Assessment Time

It’s been nearly a year since I initiated this blog. 

I remember sitting in my office on a frigid February evening with my Jedi Web Geek, Jared, filling out the required WordPress entries, then spending the following Saturday creating my first post.

My goal was to write about stumbling around the Web 2.0 world, sharing thoughts, discoveries and other blogs that I find interesting.  For the most part I’ve done that with occasional wanderings.

Checking my WordPress stats, the most popular blog is Lonely Girl 15—Sex, Mystery and Web 2.0.

I suspect it’s being hit by a lot of young males who are disappointed once they begin reading it.  I’ll admit I put the S word in the title by design as an experiment.   But I won’t do it again.  I’m not interested in numbers as much as I am in an audience who cares about the subjects I write about.

Google Communicates with the Dead  and Dead Part 2 and Google Maps Heaven and Hell have been visited continually since I posted them .  I wrote them as a satire, but with all the progress ubiquitous Google makes they just might try it and they just might pull it off.  If that’s the case you can write to that French professor who failed you and tell him you’re glad he’s in Hell.

I’ve written nearly 100 posts and now it’s time for assessment.  Is the higher ed marketing blog helpful?  Entertaining?   Does it contain useful information?

Are there things you’d like me to explore and write about? 

I need to hear from you. 

2007 Top Tens

It’s a warm gray Sunday morning.  Light rain is melting the 10 inches of snow.  Hours are collecting into days that are quietly trudging toward the end of the year.  Al Gore was one of the few bright spots in another year cluttered with drug-dumb entertainers, lawmakers  who aren’t gay and never have been, baby battles and and Paris Hilton.  (I have never seen her on TV, listened to her or watched her have sex.)

The  final days of 2007 are a frenzy of Top 10 lists.  I read them, recognizing or understanding maybe half of the listings.  I always wonder:  why 10?  But it doesn’t matter.  It’s an encapsulation of our collective year.  I’m gong to search  the Net and share as many top 10 lists as I can.  As PR and marketing folks we need to understand the fast-shifting culture we’re in whether we agree with it or not.

First top 10: Simon Dumenco’s Epic Media Meltdowns from the Dec. 17, Ad Age on Line.

Second: John Rash’s Most Watched Shows of 2007.

Both are from Adage.com 

Reality check:  We’re hawking Socrates while the media is serving up Britney.

Okay.  I’m off to find more top 10s.

Dance Your Job

In my last post I mentioned playing with our dogs and how their play is meaningful, energetic, in the moment and graceful. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could combine seriousness with playfulness and turn our jobs into art as the dancing cop does?

Surgeon’s Knife, Time, Revelation

I’m standing at the counter at home finally writing  a new blog after some minor surgery which is taking a long time to heal.  (Several friends and associates have reminded me that there is no minor surgery.  I now believe them).  Up to this point, I’d  gotten through life with no surgery.  (I had 24 stitches in my leg after a chain saw accident, but that was local anesthetic and out the emergency room door when finished, so it didn’t count)
For the first time in my life I’ve forced to stop all regular activities.

As I lay on the couch watching movies, listening to healing music tapes, reading Journey of Souls, Firefox for Dummies, and playing with my Mac, I’m finding this:  There are more important things than college presidents,  (and I love my president).  There’s more in life than the latest technology, the fact that Web advertising will out pace radio advertising in 2008, and on and on.
For the first time in my life I’m unable to drive, sit or move fast.  I have entire days and nights with no appointments or deadlines.  I have to create my own life within the parameters of my physical limitations.  While I believe that we do, for the most part, create our own reality, now it is before me with no distractions  It is morning, the day is ahead, how do I want to fill it?  It was all up to me.
I find myself watching movies that had lounged on my shelves for years.  I read books I’d been meaning to for a long time.  I’m forced into a pace I’m not used to.
And as I get used to it, it feels good.
For the first time I appreciated how frenetic my life had become — news releases, publications, podcasts, blogs, speaking engagements, special projects and meetings.  I was counting my life out in minutes, and the problem was I knew it.
The real revelation?
I’m not alone.  Just about all of us in higher ed or any profession, are experiencing the same thing.
I know it’s easy to say we have to slow down, but now that I’ve experienced a slower pace, I can say it with authority.
We’ve allowed  time and technology speed us up to such a degree that we delete art, entertainment, culture, education and contemplation because they take too long.
I’m not kidding myself.  When I’m back on my feet, I’ll probably get sucked back into the fast pace.  But right now, moving very slowly and playing with our three dogs outside and watching their grace, energy and total commitment to play, reminds me that there’s more to life than the professional rush.
If you have kids, they grow up too fast and every moment you don’t spend with them is a moment gone forever.  The moments you do spend with them are eternal.
If your kids are grown, there’s your spouse, the ever-changing art of clouds, the glorious living mathematics of nature.
I love my profession.  It uplifting, challenging and a continual learning experience.
But there’s more.
A one-hour surgery has kept me down for more than a week, a week of introspection, relaxation (okay, a little painful) and quiet enlightenment.
If you want to see what I actually did for more than a week, see my personal blog.
Meanwhile,  just for the heck of it, fill in the blank below, send it to me and share it with others. We’ll all benefit.
There’s more to life than ____________________________
There’s ________________________________

The Gift

I gave a presentation on podcasting recently.  The host was a small private college.  As a thank you gift, the PR director gave me a lovely spiral bound book with the college name and seal embossed in gold on the cover. Inside was a  pen. 

