Category: Professional

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keynote

sitting right behind one of the projectors in the main room. head guy (whose name escapes me) talking about the first webvisions in ’01, right after the bubble crash. which iirc hit really damn hard in pdx.

fun, casual, creative, inspiring. which is why I love it.

I have 1 hr ~11 mins left according to my battery clock.

party afterwards…should I invite Tom et al, or just continue with my original plans?

intro blather. 🙂

sensory overload with david pescovitz (make magazine, boing boing, etc.)

institute for the future is a rand spinoff. huh.

weird stuff with screen res. aw. happy baby.

::sigh:: oh, the silliness. is THIS distributed intelligence?

VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (term from army war college, apparently)

they don’t make predictions! don’t believe predictions, when you hear them. instead, narrow the cone of uncertainty.

sensing the problems, getting insights, and acting.

methodologies (which reminds me much of the research discussed in previous sessions)

cabinet of curiosities, weak signals, wunderkammer. sense making.

208 unread emails. (ack!) “suffocation” and that’s what it feels like. (Bit Literacy book?!) and we’re only scratching the surface.

so this is his collection of “weak signals” of ways that people are finding to deal with this.

15 thousand terabytes. (my barely organized photo collection. MP3s I ripped from CD in 1999. 6 years worth of blog posts.) 800 mb of data created by each person every year, and that’s before the rise of blogs.

waves of technology (pretty graph) computing -> communicating -> sensing

stuff that connects to the human body. (like the pedometer I’m wearing right now!) when things start to blog? when every single action is a piece of data, everywhere, anywhere. (Everyware?)

smart dust. weird shit.

geoweb. which gives me that freaky feeling of awe and dismay. (what does location awareness do to people fooling around? or playing hooky? or? or?) and also skin crawling.

how do you deal with the data?

next curve: sensemaking?

a personal digression, if I may: I’m tracking four things in my life right now, all of them collected electronically in one way or another. focusing on those particulars helps, with one thing or another, because I can see the trends, or get excited by the highpoints (27.4 mph!), or look back and remind myself of one thing or another. all of which helps me to be more of the person who I would really like to be.

and the rise of infographics. cabspotting (weren’t they @ sxsw last year?) by stamen design.

and then ambient info devices. glowing threat level? fountain reflecting the movement of xerox stock price.

art & technology, using the old saw about hemlines & the stock market.

people want to replace the old clock radio with something smarter. chumby? (open source, coming out later this year.) actually this is how I use my cellphone, when my alarm clock last year.

the ambient devices thingamabob. I put their google gadget on my google homepage, and it sucked.

and then the bacon-cooking alarm clock. some coffee makers work this way.

my battery notice is in the red zone, 43 mins remaining. dunno if I’ll make it all the way to the end.

“imakeprojects” 6th sense, vibrations, for wireless networks. (oh, hey, wasn’t that in wired 2 mos ago?) I loved the idea of the guy who could sense direction.

ew. magnet in finger. but he can feel where the wires are in the wall. at this stage, that seems freaking useful.

delicious! yay! also digg, which I’ve never gotten into. and mefi. 🙂 mathowie right over there. and ask mefi, which I’ve found useful a few times. (how I decided not to wear makeup for my job interviews.)

messages at places.

wtf? making sense of nonverbal cues. (ah, the aspergers people, which kicks back to a previous discussion about geeks and depression. would something like that be a reasonable treatment addition in cognitive behavioral therapy?)

BS detector?! I missed the details.

task switching tracking, and remembering what the hell you were doing. program to download: onlife (for mac)

mmmmm…lifehacker. although I never seem to catch up with all the useful things I see there.

continuous partial attention, which can be tiring. oh, hey, that’s why conferences can be so exhausting. “if you drink too much coffee, it gets much worse”

(every so often C tries to get me to monotask for a while, which I find harder than seems appropriate.)

I think I used to have a Firefox extension that did that. (anti-procrastination alert)

mind-hacking. medications. law students using ritalin to study better?! not using it for fun (ala acid, pot, etc) but to be more productive. (freaky.) what happens to the people who aren’t? the anti-narcolepsy drug, not being used by narcoleptics. CX717, people doing better than people who had slept.

