Everything is coming together. Slowly, steadily, it’s all about to come crashing together in an energy producing, gamma ray blasting, supernova explosion. Twenty years ago when the first colleges and universities started getting in to the web (and ten to fifteen years ago when it became more commonplace) the web was a very decentralized and amorphous thing. Rarely was there central control because there was no central to do the controlling to begin with yet. Part of our issue with centralized control now is that frequently colleges and departments started sites entirely on their own to begin with, and now don’t want to give up that freedom (whether or not they are doing good things with that freedom). That’s a problem many of us are dealing with, generally with varied success. Usually the move to an increasingly centralized control can be made or broken on the backs of high level buy in. That is crucial, especially with what I’m talking about, something that can span departments, colleges, and the university on the whole.

The issue I’m seeing is way bigger than that. It goes beyond who should be allowed to put content on the Art department’s web site. Look at your web presence – the whole thing. You likely have a web site that is all front facing and public, right? What about an intranet? Student portal? E-commerce platform? Student information system? Alumni portal? Athletics, fundraising, help desk, housing, event ticketing, blog system… The web isn’t just about a stack of HTML files anymore. This is the problem. Of all of these systems present on campus, how many different people are involved in running them, and how many of those are working together (better question: how many are working against each other)? How many are even under the same authority? I’ll happily throw down a stack of money that says you can’t even name everyone responsible for the whole of your web site. Peter Nissen of JBoye.com talks about some of the reasons decentralized control doesn’t work.

Despite all of this, we still have a core client to address. They might be in different audiences, but they are all web users, and they have common expectations. Is there someone responsible for looking at a housing management system that can say “Hey guys, this system has some serious usability and integration problems, and I don’t think it’s going to be a good fit in the overall web presence.”? I can answer that for you: you don’t. You should. I’m sure there are a couple exceptions out there that have gotten over this hump (and PLEASE share your experience in the comments, I’d love to see what you have to say). We see similar issues with content. Kristina Halvorson, in her book Content Strategy for the Web, looks at the web like a news show, newspaper, or magazine. All have to have multiple content types and sources, all reach an end user, and all need to have a central point of oversight to make sure it’s right. Where’s our editor-in-chief?

The Singularity in this case is user expectation with respect to our systems. Your web visitors don’t care that you have a dozen different systems and applications running to make their web experience happen. All they know is that if it sucks, then you must be failing. They get angry, they get frustrated. They want a simple, seamless experience. If you’re familiar with the MVC style of programming, users want a single, standard view, not dozens. And to put it simply, the systems are starting to get good enough that our excuses for not working towards that goal are getting very thin. It might be hard, it might take time, but that’s our job. We aren’t here to just set something up, slap the school colors on it, and walk away. If you aren’t striving to do better than that, then you are probably falling prey to the very issues I’m talking about.

Imagine if you will a cruise ship. Cruise ships have tons of components that make your vacation happen. Some you have direct contact with, some not. Engineers, cooks, stewards, bridge crew, medical, security, performers, and so on. Imagine if all of these people tried to make your cruise happen without any central management. It’d be a mess, a complete disaster. Every cruise ship has a captain. The captain might not know the fine nuance of the water reclamation system, but he can at least make sure their team coordinates with the right people when there’s trouble or when a common goal must be achieved. He can’t do the job of all 2,000 employees on the ship, but he is a successful planner. He dictates, directs, and designates well. He’s a 3D sort of guy (get it? 3D? Because he dictates, des… oh nevermind).

That’s what we need. Our web sites need a captain. That captain doesn’t have to be a Python guru, or a master of Flash, or a jQuery ninja. But, he should know the heading and be able to make sure efforts are properly and efficiently coordinated. Their knowledge should be broad, but not always deep. That’s why you hire the experts in the respective fields for your specific tasks. Our problems aren’t going to get simpler moving ahead. It used to be a web site was a handful of GIF animations and a dozen HTML pages. Now we have CMSs, tens of thousands of pages, multiple servers, and all that just to maintain our front facing presence. In the coming years, these systems will have more crosstalk, not less. Expectations will increase, not decline. And the complexity of our sites will balloon.

Centralized control might not be a popular idea to a lot of people, but it will become a necessity for success, regardless of how big your university is. That’s my prediction. The alternative risks a mess of code, duplicated efforts, and upset development teams. Without someone at the helm, to use a phrase from Twitter this morning, running your site will be like pushing a wheelbarrow of squirrels. That’s my rant for today. Our needs are going to come together, as users and providers, and we’re all going to be looking for something central to tell us what to do. We’re already near the event horizon of this problem. It will be up to us how we’ll handle crossing the threshold.

Illustration by NASA/Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital Inc.

Related posts:

1. Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive Web presence
2. Reining in the outliers for a university-wide cohesive social media presence
3. [Results] State of the University Web Department survey

The Ask the Gurus page is set up so you can send a question to us. This message will go to the entire .eduGuru staff, and will allow one or more of us to answer your question and give you some feedback that you’ll hopefully find helpful. This might be a question about which CMS to use, a good content strategy, or an opinion on a landing page design. Then, once a month or so we’ll feature some of the best questions we get in a post for everyone. You can opt out of that if you’d rather not share your question, or if you want to share the question but remain anonymous, you can do that to.

We just ask a couple things:

• We’re happy to help out and lend advice, but we aren’t a consulting firm. As such, we ask that you help us by observing the “use, don’t abuse” rule. The simpler your questions are, the more quickly we’ll be able to get back with you.
• We don’t know what kind of volume to expect yet since this is brand new, so be patient if it takes us a little while to answer you.
• If you want this to become a permanent component of the .eduGuru site, please, USE IT! That’s how we’ll know how successful it is.
• Understand that just because you say we can share your question doesn’t mean that we will.
• If you appreciate the tool, please let us know! We want to find ways to better serve our audience in 2010, and if you think this is a good way of doing it (or not), your feedback will help us direct our efforts.

Down the road, besides monthly posts, we’re also considering building a “knowledge base” of sorts out of the questions and answers that are produced as a result of this little experiment. We’ll be watching how this whole thing works out. We hope you like it and find it helpful!

Related posts:

1. Happy Halloween from the Gurus
2. Presenting .eduGuru 2.0!
3. Product Review: My Wishlist for the Lynda.com Academic Site License

Before I dive too far in to what we learned, let me be transparent. I personally don’t feel we got enough responses to be statistically significant beyond the general answer of no. A total of 42 of you answered the survey, half of those were from schools between 1,001 and 5,000 students. Rather than throw away the survey, I do want to share some of the points that I think were of value. Just keep in mind the reality of some of this information might differ from the snapshot we got, so use care if you want to make a case for something and are citing this survey.

