Category: blogging

Blog identified as Dawson College gunman paints dark portrait

I’ll be blogging more about all the web 2.0 stuff being discussed today at the CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketeing Professionals. But first, a harrowing example of how web 2.0 activities — in this case, blogging — gives the mainstream news media another stream from which to draw information and to provide context.

Story via Canadian Press:

(CP) – In an online blog, Kimveer Gill includes a photo of a tombstone with his name printed on it – below it the phrase: “Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse.”

The blog, posted on an online hub of goth culture, paints a dark portrait of the 25-year-old man published reports have identified as the trenchcoat-wearing gunman who opened fire on students at Montreal’s Dawson College Wednesday, killing one and injuring 19 others.

Gill’s image gallery, which contains more than 50 photos, depicts the young man in various poses holding a Baretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots.

“His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death,” he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile.

“He is not a people person. He has met a handfull (sic) of people in his life who are decent.” But he writes that he finds the vast majority to be “worthless, no good, kniving, betraying lieing (sic), deceptive.”

The last of Gill’s six journal entries Wednesday was posted at 10:41 a.m, about two hours before the gunmen was shot dead after the college shooting.

In the latest one, Gill extols the virtues of a morning quaff of whisky. Other posts Wednesday deal with topics as mundane as dry contact lenses, purple freezies, and eating eggs and toast for breakfast.

Eerie.

Full story.

Liveblogging from CASE: Joe Hice: talk about the passion

Blogging live from the CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals, which got under way today.

Opening the conference was Joe Hice, associate vice president of marketing and public relations in the Office of University Relations at the University of Florida. A former marketing exec for Harley-Davidson, Segway and Sea-Doo, Hice spoke about a few lessons PR and marketing folks in higher ed could learn from the corporate world.

What it boils down to — whether at Harley or on our campuses — is passion. “It starts with the passion for the product,” Hice said, “and it starts with you.”

A relative newcomer to higher ed (he’s been with Florida for 14 months now), Hice’s biggest culture shock came when he discovered how tiny the marketing budget was compared to the corporate world. “When I was at Sea-Doo,” he said, “I was accustomed to spending $8-$10 million a weekend. At the University of Florida, I won’t spend that much through my retirement.”

But even financially strapped colleges and universities can incorporate some of the ideas companies like Harley-Davidson use to build their brand and brand loyalty — or, in Hice’s words, “disciples” who will carry the message to broader audiences. Harley has its HOGs, and the University of Florida has its Gator Nation. Hice says the Gator Nation launch will begin this weekend. You heard it here first.

More later.