Live from HighEdWebDev 2007: Unifying Print and Web Publications, An Example from Missouri State University

Monday 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 print and web presence of the Public Affairs Conference and the lessons learned.

• Conference information constantly changed, even after it began
• Conference planners were trying to organize more than marketing efforts
• Communication process was clumsy and disorganized
• Publications/Web Services had to guide conference committee marketing efforts to meet deadlines

Examining these issues and goals – it was critical to identify key components for a suitable solution.

Centralized database
Changes are global and real-time
One version of the content

Examining these issues, particular to this project but common to most web/print endeavors they evaluated the various pros and cons of implementing the “system”.

Pros

Allows client to focus on content before design elements are introduced.
Edited content can be easily pulled for spur-of-the moment publications
Web site does not have to redeveloped from a print publication starting point.

Cons

Required up-front planning and work
Caused everyone to change their normal routines

The presenters stressed preparing a timeline based on prior experiences in managing this event of duties and timeframes for content submission by “to client to action” items for the publications and web services group.

Following these guidelines allowed MSU to create a working model for a series of additional projects that their web team and publications division commonly collaborate on. All in all it was an insightful presentation on departmental relationship MSU has fostered between print and web in additional to the new technology they use to complement that relationship.