Here’s an easy way to access the presentations and conversations posted here during April.
Week of April 3, 2006

>> Teaching Master Index

Week of April 10, 2006

>> Blogging in Libraries
>> Podcasting in Libraries
>> Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies
>> Issues in Libraries
>> Making Information Work Harder

Week of April 17, 2006

>> Admissions, Alumni Relations, and Communications and Marketing Master Index

Week of April 24, 2006

>> Websites and Web Development Master Index

Here’s the list of future Skypecasts on similar topics. We’re doing one tomorrow at 1 pm ET, 17:00 GMT. Here is a time converter in case you need one.

In the end, we posted 41 screencasts, podcasts and papers by 51 presenters. More than 12,000 visitors attended the month-long event on the Web, and an additional 1300 attended the two teleconferences hosted by CASE.

We now begin a process of evaluation and planning for HigherEd BlogCon 2007.

Among our questions:

– What key issues emerged that clearly merit further exploration?

– What steps might we take to increase the amount of direct interaction among presenters and attendees?

– How should next year’s event be organized?

To support a discussion of these issues, we’ve created a page in the HigherEd BlogCon wiki where all are invited to share ideas and observations. That’s at http://higheredblogcon.editme.com/.

Also, we’re inviting all section chairs and presenters to join a live online discussion the subject Friday, May 5th at 1 p.m. EDT.

If you’d like to participate in a long-running discussion of this topic with full access to the full transcript, please contact Dan Forbush at dan.forbush@profnet.com and he’ll add you to the BlogCon chat area as a member.

If you’d like to participate only in Friday’s live chat, you may join as a guest at https://blogcon.campfirenow.com/24c45.

Tags: higheredblogcon

For this week of HigherEd BlogCon, we’ll take a closer look at the technology powering these new tools and examine the development and implementation process for bringing institutions into the 2.0 era. It’s a diverse set of topics, ranging from the nuts and bolts of podcasts to a session covering one of the hottest development tools, Ruby on Rails.

I’d like to take a moment to thank this week’s presenters. They have created some veryinteresting content and presentations. I’d also like to thank Karine Joly and Rob Pongsajapan for their help in coming up with a plan and theme for this week.

-Mike Richwalsky, Section Chair

>> Monday, April 24, 2006

Legal Education Podcasting Project

John Mayer
Executive Director
Elmer Masters
Director of Internet Development

Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI

>> Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Student To-Do List RSS Feed: Combining Audience and Task Navigation

Matthew Winkel
The College of New Jersey

>> Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Using Web Traffic with a Kaizen Methodology

Tiffany Vincent
Academic Web Services

>> Thursday, April 27, 2006

Know Enough to be Dangerous: Tools for Taking Control of HTML and CSS

Steve Lawson
Colorado College

Bringing Audio to a Visual Medium: Podcasting News and Events

CASE Online Speaker Series
2:00-3:30 ET (Paid registration required.)

>> Friday, April 28, 2006

The Fast Track to Agile Web Apps: Best Practices for Higher Ed Web Development on Rails

Jason Garber
Eastern Mennonite University

Universities are dynamic places where supporting technology must keep pace with vigorous academic and student life. This presentation is a practical look at what it takes to build, deploy, and support web applications in record time using the best tools available today for source control, collaborative development, testing and deployment. Primarily I will demonstrate Ruby on Rails and why it is appropriate for development of blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other social and collaborative applications, especially ones requiring AJAX enhancements. Our experiences with these technologies and frank assessments of their strengths and weaknesses will be generously sprinkled throughout.

View the presentation (24:41; .mov; Quicktime required).

Blogs have been hyped as “push-button publishing;” indeed, it is fairly simple for an educator, librarian, administrator or the like to set up his or her own blog with almost no knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. But for those who do so, this lack of knowledge can quickly become limiting and frustrating when they want to customize their blog.

This session is designed to help you learn enough about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to feel comfortable making changes to your blogs and other web pages. It will work like a case study; we’ll start with a blog right “out of the box,” and use free tools like the Firefox Web Developer extension to customize and personalize the blog. In the process, you will gain confidence in making small changes to existing templates, preparing you for more extensive, adventurous changes in the future.

Additionally, this presentation has many links and pointers to further reading for those who either need more background on the fundamentals of HTML and CSS or who want to explore the ideas and techniques introduced in the session in greater depth.