Despite the low return on responses, only 5% (2 people) said they do use content generated in courses on their site. That left the remaining 95% in the no column. No matter what, that to me was telling. It would definitely appear this is not a resource you are tapping, and that surprises me. However, out of those that said no, 44% said they had in the past, and 69% said that they would consider it in the future (that number goes up to 97% when including the ‘maybes’), the biggest barrier (34%) being inter-office communication. It would largely seem that the primary reason people aren’t doing this is that no one is getting together and talking about it. Concerns like the quality of results can be addressed if people got together and talked. But, that was barrier number two – according to 31% of you, you just don’t have a department on campus to talk to about this kind of content development, even if you wanted to. Obviously that’s a harder problem to solve.

The reason I started this survey is because it’s a concept I’ve talked about a little with some faculty on our campus. We have interest, we just need to coordinate the effort. As a university, it seems like from an academic standpoint we have at least some obligation to help kids get their feet wet in this environment. That doesn’t mean letting them redesign the home page, but why couldn’t they help with a student landing page, or marketing efforts? We let television kids produce shows on cable, journalists and photographers are printed, and broadcasting majors make commercials for local radio stations. Yet those interested in the web appear to be given no real chance to interact in a live market. I find that very interesting and a little sad.

From the results, here are a couple good comments folks made:

“Using student work is just too hit-or-miss and you have to use what they make or no one will want to do the projects for you next time. It’s like having a contest and using whatever you get in contest entries. You might get lucky, but more often you don’t because it’s a conflict of interests. The students’ objective is to learn the medium and get a grade. The university has marketing goals that don’t necessarily align with the class academic goals. Bottom line is, it looks like amateur work and that’s not the image we want to give in our marketing.”

What do you think, is this right? What if you used higher level courses with clear content objectives directed by the teacher? If quality was your biggest concern, it would seem clear communication and planning could help with addressing that.

“Our faculty are many years behind on technology, even our computer science instructors.  It makes it hard for students here who know more than they do.  They seem really afraid to even try anything new.  They also seem to not even want to continue learning – just waiting it out to retirement.”

This is a more difficult, broad issue. How do you teach the best without the best teachers to begin with? This is one reason I advocate using our positions in higher ed to also be teachers when possible, even if it’s just a night course.

So, what can we learn from this? Well, if you aren’t using courses on your campus to generate campus, you are in the overwhelming majority. If it interests you, work on communication. Don’t be afraid to talk to people about ideas you might have, someone has to start the dialog after all. A lot of people are willing to entertain the idea, so don’t ignore the value this approach to content development might provide for you. Better still, if someone comes to you with the idea be sure to vet it properly. Good ideas for web won’t always come out of your office.

Click here to view survey results. [Download PDF]

photo credit: ekai

Related posts:

1. [Guru Survey] Are Classes In Your Toolbox?
2. eduWeb 2009 LiveBlog – Social Media Toolbox
3. Highlights from E-expectations: Class of 2009

1. Job Security

Despite budget cuts around the country, we are still in one of the most stable parts of the industry available. If you’re an army of one, even more so. It’s not because you’re irreplaceable, it’s just that no one wants to hassle with replacing you right now. Most states tend to also have laws or unions that make it additionally hard to get rid of you after X amount of time. So, count your blessings, stay on your game, and you’re almost guaranteed to be here next year. Having that steady paycheck and the other benefits that come with the job can be worth more than the mere dollar number on your pay stub.

2. Flexibility

Maybe my situation is unique, but around these parts they basically shovel vacation and sick time on us. They can’t pay us like our private counterparts, true, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t compensated in other ways. And that not withstanding, I know if I picked up the phone and said my kid was sick (hypothetically, since I don’t have a kid), or I was sick, or pipes burst in my house and I have to wait on a plumber, I wouldn’t get an ounce of grief about it. In some cases I could even say I’ll VPN in and get someone to forward my office phone to my cell. There just aren’t many jobs that give me that latitude. And maybe it’s just as simple as “I’ll be in at 8:15 this morning because I’m running late.” I’ve had jobs in the past where something as simple as that was a major issue. Sometimes not sweating ten minutes here and there can be a big stress reliever.

3. Leadership Opportunities

Besides the chance for actual leadership classes and such, the number of committees and meetings we are exposed to come with a positive side effect. In the event you do plan to get out of higher ed, you have basically an endless stream of chances to get into leadership positions which you can reflect on a résumé. They might not be glorious or significant, but it still looks good. Use that as a chance to influence the things that bother you. Change the system a little here and there. I’d rather people be annoyed because I’m more ambitious than them, rather than have people think I’m lazy or complacent. A common complaint I hear is that someone’s coworkers are basically just trying to coast to retirement, and any initiative is met with resistance. Use leadership opportunities to change and improve the system for yourself and those after you.

4. Industry Resources

This might not be true everywhere, but many schools have various contracts that allow us to get into the latest, greatest versions of different pieces of software whenever there is an upgrade. When we bought Adobe CS3 a couple years ago, it came with a built in, free upgrade to the next version as soon as it came out. So we effectively got both CS3 and CS4 for less that the retail cost of one part of the entire suite. When CS5 comes out, we can get that at a discounted rate. Likewise, if you play the “game” right, it’s pretty easy to keep yourself awash in things like multiple monitors (I can’t debug without them!), Wacom tablets (you try graphic design with a mouse!), cameras (you want web video made with a pad and paper?), etc. In a lot of cases, we’re some of the best equipped web developers out there.

5. Professional Development

Okay, this one is a little iffy lately. In the past, things like conferences, manager training, certifications, etc have all been at our feet. Lately, not as much. But there will come a time where the tide shifts back on this. And even still, most of us at least have some kind of development options. Even if it means reaching out to someone like .eduGuru with an idea for an article you’d like to write for the community or something along those lines. There’s a lot you can do that doesn’t cost money that you can accomplish to improve your standing, skills, and position (see leadership opportunities above). In most cases, if you go to your boss and say “I’d really like to do X to help me with Y,” they’re very likely to hold the door open for you and give you the room to accomplish it, money notwithstanding.

6. Challenges

I like to think about the things that face us in higher ed as challenges to be overcome. Short or moving deadlines, scope creep, audience targeting, budget silos, you name it. These aren’t barriers, they are hurdles, and the trick is to get good at overcoming them. You do that, and you can make it in web development anywhere, because everyone has these problems to one extent or another, and if it isn’t those problems, it’ll be something else. You need those critical thinking and problem solving skills. I have a job to do, and if there’s something in the way of that, then we need to deal with it. If you do it right, in the process you can set it up so next time it’s much easier to handle. So bring it.

7. You

You are the reason I am here, writing at .eduGuru, and enjoying my day to day work life. You make the UWebD social network fun. You make me laugh on Twitter. You are there to help me when I need a second set of eyes on some code. The higher ed web developer community is one of the most open, friendly, active, helpful professional networks that I have ever seen. I can count on untold numbers of you to walk up and say hi to me at conferences, or email me with questions, or take part in surveys and research. I may be an army of one in the office, but I rarely feel alone.

