Category: web 2.0

Liveblogging from CASE: some final thoughts and a request for feedback

My first adventure in liveblogging from a conference is now behind me. While it was fun — and challenging — to try to capture the immediacy of presentations in real time, it was also stressful. It didn’t allow me to soak up some of the knowledge that was shared, and since I couldn’t be at all of the sessions, the dispatches from Philly gave an incomplete picture about the conference.

(Also, for this old-school reporter used to scribbling down notes and quotes in a reporter’s notebook, trying to compose on-the-fly blog posts on the laptop wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it’d be.)

I hope the nuggets that I and Karine Joly passed along from the conference sessions were of some value to our readers who could not attend in person. Of course, there’s nothing like being there, and I would encourage anyone who missed this year’s conference to make plans now to attend next year’s.
This also was my first experience co-chairing a national-level conference for CASE. This, too, was a rewarding experience, because I got to work with and get acquainted with so many terrific folks in the advancement field. My conference co-chair, Lynette Brown-Sow of the Community College of Philadelphia, helped keep the energy level high throughout the conference (even as she had to deal with some brushfires — or maybe they were wildfires? — back on campus). Lisa Schooley, the educational programs manager for CASE, kept everything organized and on track, and was always, somehow, at the right place at the right time. Our faculty — the aforementioned Karine Joly, Joe Hice, Kathi Swanson, Larry Lauer, bloggers Dave and Dan, Rae Goldsmith from CASE, and all the rest — were top-notch. It was great, too, meeting so many of the conference attendees. I learned much from them in personal conversations and small groups. (I ‘ll stop now, before this post starts sounding too much like an acceptance speech.)

A request for input

To those who read this blog during the conference, and to those who attended the conference live, I would like to ask for some input, either in the comments to this post or via email (andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com).

  • For the readers: How beneficial was this little three-day experiment in sharing information from the conference? Was there enough information? Too little? Too much? Was it relevant? Irrelevant?
  • For conference attendees: What did you like best about the conference? What suggestions do you have for improving this annual meeting?

I’ll be certain to share your thoughts with the folks at CASE. (Unless you request otherwise. Of course, if you post on this blog, then anyone who reads will see your comments. That’s one of the beautiful things about the blogosphere.)

Thanks for reading, and for sharing.

Liveblogging from CASE: The Dan and Dave show

This post is out of synch because I was moderating this particular session so couldn’t blog in real time, as they say.

One of this morning’s sessions — “Bloggers as Journalists and Journalists as Bloggers” — featured two terrific Philly bloggers: Dan Rubin, who has a full-time blogging gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer (the blog is called blinq), and Dave Ralis, who blogs for Phillyburbs as well as on his own site. Both of these guys have enjoyed long and successful careers as reporters but have made the transition to new media. Even so, they still consider themselves reporters and use that skill set in their blogging.

This session stirred a lot of discussion about the role of blogs and other social media in terms of traditional vs. non-traditional delivery of the news. A few of the points that came up:

  • Higher ed PR people should monitor the blogosphere — just as we do traditional media — to see who is talking about their institutions and how. This is easily done by searching for your institution’s name on Technorati, a popular blog search engine/aggregator. One of the conference attendees mentioned that she shares a “blog report” of mentions with upper-level administrators on her campus, just as many of us do with our “clips reports” of media mentions. (A good idea! Wish I’d thought of it.)
  • Bloggers are journalists, too. One question came up about whether media relations staffers should grant bloggers’ interview requests with college presidents. Both Dave and Dan agreed that PR folks should have policies for dealing with bloggers’ requests, just as we may have similar policies for granting interviews with journalists. (Another good idea I wish I’d thought of.) We discussed possible criteria such as blog popularity (the assumption being that granting interviews to popular or influential bloggers might be preferred, while requests from small-time bloggers could safely be ignored), but Dan noted that a post by some little-known blogger could be picked up by an A-list blogger and spread the story virally.
  • Correcting misleading information in the blogosphere can be tricky. If you discover a misleading blog post about your institution, it’s a good idea to post correct information in the comments section of that blog (if it has a comments section, and many of them do). Or if your institution has a blog of its own, you can post the correct information there.
  • We don’t control the message. Neither does the mainstream media. At best, we can help to influence the message by becoming part of the conversation in the blogosphere.

Similar themes came up in an afternoon session about crisis communications in the web 2.0 era. Does your institution’s crisis communications plan consider the potential impact of the blogosphere? The recent tragedy at Dawson College in Montreal serves as an immediate and evolving case study of the power of blogs, the photo-sharing site Flickr and other social networking phenomena to tell and shape the story of an ongoing crisis — and to become a big part of the story.