Category: communication

UMR’s name change conversation is about to become more public

Some of you have read on this blog (or on Karine Joly’s, or Robert French’s) about the proposal to change the name of my employer, the University of Missouri-Rolla. At 11 a.m. today, that discussion will become more public. That’s when UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III plans to announce the recommended he has submitted to the University of Missouri and its board of curators.

Since sending out a media advisory Thursday afternoon, the Name Change Conversations blog has been moderately abuzz, with traffic surging from an average of about 110 unique visitors per day to 353 yesterday. Commenting has heated up, too, but some of those comments — from “insiders” who have gotten the scoop — are being held until after the 11 a.m. announcement.

Fun times to be a higher ed blogger.

Limited-time offer: Karine Joly’s ‘Currents’ article is online through April 15

Kudos to CASE for offering Karine Joly‘s primer about social media and the web, User Generation, for free until April 15. The article appears in the March 2007 issue of CASE’s magazine, Currents. Usually, the mag’s online contents are accessible only to CASE members. (If you aren’t a member, you should consider joining, as CASE is the world’s largest professional organization for institutional advancement people — not just those in the communications and marketing field, but also those working in alumni relations and development.)

Karine’s article includes some steps to “You 2.0” — i.e., ways to get digitally connected. Good advice.

An aside: I also discovered that my February 2006 Currents article, Changing Lanes, is also accessible. For how long? I don’t know. But it’s a brilliant albeit now-dated analysis of social media’s impact on education. How dated is it? I mention Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom in the same sentence. How brilliant? For me, not bad. But not as brilliant as Karine’s. You should read her story first.