Bottom line is that I think that while we do complain about a lot of things in higher ed, I don’t think a lot of those issues are necessarily unique to higher ed. We just feel like they are, because the environment we work in is far from tuned in to how agile the web is, and we all reinforce each other since we identify with each other’s pain so well. We end up feeling like we’re riding an elephant in a NASCAR race, but we fail to notice all the other racers are on pacaderms too.

photo credit: cobalt123

Related posts:

1. IMHO 7 Reasons Why Higher Ed Is the Toughest Gig in All the Web
2. Web Leadership’s Role in Higher Ed
3. “Repent! Collaborator,” Said the Higher Ed Beancounterman

First off, I advocate admission offices having their own Twitter account. For one, primary university accounts are (generally speaking) going to have extremely high concentrations of current students and alumni – audiences that won’t have much interest in admission related news or announcements (that’s not to say that admission messages can’t be selectively passed on to the main stream). Also, a separate account can then be shared amongst admission counselors/staff or tied to things like Facebook pages. After all, you don’t want important admission messages to get drowned out by other university information, or vice versa – segmenting your messages is valuable to making sure users get relevant, targeted content.

The challenge is that the audience for admission messages is a moving target. Generally speaking, parents and prospective students will be in the sights of an admission office for about a year, give or take, before either choosing to not enroll or becoming an enrolled student. Either way, beyond that window they usually move into the responsibility of other handlers. That creates certain challenges with measuring success, since follower numbers maybe be prone to fluctuations as interested parties come and go (for whatever reason they may go). The best examples are in this list though not because of their follower numbers, but rather based on how they engage and what they do it with. If you are interested in measuring your own success, look at things like link clickthroughs, retweets, and engagements with other Twitter users. Have conversations and listen; remember, engagement means give and take.

Before you go through this list, I want to just toss out one caveat. I generally find that many of these accounts do one or two things well, but at the expense of others. For example, they might retweet really great content but not engage others much, or they might engage great but not share interesting information sources. I encourage those that are looking to do something similar at their school to look at these and take the best qualities and combine them as much as your resources will allow. Also keep in mind I’m looking at these specifically as they pertain to admissions, and not as a mouthpiece for the university on the whole. In no particular order:

University of California, Davis
follow: @ucdavis
Klout score: 29

Why they’re good: UC Davis has done a great job of engagement. They have been featured in 68 lists, as well as provide 10 of their own (great for passing followers on to other areas once they have passed out of admission’s hands). Their follower ratio is 2.6:1, with better than 1,700 followers currently. I love the amount of retweeting they do, as well as actively engaging with individual tweeters. This is probably the best admission office Twitter account I’ve seen.

University of Oregon
follow: @BeAnOregonDuck
Klout score: 21

Why they’re good: They are doing a great job cross promoting videos through their Twitter account. Extending that, they are also using Twitter as a means to get people into other tools like Facebook and their virtual tour. They’ve gotten out there and are following more people than are following them, and have been featured in 31 lists.

Louisiana State University
follow: @LSUAdmissions
Klout score: n/a

Why they’re good: LSU has mastered the art of sharing (and they’re using HootSuite to do it, so they can measure just how successful they are at it). They link out to many admission related resources, as well as interesting school talking points, and are working the tour angle.

Winthrop University
follow: @WUadmissions
Klout score: 9

Why they’re good: Winthrop’s Twitter account has got a fantastic personal feel to it. The voice of the people behind the account really comes through and creates personality. They haven’t just piped in an RSS or Facebook feed. This also allows them to do a decent job with some low volume retweets and an okay amount of direct engagement with other tweeters.

University of Colorado at Boulder
follow: @mycuboulder
Klout score: 22

Why they’re good: I like that CU Boulder has done a good job both tweeting good prospective student resources and also retweeting other blogs and resources. They are keeping up a relatively high volume of tweets and have drawn in a respectable 730+ followers for it. They also do a “pic of the week” as their Twitter background, something to provide new and interesting content on their Twitter page to keep people coming back to see what they’re sharing.

Drexel University
follow: @DrexelAdmission
Klout score: 13

Why they’re good: Drexel, like Winthrop, is another example of good engagement being provided to their followers, of which they have many. It’s very considerate seeing the occasional congratulations going out to accepted students following them. They feel very “present” on their account.

University of Chicago Law School
follow: @UChicagoLawApps
Klout score: n/a

Why they’re good: Don’t let the low tweet volume fool you. UChicago’s law school has been providing a steady and valuable stream of information to applicants since September 2009, and I think they show a lot of promise for the future. They communicate out where they are in the admissions process throughout the weeks, letting people know when different updates are being released and where they can get information at. It gives folks a nice little piece of insight into how the office is working.

You may (and likely will) have other favorite admission Twitter accounts that you follow or refer to for inspiration that I didn’t list. If so, be sure to take a second and share them in the comments with why you like them so other people can check them out and learn from their inspiration. There are plenty of examples out there, and many are very good for their own special reasons. My list isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but rather should give people resources for inspiring people at their own schools.

photo credit: William & Mary Law Library

Related posts:

1. Imposter Twitter Accounts could be Making Money off your University
2. eduWeb 2009 Live Blog – Twitter for Higher Ed
3. Is Your University Using Twitter to Its Fullest Potential?

Recently, Nick DeNardis did some research into the state of university web departments. This is the next in our series of surveys, and we’re looking to see if and how you are using students to help create content for the web. This is not without a twist, however. We’re not looking at students that are employees for you, but rather the classes that teach areas relevant to the web, such as graphic design, photography, marketing, programming, etc.

Classes provide an awesome opportunity to use coursework to foster an environment of creativity, provide opportunities to the students, and create content you might not otherwise have the ability too with normal, limited resources. Not everyone can keep a full time coder, or writer, and Flash developer on staff. With the right coordination however, you could get far beyond your normal means. So, take about four minutes to help out the community and fill out the survey below (even if you don’t work with classes, we want to know that too). The survey will be open through the end of the month, and the results will be published after the start of the new year.

Start taking the survey »

photo credit: durian

Related posts:

1. [Results] Are Classes in Your Toolbox?
2. 5 min survey: State of the university Web department
3. eduWeb 2009 LiveBlog – Social Media Toolbox

Tuesday morning on the Today show, Marissa Mayer of Google shared the top searches of 2009.  Well, more accurately, she shared the top rising searches.  Topping the list of rising image searches: Lady GaGa.  Now, maybe she’s actually brilliant (or more likely largely messed up in the head), because even though her music is basically crap (don’t argue with me), she’s built an awesome vehicle for herself in her madness.  While we can’t go off the deep end in ways that would impress the Lady, we can take away a few things.

“People are always wondering what she looks like. She looks different all the time,” Mayer said.

