Awards

UPDATE: Tony Dunn has just announced that he decided to put his blog, TFRL, to sleep after 2 people had complained about it to his CIO. That’s a very sad day for the higher ed blogosphere and the higher ed web community. The blog is still nominated for the award, so feel free to vote for it.

Tales from Redesignland: RIP TFRL

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: Tales from Redesignland
First blog post: Welcome to Redesignland
Number of posts since you started: 57
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: Unknown
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: Unknown

Authored by Tony Dunn, Tales From Redesignland is a very different higher ed blog – a cartoon chronicling the road to web redesign happiness in the land of committees.

1) Why did you start your blog?

I originally started my blog in December 2007 as a way to explain and document the redesign process at our university in a humorous format, but it quickly became a place for me to express some of the strange and occasionally frustrating things I’ve experienced as a higher ed web worker.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

Well, it’s a cartoon, so there’s that. Also, I think that it expresses – in a humorous way – some of the frustrations and craziness that all higher ed web workers experience during the course of their jobs. It isn’t a blog about how to do your job better, or about best practices or trends in the industry; it’s about what the lives of web workers in higher ed are like and the stranger-than-fiction realities of our jobs.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

The most popular posts comment-wise are “The Home Page Redesign Committee Meeting” and “You Think I’m Kidding”, which I think express people’s frustrations with committees. As to a favorite post, it’s hard to pick since I’ve lived them all, but as far as recent posts, I particularly like “If Star Trek Was Like Us.”

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: SquaredPeg.com
First blog post: “Welcome to SquaredPeg”
Number of posts since you started: 210
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: 835
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: 73,627 absolute unique visitors

Authored by Brad Ward, SquaredPeg is the blog that uncovered the so-called Facebook Gate in December 2008.

1) Why did you start your blog?

SquaredPeg.com was started in September 2007. It was originally intended to be a team blog between myself and three co-workers at Butler University in the Office of Admission. I eventually took over the blog on a personal level and continued to grow it from there. We wanted to have a platform to share our thoughts and connect with others, as well as showcase the cool things we were doing with technology and new media in admissions marketing and recruitment. I have been blogging in some form for about 7 years now, so it was natural to start a new blog dedicated to my work and professional career.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

Practical advice from someone who doesn’t just talk about the tools or possibilities, but has actually done it in higher ed. I’ve tried to focus posts on projects where these tools have been implemented and the successes or failures of that implementation. I hope that my blog provides practical advice, insight and encouragement to others who are trying to figure out or implement new media and the social web into their strategy. There are a ton of blogs out there that talk about the social web and new media, but they often don’t even use the tools themselves or have any experience with the practical application or strategy of it. I hope my experience and knowledge helps SquaredPeg stand out from others in the blogosphere.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

‘FacebookGate’ is definitely the most popular. There were about 55,000 views in the 5 days after that was posted. It had about 275 comments. Other than that, there are several posts with more than 20 comments and other posts with 1,000+ views. My favorite post is from when I celebrated 200 posts a few months back. It was a lot of fun to go back and see how far SquaredPeg has come!

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: .eduGuru
First blog post: “Look, Ma. I’m a Blogger”
Number of posts since you started: 267
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: 960
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: 65K

Launched by Kyle James – who left higher education to work for the inbound marketing agency HubSpot last January, .eduGuru is authored by a group of six bloggers: Kyle James, Karlyn Morissette, Rachel Reuben, Nick DeNardis, Nikki Massaro Kauffman and Michael Fienen.

The interview was done by Kyle James. Karlyn Morissette – also nominated for her personal blog – chose to answer my questions for both blogs. Her interview follows Kyle’s.

1) Why did you start your blog?

I started the blog as a way to network and share my experience working in an institution. There were some key areas in Higher Education web that I felt like nobody was talking about and were very important. Mostly Web Analytics, SEO, and Social Media (although Social Media has become the hot subject lately).

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

What makes .eduGuru so special is the community of writers. We have six strong writers and absolute experts in the industry writing on this one platform. It’s a respected group and we are all each a little different and have different expertise. It is a great collection of bright individuals who are all passionate about what they do and in the community and I think that comes through extremely well in each individuals posts.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

It is hard to really label a favorite post. Not all the posts were written by myself and each of the over 250 posts has had a special reason for being written. I put together a top ten posts of 2008 the beginning of the which highlighted a lot of the most visited and best performing posts over the first year. If you really had to single out a single post though i think it would have to be Rachel’s The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications, a post that has been passed around the web and even received a link on Mashable.