(and how does this connect to my experiences with depression & medication?)

memory-enhancing drugs. (which book was that? breakpoint?)

goofball military names/acronyms. machine sensing your sense of anxiety, distraction, and reducing input appropriately.

magnetic thingamabob. (isn’t that also showing promise in treating depression? again, that book by…richard clarke, iirc.)

and then of course the implant, dude controlling robotic arm with his mind. cyberkinetics neurotechnology. (name of co.)

again moving into the realm of the exceptionally wiggy.

Q re ADHD & sensory overload. As evolutionarily advanced. ::rolls eyes:: obviously didn’t live w/Raul.

Q: ethics? esp. w/military involvement? the social/economic divide. but he has faith in the DIY culture. what about [missed the question]?

mac says she has 21 mins. I’m going to turn off.

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personas

::testing::

okay, that worked.

“if our tvs went down like computers….”  (which led to reminiscing about antennas, vertical hold & not having remotes.)

yep, a follow-up to the last session I was at. not everything you’d want to know, more like whirlwind tour.

again with the durable & actionable.

office room == painting of signing of consititution.  “what happened to feature x.” “customers don’t want it.” “but that’s not what we said we were going to do.” to be answered by jargon blather, and back and forth. “forget everything you know about users. we need to be innovative.” (apparently an actual quote.) and the conversation goes downhill from there.

omg I want that graphic of jefferson with head exploding, because that’s what I always say!

1) business results depend on satisfying users.

2) you are not your user. (hey, another financial services project! opening new accounts, couldn’t talk to financial advisors. redesigning fundamental interface w/out actually talking to the users, only thru stakeholders.  so they built for power. and then they could talk to users in testing: and they HATED it. had to start from scratch, and this time got to talk to real people instead of just stakeholders.

3) learning about users requires direct contact. (who is doing that @work? anybody?!)

4) knowledge about users must be actionable. moving from raw notes, spreadsheets, etc.

5) decisions should be based on users.  what to build, how to build it. also need to be talking about users in a memorable way (thus personas, I suppose). friend’s quest to buy a house. but no clue where to start. (hm, when we did that, we actually started with WSECU; this was of course when I was still @ Pierce.) ah, she’s actually a persona. 🙂 archetype, with unique characteristics.  (but that doesn’t negate the thought I was starting on.)

ooooh, lego heads.

personas bring focus. build empathy (as previously mentioned), use our hard-wiring of attaching to individuals.  encourage consensus. “well, do we need this feature on this page?” when you’re supposed to be working on the design comp.

distracting weirdness with the mic.

personas create efficiency. making the right decisions earlier. asking who we’re serving and what they need, earlier. adding the step up front so as to save stupid work later. lead to making better decisions. used to be just a design thing. “cute stuff” now moving into different parts of the org. again personas vs. market segmentation. (in re: marketing) and then in strategy. holy moley. the squeaky wheel persona was about 5%, not too valuable. vs. frank the frequent customer, 60% of users, 80% of business. doesn’t care about the stuff the squeaky wheel person is fussing over. redesigned entire business around that one persona!

creating personas

landscape x/y chart of user research. aspirational (what they say) vs. behaviors (what they do). sony boombox focus group: everybody picked yellow. and then take one on yr way out…and people actually TOOK the black boomboxen. the quantitative vs. qualitative. (insight vs. validation)

nobody has time to make personas from all of that!

method one: talk to real people, do segmentation (how do they group together), then each segment = persona. easiest way to get started. cross-section of people, not just people using website now. very unstructured. 15 interviews is a good starting point. uncover what you don’t know.

huge slide of bullet points. topics for interviews. “tell me about your experience.”

elements to segment on. digression re: segmentation in traditional marketing, selling to people, and demographics. this: not just selling to get them to the site, but to understand how they USE it. most important: goals, behaviors, attitudes.

working from the smallest goal (learn about points) to the larger goals (be happy & independent). task leads to need leads to goal leads to motivator. the middle (need & goal) are the most useful.

