Category: news

Blogging turns 10. Or 12.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal noted that blogging will celebrate its 10th birthday later this year. (I found this out via GigaOM, which points out that it took a mainstream media source to inform us all of this milestone.) According to the WSJ:

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger — regarded by many to be Jorn Barger — began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”

To which blogger Jason D. O’Grady replies, “Not so fast.”

“I take issue with both of their reports,” O’Grady writes, referring to another blogger’s post that traces blogging’s origins to 1996, “because there were a number of people blogging before this and I’m one of them.”

This blog is comparatively young. Next December, around the same time Barger will celebrate 10 years of the craft, higher ed marketing will enter the terrible twos.

Business is booming for one UMR summer camp

[blatant, gratuitous gloating]

We made the New York Times today. When I say we, I mean one of our most popular summer camps, one that lets kids blow stuff up. How much fun is that? And great news coverage, just in time for Independence Day.

03boomxlarge3.jpg
Students at UMR’s Explosives Camp watch a watermelon go boom (photo by Peter Newcomb for the New York Times).

Yeah, I know the timing isn’t the best, with all that’s been happening with car bombs in the U.K. this past weekend. Some people might think we’re training future terrorists at this camp (though regular readers of the Times should know better). Anyway, timing schmiming. It’s the New York Times! UMR doesn’t often get this kind of coverage in the Times.

This camp has gotten some terrific coverage this year, its fourth year. Beyond the Times coverage, explosives camp also made:

  • The International Herald Tribune (carrying the Times story)
  • NPR
  • AP’s ASAP wire
  • The Honolulu Star Bulletin (our first big hit in Honolulu, to my knowledge)
  • A couple of big-time blogs (Boing Boing and Wired’s Geekdad). Those hits in turn spawned more buzz and chatter in the blogosphere.

    But what does all this mean? Were we lucky? Sure, there’s always some element of luck. But the coverage UMR got from this summer camp boils down to more than sheer luck. It’s about having a great story to tell, and telling it well. We didn’t back off from the controversial nature of the camp. Instead, we embraced it. Hence the headline in that news release: Summer campers to practice the art of blowing stuff up

    It also boils down to having a unique story. When it comes to explosives and explosives camp, UMR is one of a kind. And our PR staff, building on Seth Godin‘s famous purple cow theory, has been trumpeting this program as being truly remarkable. Because it is. Ours is the only university in the nation to host an explosives camp. Ours is the only university in the nation to offer a minor in explosives engineering. And if all goes as planned, one day soon we’ll be the only university to offer a degree in explosives engineering.

    [/blatant, gratuitous gloating]

    Wishing all of you a happy, safe Independence Day.