She has done a number of things very well.  First, buzz generation.  It doesn’t matter if people care about what she’s doing, they just want to know, because they are pretty sure it will be strange (hint: it usually is).  She’s no Madonna, but what Madonna did fifteen years ago, she’s stepping up to now.  Don’t worry whether or not people will care, because odds are they won’t anyway.  The trick is to simply make them want to know, make them want to not feel left out if they weren’t aware.  Wacky hijinks generate buzz and traffic, and students are an endless supply.  Not to mention that if prospective students are your target market, they will be substantially more drawn to the site if it has flavor.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t celebrate successes, like awards departments win and whatnot, just be aware that information like that is generally very dry, and very dull (though you could and should always try dressing it up), and you won’t hook fish with it.  Don’t be afraid to celebrate the occasionally strange and random happenstances on campus; it’s what gives you character!

Be visually compelling!  Stand out from the crowd.  See the Mayer quote above.  This isn’t news to any of us, but it always helps to be refreshed on it, and I’m humiliated that Lady GaGa is so good at it.  If you are visually compelling, people will want to see what you are doing, and will return just because of their own curiosity.  Examples (all eduStyle award winners, either judged or people’s choice): Boston University – Bostonia, University of Texas – Medical School at Houston: Office of Communications, Humboldt State University- Sustainability in Mind, and the College of William and Mary.  The more a user, any user, is at your site, the more chance you have for donations, enrollment, etc.

It’s all about finding a way to stand apart and stand out.  Lady GaGa’s music does not make her special.  I will line up female singers a mile long that are better.  But she took Britney Spears’ crazy factor, mixed in a little Lindsay Lohan, and refined it in to something that was marketable and put her on the map.  This is all old hat, but it shows just how effective the right buzz and image can be for a brand, and it shows how high maintenance the process is.  If Lady GaGa suddenly started dressing normally and acting like your mom on a day to day basis, she’d lose all her appeal; you must be creative AND maintain!

photo credit: ★ BART

Related posts:

1. Protecting your College’s Intellectual Property on Facebook: Learning from the Class of 2014 Groups
2. When advertising on Hulu (pre-roll ads) goes wrong
3. Page Titles and Meta Descriptions: Your Search Calls to Action

I’ve written previously that higher ed has a huge challenge facing them when it comes to hiring talent because they must compete with the private sector over them.  It’s a challenge because it’s difficult to get the best if you can’t even attract the best.  But, when you can attract the best, you must also retain them.  States all across the country are scrambling to cover shortfalls, and in most cases education is one of the top three money vacuums on their lists.  I don’t care about blame.  Blaming people won’t fix our problems.  I care about repercussions and fixing.  See, there are two problems with the current approach.  The first is in most cases, if a state cuts funding for higher education below 2006 levels, they have to apply for a special waiver or risk losing Federal stimulus money.  The second is that if they cut too much money, they risk damaging the system beyond repair.  What can our system bear?  That’s a question no one can answer, and we’re testing with elementary guess-and-check processes.  It’s Russian Roulette with line item veto.

There’s your rub.  If you are a smart, talented, motivated web developer, and you’re watching the system come down around your head, are you going to just sit there and watch it happen?  Web is an interesting field.  In a time of recession, it’s one area that people still throw money at.  This is because of several reasons like cost shifting and trying new money making opportunities.  As people are laid off, they might be inclined to build a small startup of some kind, and mom-and-pop-shops may try to improve the visibility of their business in the region or expand to bigger markets.  One thing is for sure, it’s never a bad idea to have a few freelance clients on the backburner, and it’s very easy to do, if you know your trade.  A smart person will always keep an ear to the wall in times like this, if only for those “just in case” moments.  That doesn’t mean you want to leave or are trying to, but if you’re flying you’re always supposed to note where the exits are in case of emergency.  Your paycheck should be no different.  The first time a local company puts $70,000 on the table for a well-qualified, talented web developer, do you really think you can ignore it?

Governments will always bounce back from a recession slower than the private sector, and any administrator worth their salt will tell you it is infinitely easier to take money away from education than it is to get it back.  Given the erosion of ground taking place, the question I pose back to you is to see if you think higher ed is in danger of losing some of it’s best and brightest minds in web development to the private sector in the mean time, and if that happens, how do we recover?  I not only think we will lose some, but I would argue we already are, leaving the question to be more along the lines of just how many will fall.  Teams are getting smaller, conferences are being cut, funding is slashed; how much more before you start giving thought to the opportunities that might lie in the clutches of the for-profit industry?  Many people will cite the job security and benefits as a key reason for working under a state umbrella, but when that safety net is more secure with a company, or even when it is self-provided, where will that leave our colleges?

I know I talk about this a lot, but I love my job and the opportunities it has, and I’m becoming increasingly afraid for its future.  There are mountains you can read on the philosophy of the place education has in a powerful, modern, functional society, and in my opinion most of it is on the money.  When education is a target instead of a tool, I think you’re within sight of giving up.  I would love to see some drastically different approaches.  For one, states need to find another fund-cutting target.  Anything.  If you’re going to scuttle higher ed, then just get it over with, otherwise take it seriously.  It’s cat and mouse funding the way states are currently behaving.  Games waste our time and energy and are an enormous distraction.  I’d also love to see new approaches to web development.  Why can’t we start maintaining college sites as part of the education process, via an intensive and multilevel learning program for students?  It’d be hard to establish, and it would take resources, but imagine the long term payoff it creates in ideas, opportunities, and products (i.e. an abundance of hopefully well trained and flexible web developers).

What do you think?  Am I totally off in left field here or are you seeing the same trends?

photo credit: a shadow of my future self

Related posts:

1. IMHO 7 Reasons Why Higher Ed Is the Best Gig in All the Web
2. “Repent! Collaborator,” Said the Higher Ed Beancounterman
3. Equal Pay for Equal Work

The key problem is that the original screen resolution filter described in the first article operates on a now false premise: mobile devices are sub-VGA in resolution.  By now I’m sure you’ve heard of Droid, the new Android 2.0 based smartphone from Motorola.  Now, that is just one example, but it’s hitting a whopping resolution of 854 x 480.  The HTC Touch Pro2 runs 480 x 800, and even it’s older sibling was 480 x 640.  By comparison, the iPhone and iPod Touch’s resolution is 320×480.  Higher res. screens on mobile devices are the new trend, one that I’m not entirely convinced that they won’t possibly rival netbook resolutions soon.  Sure, we could just add some of these resolutions to our initial filter (which I did), but that doesn’t entirely solve the problem.  This is especially true since once you break the barrier of VGA resolutions, you run the risk of sniffing out normal computers.