The pages were blank .  Given the beauty of the book, I took it that it was to be used as a diary.

I thought about that gift a lot.  Because I spent many years writing daily notes in tons of notebooks, it really hurt to throw the book away.   I don’t mean any disrespect to the PR director. I suspect thousands of PR, alumni and development folks are giving out things like these.

And I bet no one uses them.  Certainly few people under the age of, say, 50, are making notes with a pen in a spiral bound notebook.   Even grandparents have migrated to computers to exchange emails and photos with their children and grandchildren.

The notebook drove home the realization that the days of holding a pen in your hand and physically creating words on paper are pretty much over.  That’s not an insight that’s going to rattle anyone’s brain but holding something so regal, expensive and useless made me realize again how much our  culture and way of doing business has changed.

If you give out gifts like this, you should rethink how you’re spending your money.

I kept the pen for my post-it notes.

Yahoo!Kickstart Great Site for Colleges

I recently discovered Yahoo! Kickstart, a new (yes! Another!) social site, but this  one has a lot of potential.  Kickstart is a professional network with the goal of connecting college students, recent graduates, professionals and alumni of an individual school.  Students can search for internships or jobs.  They can get career advice and mentorship. 

It’s a great example of niche marketing.  Yahoo! has identified a need, an audience, and found what I think is a simple, effective way to meet that need.

We all know that networking is one of the best ways of starting a career or changing jobs.  Kickstart, if it takes off, will enable alumni to help fellow alumni, especially, (but not limited to), younger alumni or students.  It’s a  new way for alumni to give back to the university in the form of helping fellow alumni.

The site is pretty bare bones right now.  You create a professional profile, including a photo and (for me at least) start recruiting other alumni. 

I’ve corresponded with  Scott Gatz who is heading the project, who says Yahoo! Will be adding more features and growing the site according the suggestions from users.  Sounds good to me.

In a smooth marketing move, Yahoo! will donate $25,000 to the alumni association with the most profiles by Dec. 31, 2007.

If you’ve seen the new site, I’d like your thoughts.  I’d also like to share ideas on how this site can grow and be even more useful to individual colleges and universities.  Mansfield University has more than 20,000 alumni.  If we could sign up even half, what a useful organization this could be to alumni of all ages.  I would think it could be a vehicle for news  dissemination and for announcements of upcoming events.

I have other thoughts but I’ll save them for a future blog.

Check it out at http://kickstart.yahoo.com/

Send me your thoughts.

Apple Shines for Me

Apple Shines for Me
My 10-month-old Mac crashed a few weeks ago. I called the Apple Store and a very professional and polite service guy who spoke American guided me through 45 minutes worth of help. We both thought we had the problem solved but were wrong. I called the Apple Store, waited a mere five minutes before getting a guy who spoke English with only the slightest accent. He guided me through five minutes until we hit a certain screen.
“Your machine needs to be sent to our repair center,” he said. “We’ll send you the mailing box.” (I don’t know if I’m getting the jargon exact but it’s the message that’s important here).
“How long does the repair process take?”
“Five to seven days. Usually no more than seven.”
The next day the box arrived with very detailed instructions on how to pack it correctly.
I called the delivery agency, got a recorded set of messages which were actually painless and a little fun to listen to as I was being guided through the pick-up instructions. The agency picked the box up on Monday.
When I came home from work Thursday, I had my Mac back.
I it hooked and it worked like new. They had replaced the hard drive.
I compared this with the service I’ve had on my pc’s over the years. Wait. There is no comparison.
I bought the Mac because I was sucked in by the “cool” factor and I needed a tax write-off.
The lesson for me? “Cool” is cool but the friendly, efficient staff and lightning service makes me an Apple fan for a long, long time.
It applies to all of us in higher ed whether we’re in marketing or dealing with an individual student with a problem.
Apple folks made me feel important, that my problem was important and then they delivered on the service surprisingly fast.
How often do we happily surprise our customers?
I think not often enough.
Apple did.
And in today’s society, where customers have blogs, podcasts and videos, it’s more important than ever, whether you sell computers or education.