okay, so does this feel like the real people? then go to behaviors (frequency? channel use?) and attitudes (how much do they think they know? perceptions of us?)

come up with a ton of ideas.  then explore combinations with x/y axis. (I’m seeing an indexed drawing in my mind.) again is it complete? does it match actual people?

fedex example.

list of tests. (I hope these slides are going to be available!)

why should we believe you based on 20 people? so version 2 involves a second run getting quantitative data (survey, traffic analysis) to validate. 100 data points per segment is a good minimum.

question types: things we want to test (against our segments) and then independent variables. recommended order of questions on a slide. do the demographic stuff at the END. huh.

and then traffic analysis, what people do! log files. big @ss list of things to look for, which includes some of the data that Paul tracks. so segmentation can then show both what they say and what they do.

(digression: oh, hey, this is the guy I first learned about CSS from, way back in the webmonkey days.

what the user says, does, and is worth. nirvana! jeebus, cross-tabs in excel.

version 3…can happen in v2 that your segments are totally off. so then the middle step is slimmer, with hypotheses. and then segmentation is done by the machine. weird. bringing science into the process as much as possible.

dump in all the variables, number of segments (3-6), and get options. data says: here’s however many sets of segments, and then it turns back into art.

blah blah blah spreadsheets. (and while you might not want to show it to people, it’s good to be able to say that you have it!)

what makes each persona unique? goals and such.

alliteration can help with names and memory. must make them real! photos are fun. (hey, i think I was thinking about using the bottom left woman for an ad!) sxc.hu, morguefile.com, istockphoto.com. again with the real people.

just the right data would reinforce the message, invented hobbies, jobs, etc. that match the persona.

then what’s specific to the industry/project, and their technological access.

but not just lists! a story (again, made to stick).

and label as primary, secondary, unimportant, excluded, to prioritize in competitions.

a scenario describes how we want them to interact with us in the future.

now on to using personas! practical advice

having a document, but repackaging as cards. (with gum?! go around the room and say who is most like each persona. and that can affect hiring?!)

lifesize cutouts. (on my ride to work, there’s a house where a guy has a lifesize cutout of a marine by his front door. totally wigs me out.)

persona cubicles. faux environments. doodads, quizzes, etc., etc. anything to keep them in people’s minds. (hm, like how the core values are promoted.)

can be useful or goofy, depending on the environment.

personas shine historically in the arena of features & functionality. directed brainstorming based on a personas goals posed against our business goals. in the middle: features and content that might fit BOTH. that’s damn rad.

and then a crazy matrix of prioritizing — adding personas along with all the other decision-making.

site structure. and back to task analysis. the scenario is the emotionalized context of a set of tasks. nice. or a use case.

paths personas might take through the site.

primary persona may be different at the page or section level.

okay, all of this reminded me that I’ve been meaning to register epersonae.org. (done.)

back to the session….

matching the contents and style to the persona. word cloud! ooooh. fun fun fun.

mood boards vs…. a more implicit process. how does the look match their needs and concerns? for one, it’s making links big open and clear, and then for another, adding a headshot and other elements to inspire trust.

and then iterative testing. QA scripts from persona POV. filter feedback & surveys thru lens of personas. how do I look at my log files and know whether the people in those segments are actually doing what we want them to do?

Q: 4000 page site, elearning, does personas help with creating navigation. his take on the old higher ed navigation problem of topics vs. audiences: only do audiences if you’re also doing topics, as a secondary method.

Q: example of amnesty international site redesigned by happy cog as successful use.

Q: adaptability of a site that’s built on personas? and how do you know who’s using/not using features. ah, this sounds like you can only really know in cases where you have known people logged in. (like online banking?) otherwise you’re kinda guessing. oh, no, it’s also connecting usability testing, use testing, to the personas.  is this test case a “fred”, etc. subtly guiding the experience? with predictive modelling.

