website for your institution complete with a campus directory, news, campus map and a calendar of events.

It is really amazing and definitely worth the registration fee with the time you will save – by attending the webinar – implementing the open source package.

Since I’ve received a few requests to postpone the registration deadline of Dave’s webinar series, Going Mobile, I’ve decided to give you a few more days to register if you are interested.

Registration will close this Friday (October 16, 2009) at 9PM ET: www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile.

This 2-webinar series is composed of a live event and a pre-recorded session that can be watch on-demand.

Register for Going Mobile Webinars

Going Mobile: How to build a mobile website for your institution in 24 hours
October 21st 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: October 28, 2009)

Can you find your way in a page of HTML code, use Google services and follow basic steps?
Then, you can develop a mobile website for your institution compatible with smart and regular mobile phones in no time and on a dime.

David Olsen, Professional Technologist at West Virginia University, will explain why and how to build your institutional mobile website in 24 hours (or less) and… for free. He will demonstrate all the steps involved in using MIT Mobile, an open-source mobile web platform, and will share the shortcuts and code he developed to implement the calendar, map and news features for WVU Mobile Web.

Registered institutions include:

• Indiana State University
• The University of Iowa
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Upper Iowa University
• Susquehanna University
• Point Park University
• UTM
• Rowan University
• University of Delaware
• Southeast Missouri State University
• Angelo State University
• Washington State University
• UC Berkeley
• Lehigh University
• Emory University
• University of Tampa

For more info and to register, you can visit www.higheredexperts.com/goingmobile

A frightening and yet interesting thing happened to Rachel Reuben from SUNY New Paltz a few days ago. The Facebook page she created 2 years ago for her university disappeared. Rachel tried everything to get the page back as she explained in a post she wrote last week:Feeling Naked: A Tale of the Disappearing Facebook Fan Page.

Long story short: Rachel finally got her page back but not the 5,000 fans – although Facebook has since let her know that they are investigating the issue.

SUNY New Paltz | Facebook

This incident and especially the lack of responsiveness from Facebook definitely put a whole new light on the current trend to rely more and more on Facebook for communications between an institution and its students…

About 3 months ago, I was interviewed for a CASE Currents’ article about private vs. public social networks for alums. While I didn’t mention the possibility of such an incident, I tried to offer a balanced view on the topic.

The article written by Caroline Mayer, The Inner Circle, has been published in the October issue (but is only accessible to CASE members), so I thought some of you might be interested in my answers to Mayer’s questions.

1. How vital is it for schools to set up an online community? Is it necessary and why/ why not? Are alumni associations without online communities missing out on something?

I wouldn’t say that it is vital for schools to *set up* online communities. However, I believe it is very important to join the conversation taking place on the Web (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn come to mind) as these online communities gather alumni who are definitely passionate about their alma mater and want to engage with their peers.

A few years ago, online community solutions were pitched by vendors as the next (natural) step to alumni associations relying at that time on more traditional print directories. These wall-garden solutions were sold as the ultimate tools to gather demographic data and contact information from alumni as they would allow them to connect with their old classmates. Unfortunately, most of the implementations of these solutions failed to engage enough alums to get the conversation rolling.

Today, while the tools have evolved and more and more associations have created groups or pages on popular social networking websites, it is easier to reach a critical mass. But, this doesn’t mean that it is easier to nurture and develop online communities. It takes a lot of work and time, and associations should only launch online communities if they are sure they can invest the efforts necessary to make them successful.

2. Does it make any difference how it’s done? i.e. should it be a private network where only alums can go making it feel special (and giving the schools the access to databases such as email addresses) or should it be where most of the alums hang out these days (Facebook, Linkedin).

As I said above, the problem with private communities is participation.

Alums (and other constituents) live busy lives offline and online. If schools can offer a unique and compelling experience to their community members, they can definitely be successful with a private social networking website. However, they should prepare to work harder and longer to attract and keep these members interested. If they are successful, their hard work will be paid by access to more contact information.

In the case of the most popular social networking websites, it takes less effort to attract community members as they are already using these websites to keep up with their friends and colleagues, but it doesn’t mean it’s easier to keep them interested. On these sites, alums have other options to spend their time – countless options just one link away within the same familiar interface.

3. Is a private network worth the costs? Do private networks provide anything that Facebook and other networks don’t?

First, a private network doesn’t always come with a big price tag. More and more institutions launch private social networking websites using the Ning platform – which is basically free or cost a minimal monthly fee if you wish to remove Google ads or/and use a branded web address.

Some vendor solutions do come at a hefty price though. While the user experience offered by most of these solutions is very similar to the ones provided at no cost, some vendors have set up interesting link between their community application and other CRM/ERM solutions, allowing to set up a system tracking community members from engagement on the social networking website to donations — or matriculation in the case of prospective students.

Private networks also provide a sense of greater privacy – especially when alum associations choose to keep them totally private (you have to be a member to read AND post). On Facebook, pages – used by institutions to manage their community – are indexed by Google. Any comments made on these pages by a fan – i.e. a member of a Facebook page – can be associated to its author right from a Google search.

4. Is a public network worth the lack of control?

It really comes down to participation and engagement. Is it worth losing a bit of control if people are actually going to come to your party? Probably. Moreover, if schools manage to create communities on Facebook or Linkedin and become their administrator, they actually keep some control – they can delete comments, prioritize the order in which some discussions are displayed, etc. However, there is always a risk of backlash if schools intervene too much and try to censor conversations.

My new UB column is now available in the October issue as well as online: “Social Media Measurement 101: A seven-step plan to set up (and benefit from) a simple social measurement program “

Here are the 7 steps:
1. Define measurable goals for social media activities.
2. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) carefully.
3. Plan ahead and properly set up the right measurement tools.
4. Capture the data at preset intervals.
5. Don’t forget some benchmarking.
6. Share your measurement data.
7. Use measurement data to craft your next moves.

Social Media Measurement 101

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.

Previously AVP of Marketing and Public Relations at his alma mater, the University of Florida, Joe Hice started to work as the chief communications officer at NC State University last week.

What’s really interesting here is that Joe has decided to share his first 100 days on the job through his new professional blog (he used to blog at The Gator Grotto) cleverly named HiceSchool Blog.

HiceSchool Blog

So, if you ever wondered how it felt to start a new job at this level, check out the blog.
You might learn a thing or two along the way. You might even offer some useful suggestions to Joe.