Students: Broadband, Not Books

I recently had a brief conversation with a senior administrator I respect a lot.  He cares deeply about the university and the students.  He’d just came out of a cabinet meeting which was dominated by a discussion about how our students want more broadband.  “They’re upset about not having enough,” he said. “They’re really upset.  It’s going to cost a lot to give them what they want.”
“They need it to download music, movies and do gaming,” I said.
He nodded  his head slowly in dismay,” mumbling something about it being “sad.”
A hour later I read  the student newspaper editor’s editorial.  It was an angry piece about the fact that the student newspaper was read  faithfully by faculty, staff and administration but not by students.  This is a  girl who last year was very upbeat, positive and proactive.  Why don’t students read  and get involved?  She asked.  She wanted feedback, even if it was not positive.  It was a desperate plea by a committed student who can’t understand why others don’t share her enthusiasm.
I thought a  lot about these two people and their feelings.  The administrator is recognized and respected nationally in his field.  I can understand his feelings of dismay but I don’t agree with them.  To have those feelings at all is to cling to a way of life that’s history.  As a PR person I need to say to him — and I will — “forget the days when people read and made little notes and wrote long term papers in a achingly boring passive voice about something they didn’t care about.  That’s gone.  Better understand who our audience is and how they live and communicate.  Find the money for the broadband because students our customers and if they’re unhappy, they’ll find other colleges to attend.
It’s expensive?  Well, if we invest in it and retain a few more students, it pays for itself.
The tension here is that we’re a university and should instill good study and research habits.  At the same time we have to understand our customers.  Clinging too much to the past doesn’t pay the bills.
I’m going to call the student newspaper editor and ask her to lunch.  I’ll tell her I have a lot of respect for her passion and to keep doing  it with a passion because if she pursues her beliefs with that kind of commitment, she will succeed. Maybe not with the newspaper, but in life.  I’ll tell her to not be negative but to accept the fact that her audience is the faculty, staff and administration.  It’s a solid and appreciative audience.  Her readers remain steady and consistent, which is more than The New York Times can say.
I’ll tell both these persons, separated by two generations and frustrated by the same thing, that we’re in a huge time of transition.  It’s exciting.
Listen to the audience.
Learn how the new conversation is being conducted.
Embrace  it and move forward.

Kubrik, The Chronicle and Sweet Corn

It’s Sunday afternoon. The thermometer reads 110 degrees in the sun but it’s probably more like 95. I sit on the deck that overlooks a patio my wife and I built from field stone given to us by the former Mansfield University admissions director, a dear friend who died in his late 50s of lung cancer.
I’m reading a treatise on Stanley Kubrik in the August 3, 2007 issue of the Chronicle. Before that I skimmed through the latest issue of Mac World.
I’m relating this because I cannot bring myself to read any professional blogs or listen to any podcasts today. I’m on overload.
I’ve spent three weeks, night and day (hence the slow down on blog postings) writing a five-year marketing plan, of which, the first two, maybe three years, are valid. The incredible pace of developing technology and changing methods of communication prevent detailed planning for five years down the road.
The iPod was introduced in October 2001 by one of the most innovative labs in the world. YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former Pay Pal employees. Both revolutionized communications in equal measures.
The all-too-common question in PR is: what’s next?
I don’t even want to think about it. I’m trying to keep up with: what’s now?”

At the same time, I’m still formulating the creation of an interactive, multimedia news site, a new blog totally different than anything out there at this point, and more videos. Our “video portraits” are doing a respectable job and I think will gain in popularity as we progress.

But right now I’m on overload. I won’t say “burned out.” I will say I need to focus on non higher ed things while I recharge.

Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed, burned out or on low charge? What do you do to re-energize?

(And believe me, it’s not a rhetorical question!)

Now, I’m going to grill some burgers, boil the sweet corn and slice the tomatoes that I bought at the local farm market, and enjoy an August dinner on our deck with my family.

I Didn’t Cheat on Lonely Girl

I unwittingly*  seemed to have stumbled upon the perfect headline magnet.
It was my last post.  The headline: Lonely Girl: Sex, Mystery and Web 2.0.  It’s pulled in the most downloads of any of my 67 posts.
Makes sense.  Let’s take a look at it.  Let’s tear  it apart,  analyze the hell out of it and leave it in helpless shards as academia loves to do.
Lonely Girl:  something straight out of a spam tag so I’m sure I attracted a lot of lonely guys; probably a bunch of lonely girls, too.
Sex: the most popular word on the web.  What the hell, the most popular word in our culture.
Mystery: everyone loves a good mystery, especially when it involves lonely girls and sex.
Web 2.0:  This may have attracted a couple people.  When I introduce Web 2.0 into a conversation on campus, I am still met with questioning looks. When I explain it, the questioning look turns into a glassy-eyed stare.  It’s  big in the Wired world, friends, but it has some long, lonely miles to go to become a pop culture phrase.
So, while I attracted a lot of new readers, I don’t think they’re ones who will come back.  But it taught me a lesson.  If you want to really start your search engines, keep your list of red words handy, toss one into a headline, tag it, and watch the readers roll in, whether you want them or not.
It makes me want to write a boiler plate disclaimer: “I feel your disappointment.  My apologies.  It’s just one of the hazards of Web 2.0.  BTW, Lonely girl is 20-something and sex really is a mystery.”

*Who does anything wittingly?   (I wittingly discovered that my friend’s wife was cheating on him with his mistress).