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user experience design

fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck. I tried to save a post and it’s entirely fucking gone.

pardon my french. but I was getting something really useful written down.

goddamn convention center wireless.

context, emotion, complexity. missed a bunch of stuff about research, which we aren’t even doing.

thing I really want to capture from my lost post: people go through the motions like they know what they’re doing, because they can’t admit that they don’t. framing tasks with a path to knowledge.

get out there! can I set up a workstation at a branch?

in their project, went out and talked to people about statements, where their computers actually were, etc. not a useability lab! “you had to be there.”

social interactions, what people are made for. (except autism spectrum. hm. something meaningful there perhaps.)

and integrating with design & development.

strategies:

take the skinheads bowling! (engineers & designers into the field) even more powerful than making racer-boys watch usability tests.

getting empathy helps propel action, and making the research durable. (there are still things I remember from usability testing @ pierce. the woman who COULD NOT SEE the navigation.)

what if I can’t?! (his question) a continuum. getting everybody in the same room.  I have some hopes for being in the same cube neighborhood as strategic planning.

weird, just leaving the audio from testing on while people were doing work, and even that seemed to help.

there’s a conversation I need to have, and I don’t want to forget.

if you have to jump over a wall between research & others, research reports are where good insights go to die.  (what I heard about the last accreditation process @ Pierce.)

effectiveness of research is inversely proportional to thickness of binding. heh.

one good example….

Personas! (and hey, that’s the next session I was thinking of going to)  as a place where insight and empathy can meet.

case study: people and possessions. emotional relationships with stuff. (my much beloved bike.)

more common: show & tell (opportunistic more than proactive; when asked vs prostletizing).  anyway, behaviors tell us which patterns to design for.

groups of motivations. symbolic: my grandmother gave me. activity-oriented: love using the thing. also people who love looking for deals or just the right thing. misc: confirmation of choice, representation of self (both of those are ego & identity-based).

motivation as trigger for desired behavior.

and then personas. names, 1st person (quotes or assembled snippets), and then actions across motivations & behaviors. then looking at specific obstacles.

wwkd? (what would Kitty do?) a way to introduce empathy. a persona as a pattern that comes from observation.

we should totally do that. not the life cycles stuff that I’ve read, but actual members.

tshirt: “we are not the target audience” (can I mail those to pierce?)

skits?  ::wince::

dark side: revisit them periodically, to retire personas when no longer relevant.

mmmm…gantt chart. and now with research continuously! and then the whole iterative thing.

okay, I totally want to take the gang to lunch to talk about this stuff.

modified: with overlaps between research/design, research/design/development.  ::sigh:: but we don’t have much to do with the development of actual experience. (oh, hey, except maybe on the intranet.)

ideas are cheap, making them work is hard. mixing helps.

as you have conversations with the audience, you start to have ideas. then take 10 mins to share ideas at the end of new interviews. iterating the idea, cheaply.  I really, really, really want to do research for the intranet.

the long view. the history of interaction. (as I said in the lost entry, my intense loyalty to my credit union, even as I work for a different one!)

again:

1) understanding people

2) getting the understanding into design

passing on a mission. to make these things happen. (simple != easy)

amen. 😉

mathowie: let’s get practical. high-ups dissing personas, very polarizing. what to do? some people had been in a situation where it went very very wrong. also hadn’t been done well. and over-promised, over-generalized. (try in a smaller context?) “behavioral archetypes” heh. getting people to come along, either in person or through frequent reports.

hey, maybe the delay on the KB project is a good thing.  maybe I’ll have a chance to do some of this with members pre-launch.

Q: what about small agencies w/out the time? (not to mention all us one-man-bands!) field interviews aren’t that expensive, and then on the phone even cheaper. NOT out of market segments, surveys, etc. Mostly a person he specifically talked to, to enforce rigorousness. and just arguing. use books, articles, etc. (prophet from the east, as Dale used to say.)

Comment from some guy: cafe testing. buy people coffee. or bug friends & relatives. and after the first success, it gets easier to argue for it next time, working yr way up.

anytime you do it the first time, you’ll get things wrong. failing early & often, 1000 ways not to make a lightbulb, etc. (hey, this came up in an ENTIRELY different context 2 days ago.)

Q: when you’re involved, how do you keep from changing things? Mmmmm, epistomology.  Anything you do changes something, and the more you do, the more perspectives you get. (triangulating^N) dude, he just said triangulating! more data!