Most of this presentation is text, but screencasts illustrate the projects.

View the presentation master page (HTML).

Get the .mp3 of the presentation

Spreadsheet mentioned in the .mp3

- Six sigma
- Kaizen
- TPM
- Lean
- TQM

All are various ways to improve the way an industry works. I first learned of Six Sigma from a friend who worked as an engineer for GE. Six Sigma is, at its simplest, a way to eliminate defects in a process. As a Web developer this had immense appeal. As I began researching Six Sigma, I found its sister methodology, Kaizen. Kaizen in Japanese literally means “improvement,” but the first definition I read of defined it as “continuous improvement.” In this presentation I will discuss ways to use Kaizen with Web traffic metrics to continuously improve a site.

The Excel spreadsheet
The metrics spreadsheet was designed so that you can input your monthly traffic statistics on the page labeled “Data.” (Use the IND DATA column to populate the sheets with the IND prefix.) YTD and YTD CHARTS are automatically generated charts showing your traffic changes over time.

Pertinent links:

Wikipedia Kaizen entry

Six Sigma, Kaizen and Lean

Comparison of Six Sigma and Kaizen

Web Analytics Demystified By Eric T. Peterson

Alexa (useful for doing research into other site’s statistics)
Eduweb

Overview

Higher education portals can offer targeted collections of links for students, faculty & staff, parents, visitors, and alumni. Most users start their portal experience with a time sensitive task to accomplish. An obvious important task in higher education is registering for courses. Students should not be expected to navigate by topic to “Academics” link and then to “Course Registration System.” Instead, a clear link labeled “Register for Courses” should be one click away during the registration period. A time sensitive navigation scheme organized by task can offer one click access to important resources throughout the semester.

The College of New Jersey provides an automated “To-Do List” on the “Resources for Students” page which enables our students to quickly navigate to clearly labeled tasks to accomplish (e.g. Calculate your GPA, Visit bookstore for buyback, Apply for federal Pin to complete FAFSA, Pay next student bill by Dec. 14). The “To-Do List” could be targeted to even more specific audiences and even personalized with current portal technology.

View the screencast.

Highlights

The “To-Do List” navigation concept is fairly simple. Instead of just providing permanent links to a web page of resources organized by topic (e.g. Academics) or an office home page (e.g. Information Technology), we can offer links directly to pages within our site so users can accomplish time sensitive tasks.

At the College of New Jersey, the inspiration for this navigation scheme came from analyzing search and web logs. Popular search terms could easily be tied to distinctive times during the semester. For example, our users searched for the Bookstore and Residence Hall Opening and Closing Schedule at the beginning and end of each semester. They searched for advising and registration information during the middle of the semester. Finally, the GPA Calculator was the most popular search term at end of the semester.

These items were entered into to simple database driven web application that includes fields for: title, link, start date and end date. The College of New Jersey uses this same system to manage news and events and RSS feeds.

Next Steps

Web-based applications are becoming easier to plug into higher education portals thanks open standards. This increase task-based content will require adaptive approaches to portal navigation and information architecture that focus on usability. An effective higher education portal will guide each user to complete specific tasks required to support the education process. Combining audience and task navigation with a “To-Do List” is an effective way to highlight navigation to important tasks that correspond with the academic calendar year. The “To-Do List” may be targeted to even more specific audiences and even personalized with current portal technology. A college senior could see items required for graduation or a new faculty member could view items required at specific times in the tenure process. Portal users could even add their own items and check off completed items on these personalized lists which they can then download to other browser based personal organizers and RSS aggregators.

Elmer Masters
Director of Internet Development
Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI
Website: http://www.cali.org
Blog: http://www.content4.symphora.com/

In the Spring of 2006, Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) launched the Legal Education Podcasting Project where over 50 law faculty signed up to either (1) record their classes for their students or (2) create weekly summaries. In this presentation, we will demonstrate the tools that we developed to make this happen, the support issues we encountered and the reactions from both faculty and students (via the forums and from surveys conducted).

The main blogging tool we used is called Classcaster (www.classcaster.org) which we developed as a combination of Asterisk, pLog (now LifeType) and our own glue script so that faculty could either upload MP3s or make a telephone call and leave their podcast as a logn voice mail. (One faculty recorded a 3 hour lecture this way!).

We also provided all 50 faculty with their own Olympus WS-100 digital recorder which they used to record their courses and their summaries. We will talk about how we came to making that decision and the pluses and minuses of using digital recorders generally in classroom podcasting projects.

