Month: October 2007

Friday Five: Purging the RSS feeds, again

It’s Homecoming Weekend here at UMR. I’m getting ready to meet with the alumni association’s communications committee this morning, then this afternoon I’ll be helping departments set up tables outside the student center. It’ll be a lovely Ozarks fall day, and I’m looking forward to it.

But you, dear reader, are not interested in that. You have your own Homecoming Weekend coming soon. So, here’s some stuff that’s been clogging my RSS feeds lately — just five of the hundreds of items that may or may not be worth your time. Enjoy.

  • Findings from A List Apart‘s latest web design survey. This is fresh stuff, folks. “The findings we present here have never been seen before, because until now, no one has ever conducted public research to learn the facts of our profession. This report is not the last word on web work; it is only the beginning of a long conversation. Read, reflect, and let us hear from you.”
  • How Blog‘s take on Motivating creative types talks about peer recognition. (And they thought we were only in it for the money.)
  • Generation Q: a new label for college students That’s what NYT columnist Tom Friedman’s calling them nowadays. The “Q” stands for “quiet,” because they’re “the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad. But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good.” Via Brad J. Ward at SquaredPeg, who wonders: “Who gets to name these generations, anyways? … Are they the same people who name hurricanes?”
  • 10 myths to include in crisis planning, from SimpsonScarborough.
  • Radiohead and the mediocre middle is Seth Godin’s take on Radiohead’s recent launch of its new album online as a “pay-what-you-want” mp3. What he has to say about the music industry — and business in general — connects nicely with the disruptive marketing concepts discussed here last weekend and over at Zen and the Art of Higher Education Marketing. Godin’s point, worth pondering this weekend:

    Most industries innovate from both ends:

  • The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.
  • The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.
  • It’s the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.

    • Could the same be said for education?

    Have a good weekend.

    Colgate news site moves to blog format

    Colgate University recently switched its news site over to a blog format, using Movable Type. The university’s news release claims the move will help raise the profile of Colgate news stories (via tagging, etc.) while encouraging more interaction and making the site more usable. Charlie Melichar, Colgate’s vice president for public relations and communications (and a fellow blogger), expounds on those ideas in a recent email:

    All Colgate news, from the headlines to our feeds are now being populated by the blog’s content. We’re excited about all the benefits of tagging, categories, flickr photos, feeds, etc. but I think much of the proof will be in the pudding of the comments. I know of plenty of college news sites using blog platforms, but I haven’t yet seen many (any?) fully opened as blogs to this point. So, I think we’re either at the front of the curve or just plain crazy. We shall see.

    I applaud Melichar and the entire Colgate PR/comm team for taking this step. It’s something we’ve been talking about on our campus, but we haven’t yet made that leap. It would make sense, though, as we’ve been using Movable Type for our blogs since we launched the first one, Visions, in February 2006. We’ve found MT to be a solid blogging platform. We’ve even been toying with the idea of also moving our news site into Movable Type, as we recently did with our alumni magazine. I’ll be keeping a close watch on Colgate’s news site to see how the new format works.

    Regarding comments: What we’ve found is that our posts with the heaviest comment traffic occur when something is either controversial — such as when we announced a proposed new name for our university (44 comments, many of them bordering on hostile) — or something the campus community can rally around, such as when one of our students tried to break a collegiate land-speed record and we asked the campus to post notes of support for the effort (15 comments ensued). I hope the folks at Colgate receive plenty of comments, but remember that even some of the most influential blogs only receive a handful on some posts.

    Getting faculty buy-in for branding

    Most of us have dealt with faculty skeptics who think branding and marketing is just a bunch of hooey. So, how do you get such skeptics to buy in to a branding initiative on your campus? The brand strategy blog Whisper offers this advice from a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article:

    Faculty members can…be pivotal in urging a college to move to the next level in its…trajectory. They usually react badly to the commercial connotations in the word “branding,” but they will dedicate themselves to strengthening its near synonym: reputation.

    So, when approaching faculty about branding, talk about your institution’s reputation. You’re likely to get better buy-in.

    Via Snark Hunting‘s latest Naming and Branding in the Blogs roundup.

    From Mrs. Doubtwire to Techs in the City: Regina Lewis tells us what wired women want

    For those of you who think techno-gadgetry is a man’s domain, think again. The average woman owns five electronic gadgets, according to a CBS report about how women approach technology.

    And lest you think classifying tech users into cute, condescendingly termed demographic niches is also solely a male pursuit, think again there too. For the Saturday Early Show segment about women and technology, CBS talked to AOL’s trend-spotter, Regina Lewis, for insight into what wired women want. Lewis breaks the gender into three groups and gives each its own punny label:

    First, there’s Mrs. Doubtwire. This is not a male posing as a female in an AOL chat room. The Mrs. Doubtwires of the world are “a little slow to warm up to technology,” Lewis says on her blog. They’re focused mainly on “doing the email thing and maybe a little web surfing, but not much more.” But as “the family memory keepers,” the Mrs. Doubtwires are likely to purchase digital cameras.

    Next comes the pragmatechs, the “more career-focused and more tech-savvy” women. “The key for this group of users is functionality. How will the device make their life better, easier, more productive? One thing tech companies are finding out — if you’re going to appeal to this crowd — you have to do more than make a product in pink or candy apple red.”

    Finally, there’s the group Lewis calls — brace yourselves — Techs in the City. These are “the tech trendsetters” who see gadgets as fashion accessories. “The ‘cute’ or ‘cool’ factor plays a very big role with them,” Lewis writes. “Tech gadgets are as much something they wear as something they use.” In addition, these users “are big into text messaging and social-networking — think Myspace.”

    So, there you have it: tech-savvy women fit into three neat categories.