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Webvisions

I’m going to be at Webvisions tomorrow and Friday, getting into Portland midday. Probably having lunch with Dylan, hopefully going out to dinner with C., Tom, and Tom’s gf. (Ye gods. Tom hasn’t updated his site since ’04, when he was still in the UK.) Holler if you’re around!

(This will be my 5th year at Webvisions….or 4 1/2th? since the first time I went for a half-day, by accident. Seriously.)

As usual, there will be copious stream-of-consciousness notes.

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my accessibility story

After seeing Pat and Ralph‘s posts on the subject, I thought I should put in a few words.

I honestly don’t remember when I first learned about web accessibility. It was probably in an article on A List Apart, either that, or something else by Joe Clark. I do remember that I was already into web standards & accessibility when I got his book, which was pretty much as soon as it came out. I read it cover to cover, and loaned it to any number of people at my old job. (It was required reading for my assistants over the years.) I’ve been a Joe Clark fangirl for quite a while. 😉 Oh, that reminds me: I need to do the micropatronage thing.

The practice of accessibility is intertwined indelibly for me with the whole explosion in learning that I experienced in 2001. Discovering CSS in late 2000, giving up tables entirely, learning about XHTML, learning PHP, and getting into blogging. All wound up in this big ball of webby knowledge.

And for me it’s also always been about doing “it” (this whole web thing) “right” — which is something that I can get obsessive-compulsive about. I care deeply about the nubby details.
All of which is about me and my ego, psychic needs, etc. ::sigh::

I will say that like Pat, I believe that web accessibility is part of truth, justice and the American way. (Paraphrasing) And like Ralph, I was affected by someone in my life: in this case, my kid sister.

Elizabeth has one of those disabilities that’s hard to quantify in web accessibility, a learning disability. She was in the 4th grade before anyone really realized that she didn’t know how to read, and had all of her textbooks on audio for many years. Her weird experiences with her particular disability have given me lots of food for thought over the years; in terms of web accessibility, I remember asking her, some years back, what she felt like she needed, and her affection for Google’s spelling correction. (Elizabeth’s spelling remains, if I may say so, a little…idiosyncratic.) Thanks, kiddo. 😉

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Roundtable notes, class schedule

[originally written Oct 26, just now getting around to transferring from my MDA.  these are much less narrative than my usual note-taking style!]

Credit only
Road to improvement came thru budget cuts couldn’t dist off campus
Schedule is plain bw just classes
New student cannot reg from offcampus anyway
Off campus is simplified
Increase in costs but huge increase in population
Lane had similar issues
Creativity coming from constraints
Administration buyin needed partially to have a directive
Went to magazine format
Was so popular that she doesn’t have copies
Some paid ads
They hadn’t even had internal ads
Making it interesting enough to read
Not showing all classes
Cocc took out prereq courses
Lane took out mult sections
Lane saw no impact on enrollment no complaints from students
Cocc did theirs in a shitty year
Put energy into noncredit schedule
Most people who came in cold had shiny pub
Cocc has amazing scheduling
Lots of push to web and phone
Staffing for advertising
People contact them
Web
Quickly had to change site link to aspire in real pages
Using surveymonkey old people don’t like it
One email complaining about spanish welcome
Several sections in spanish
Barter with photo agency
Personally met with post office people show em the regs
Usps.org 6.3.4
And talk to counsel
8 month process
Two columns trimmed 40 percent pagecount mt hood cc

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NCMPR 2006 summary, etc.

Update: Janelle Runyon of Lower Columbia College reminds me that I haven’t posted my notes from the course schedule roundtable. (They haven’t yet made it over from the MDA.) When the computer, the MDA, and an appropriate USB cable are all in the same general area, I’ll post those notes, too.

I’ve had a couple of days to let all this simmer in my head, so I think I’m ready to write up my take on a summary, assembling some meaning, and making some suggestions of things we (my employer) might want to try.