This presentation consists of the following components.

1) An 8 minute screencast that provides background about CALI and its project and mission. This was created seperately so that people who are interested can view it and those that are not interested can go on to the other presentation materials.
2) A 20 minute screencast about the Legal Education Podcasting Project.
3) A self-contained wiki file (created with Tiddlywiki) that lays out some of the technical issues with links and explanations about the Classcaster software that we developed in support of this project.

In addition, we have provided two PDFs that contain the Powerpoint slides that were used to create the screencasts: What is CALI; Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Communications and Alumni

• Advanced Organizational Communication is a team blog by Walter Carl’s class at Northeastern University. This semester, the class is collaborating with John Cass from Backbone Media to better understand the reasons, conditions and factors it takes to make a successful corporate blog. Student involvement consists of helping to design questions for the interview protocol, conducting interviews with corporate bloggers, transcribing the interviews, performing a thematic analysis of the interviews, and contributing posts to the class blog that articulate the initial findings and what they learned from the project. Blog and description submitted by Dr.Walter J. Carl.
• “What’s hAPPening!” is the blog of the Appalachian Alumni Association (Appalachian State University) consisting of links to news articles, photos, alumni profiles, campus news and other information relevant to our alumni base. Submitted by Rob Robertson.

Library and Information Resources

• The FLICC/FEDLINK Environmental Scan wiki is a collaborative project to describe external trends and issues that could affect FLICC/FEDLINK’s strategic planning. We describe, annotate and link to societal, information use, library, publishing and government library trends that will help set the stage for a Business Plan being created by FLICC/FEDLINK, a Library of Congress-sponsored consortium of federal library and information centers (http://www.loc.gov/flicc/). Site and description submitted by Cindy Boeke.

Teaching and Learning

• The collegiate education experience becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Yet our high schools and universities have failed to educate their students with the means to take full advantage of the tools available. College v2 aims to arm students with the tricks, tips, and knowledge to put them ahead of the pack. College v2 will also post an occasional news story or photograph that will help you in you everyday life. My aim is to help you take over the world, or at least get out of taking 18 credits alive, and intact. Site and description submitted by Sean Blanda.
• Jason Heath, bass instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Trinity Intenational University, maintains Jason Heath’s Bass Page, a blog for players and enthusiasts of the double bass and electric bass as a way to communicate with both both personal students and for the Chicago bass community in general, providing double bass concert news, lesson schedules, recommended repertoire, lesson summaries and assignments, and the like.
• Skate of the Web highlights new tools for learning by Dr. Antonio Vantaggiato at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón.

Is any area of higher education being transformed more rapidly and more dramatically by new media than advancement?

As professional communicators, we used to “deliver our message to key audiences.” Now we “interact with communities.”

We used to be confident that we were the masters of our respective institution’s brand. Now we’re not nearly so sure.

“Markets are conversations,” the Cluetrain Manifesto declared. What more evidence do we need than the social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Xanga, to which our students, prospective students, and alumni are heading in vast numbers?

How colleges and universities will recruit students, retain the loyalty of alumni and conduct fund-raising in the new era of Social Media is the focus of this next installment of our conference.

Many thanks to our 15 presenters for sharing their perspectives, their outstanding presentations, and the live online chats we have scheduled.

Thanks also to Robert French for chairing this section, and to Dan Karleen for the Herculean job he’s done in pulling ‘BlogCon’ together.

Dan Forbush
ProfNet

>>Monday, April 17, 2006: New Media in Admissions

>>Tuesday, April 18, 2006: New Media in Alumni Relations

>>Wednesday, April 19, 2006: New Media in Communications; Resources for Further Learning

>>Thursday, April 20, 2006: CASE Online Speaker Series

>>Friday, April 21, 2006: Special: Links to More Applications of New Media in Higher Education

]]> http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/admissions-alumni-relations-and-communications-marketing/feed/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/how-can-i-learn-more-about-new-media/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/how-can-i-learn-more-about-new-media/#comments Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:32:38 +0000 Dan Karleen http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/how-can-i-learn-more-about-new-media/ Dan Karleen
Thomson Peterson’s
Syndication for Higher Ed

Developments in new media seem to be occurring more and more rapidly. Whether you refer to the web as “teeming” (as Bob Robertson-Boyd and Dimitri Glazkov say) or “come as you are” (Dave Winer), it can certainly be challenging to keep up. It’s increasingly important to be familiar with sites that can help you learn and tools such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) readers and blog search engines that will help you scan for new information efficiently. This brief screencast introduces some key sites and tools that will help you get started and stay informed. A warm thanks to Karine Joly, Paul Baker, and Erin Caldwell, who shared their expertise in the interviews linked below.

