The polls have closed and all votes have been added up and counted. In the end 75 of you blessed us with your vote. We listened. With little to no deliberating by the staff we are pleased to announce that we are adding the three highest vote getters to the staff! We would like to thank all the guest bloggers, readers, and voters for making this contest a wonderful success.

Once again I encourage everyone to keep sharing, writing and blogging. As always we will continue to accept guest posts (actually have an interesting one going up this week) and if anyone has something that you would like to post to .eduGuru and share with the community please don’t hesitate to contact us.

So in no particular order please welcome Nick DeNardis, Nikki Massaro Kauffman, and Rachel Reuben to the .eduGuru Staff! Hopefully you already know these three wonderful writers and contributors, but just in case you don’t here are a few words about each.

Nick DeNardis

Nick DeNardis is the Associate Director of Web Communications at Wayne State University.  Nick writes on the Universities Web Communications Blog and is the mastermind behind EDU Checkup video blog which strives to “turn Web Workers into Web Rockstars”!  Nick has a personal blog and you can also connect with him through Twitter or LinkedIn. Nick just married a beautiful girl this July.

He is also the owner of the PHPSimpl framework. Web standards and simplicity advocate. He strives for elegant solutions to complex problems. Freelance Web Designer and Developer with emphasis on accessibility and optimization for high load environments.

Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Nikki Massaro Kauffman is the Technology Training Coordinator for Penn State University Libraries.  Nikki blogs at In Clear Text and you also connect with her through Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or SlideShare.  Nikki has been a programmer, a database specialist, a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor, a continuing education instructor for seniors and adults with disabilities, and a high school English and communications technology teacher.

She is a mother of two adorable children, ages 5 and 3. So naturally two of her hobbies are taking pictures and scrapbooking revolve around them.

In the days when she had time for gaming (before kids), she spent some time playing RPG and strategy games. Now she mostly just reads and follows TV when sye can claim it after the kids go to sleep and is quite a fan of the IT Crowd, Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Heroes.

Rachel Reuben

Rachel Reuben is the Director of Web Communication & Strategic Projects at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she has worked for the past 11 years. She was the college’s first full-time Web developer, and now oversees the Web Management staff. In her tenure she has co-developed a home grown portal, implemented the OmniUpdate CMS, launched the Luminis portal, redesigned the college’s main Web site five times (going on six next year!), implemented the college’s first student blogging program, selected and supports the e2campus mass notification system, and serves as an active member of the Emergency Response Team and the President’s Brand Marketing Taskforce. Rachel manages the college’s Welcome Center, as well as the Distinguished Speaker Series.

She has been a guest blogger on CollegeWebEditor.com, as well as .eduGuru, where she published her research paper: The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications: A Guide for Professionals in Higher Education this past summer and live blogged the Stamats Integrated Marketing conference in November. She is an avid Twitterer and is currently pursuing her MBA in marketing and management from SUNY New Paltz.

Survey Results

The second part of the survey provided some interesting insight to us as we continue to evolve this site. The way people consume content on our site ranges, but the majority scan posts as would be expected with any writing online. This reinforces the need to keep content concise with the use of proper markup, lists, and highlighting key points in bold. As far as frequency of posts over 80% of you felt like we post just right.

Social Media was interestingly enough the #1 way that many of you were first introduced to .eduGuru. This shows the power of getting engaged in Social Media and its ability to help to “get found”.

Over 80% of you find live blogging posts “Helpful & informative” which shows the need for continuing to offer this service. Honestly I’m one of the minority that don’t get a lot from these sort of posts so was curious about how others felt and overwhelmingly this is a service that you desire and we are listening and will continue to strive to provide this service as best we can.

Over 85% were either “Completely fine” or “Ok, but only as long as it doesn’t distract” with .eduGuru having advertising on the site. There was serious interest in consulting work w/ .eduGuru staff with “Possibly” getting the most votes at 35%. Even with these encouraging signs for ways to possibly grow the site over two thirds of you were not interested in a monthly charge for premium content. This knowledge is all very valuable as we continue to grow the site and think of new directions that will require money to do.

Finally the remaining question on the survey asked you to tell us subjects you would like to see more coverage. There was an interesting range of responses to that one and as enticing having coverage on “Michael’s sexy ass” would be… well… I’m just not going to go there. Others that I’m posting to hopefully get picked up by one of the staff.

• Best Practices
• New Uses for Social Networking (Check out the Social Marketing section for starters)
• Content, user centered design, usability
• Conference experiences…which ones are good to go to (I did compare HighEdWeb and eduWEB in this reflection)
• Development, Programming

So we are listening everyone and I’m excited to keep moving forward.