The thing I keep coming back to is the gap between the keynote and everything else. Near as I can tell, the techniques discussed throughout the sessions were aimed towards or designed for just the sort of middle-class audience that the keynote speaker was NOT talking about. I guess there’s not a whole hell of a lot of research or focus on marketing towards people in generational poverty…which sounds like a horrid thing to do, except that here we’re talking about marketing education.

The generational marketing session reverbed most strongly for me in this way. When I see her chart of key events and pop culture references for the generations, it’s totally obvious that it’s (mostly) a middle-class white suburban lexicon.

I was involved in some really good thoughtful conversations outside of the sessions, including over a few drinks. Somebody questioned the value of taglines in our context. Also some discussions of the futility of competing — can we collaborate more and get a rising tide to lift all boats? (This is particularly critical in my environment: 4 community colleges and 2 technical colleges all within rational commuting distance.)

Tidbits….

  • ASU president’s blog (I can’t believe I remembered that!)
  • Census bureau poverty stats (approx 10% poverty in Pierce Co. Slightly higher in families with children 5-17. And of course that makes the effective poverty rate more like 20%.)
  • (Middle class) boomers are a good target for both high-end CE programs and direct mail. Hmmmmm.
  • It may be time to progress on my idea about 1st day of school SMS messages.
  • Oh, heck, I need to get Brian M’s PierceTV/YouTube page set up.
  • More people should present w/out Powerpoint.
  • I should find some faculty who want to blog. A chancellor/presidents’ blog might be a nice touch, too, although perhaps more interesting on the intranet.
  • Ken came up with an interesting alternative to student blogging, using our current approach of testimonials in combination with additional contact info. Do we have any crash test dummies available?
  • Send notes from new media session to Sally.
  • More email newsletters/cards! Theater, arts, CE? Do we collect email addresses from CE students?
  • I wonder if we should be segmenting our visual and verbal style more, and more consiously.
  • Ideas: CE “sample day”, invite-a-friend, coupons.
  • Who is talking about us, if anyone? What are they saying? How do we find out?
  • What do we do that’s GREAT?
  • Give fliers from keynote to student services, get a copy to everyone!
  • 68% of people in her research, when they deal with professionals, walk away not knowing what they’re supposed to do next. Is there anything that we (CR) can do about that? Better takeaways?
  • Is there any research available on how poor people get information? Any differences with overall stats? What’s a good media mix for transitional ed programs?

Whew. I think that’s it.

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generational marketing

the four generations, like the four food groups

traditionalists (25-45), 75 mil

baby boomers (46-64)

gen x (65-80)

gen y, etc. (81-03)

we are outnumbered by everybody else. ::sigh::
“you are being held prisoner by traditionals & boomers.” imagine that. the “I AM the audience” syndrome. college catalog covers that faculty hate, students use as posters.

and by “old concepts of academic marketing” — if you have X, they will come.

pop culture references. go Simpsons! 😉 I wonder, do Y’s do everything as groups because they are still teens and teens do EVERYTHING as groups?

experiences and technologies. nothing terribly new here. cell phone as gen x?! not in the same was that TV was for the boomers? and “these kids are hardwired different from ours [brains]” not so much. or maybe us aspergers nerds are a generation ahead.
the herding cats ad.

more video. john wayne. what other movie was he in with Maureen O’Hara? (besides my favorite: the quiet man.) mcclintock? is it a comedy? [McLintock!]
traditionalists are grandparents of students. senior everybody. more history, more pop culture. (this looks like a much slicker version of a presentation that we had at a college event.)

70% of newspaper readers are over 40.

40% of tv/newspaper/print audiences are traditionalists; they fill the social/civic organization. oh so sad that those are dying. ::rolls eyes::

NYL ad.

boomers. ad. “I think you’ll like this.” yes, because most of you are. because it’s a spoof of the graduate, with hoffman of the dad.

parents of your students. returning students. “They like to think they’re still cool.” They were that way when I was in high school.