My solution is now a two pass system in our Google Analytics mobile traffic profile.  I’ve kept the resolution filter in place as the starting include filter since that’s still the best and most reliable place to start, and modified it to account for the higher resolutions.  I took a simple approach and just added in the main increments that we’ve seen on the upper end of the spectrum: 480, 640, 800, and 854.  You could just as easily simplify the entire thing to grab everything 854 and down (you’ll see why this works in step two) as that seems to be the current top mark for phone resolution at the moment.  My resulting regex for the new include filter based on the old one is:

^([1-2]?[0-9]?[0-9]|3[0-6][0-9]|480|640|800|854)x([1-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]|4[0-8][0-9]|800)$

A simpler approach (which matches anything 899×899 or less) could just be:

^([0-8]?[0-9]{1,2})x([0-8]?[0-9]{1,2})$

That’s step one.  The issue is that you are guaranteed to catch normal Windows users with either one of those filters (Apple machines almost always have higher resolution than that, even older machines, but I’ve learned there are no absolutes in analytics).  That’s where the second pass comes in to play.  After the first filter, which tells the profile what to include, set up a custom exclude filter on the field “Visitor Operating System Version.”  For the pattern, have it exclude matches for:

(95|98|ME|XP|Vista|NT|10\.[4-6])

This will get rid of all relevant versions of normal desktop Windows (Windows 7 reports as NT currently, as far as I can tell) and OS X, and leave you with a nice pool of mobile users to paw through.  This should even allow you to scale up the resolution filter as smartphone screens improve and maintain your reporting accuracy, though you might want to add Linux to the exclude filter then too.

If anyone has come up with what they feel is a better solution, I’d love to hear about it in the comments so we can discuss ways to improve upon the method I’ve offered here.  So far, I’m very happy with the results this is producing for us, but we also have a pretty small mobile device user base, so it’s not easy for me to tell how well this might work in a larger environment where more variables might come in to play.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Analytics: The Neglected Mutant Step Child
2. Prediction 2008 The year of the Mobile phone
3. 7 Google Analytics Filters To Help Understand Your Visitors

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith talk about the process I’m sharing here briefly in their book Trust Agents.  It is very sound advice (as well as an excellent book), and my intent is to simply expand on the concept brought up in the book.  By seeing what and where people are discussing you, it allows you to determine what areas that you might not exist in adequately enough, and you might discover problems that you can fix that you may not have seen previously.  The process is propped up by using Google Alerts tied to several queries and Google Reader (or your choice of RSS digestion).  This process educates you, and as a result allows you to educate others.  Sometimes others don’t realize how important something is until they see it coming out of someone else’s mouth.  This is part of the problem that universities have a habit of hiring experts, but not expertise.  Even though commenters and bloggers on the internet aren’t highly paid consultants, their voices will carry weight, especially if their views are critical.

First thing’s first, identifying the best places to go hunt yourself out at.  I’ll generally come up with a set queries I want to watch for, for instance “Pittsburg State University” and “Pitt State.”  These are both common ways of referring to our college in the media, and generally “PSU” is too generic and tends to return results frequently from the *other* Pittsburgh (you know, the one with the evil goatee).  Go take a spin by Technorati’s advanced search page and run exact phrase searches for each of the ways you want to watch for you school.  Each result set will reward you with an RSS feed you can subscribe to.  Copy those addresses down for later.

Next up I’ll make a swing past YouTube and do a similar search.  YouTube is nice though, as like some other sites (like Twitter), they support a little logic in their search, so I can do a search for “Pittsburg State University” OR “Pitt State” all at once, which makes things much easier.  You might notice though that the RSS feed provided by search results comes in by relevance rather than date.  I use the method of http://www.youtube.com/rss/search/[YOUR_SEARCH_PHRASE].rss which will provide results based on date.  You can still use the logic too.  What I’ll normally do is run my previous query through something like a URL encoder to give me a URL safe string to stick into the path.  In this case, my query that I put in becomes %22Pittsburg+State+University%22+OR+%22Pitt+State%22, which I can then stick into the RSS address just mentioned.

Marching on, Twitter is pretty straightforward.  Just hit up http://search.twitter.com/ with your same (non-URL encoded) query you used for YouTube, and grab the result RSS feed that it throws your way.  Lastly, go make the Google rounds: Blogsearch, News, and Alerts.  By the time you’ve hit up each of these, you’re very likely to get some double coverage (especially if you do it right).  That’s how you’ll know you’ve really cast a good, wide net, and you can start taking out sources that result in duplicates.  Remember, you’d rather have to make the nets smaller than not have them big enough, otherwise you’ll possibly miss things and never know it.  Theoretically, a comprehensive Google Alert will catch everything you find with Blogsearch and News, but I prefer to confirm that first, and then cut out what isn’t needed rather than assume that the comprehensive feed really will be.

Now, to put a nice little bow on all this, you just need to manage the feeds.  I’m going to go through bringing them into Google Reader, but you could just as easily use some other reader, like NetVibes, Thunderbird, or whatever you like, after all, it’s just a bunch of RSS.  In Google Reader I create a new folder called “University Listening Post” to keep everything relevant in one area.  Then I take all the feed links and add them to the subscriptions under that folder.  Really hard, right?  In the end, this is all just about finding a great combination of relevant RSS feeds, and putting them all in one place where you can easily follow them.

Oh, and we can’t forget the last most important thing.  All of this doesn’t mean anything if you don’t do something with it.  In many cases, this information is cool, but we have to make it actionable, and that process is going to be different for everybody.  You could make this information available to different groups, or pass it on as needed.  Do monthly or weekly digests for PR or Marketing.  Direct student ambassadors to different locations to engage people.  There are a lot of options if you can’t directly act on this information.  Just remember, it’s about the conversation, and it’s not usually a conversation you start.  Don’t try to control it, don’t try to take it over.  It will be rare that the conversation takes place on your “territory,” so any attempt to deal with it heavy handedly is absolutely destined to backfire.  That’s why I like the idea of getting students to go out and engage, it sort of lets you cheat a little and get positive messages out without it looking like the university itself (assuming you need to put positive spin on something).  Just don’t forget to celebrate success too.  It’s not all about damage control.  If it is, well, I’d say you have much bigger problems to deal with.

So there you have it.  Go set up your own listening post, and see what people are saying about your school.  Find neat ways to engage those authors and communities.  Try out other tools like Addict-o-matic for monitoring searches for your name and see if it reveals better results.  If you have any other favorite tools or techniques, be sure to share them in the comments.  We’d love to hear your success stories with sniffing out conversations on the web.

photo credit: Richard Pluck

Related posts:

1. Marketing: The difference between building a website and using it
2. Is Your University Using Twitter to Its Fullest Potential?
3. Need a Link Building Strategy? Create Content!

So, that said, some fast background on them.  From their site, MobileEducator was created by a group of admissions marketers, expert software engineers, developers, and designers. They believe schools, universities, and colleges should have access to expert mobile development resources and that apps should be ever-changing and dynamic, not static.  The software is really brand new (You can find a school, Simon, a customer service expert, Shep Hyken, and a Joan Jett app currently using the system in the App Store), and some of my screenshots and comments will be in reference to a currently released version, a version that will likely have already been updated by the time this review is published.  They saw what groups such as the students at Stanford (iStanford via MobilEdu), or a student team at OU (OU2Go) had done, and decided to see if they could develop a framework that would allow anyone to get into mobile apps without the expensive cost of development and cumbersome integration processes that schools face now.  Granted, that heavy-handed process has resulted in some really awesome apps for universities, but few schools have the resources and skills available to tackle something of that scale.  So, let’s look at what makes this process tick.