View the screencast presentation (10:10); will open directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

Links mentioned in the talk

Collegewebeditor.com - Interview with Karine Joly

EducationPR - Interview with Paul Baker
(Apologies to Paul Baker and you, the viewers; Wordpress.com, where Paul hosts his blog, was down briefly for maintenance the weekend morning I prepared the screencast.)

FutureOfPR.com

For Immediate Release

Forward - Interview with Erin Caldwell

Bloglines

Sage for Firefox

Technorati

Google News

Wordpress.com

Tags: new media, blogs, blogging, higher education marketing, blog search

]]> http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/how-can-i-learn-more-about-new-media/feed/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-karine-joly/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-karine-joly/#comments Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:18:36 +0000 Dan Karleen http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-karine-joly/ Karine Joly’s blog is Collegewebeditor.com, a leading resource on higher education marketing in the age of new media. I recently asked her to share her thoughts on some ways to stay informed about new media.

-Dan Karleen

DK: What are some of the ways you stay informed about the latest developments in new media? Which tools or resources do you think might be helpful for those who want to learn about new media, but aren’t sure where to begin?

KJ: I live in my RSS reader. I’ve chosen Bloglines because it’s web-based and I can check my feeds on any of the three computers I use. I’m subscribed to about 150 news feeds (higher education, web design, marketing, search engine optimization, etc.) as well as a few keyword searches on Topix.net. When I have a bit more time, I also do keyword searches on Technorati.com or del.icio.us. If you want to learn more about new media, you should start to use RSS. Get a Bloglines account or download the RSS reader of your choice and start to subscribe to feeds and blogs. Don’t limit yourself to higher education, but check out what’s done in Corporate PR as well.

DK: Let’s say I have ten or fifteen minutes to spare, and I’m eager to learn more. What are two things I could do today that would help accelerate my understanding of the role of new media in Higher Education?

KJ: From the shameless self-promotion department, I would say that you should read my latest column in University Business: “The Brand (Brave?) New World Of Online Public Relations“. In this article, I tried to explain why it’s so important to learn more about the new media and provide a few good examples of what’s already done by some institutions. With the five minutes left, take the next step toward a better understanding of the role of new media in Higher Education: email me a quick note at karine@collegewebeditor.com to request a free Bloglines account already set up with a selection of the best higher ed RSS feeds available. If you already have an RSS reader, I’ll share the corresponding OPML file, so you can import these feeds at once.

DK: You publish both a blog (Collegewebeditor.com) and a column in a traditional a publication (University Business), and your work has helped inform many in Higher Education about the role of new media in PR and marketing. Now that many have been introduced, what do you believe are the keys to more widespread adoption of some of the tools of new media among Higher Ed PR and marketing professionals?

KJ: I think higher ed PR and marketing professionals need to get their hands dirty. They need to offer their press releases in RSS, set up Technorati watches to monitor conversations about their institutions and set up blogs to share their clips with their campus community. They need to understand that Web 2.0 doesn’t present the same technological barriers to access that Web 1.0 did. You don’t need to be an IT pro to publish a blog. That doesn’t mean you should do it solo without asking for help to set up or customize your blog. But, this means that you don’t need to invest dozens of hours to start posting. The beauty of Web 2.0 applications is that they are all created with the end-user in mind, a user who is supposed to read but also write the Web. In other words, you don’t need to be a geek, because new media is all about media, not technology. Last, I think PR and marketing professionals really need to embrace change, adapt their messages and add these new communication channels to their tool box.

Tags: marketing, PR, education, blogs, blogging, RSS

]]> http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-karine-joly/feed/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-paul-baker/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-paul-baker/#comments Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:14:52 +0000 Dan Karleen http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-paul-baker/ Paul Baker is the blogger at EducationPR. I recently asked him to share a few thoughts about his experience in migrating from Blogger to WordPress and re-launching a newly branded blog with a fresh focus on tools and resources for those in education public relations and communications.