[the other day, we were watching Kids in the Hall. the “He’s Hip, He’s Cool, He’s 45” sketch series. heh.]

they think everything should speak to them. imagine that.

same media mix as traditionals. “you’re still a rebel.” most responsive to direct mail. hm. including reading their kid’s mail (and email). “she doesn’t know we read her email.” ew.

sprint ad: “but you are the man.”

the busy lassie ad. oh, they’re so very tired.

gen x. goofy ad with kitty and spaghetti sauce. cynical. (ya think.) nontrad students. stay at home dad generation?

they don’t trust you, because it’s all bs. “just fill my classes and shut the door when you’re done.”

no hype. prove it.

media mix: tv news on comedy central. 86+% are web-savvy. permission marketing, nothing unsolicited.

that’s not cynical. that’s stupid. chicken in vests.

practical side. but “they’re all about style.” huh?

ad with guy running away from work who goes back because he sees a cool car.

dropping landlines in record numbers. boomers got sexual revolution, we got AIDS. wasn’t that a line in a movie?

don’t buy warm fuzzy.

big list of percents of stuff done online.

pew internet study; cox-otto college web choice. job training & retraining paths are important. (isn’t that just a function of age?)

practical, practical, practical. that, and flexible. guy who works for them, came to interview, grilled them, made very clear that he needed a flex schedule to do stuff with/for his kids.

market death: ads on news, standing line, cookies on web, warm & fuzzy.

gen y. star of own show. (and how is that different from either boomers or your average teen of the last 60 years?)

starbucks ad.

ad making fun of hummers.

ad (with buffy’s sister?) supposedly making fun of boomers, bathtub cleanser.

pay attention parents because they’ll protect. curling parents: like the sport, smoothing the ice. (is that like “helicopter parents”?)

majority of students.

era of brands. again, how is that not like jordache when we were kids?

“how their little brains work” experienced by 20 what boomers experienced by 40.

they trust you, but they have to go with friends. going to disappoint faculty.

not reading. except when they are (on a screen). group events.

“which makes me feel a little better” (picking up subliminal fear messages from boomer parents?)

two-fers — class that’s also a service project.

TV, targeted; less than 10% are not web-dependent; permission marketing; produce their own digital content. [she needs to drink some water.]

buying spots on exactly the right show.

want instant response.

ad with water balloon fight in abandoned city. (xbox)

what is up with her saying “their little brains”

ad with 60s band following around some office lady.

wireless, surfing for fun. web w/cell. (really?) 2000 IMs in 30 days. males are mobile & hard to find. (neo)

wired for complexity.

like to keep their .edu email active.

youtube.

don’t care about good grade. (I thought I read something recently about kids of the same age being really pressured to do well. this is the problem of oversimplifying.)
don’t choose college by site, but will use to cut from the list.

again with the IM.

making fun of hyperbole. group projects. type 1: safe & protected. type 2: your own adventure. (extreeeeeme!)

market death: no web service/messaging, no web complexity, traditional media.

1 in 3 do online art, photo, story, etc.

3D mental maps, spatial & temporal signposts.  (hey, maybe C is also a generation ahead!)

dilemma: branding across generations.

convince inside boomers to listen & be fair.  PODs for website.  (audience-based navigation?)

refs that they use.  (ah, richard florida)

q: could ncmpr put this up for downloading?  she can put it on their site.  can send DVD with vids.

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new media

like “new market”, it’s actually about an old media, in part. one presenter is a tv guy.

thor is going to talk about blogging. (how meta.) he wants to have a dialogue.

the usual foofurah of booting up computer, etc.

shit. Web 2.0. “where blogs are moving towards”

everything you need to know: stacks and stacks of logos. web as platform vs. web as content medium.

focus on core piece: blogs. quote from Rebecca Blood handbook for the definition, and then Evan Williams. list of general characteristics. nothing I’d disagree with too strongly.

and then the why. promote, extend, showcase, enhance, articulate, invite feedback, share, etc.

use of blogging for publishing press releases, vs big-ass CMS. we’ve been doing that since 2001. not replacing but augmenting/extending.

official vs. unofficial.

page of screenshots — includes the Dean, CollegeWebEditor. the Dean rawks. (oh, and I was interviewed by CWE.)

what’s ahead? big slide with key trends (horizon report) — educause and ???. everybody says mobile devices, but they’ve been saying that for so freaking long that I just don’t believe it. mmmmm, youtube…. ah yes, commonplace in japan.

top 10 things. I just linked to that this morning! 🙂 I would love to get student services staff to commit to IM (or equivalent). ::sigh::

clarity-innovations.com/home/events/ has resources, references.