——————————————-

Blog titles: KarlynMorissette.com and .eduGuru
First blog posts: “Re-introducing myself” and “New Standards for Email Subject Lines”
Number of posts since you started: 234 posts on KarlynMorissette.com – I’ve done 20 posts individually on .eduGuru
Total number of RSS/email subscribers and Number of unique visitors in last 12 months:
None of anyone’s effing business :-) (Seriously though, I don’t give out traffic stats for my blog. Those shouldn’t matter to people as long as the ideas are valuable)

Karlyn Morissette blogs at .eduGuru, but also on her personal blog, KarlynMorisette.com. Both blogs were nominated for this award.

1) Why did you start your blog?

Well, I’m nominated as a part of two blogs in this category so I hope you’ll excuse the longness of my answers, so I can address both :-)

I started (or I should say re-started) KarlynMorissette.com in January 2008. I had previously blogged about using the web to recruit students in 2006-2007. To my utter shock, people actually started reading it! Fast forward about several months later and I was presenting a conferences and getting more attention outside of the institution I was working at and I ended up experiencing what many higher ed bloggers who work for institutions experience – backlash from the people I work with. To make a long story short, I was given the ultimatum that I had to clear every post on the blog with my higher ups to continue it. Those of you who know me or have read me for a while probably realize that just didn’t sit well with me, so I had a few cocktails one night and deleted the blog altogether. A few weeks later, I quit the job entirely and moved on to another school.

The original experience with professional blogging scared me away from the medium for a bit. I moved on to a different job and laid low for a few months, but, since I’ve been a blogger in one form or another for about ten years, my return to blogging was probably inevitable. I originally viewed the blog as a continuation of what I had previously started, and kicked myself for deleting the previous blog before saving the posts from it! I keep coming back to blogging because I genuinely love what I do, and I love writing about it and sharing my passion for it with others.

I got involved with .eduGuru this past summer. Kyle and I had been talking a lot and he was looking to expand .eduGuru to make it a multi-author site. I loved the idea and immediately wanted to become involved with it because I felt that it could be a great resource for higher ed web people. I looked at it as a different sort of publication than KarlynMorissette.com, particularly because it was going to include multiple people from different backgrounds. I loved the idea of working either others, because ultimately I think that delivers a better final product. Plus being involved with two blogs just took my obsession and belief in the medium to another level :-)

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

For KarlynMorissette.com, the biggest differentiator definitely is the fact that I address a lot of things that I think are problems with higher education. I love this industry, but there are just a lot of things that do not make sense and I feel like addressing the problems in a forthright manner is the only way they are ever going to be solved.

For .eduGuru, the biggest differentiator is the format – six different authors who come from very different points-of-view and experiences. It’s not just marketing, or just social media, or just development, or just SEO and analytics – there truly is something for everyone on it.

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

Tough question. On KarlynMorissette.com, definitely the most popular post was the Higher Ed Twitter List, which I swear one of these days I’m going to go back and update! The live-blogging posts from conferences are always popular too (especially my posts from An Event Apart, since Jeffrey Zeldman posted them on his website). I don’t have a favorite post, but I’ll give you my top 3 of the moment:
-A Twitter Discussion on Higher Ed Consultants
-Organizations Don’t Like Experts
-Back to Basics: An Email Marketing Framework

On .eduGuru, my most popular post was one I did comparing the Obama and McCain emails. My favorite post on there of the moment is the one I called Making A Case for Twitter, since I’m on a Twitter-kick :-)

As you’ve probably heard (or read in my previous post), the eduStyle awards include a people’s choice award for the best higher ed blog this year.

As a partner for this category and a fervent supporter of higher ed blogging, I’ve decided to publish a series of interviews with the 5 nominees for this award. My goal for these interviews was to provide a good and fair introduction to all these blogs — and help you cast your vote. So, don’t forget to vote by June 1st and let the most popular blog win!

Blog title: mStonerblog
First blog post: “Academic blogs” – June 13, 2003
Number of posts since you started: 569
Total number of RSS/email subscribers: >1,000 (we don’t track this systematically)
Number of unique visitors in last 12 months: not available due to a recent change in platform

Authored by Michael Stoner and his team from his firm mStoner, mStonerblog has been around for a long, long time – that is in blogging time. Actually, this is the only nominated blog that was started before collegewebeditor.com.

1) Why did you start your blog?

We launched on 13 June 2003. We were one of the first, if not the first, blogs focusing on education marketing, communications, PR, technology, admissions and advancement, and related issues–and I believe we were the first communications consulting firm for .edu that was blogging.

We launched initially because it was a powerful and distinctive way of furthering our mission of sharing knowledge and building awareness, which has always been important to me. While the blog was very much intended to be a collective statement from all the members of mStoner’s staff, I’ve written most of the posts over the years. My wonderful, opinionated colleagues are generally more engaged in client work than I am and have less time to write up their thoughts and observations for the blog. This has begun to change lately–we’re all focusing on the value of sharing our knowlege and insights with others and the blog is the best place to do it. When we launched, blogging was less about building a community around your blog and more about sharing your viewpoint; now we’re trying to do more to invite comments and broader engagement.