-Dan Karleen

DK: What prompted your decision to try a new blogging platform?

PB: Four things: functionality, content, design, and reputation.

I decided to begin blogging really recently – just last August. My original site site is here: http://wcer.blogspot.com.

I chose Blogger because I knew a few people who were using it, and because it’s free. It seemed fairly simple to set up and get started, and as a newbie I wasn’t ready to try anything really sophisticated. As time went on, the more I used it, the more I wanted to tweak it. You have to tweak it to create a Blogroll, and you can’t create categories for your posts. So after five months or so I began to feel limitations. That’s the functionality part.

In terms of content, after a few months of blogging I wanted to change direction, to refocus my content. My Blogspot blog began as a way to repurpose education-related content I had created for other media and as a way to reach new audiences, and point them to our corporate WCER web site, http://www.wcer.wisc.edu. But I began growing away from my original subject – education research – and posting more about my profession, public relations, and about cool new technologies available to communicators. I realized that was the direction I wanted to go, and so a new blog seemed appropriate.

As long as I was going to refocus content, I thought it would be appropriate to come up with a new name, a different design, and a new domain. Over the months I had added all kinds of buttons and other graphics to my Blogger site and had really cluttered up the page. I wanted to start over with a clean-looking design.

In terms of reputation: There are some fine bloggers using Blogger and there is some useful content on Blogger sites. But I learned that some of the blogs on that platform were shady — spam blogs and fake blogs — and that a professional blogger would want to avoid being associated with less desirable blogging practices might do well to choose another platform.

DK: Which platforms did you consider, and why? Why did you end up on Wordpress.com?

PB: While still learning my way around Blogger I read several reviews comparing the other major blogging tools including Moveable Type, Expression Engine, and the various flavors of TypePad, and Blogware. There’s a great comparison chart here: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm.

For a number of reasons I didn’t want to host my blog on a work server. I wanted a free, hosted service. It eventually narrowed down to a choice between TypePad and WordPress. I would probably be happy with either one. Maybe in time I’ll want to move up to the full-blown version of one or the other. But I’m not a heavy-duty blogger, just a few posts per week, and at this point don’t feel a need for all the bells and whistles.

DK: Did you have any specific goals in terms of migrating content from the old blog to the new one? How successful were you in reaching these goals?

PB: In terms of content, I did not migrate over the posts releated to education research. The blogroll and other links are pretty much the same, though, and I retained the posts releated to technology and public relations.

In terms of logistics, I was really pleased at how easy WordPress makes it to migrate from Blogger. You basically push a button and WordPress sucks everything in. The formatting and links came through just fine. I don’t think I had a single problem with it. Then it was just a matter of assigning categories to the old posts, and setting up my blog roll.

DK: How did you help your readers find your new blog?

PB: On the day I “threw the switch,” I posted about it on the Blogger blog, provided a link to the new WordPress site and the URL for the new RSS feed. So anyone who subscribed to my RSS feed got the announcement in their feedreader.

I also sent the new WordPress URL to the major blog indexing services. I mention the WordPress site occasionally in the podcast that I do, and in a monthly electronic newsletter I edit.

Although the Blogger site is officially archived, I’m happy to see that it still gets visits, so I hope some people are finding the content there useful.

It will take a while for the WordPress site to get as much traffic as the Blogger site once did. I just need to keep posting new content and linking to more useful things.

DK: What do you like or dislike about Wordpress.com so far?

PB: The user interface is clean, the templates are professional-looking. It’s easy to post and create categories. I like the Dashboard, I like the stats reports, and it’s easy to add and manage links and the blogroll. There are special editors for the sidebar and for the header design. There are several features I have yet to take advantage of.

DK: Now that you have run blogs on two platforms, what would you recommend to Higher Education PR professionals who are considering launching a blog or moving their blog to a new platform?

PB: Talk to your friends who are blogging. That’s the best piece of advice I can think of. Then maybe borrow one of the many “how to blog” books available.

Ask yourself why you want to blog. Do you want to blog for a strategic communication reason? Or is it to learn how blogging is done on a technical level? Or do you just want to become a more informed consumer information you find in the blog world? These are all perfectly good reasons. Then jump in with both feet, learn as you go along.

I have to say blogging has been really enjoyable and that I’ve contacted some great new people.

