Dialog

This weekend I went to the second-ever Cre8Camp at souk in downtown Portland. The setup: a BarCamp-like unconference attended by about 50 or so creative professionals, mostly from the Portland area. Attendees suggested and led topics for the day, some of which included trend tracking, sustainable marketing, youth marketing, and generally how to keep creative in a stressful and competitive profession.

Although higher ed wasn’t the focus, there were plenty of tips to pick up on. I went to the youth marketing session, and picked up a tip which I’d long suspected: that kids are so jaded from being advertised to all the time that they’re really looking for authentic information. They want the freedom to access your messages on their own time, and more and more they’re looking to feel involved and included in your message.

Later in the day, a session on leadership evolved into a discussion on how to call the most effective meetings (tip: not on Monday mornings). A way to help people develop a pride of ownership in your meetings could be to decipher their want or need to be there…drawing those wants/needs out will foster a sense of inclusiveness. Also, if you’re calling a meeting, be able to say in one sentence what the desired outcome or action item is!

And for a note on trends, people are coming up with more and more ways to manage their social networking sites in such a way that they no longer have to visit separate Flickr, Facebook, or Digg pages to update their profiles. They can use a browser like Flock or tools like friendfeed to aggregate and manage them. Amber Case, Cyborg Anthroplogist from Portland, recommended these tools - she’s got a great list of 2009 creative conferences on her blog.

According to Google Analytics, every Monday over 20,000 visitors arrive at the OSU Web, stay two minutes and 14 seconds, view one and three-quarters pages, then move on.  The number decreases each day of the week until Saturday, when we’re down to less than 12,000 visitors.  What are those 12,000 people looking for on a Saturday?  It intrigues me!

But what would be even more intriguing would be to watch their movement across the entire OSU site - to have our tracking code on every page.  That would provide us with a clear picture of where we would be wise to invest in further development and also where we can minimize our efforts.  Anyone wanting data for their site should let us know so we can assist you in placing the appropriate tracking information and creating a unique profile for you.  The more sub-sites of OSU that sign-up, the greater detail we will have of how visitors are using our Web resources. Oh, did I mention that it’s free?

The Web Communications team is seeking a Social Media Specialist to help us organize our expansion of the OSU Web presence into the social arena. This is a growing and dynamic space, and we feel that a dedicated full-time position is not so much progressive as it is necessary to what we are doing on the Web.

There are already some innovative social media efforts happening around campus, and we plan to make Web Communications a resource to help enhance these projects, and also plan new ways of using innovations in online communications.

This is very exciting. Please spread the word.

Our incipient OSU YouTube channel and Web Comm grad assistant Justin Smith, were featured in this morning’s Gazette Times.

The Office of Web Communications is pleased to have a hand in the following projects. It’s been quite a fall and we’ve seen our team stretched in new directions to good results.

Office of Government Relations

This is Your OSU: A Report from President Ed Ray

Office of Financial Aid

We’ve also expanded our numbers through the addition of a graduate assistant focusing on video and multimedia for the Web. Our first project is a profile of longtime OSU communicator and intrepid bluesman, Jeff Hino. We’re glad the new term has started and we’re happy to have new students on our team, reminding us of how valuable they are to the work we do.

Many Oregon State Web communicators use software called Drupal to manage their content. Content management is an efficient way to distribute editorial responsibilities. Also, by placing your content into a database-driven system like Drupal, it becomes easier to search, update, categorize, reuse and syndicate.

But this doesn’t mean that moving to a content mangement system from a static HTML-based site is easy. It’s challenging and also a lot of work. These facts often result in what I’ll call “content management backlash.” In some circles, Drupal is used like a four-letter word. But in truth, any content management system, with its array of advantages and disadvantages, would earn a similar level of abuse.

I have my own challenges in working with Drupal. I’ve worked with a number of CMSs over the years, including WordPress, Cascade Server, Microsoft CMS, TextPattern and Joomla, as well as some home-made options. Drupal is easier than some, and more challenging than others. The features it provides are, however, very similar. But a couple of factors make me feel good about working with Drupal.

First off, it’s an open source project. That means it’s free to use. It is developed by a worldwide collective of intrepid programmers all working for free. It isn’t completely selfless…many of these developers turn around and use Drupal on client projects and sell their services for support and maintenance. But as a Drupal user,you aren’t required to pay a dime. In higher education, where we’re always seeking creative ways to stretch our thin budgets, that’s a huge advantage. It always hurts in our field to sign those dwindling budget resources over to Adobe, Microsoft, Apple and the rest.

The next reason I feel good about working with Drupal is that our university plays a large role in keeping the Drupal project running. Drupal.org, the worldwide community of Drupal users and developers, is hosted right here in the basement of Kerr at Open Source Labs. OSL has played a role in a number of highly regarded open source projects, including Mozilla Firefox. With many Drupal users on campus, we also have a number of users who can serve as resources. There is also extensive Drupal training on campus.

So whenever I grow frustrated using our main content management tool, I try to recall all of those problems I’ve had using other systems. They’re all capable of giving you fits. Then I also try to remember that by using Drupal, I’m investing in a project in which OSU has a very large stake. But none of this means I’m a Drupal purist. In fact, this blog is running on another open source content management system that plays a significant role in higher education, Wordpress.

US News has started a YouTube video contest. Any OSU contenders out there? Let us know and we’ll try to help spread the word.

Our latest home page feature story includes the first official podcast from the Web Communications office. It’s part of the new Mentors series, a holistic marketing and communications effort that includes everything from a banners appearing around campus to a website filled with stories about the amazing mentoring relationships cultivated across OSU.

Podcasts are hardly the latest trend in Web technology. Innovators around campus have been exploiting this medium for years, much of their work aggregated and championed by the College of Education, Chester Bateman and the Grassroots Learning Project.

In our case, serendipity accompanied our move into this platform. Our Web Writer, Celene Carillo, noticed that an interview recorded for a mentoring article was compelling enough to stand on its own. Student Jenny Villalobos and Sandy Neubaum from the College of Business were so engaging as they discussed the instructor-student relationship and the values of a strong mentoring partnership, that it would have been a crime just to erase the file and record a new interview onto the memory card. Celene edited out the background noise, selected choice excerpts, recorded an intro and a new podcast series was born.

It does take extra effort to add depth to your Web content. But being aware of opportunities is a solid first step.