We haven’t made a concerted effort to build an audience for our blog or to track accesses. But I know that it’s effective: every time I visit a prospective client, I hear people talking about it and I can see accesses via Google Analytics.

2) In your opinion, what is the biggest differentiator of your blog? What makes it different from the other higher ed blogs?

It’s hard to pick a single differentiator, though I would say that mStonerblog is more authoritative, longer-lived, credible, and has more breadth than most other blogs. Not that there aren’t other great blogs out there (I follow all the nominees and think they’re terrific!), but we do have a first-mover advantage. Here are more thoughts about this:

Authoritative: What we share on our blog is grounded in our experience working on many different aspects of strategy, design, and implementation with many different clients in education (schools, colleges, universities, graduate and professional schools). We have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t; where the sticking points are; what organizations are capable of and what they’re not capable of.

Longevity: We’ve been doing this for a long time, so we have a unique sense of perspective. We’ve seen technology come and go, which leads us to further emphasize strategy over specific technology or solution.

Credibility: Our experience plus the longevity of our practice means that we’re highly credible. People at all different levels in institutions can get something from our blog. I’ve had presidents, VPs, and deans engage with me about posts I’ve written. More junior staff members use our posts to help build a case with their bosses for something they want to do.

Breadth: We’ve worked on many different kinds of problems (admissions, fundraising, advancement, alumni, etc.)

3) What are your most popular posts? What’s your favorite post?

Most popular posts this year were a post I did about how reporter Shay Totten used Twitter to report on the Vermont Legislature’s debates about civil marriage and “Lessons for Advancement from Obama for America”.

My single favorite post was “Just Call them visitors”.

You’ve probably heard about the eduStyle awards. There has been a lot of buzz around these awards organized by eduStyle.

Well, now is the time for you to vote and choose the people’s choice awards in different categories including the two in partnership with this blog and yours truly.

So, without further ado, here are the nominees in these 2 blog categories:

For the Collegewebeditor.com Best School Sponsored Blog Award (including blogs submitted in the student and institutional blog categories – Cast your vote!):

Biola University – Biola Blogs

Cornell University – Lab of Ornithology – Round Robin Redesign Blog

Imperial College London – Student blogs

For the Collegewebeditor.com Best Higher Ed Blog Award (Cast your vote!):

.eduGuru

Karlyn Morissette

mStonerblog

SquaredPeg.com

Tales From Redesignland

You might have heard that tomorrow (April 15, 2009) is the last day to nominate blogs for the eduStyle annual awards.

This year again, I’m supporting the blog category of the awards.

As I explained in a previous post, anybody can nominate blogs in the student and institutional categories by just following the instructions on this web page.

For both categories, there will be 2 winners: the people’s choice and the choice of a panel of judges (including yours truly).

For the best higher ed blog award, it’s even easier. You just need to fill out a simple online form with the name and web address of your favorite blog. You can even nominate several blogs.

In this last case, this is only a popularity contest as the Collegewebeditor.com Best Higher Ed Blog award will only be awarded by a popular vote (but, there’s nothing wrong with that, right? ;-)

You need to nominate higher ed blogs though by tomorrow (April 15, 2009). In the sake of helping you with your picks (hey, especially since THIS blog is excluded from the contest because it has already its name on the award), here’s a list of 10 deserving higher ed blogs (in no particular order) that haven’t – to my knowledge – ask for your nomination yet.

I’ve taken the time to set up the links for you, so you just have to click on the “Nominate it” link(s) and hit submit to nominate any (or all of them):

BUT, FIRST MAKE SURE YOU’RE LOGGED IN IN THE EDUSTYLE WEBSITE.

• Andrew Careaga’s blog – Higher Ed Marketing: Nominate it!
• Andy Shaindlin’s blog – Alumni Futures: Nominate it!
• Lev Gonick’s blog – Bytes from Lev: Nominate it!
• Drew Stephens’ blog – College Web Guy: Nominate it!
• Tony Dunn’s blog – Tales from Redesignland: Nominate it!
• DW’s blog – The Old College Try: Nominate it!
• Michael Stoner’s blog – mStonerBlog: Nominate it!
• The Chronicle’s blog – Wired Campus: Nominate it!
• University Business’ blog – UB Buzz: Nominate it!
• Nick DeNardis’ video blog – EDU Checkup: Nominate it!

If you want to help other blogs to get more nominations, feel free to post your pitch and a link in the comments below. Just make sure you do it by April 15, 2009 – end of the day.

I had 2 announcements related to higher ed blogging awards, so I thought it made sense to bundle both in a single post.