Tags: PR, blogging, education

]]> http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-paul-baker/feed/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-erin-caldwell/ http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-erin-caldwell/#comments Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:12:57 +0000 Dan Karleen http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/interview-with-erin-caldwell/ Erin Caldwell is managing editor of Forward, a new resource for those in public relations seeking to learn more about new media. I recently asked her to share a few words about this new site.

-Dan Karleen

DK: How did Forward get its start?

Well, there were two separate thoughts that lead to the big idea of Forward. Initially, it was becoming more and more clear to me how unique and ahead-of-the-times Robert French’s Style and Design class makes Auburn University’s PR program. I was realizing that very few universities were latching on to this new idea and embracing new media. I also anticipated an increasing knowledge gap between those who were exposed to it early on and those who weren’t. Forward was created to provide all PR students with knowledge and information on these new communications tools; to give them some basic skills and the confidence to start working with them themselves – even if their schools weren’t yet regarding them as worthwhile.

There is another aspect of the site that doesn’t really deal with PR issues or new media. The career advice section stems from my getting ready to graduate and realizing that there were TONS of questions that I had … and had no idea who I could ask, or I wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was getting (as in, they were just canned answers and didn’t really apply to my situation). I’m also a very inquisitive person, so the career advice area deals with discussing issues that people will face as they come to that time when they’re leaving college and entering the real world. We offer answers and discussion on some basic questions, as well as several that most people haven’t even thought to ask yet!

I should point out, however, that Forward would not exist if it weren’t for French’s class. The material he covered (i.e. introducing us to blogs and other new media tools) and the connections and relationships I made as a result are essentially what led to the creation of Forward.

DK: How did you decide on the name Forward?

That’s a good question. I wish I could remember. I believe I was actually trying to think of a new name for my personal blog and it popped in my head. I liked the word and started thinking, “But what does ‘forward’ really mean??” That train of thought eventually led to the “Forward thinking. Forward moving” tagline, and everything clicked.

Our tagline ties into our advocacy of forward thinking – we want to help people in the industry develop a forward-thinking mindset, to sharpen their skills and give them the tools and confidence to really start thinking critically. Forward thinking leads to forward moving – individuals going forward in their careers and an advancement of the industry with a focus on integrity and intellect.

DK: Why do you feel it’s important that Forward be more than a blog?

The HTML pages (the non-blog part) serve as the gateway to the blog, in a way. It was a strategic choice based on the recognition that we’re targeting individuals who haven’t necessarily been exposed to blogs and may feel more comfortable interacting with the site if there’s a buffer there to sort of introduce them to the new medium. Within the HTML pages, we try to spell things out and make navigation smooth and logical, again, to make it easy for people to embrace this resource. We also have the “About Forward Blog” page that gives a brief explanation of how to utilize that part of the site. HTML pages, by nature are more static, so the weight of content for the site is within the blog – that’s where all the conversation happens! The HTML pages are an introduction and a source of good, staple information. And of course, we’ll continue to develop that part of the site as well, to make it more thorough.


DK: What does it take to keep the site running?

Oh goodness, the first few weeks after the launch required CONSTANT monitoring. I had no idea! It was a big learning experience for me. It has settled somewhat at this point. We try to post about twice a day, but we have almost 20 contributors at this point, so that’s not hard to maintain. Only I have the permissions level, as the administrator, to publish posts. One reason for this, it allows me to manage the timing, frequency, topics and authors of the posts. I also read through, edit and give feedback on posts when needed prior to publishing. Coordinating and communicating with the contributors is also important at this early stage. I send an email to the group about once a week with notes and important news or information. I also communicate quite frequently with them on an individual basis, mostly regarding material for the site.

The contributors do a great job of keeping the conversation going on the blog. Feedback that I’ve received tells me that they’re really enjoying taking part in this and getting a lot out of the experience.

Besides all that, I also try to keep tabs on who’s talking about Forward, and I closely monitor the site’s statistics. I don’t put too much weight on the stats – I’m more concerned with posting quality material and maintaining good discussions – but it’s interesting to see where the peaks and valleys are and what affects those numbers. It’s all adding up to be quite a learning experience!

DK: In your opinion, what are the key things new PR professionals need to know in order to succeed?

Haha – that’s what I’m trying to find out! I think new PR professionals definitely need to grasp the idea that information and knowledge isn’t always going to be spoon fed to them. They need to go in search of knowledge. They need to read and research and find what really interests them and pursue it with genuine and thoughtful curiosity. Also, it’s important to really dive into and look deeply at trends, issues and new tools in PR – but never lose site of the big picture.
How can Forward help, and how will you convince people that they should pay attention?