TV guy is going w/out slides. good for him. real practical things to help us do our work better. news releases. have you changed how you do them? email, but still no response.

this is a problem.

they get 300 emails a day. how do you get your message? no attachments! better subject lines. but contrariwise, if you have photos include them. can be used on station’s website.

kid chased by deer, still pictures on website: 200k pageviews. (OMG)

some stories from colleges that get attention, although sounds like all research stuff. don’t overwhelm with text. if they’re interested, they’ll find it. keep it short and quick. (vlogs. oy.)

3 years ago they stopped holding stories for the 5pm news. just get it on the web. 10-4 is primetime for the web.

tv & computer getting closer together. (like the mobile thing, I’ve been hearing that for a long time. it’s hard for me to fight my deep native scepticism.)

if you don’t make 1st tier, might be able to get story to web.

they follow a few select RSS feeds. thor explain RSS feeds, poorly, in a few seconds.

questions about media attention? I wish I could channel Sally or Dale.

q: good days/times? most newsrooms have editorial meetings around 9am or 2/3 pm. 10 am newsconference work good. anything that’s practical, esp. if it has a photo. people who have interesting stories to tell. international stories that connect to international students.

q: picking stories that are tv-worthy? money issues can work if they reflect a trend, national scope w/local impact. might be good moments to use relationships with media people.

q: relationships? just give a call once in a while. “we have phones” — introduce yourself. like high school: you can only ask a girl out so many times. heh.

(of course, pretty much all the TV for us is regional out of Seattle. much harder to get attention.)

and then somebody from Pendleton, asking whether to send stuff to Portland media. if it’s a good story, it’s a good story. their cable uses Portland TV.

q/comment: two staffs, one for web, one for tv. back in the day, not too much journalism on their sites.

q: spokane tv site, watch editorial board mtgs. “goofiest thing ever, like watching someone getting a haircut.” sometimes we think we’re really funny. 😉 it’s an experimental phase. adding transparency to what newsgathering is.

q: what are THEY doing differently? looking for different kinds of stories? or? listening to viewers/readers more. used to be that importance was decided in the meetings (except emergencies, fire down the street), go out, get it, put it on the air. newspapers are in trouble. they did some wacky thing with the state & intel to be on the wifi at rest stops (or something). [oh, that reminds me: need to email DOT re: really nice rest stop experience on the way down.]

q: explain daily decision process. led by assignment desk people/person who has all the news releases, overnight police stuff, phone calls, etc. and they go through it. 3 stories that every station in town will do. news mgrs, reporters, photographers. collaborative. sometimes people fighting for a story. redo around 2:30 pm to review. [missed some stuff about the weekend clicking the low batter button.]

media needs access to experts. inhouse experts with blogs could be really helpful. Portland State sends them experts on the top stories of the week every week.

use departmental blogs for cherrypicking. outside of the official organization, outsiders may want to write about the college they care about. parent bloggers made an impact on schoolboard elections in pdx.

q to thor: in collaborative enviroment, how do you see blogging changing college’s approach to providing web site? every CC president should have a blog. (hm.) inviting comments. (!!!! I think have some links about particular experiences with that.) blogs cowritten by CEOs w/marketing. (not super-impressed with the answer. I think there’s something deeper, about how that “core” of the site works, how students use it, etc. but I don’t have the answers either.)

q: missed. trends, maybe? crime that doesn’t impact you isn’t important, but some stations think it is. lazy journalism. (that’s been going on since I was a kid, at least.)  electronic journalism is being challenged to do good journalism.

and then the battery died.  nothing else more to report, really.  some good chitchat over the break.  tool called kidblog?  for super-simple blogging.

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morning comments

Portland CC president.  lots of internal chitchat type stuff.  honestly? not really paying attention.  it’s early, and the fog is just burning off.

his story of going to a CC in Michigan, fairly amusing.