When looking at prospective students, there are some numbers worth mentioning.  According to MobileEducator, 28% of iPhone users and 69% of iPod Touch users are between the ages of 13 and 24.  That amounts to approximately 20 million users.  Online ad campaigns currently convert at about .3%, while mobile targeted campaigns run at 13%.  My opinion is that the reason mobile platform targeted campaigns work better is that for them to work, the user has to already have agreed to use your application or tool that provides the channel for the message.  This also means that you have a smaller pool of more relevant eyes to see your message, so those numbers aren’t exactly apples to apples necessarily.  But, the goal is clear: tap into a more relevant market with tools that can add value and enhance the experience of students on your campus, and in turn give you the ability to leverage that network for other goals.

The Framework

First off, every school gets its own app.  It’s not one global app that students pick a school from.  Your app is custom compiled and submitted to Apple, and uses the modules and information that you’ve chosen to use.  The system is built out by you (or with assistance from them) to include all your own graphics, colors, and any selection of modules that are offered with content you provide.  That might be RSS feeds, images, video, links, etc.  This process is made simple via the MobilityCMS platform, a web based content management system (CMS).  You never have to write a line of code, or know a thing about iPhone application development.  This is all part of the lower barrier to entry idea.  However, the side effect would be that two different schools using MobileEducator will ultimately have two very similar applications, even though they might use different combinations of modules (look up the examples mentioned at the start of this article and you can see how the different clients, not even edu related, all clearly are driven by the same engine).  This is simply the price of simplicity though; if you want more complex, you’ll have to pay for it.  In the example I viewed, the user was the Simon Graduate School of Business, and they had implemented features such as a news feed, images, lectures (a YouTube feed), as well as some additional tools like an event listing, tie in to a mailing list, and a page of links (“Everything Else”) in my video.

The MobilityCMS platform also affords the user a simple upgrade path as features are added.  MobileEducator can add new modules over time, and give you additional tools to drive the application without making the overall framework and management any more complex.  This is certainly good for you, and smart for them.  You could pay more money for a more complex app from some other company, but then you’re also stuck paying again and again when you want the app updated.  Here, the updates are just going to come with it through the CMS.  Over time, this CMS could enable all kinds of spinoff tools that add value to your package.  Even as it is, the currently available modules allow for some creative options, such as imported Twitter feeds, student blogs, lecture captures, etc.

The App

Okay, first, go ahead and run through the YouTube video below.  I apologize for the blurriness, my Flip camera isn’t so great for close quarters.  I’ll have some screenshots as well to help.

I already mentioned the particular modules that Simon was using in this application.  The main page that loads is primarily just a big static image for now, though future updates may allow more WYSIWYG type editing of that area to make it more useful.  Note that they reused some tools, like the YouTube feed, once for a section called “Lectures,” then later for “Simon Trailers.”  Same tool, just reused with a different filter.  The “Everything Else” panel is just a list of links.  You could put Facebook, Twitter, or links to your internal systems there.  They chose to list several PDFs that they wanted users to have access to which you can see me navigating in the video.  The application lets you highlight the top four sections that you want users to have access to, and the “More” option leads to everything else you have.

Naturally, the app is released for free, and depending on the content you include in it, could be targeted at any number of multiple or different audiences.  By utilizing RSS feeds and the Mobility CMS, you can provide custom, changing content to users via the app.  This also allows you to leverage the appeal that is afforded when users view your university as being more high tech than competitors when you can tap some of these niche market areas that normally cost a lot to get in to.

The Good

So, here’s the dish.  I like the application for it’s simple creation interface.  It achieves its goal of lowering the barrier to getting clients into the mobile space in spades, which will make it a prime target for small colleges, or schools which overall lack the resources or developers capable of tackling an iPhone app on their own.  There’s also a lot of flexibility provided by the available modules, as shown with the Simon example of using multiple YouTube areas to show different things.  This really provides quite a few options and opportunities for creative areas within the application.  You could even extend it with web based components by using the link module combined with the internal Safari browser (so clicking links won’t take you out of the application).  It’s also fast.  You’re not waiting long when loading the app and moving between modules.  Content is right there, and you don’t feel like there’s a lot going on in the background that you have to wait on.  MobilityCMS provides some simple application stats, such as download tracking and mailing list subscriptions, and you could easily build destination URLs to include Google Analytics tags to track incoming users to certain pages of your site from the links module.  Lastly, the cost is very affordable, with most people being able to get into the platform for around $5000, with a monthly service charge of around $125 at the time of this writing.  Keep in mind, the setup fee is one time, so after that you’re only on the hook for the $125 a month as long as you want to keep the app active.  I would love to see some people try this coupled with some fundraising campaigns or storefront options to see some hard ROI type numbers on it.

The Less Good

Its simplicity is also a failing in this case, as power must be sacrificed to make the system flexible and easy.  So, for example, don’t plan on doing any fancy systems integration with the app (though an XML/XSLT module in the future could easily work to bridge that gap).  The application interface lacks some flavor, and as mentioned, two different colleges will inevitably have very similar applications (luckily, you’re not likely to have students making a choice of whether or not to come to your school based on iPhone app comparisons).  Besides changing the top four tools on the app home page, there just isn’t much else you can do besides push everything else into the “More” area where it gets listed out.  Presentationally that’s just not much fun.  It makes the app come across very flat, in a navigation/usability sense.  You can make it very broad, but not deep.  At the very least it would have been nice to see an image rotator for the home page image, something to provide some variety instead of the exact same static image constantly.  Current module selections are a little limited, but that’s not so bad, as it means you don’t have to keep track of a ton of stuff to keep the app data fresh.  If you stop paying for the service, your app can remain available, but the content in it will go stale.  While I stick this in the “less good” header, it is understandable.  The image module is fairly basic, and doesn’t support anything like separate albums or categories (though you could use several instances of the module, but that’d get a little messy if you wanted to make a lot available).