First, I’d like to announce the 20 finalists of the Edu Blogger Scholarship Contest “popularity” phase that ended yesterday:

• al-jamiat.com
• blogs.oc.edu
• christine.smcbloggers.com
• dontwasteyourtime.co.uk
• eironae.com
• elearningpundit.com
• heidicool.com
• highedwebtech.com
• highered.prblogs.org
• higheredmarketing.blogspot.com
• isupportuoregon.org
• karlynmorissette.karlyn.me
• killjill.wordpress.com
• learnqtp.com
• murcha.wordpress.com
• nick.smcbloggers.com
• sekolahbogorraya.edublogs.org
• simpsonscarborough.com/blog
• teachingcollegeenglish.com
• ukwebfocus.wordpress.com

The next step will be for the judges of the Edu Blogger Scholarship Contest (Matt Herzberger, Stewart Foss and yours truly) to evaluate the quality and originality of the entered blog posts. After compiling these evaluations, we will announce the winner of the grand prize – the $1,500 scholarship – as well as the lucky winner of the 2 other prizes – the $500 door-prizes – drawn among all the contest entries on April 15.

You have until April 15 to nominate your favorite higher ed blogs (institutional, students and best higher ed blog) to participate in another popularity contest (well, the institutional and student blogs will be judged, but as far as the best higher ed blog goes, only a popular vote will be used): the collegewebeditor.com/eduStyle blogging awards.

Here’s the page explaining how you can nominate a blog for the CollegeWebEditor.com Best Student Blog and Best Institutional Blog and here’s the online form for the CollegeWebEditor.com Best Higher Ed Blog.

For this last category, the rules are a bit different:

This category will be awarded as a “people’s choice” award only (not judged). Any blog related to higher-ed qualifies. Blogs maintained by judges of the eduStyle awards may win this award with the exception of “CollegeWebEditor” and the “eduStyle Blog”. Judges have no influence over the winner in this category. You may:

* Nominate as many blogs as you like
* Nominate your own blog
* Use any means you can conceive to encourage people to nominate your blog

Limit of 1 entry per blog per user of eduStyle.

As announced in my first post about these awards, the nominations for best websites, web projects and blogs are now open and will close on April 30, 2008.

So, here is what you need to do if you want to nominate a website or a blog:

If a site is in the eduStyle gallery

1. Create an eduStyle account if you don’t already have one
2. Log into eduStyle in the log in box in the right hand column of the site
3. Navigate to the site you’d like to nominate by clicking on the Gallery link in the top navigation
4. Click on the “Nominate this site for an award” button

If a site isn’t in the gallery

1. Create an eduStyle account if you don’t already have one
2. Log into eduStyle in the log in box in the right hand column of the site
3. Click on the “Submit a Site” link in the right hand navigation
4. Submit the site to the gallery
5. Once the site is approved for the gallery (typically within 12-24 hours) you will receive an email
6. Click on the link in the email to visit the site’s page
7. Click on the “Nominate this site for an award” button

I hope that you will take the time to submit/nominate some blogs as well for the Collegewebeditor.com Blog Awards. We are looking for 2 types of nominations:

• Student blogs
• Institutional blogs (written by staff or faculty member(s)

The nomination process is the same.

I haven’t picked my dress yet for the walk on the red carpet, but I’m really excited to be part of this great initiative officially launched today by Stewart Foss, the founder of eduStyle – Stewart who also presents today the first webinar of “Website Redesign Boot Camp” about top trends in higher ed redesigns.

So, what are those eduStyle Higher-ed Web Awards all about? Here’s the answer straight from the source:

These awards celebrate the best work in college and university websites of 2007. Thirty-five categories recognize the most innovative and exciting developments in key areas of higher education web development.

Top-level prizes include best overall website, best redesign and most innovative. There are also awards in areas such as information architecture and video; awards for sub-sites (e.g. a faculty website), special projects and writing. Awards on blogging in higher-ed will be presented in partnership with CollegeWebEditor.com.

I don’t know if there will be a red carpet, but the award ceremony will take place on July 22, 2008 at eduWeb in Atlantic City, NJ.

What I really like about these awards is that there are widely open (you don’t need to pay to get your chance) and have a strong community component. As Stewart explains in the FAQ about the Awards, “Anyone can nominate any site for an award. You don’t need to be associated with the site you are nominating.”

You will be able to nominate your favorite websites for different categories starting March 5, 2008.

The voting for the People’s Choice will start on May 1st and close on June 1st.

For every category (categories will be announced later in the process), there will be a winner chosen by the judges and a winner selected by the community.

Obviously, I’ll keep you updated about the eduStyle Higher Ed Web Awards throughout the process. I hope many of you will submit websites (and blogs), so we can have a representative pool of what’s done in higher education.