How can Forward help … well, I hope that we’re stimulating thought. Thinking through these issues and reading all the different perspectives – I hope that that ignites an interest and gives people a little confidence to go and start looking into these things more. That’s the whole idea that this is a springboard. It’s a starting point.

How to convince people to pay attention … the PR people already involved the blogosphere certainly embraced the idea of this sort of thing, long before Forward actually. The trick is getting the folks not already acquainted with the medium to chime in. I’m still working on that. The best way, and how we’re approaching it, is contacting them through a medium they’re already familiar with, explaining the benefits of the site in terms they can relate to, and simply inviting them to take a look. This has actually been pretty successful. We did a fairly small-scale student-oriented awareness push a few weeks back and saw an increase in site traffic and blog-related stats as a direct result. Looking to expand on that strategy in the coming months …


DK: How will you know that Forward is accomplishing what you hope it will?

EC: That’s hard to say. Most likely through discussion on the blog. I can tell from our feed stats that our readership is steadily increasing (so folks are reading the material!), but I’ll have a better idea that we’re making an impact when more students are participating in the discussion. I’m expecting that to take some time, however. They have to feel comfortable enough to comment, and that essentially just takes a certain period of time of laying low in the blogosphere – just soaking it up and getting oriented.

DK: Have you received any feedback so far?

EC: Yes! We’ve received plenty of great feedback from professionals – both “good job” feedback and “here’s another idea” or “this didn’t work.” General consensus from the professionals is that they’re happy with what we’re doing and they’re enthusiastic. We’re working hard to maintain that.

We have also received feedback from students. Slowly but surely, they’re adding themselves to Forward’s Frappr map – which is an easy and fun way to see who we’re reaching. I’ve also gotten a few personal emails, and the blog has gotten comments. The feedback is very positive, and the involvement is slowly increasing. We certainly hope to see that trend continue.

DK: How do you see Forward evolving?

EC: I have thought about this question for a while, and the answer that keeps coming to mind is “However it needs to.” I realize that’s rather vague, but that’s precisely what I mean. We’re working to build a sharp team that will constantly strive to develop the site into a resource that fits the current needs and questions of our audience. We’ll continue to expand and add content to the HTML part of our site – I’d like to see that grow into a larger resource. And I think the blog will evolve naturally. Contributors will continue to write about issues and trends that are relevant and timely.
At the moment, we are developing a few podcasts. These will not differ much from the type of material found in posts, but will simply utilize the advantages of the audio medium.

We’ve also had some discussion of creating a place where PR educators from around the world can post lecture notes and other class materials. That could possibly employ the use of a wiki. We’re currently considering the logistics of such an undertaking and trying to gage interest in this sort of resource. Would educators be willing to share material (under a creative license, of course)? Would students utilize the material? We’ll see …

DK: Who would you like to reach?

EC: More students, and especially younger ones or those who aren’t necessarily in PR yet. Something interesting I’ve come across in a lot of the feedback from other students is that the site gave them a better idea of what PR is and what you can do with an education in PR. Perhaps this can help some young people determine if this is a professional area they’d like to pursue.

DK: What kind of effort do you think this will take?

EC: Really, I think it will take a massive outreach effort to develop relationships with faculty and leaders of PR programs at colleges and universities. This will take time and a lot of networking. Forward is only about a month old, so I think we’ll let the site grow a little more and then we’ll start up with this strategy.
We’re being very thoughtful about all of the choices we make and trying to take the time to do it right. This is in an effort to meticulously craft Forward into a valuable, lasting resource – not something that will just fizzle out or flop in a matter of months.

DK: Have you considered developing Forward into a business? If so, what would this look like?

EC: Honestly, I’d rather Forward not develop into a business. Several people have mentioned that, actually. Forward certainly wasn’t created with that in mind, and even after giving it some thought, I still maintain that I don’t want it to head in that direction.

Forward was created to provide a place for an exchange of ideas and information. Its focus and roots are in education. We’re sure that the relationships we form with Forward will provide benefits to all involved, without the need to try to make money from it.

As of right now, we just hope to expand the impact of our efforts and continue to develop Forward as a place where PR people – both novice and experienced – can learn and interact.

Tags: public relations, new media

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