The Future

Currently, MobileEducator is aiming for three to four major updates a year.  I already mentioned that they have a WYSIWYG module nearly ready for the application, which will bring a lot of new possibilities to users.  This includes being able to make the app home page functionally useful too, perhaps with links to student portals, eLearning software, giving, etc.  There’s also a planned Google Maps module that would be combined with the GPS in the phone to provide simple mapping and potential user discovery options (imagine being able to do a flash mob at a football game by identifying where other app users are in the stadium).  Currently the system is only available for the iPhone, but there are also plans to expand into tho Android market as well as providing a simple mobile web based version, with the one CMS feeding the data to build all the different apps.  I’m told that as they add this ability, there will be no increased charge for the extra platform.  If they eventually add Blackberry into the mix, that would make them about the only system I know of that’s designed to give a non-technical way to build applications to basically canvas the smartphone market (and even without a Blackberry specific version, the web version would allow you on to basically everything else out there).  I would like to see some increased flexibility added to the system, as well as the ability to layer functionality similar to the way a lot of sports applications work right now in how you can drill into the app, with the navigation changing as you go.  Speaking of sports, there would be huge value to enable sport score reporting, possibly via a web services API or similar.  I’m not saying that’s coming, that’d just be a wishlist item from my court.  There’d also be some benefits to adding in push notifications for when content updates, and maybe something like iCal type support for events to quickly add them right into the iPhone calendar.

Conclusions

It’s not perfect, but it is a pretty good start for sure.  Most of the things I mention in the “Less Good” section can be overcome, and there’s huge potential if they start covering some of the things I mention would be good on a future roadmap.  As it sits, I like it for someone set on getting onto iPhones that can’t do it themselves, which is a whole lot of us.  Their direction is certainly pointed correctly too, with the goals to use their CMS framework to get into additional markets outside the iPhone.  That’s a huge value that shows they realize the iPhone isn’t the only mobile sphere people exist in.  In the end, I look at something like this and ask myself: “Is this something I would use myself, as a user or a client.“  I would pretty confidently answer both yes in this case, because I’m pretty sure the value is definitely there to justify the investment.

Related posts:

1. Software Review: Flimp – Flash Development Tool without the Programming Knowledge
2. Product Review: My Wishlist for the Lynda.com Academic Site License
3. Forget Smartphone Applications, Just Build for the Web

It all began at 11:59AM with a simple little post from @mherzber. Nothing major, just an observation about some visual displeasure with the first slide of the second keynote speaker’s Powerpoint on Tuesday.  And then it got bad.  Very bad.  Then worse.  And worse.  And worse.  Both the keynote AND the Twitter backchannel during it.  Several people outside the conference caught on and have talked about it, and I thought it might be of value to provide a voice from someone who was there, and explain what happened, how, and why it’s not all bad.

So, some background.  The keynote speaker was David Galper, of the failed (and mildly infamous) Ruckus service.  That was the first sign that things were about to go wrong.  I talked to several people the day before that were a little perplexed by the choice, and it was then that *I* connected the dots (sometimes I’m slow).  I hadn’t read the description closely, so I hadn’t connected Galper and Ruckus right offhand.  See, Ruckus got a bunch of VC, offered a service to colleges that allowed a way for students to download music legally (with DRM, and only if you used Windows), and then burned out six years later amid a storm of criticism.  Turns out, the suspicion was well placed.  If you haven’t already, you can go read all the backchannel (the fun starts at 11:59AM).  I’ll warn you, it’s long, and it starts to get pretty acerbic about a half hour in.  Now, here’s what I want to talk about.  First off, I think people researching the incident need some context, because a lot of what has been said about it has come from people not at all related to the event.  Two, let’s look at what happened.  And last, what you can take away.

First off, people who attend HighEdWeb aren’t a bunch of immature, angry, hatemongering lunatics, as some might call us (well, I’m a little crazy, but good crazy. Most of the time.).  The very contrary, actually.  I know some of the tweets that came through were from people who weren’t there, and they basically said they wouldn’t want to be affiliated with a group that would roast a speaker like that.  The proportion of those roasting were small compared to the whole, so I hate that the lumping together has to take place.  We have a HUGE tolerance for presentations.  The first keynote is a prime example.  Many of us disagreed with some of what Jared Spool had to say, but we respected him and appreciated his effort at putting together a thoughtful keynote, content aside.  And sure, a few of us poked some fun at Jared too, but it was in good spirit.  He was a good speaker, and showed us that he was ready for us.  There was also an unfortunate incident where a fellow attendee had her laptop stolen, and the community came together and donated enough money for her to go out on the last day and buy a new one.  There was even talk of trying to start up some kind of scholarship type fund to help out people next year who might not have the budget to come, but would benefit from the experience.  We are extremely friendly, unlimitedly helpful, and very fun.  This is why when things are so bad that it breaks all ability to cope, we push back.  Our tolerance is high, and our expectations are such that not meeting them really means you’ve failed completely.  It’s the difference between just saying “man, that was pretty bad, hope it’s better next year,” and “that was terrible, and the only way to deal with it is to do something that creates the word harshtag.”  We also speak our minds.  Being in higher ed means playing a lot of politics.  Getting to be with a group of like minded people allows us to break free a little bit, and it’s refreshing being able to be truthful with people that understand you, because we were all pretty equally disappointed.  That’s the environmental effect that we deal with, that others can’t really appreciate.  So it’s not that we ask for a lot, we just ask for a couple important things.

Now, what happened.  As I mentioned, it started out simply enough.  A few comments about how things seemed to be starting off sort of on the wrong foot.  Then it got worse.  Then things were off to the races.  Believe me when I say that while the backchannel eventually got quite harsh, it was not out of line with respect to what was being viewed.  The presentation was what many of us would call a fairly egregious breach of professional protocol on its own.  It really was that bad: slides with paragraphs of text, poorly presented video with dated music that was too loud, comparisons and examples that were out of date, and a general feeling like it was a presentation developed five years ago for an audience that clearly had no clue what he would be talking about.  But we get it, we’re there, we understand the channels; in this sense, we were well ahead of the keynote.  Twitter allows two things to happen very well: mobs feed on themselves, and the slippery slope gets very steep and extremely slick.  There’s also the snowballing analogy.  Pick your poison.  Bottom line, there was a lack of respect for the topic, a clear void in researching the audience, and just bad presentational ability.  A perfect storm, if you will.  And once the tweeting started, it simply became more fun to be in the stream than put up with the presentation.  In a way, it was less about being snarky towards the speaker, and more about amusing each other by sharing and exaggerating the pain.

Personally, I feel worse for the HighEdWeb committee on this than the presenter, because I know it reflected poorly on the conference on the whole, and it puts them under a huge microscope for next year.  I also would hate to have put them under any pressure as a result of something that they didn’t have control over.  “You can’t stop the signal, Mal.” It brought attention to one negative, and ignored the mountains of positive associated with the conference, and that just plain sucks.  I’ll be the first to step up and apologize, not for everything I said, but certainly one comment towards the end that might have went a bit far in retrospect (I’m also so very glad I resisted people’s requests for me to Kanye him).  I think that it’s important to admit that several of us might have overstepped a professional line, but I think the event itself was not uncalled for and is an important example that audiences are no longer passive.  You can’t just cram what you want down their throats without consequence.  Presentational etiquette is changing along with audience expectations.  Twitter is there, and people are going to use it, for good or for bad.  One comment to me was that no one (at the keynote) came to his defense, no one was a voice of reason to calm down.  While that may or may not have helped, the reason it didn’t happen was because there was nothing worth defending.  And I do think that in a situation like this, constructive criticism becomes almost unhelpful.  For that to work, there would need to be something worth salvaging, but in this case that just wasn’t there.  One person mentioned later that for example, in TV, when things are going bad you just pull the plug.  There’s also a certain expectation that comes with attending a conference that you pay for, where you are effectively paying for the keynote speaker.  The standards are higher, and we expect you to step up, not down.  In the tech world, you’re terribly exposed, and you’re expected to hit home runs all the time.  If you can’t, there’s a lot of others that can.  If you’ve lost your edge, it shows fast and blatantly.  When it is so painfully obvious that you haven’t researched your audience, haven’t done your due diligence, then you might as well not bother, because we’re smart enough to see through the bull.  All that aside, it excuses nothing, but only in the way that you wouldn’t excuse a tornado destroying a barn.  It’s like its own force of nature at some point: destructive but naturally occurring.

So what’s to learn?  Many of the other blogs mentioned at the start have covered the basics, most of which is common sense.  Know your audience, make connections, PREPARE.  I won’t really rehash them in any detail, since the other blogs are worth reading too just for their information on being a prepared presenter.  There’s two real simple rules though that one can apply: Don’t be dumb, and don’t suck.  You aren’t untouchable on stage, and it no longer means you get instant credibility.  The web is a savage, competitive field where Darwin rules.  And I’m not saying that you can’t shop around the same presentation at several conferences.  But you do need to keep it up to date (6 months is really pushing it for presentation age in this era), and you do need to make sure some relevance is tossed in so your audience feels like you know them.  Not doing so is like a slap in the face to them, and now the audience can slap back.  If you can’t put in the effort, or you aren’t good at it, then don’t do keynotes.  I think from the administrative side, a careful vetting process needs to be applied to potential keynotes.  There’s no shortage of people out there these days with impressive looking résumés and credentials, but that means a lot less than it used to.  A fast preview of this guy’s Powerpoint would have revealed the potential trouble to come pretty easily.  And it might not hurt for official Twitter accounts to step into the hashtag and provide a polite nudge to maybe cool it down a little.

In the end, it has to be taken as a learning experience for everyone.  What’s done is done, and the best thing you can do is learn from it and plow ahead.  I hope that if and when David sees all the chatter (thus far it appears he has no Twitter account, yet) he can forgive the comments and use it as an opportunity to improve.  He might be a great guy for all we know, he was just a crappy keynote for that particular time and place, and I hope he can find success in the future.  I think that it was an important experience that was going to happen somewhere, someday, and it just happened to be HighEdWeb 2009, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen again somewhere else in the future.  The important thing is that we take something away from it that can make us better for it in the future, and not let it lower us overall.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 .eduGuru Posts of 2009
2. eduWEB 2009 in Chicago. Are you Ready?
3. OmniUpdate Users Conference Next Week

I’m releasing the Prezi and research data under a Creative Commons license (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike), so feel free to build on this information and make it more valuable.

• Survey Results
  • Employer Responses
  • Student Responses
• [ Download Presentation ]
• Twitter Stream (#hew09mmp9)

photo credit: vancouverfilmschool

This work by Michael Fienen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on work released at doteduguru.com.

Related posts:

1. Student Worker Research
2. Untapped Resource: Do you have Student Web Workers?
3. [Guru Survey] Are Classes In Your Toolbox?

Mo’s Irish Pub (also on Twitter and Facebook) is only about 4 blocks from the hotel. They serve food until 1:00AM and drinks until 2:30AM; there is a full menu on their site.

Please RSVP by Friday the 2nd if you would like to come so we can warn Mo’s ahead of time.

View Larger Map

Related posts:

1. Join the whole .eduGuru crew live, Thursday 4/23 at 3:15 p.m. EDT
2. All of HighEdWeb 2008
3. Pictures from the first HighEd Tweetup

[UPDATE: 09.09.24 11:28AM] Thanks to Andrew in the comments for pointing out something I missed: If you would like to read this book, Lessig has made it available, for free, under a Creative Commons license for anyone to download at the book’s web site.

Lessig is, to put it lightly, a talented academic and lawyer.  If you’ve never heard of him, I can’t recommend enough that you go listen his TED lecture on user generated content.  Oh, he’s also on the board of directors for a little system called Creative Commons, you might have heard of it.  He picks up his legal understanding of copyright law and swings it around deftly like Babe Ruth and his famous hickory.  He even shows substantial humility by writing of his own big failure on the topic before the Supreme Court.  The best part is that he’s not writing from the perspective of a politico pushing an agenda, he’s writing as a lawyer and academic evaluating the law and the damage it has on a society.

As educational professionals, we tend to ride very close to the edge when it comes to the development of web and creative content, especially in terms of fair use, and the issue is increasingly confused by professors who come to us asking us to do things with content or post things they have done with content that is in a substantially gray area of the law.  Education leans heavily on the idea of fair use, but increasingly the freedom of that idea is being challenged and eroded at every opportunity by those with the power and money to do so.  Thus, the problem isn’t that there is a gray area, it’s that the gray area itself is increasingly a realm of lawyers, where you either have to hire one to assure your rights, or one to defend them.  In either case you end up with costs and work that often times outweigh the value of the content being created.

But, I don’t want to spiral into my personal opinion on the matter.  Obviously, I agree with Lessig at pretty much every turn.  But, the man is smart and precise.  The book dives into the history of copyright law and it’s evolution into the monster that is now fighting a messy battle with internet technologies on our doorsteps.  All of this is done with the lay person in mind, and even without an understanding of the law, anyone could pick this book up and understand the threat being posed to our creative culture.  Indeed, by the end, you’re likely to find yourself sitting in your chair thinking, “How can Congress be so dumb?”  Well, as it turns out, it’s quite easy, and he explains why.  By the end, you don’t feel even remotely like you were just lectured ad nauseam by a lawyer.  He lays out scenarios, explains how common and primary law has handled it in the past, and why the drastic change in honoring that past is costing us a great deal in the long run.

This is not a book about education or law, this is a book designed to educate.  Because of our proximity to such issues, I think it is critical that we all educate ourselves on the changes that are taking place, and the impact it is going to have on us as we move forward and try to support schools, professors, and students in their pursuit of an open learning environment.  I’m not sure that there is any place better to start that education than with Free Culture.  Despite being five years old now (a long time when dealing with anything related to technology), the book is still extremely pertinent to our world today, and indeed, there are a number of times that I caught myself thinking about some of the newer instances of intellectual property challenges taking place today in the context Lessig provides.

An absolute must read for everyone, period.

Have you read Free Culture?  Share your thoughts with everyone below.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Inbound Marketing the Book
2. Book Review: Web Analytics An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik
3. Book Review: World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott