As most of you already know, Tufts University announced today that Anthony P. Monaco was chosen to serve as the thirteenth President of Tufts University.
In addition to the standard (and important!) email blast, news release, feature story, and website updates, Web Communications incorporated more interactive forms of communication to help spread the word.
Continue reading "Social Media and a Presidential Announcement" »
Web Communications is looking for a social media intern and an events calendar intern to work with us in the Spring 2011 semester.
For more details, please see the job listings on Tufts Life:
Web Communications recently finished building a Tufts-wide Social Media Hub that combines feeds and content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and blogs from around the University.
The page provides a clean, feature-rich way to keep tabs on Tufts' social media presence without having to visit each site individually. In addition, the page includes tweets, videos, blog entries, and other content from many departments and student groups.
What do you think of the new page? Are there other social media channels you think Tufts should include? Would you like your department's social media outlets added to our lists? Let us know in the comments.
After a University-wide survey and revisions made by a Master of Library Science, Tufts' Offices and Services page has been updated.
While we had our own ideas of what needed changing, we received hundreds of responses and suggestions from the Tufts community, as well.
The new page includes:
- Improved sorting (“Department of Philosophy” is now under P instead of D)
- Enhanced keywords to make search results more relevant
- The removal of non-existent programs, individual labs, and departments without websites
- The ability to list an entry under multiple names
- The ability to search by partial titles (searching “communic” will return a link to “Web Communications,” rather than nothing)
While we couldn’t add all the suggested improvements, such as photos for all listed departments or information on the nonexistent “Walpole Campus,” we feel this is a vast improvement over the previous version of the page.
A quick spin around the web turns up....
We're proud to announce that the Office of Web Communications has received a CASE Bronze award in the Other Uses of Social Media category for our coverage of the Beelzebubs' appearance on NBC's "The Sing-Off."
Out of 25 entries judged in the competition, two won gold and one (us!) won bronze.
The great thing about a prize like this is that it is not our accomplishment alone. It also belongs to all the members of the Tufts community who made our social media outreach about the Bubs' progress through the competition -- whether it was through retweeting or live chatting -- a success. So, thanks to all!
The BostInnovation blog recently recognized the @TuftsUniversity Twitter account in a rundown of Boston-area university Twitter presences.
Being in the Boston area, which has so many colleges and universities, it's always nice to be reminded of our neighbors who are doing the same thing we are -- trying to communicate and connect about our respective institutions on the web. BostInnovation calls it competition, but I also call it community. We all learn from each other. Congrats to all!
Back in the summer of 2006, I had a crazy idea. What if we followed the lives of a group of Tufts students from start to finish, ending up with a cumulative portrait of the undergraduate experience?
We didn't quite know what would happen when we launched Four Years, Infinite Possibilities. But last week, as the class of 2010 prepares to ascend the Hill one last time for Commencement, we launched the final installment.
Four Years, Infinite Possibilities from Tufts University on Vimeo.
Over the past four years, the students' lives changed in ways they couldn't have anticipated. You can read back through the installments of the feature to see how that happened. But Web Communications changed, too. The project itself changed owners. Our platforms shifted. Our technological capabilities and collaborations evolved (and the above video is proof positive of that).
So what does this mean? It means that, for both our department and for these students, the story always goes on. All that changes is how we tell it.
Congratulations to the class of 2010, and best of luck with the rest of your story.
This summer, the Tufts Office of Web Communications is offering a paid internship for students interested in helping us update and manage web content. Interns will manage Web content (in HTML files as well as in content management systems) and do basic image production (cropping and resizing) using Adobe Photoshop.
The ideal candidates will be motivated team players with an eye for detail, exceptional organizational skills and a broad-based knowledge of systems necessary for managing Web site content (e.g., secure FTP clients, HTML editors, and Web-based content management). Knowledge of Web site production and working knowledge of Web-related production tools and concepts (e.g. HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, Web content management systems, Adobe Dreamweaver [or similar], and Adobe Photoshop) is preferred. Ability to hand-code HTML (without the help of a WYSIWYG editor) is required. Experience with PHP and MySQL is highly desirable, but not required.
Interested students should send their resume and the application form (you can cut and paste the information into an e-mail) to Katy Aronoff (katy dot aronoff at tufts dot edu).
Web Communications Internship Application Form
Thank you for your interest. Please fill in the information requested and return this form along with your resume to the Web Communications team.
Name:
Year:
Major:
Do you have a work-study grant?
What is your availability?
Are you also available to work during the fall?
Do you plan to study abroad? If yes, when, and are you going abroad for a semester or full year?
What (if any) HTML editing experience do you have? Do you have a preferred HTML editing client?
Have you worked at Tufts before?
Why do you want an internship with the Web Communications team? (no more than 75 words)
April is arguably the most exciting month of the year on campus. The academic year is building to its momentous close, and the calendar explodes with amazing events happening almost every day. Since part of our charge is to tell the Tufts story, and these events are a critical component of that, we considered how to better convey it. Sure, we have made strides streamlining our events promotion via the Featured Events on the University Events Calendar (which also feeds to our News & Calendars page, select pages on the upper level of Tufts.edu, as well as the university-wide Infoscreens), but what about covering said events? After all, it's all about the experience.
Enter live-tweeting. We have experimented with this in the past for Commencement, Matriculation and the Beelzebubs' finale on "The Sing-Off," but the concerns is always that it floods our main channel. Enter @TuftsLive, a Twitter channel dedicated to live, real-time event coverage.
So far, we've covered two events, and initial feedback is positive. We have a few more coming up, with one potential surprise in the works, and we're excited about the promise of integrating more real-time coverage into our regular communications efforts.
What do you think? We'd love to hear your feedback.
Tufts has a thriving community of social media contributors and managers. But since it is such a new landscape, sometimes we all need a bit of guidance to help steer our efforts. With the help of many members of that community, we have published a social media overview, including advice for groups on campus curious about social media, some best practices and guidelines for managing social media channels, and tips about specific channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
One of the most important things we wanted to include in these guidelines was some basic information for people who feel compelled to stake their flag in the social media turf, but are unsure how to proceed -- or if it is even right for them. Our Considering Social Media section, combined with our Social Media Planning Worksheet [PDF] (adapted from a similar document by Rachel Reuben at SUNY-New Paltz -- thanks, Rachel!), aims to help people walk through the implications of managing a social media outlet.
Do you have any feedback? Let us know! And check out how our colleagues around the university are making the most of social media.
This summer, the Tufts Office of Web Communications is offering a paid content internship for Tufts undergraduates interested in creating content for the Tufts website and supporting the Web Communications staff. Interns will have an opportunity to write feature stories and website copy, shoot video and help develop innovative web features. Other responsibilities include but are not limited to audio transcription, photo cropping and making web content updates.
The ideal candidates will be motivated team players with an eye for detail, exceptional organizational skills and a solid ability to write, edit, report and research, as well as an interest in web communications technologies (e.g. Google Maps, YouTube, content management). Students must demonstrate a commitment to producing consistent, quality work. We are looking for someone who can not only take our ideas and run with them, but who will also feel comfortable bringing his or her own ideas to the table.
At least two clips and/or content samples--including at least one unedited piece--are requested. We will provide training on content management and in-house style. No technical skills required.
Interested in students should send their resume and the application form at the bottom of this post (you can cut and paste the information into an e-mail) to Kaitlin Provencher AND Georgiana Cohen. (Do NOT apply by leaving a comment on this blog! Applications left via comment will not be considered.)
--------
Web Communications Internship Application Form
Thank you for your interest.
Please fill in the information requested and return this form along with your resume to the Web Communications team.
Name:
Year:
Major:
Do you have a work-study grant?
What are your availabilities?
Are you also available to work during the spring?
Do you plan to study abroad? If yes, when, and are you going abroad for
a semester or full year?
What (if any) communications/writing classes have you taken?
Have you worked at Tufts before?
Why do you want an internship with the Web Communications team?
(no more than 75 words)
There has been a lot written about Google Buzz, Google's big foray into the social networking sphere. Some say it's noise, some say it's genius. Some are turning it off, some are turning everything else off and living on Buzz alone.
Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what to make of it yet, either. But in the meantime, Tufts is there. If you follow us on Google Buzz, you'll see some of our social media streams, with more to come as Buzz continues to grow. It's still a new, experimental space, but stay tuned.
What are your thoughts on Buzz?
The website CollegeSurfing.com has published a ranking of the top 50 social media innovators in higher education, and Tufts gets top gold medal billing.
What I liked about this ranking is the fact that it acknowledges not just one effort, like the @TuftsUniversity Twitter account, but multiple efforts from different groups, ranging from us to Tufts Dining to Academic Technology.
If we only had one social media initiative running at this university, even if we had a full-time staffer dedicated to it, it would not be as successful as the efforts of multiple people from different departments across the school. That's because the value in social media comes from community. And our success in social media is derived in a large part from the sharing, communication and connections we form, both publicly and behind-the-scenes.
Go Jumbos!
Google Reader -- my personal preference in RSS readers -- now allows you to place the URL of any webpage, RSS be damned, into its "Add a subscription" box and track updates made on that page. Mashable says this might be particularly helpful for keeping track of updates to a homepage. The Google Operating System blog also offers a neat trick for generating a URL of the page feed created by Google.
This comes on the heels of Sidewiki, Google's Toolbar plugin that socially enables any webpage. (I blogged about it earlier.) It seems like Google is trying to break out of the RSS/social media boxes and give the web legs, which is really intriguing. I wonder if people will use this functionality to "spy" on webpages that aren't designed as publications. How subtle a degree of update can it detect? Will any spoilers be found via Google Reader custom feeds? Like maybe about a certain tablet? :-)
Since April of last year I have been itching to use CoverItLive, an online tool that allows you to, as the name suggests, cover live events through a forum that can be accessed by anyone around the world. I had seen the tool in action at a CASE conference I went to and have been looking for the ideal moment to put it to good use. A week before Christmas I got my wish.
As everyone in the Tufts community knows, our beloved all male a cappella group, The Beelzebubs, recently had a brush with stardom as they were chosen to be one of eight groups from around the country to compete on the NBC reality show "The Sing Off." The show, which only aired for four nights, pitted the contestants up against one another with one to two groups being eliminated each night, coming down to a final three on finale night. As the Bubs continued to move on night after night, eventually making it to the finale, the excitement on Facebook and Twitter became unreal. We knew we had to pull out all the stops.
Enter CoverItLive...
Using CoverItLive we were able to host a live, moderated chat on a landing page off of the university's homepage.
From a functionality standpoint, the interface is very user-friendly. With a couple minutes and a couple clicks you are well on your way to getting started. One of the things I really liked was that you were able to customize the the look of chat window. So, in our case, I was able to change the color to a nice Tufts blue and throw a picture of the Bubs on the opening page. Once you have made those tweaks, given the session a name and hit OK, you are given an embed code to place whereever you chose.
On the days leading up to the finale, I found it to be a great tool for aggregating all of the great feedback the Bubs were getting on Twitter. In the left nav of the console there is a Twitter search function that made it easy to search the keyword "Bubs," see what was out there and pick and choose which entries I wanted to highlight.
Other tools in the left nav include a YouTube search for embedding videos into the chat, a quick poll feature that allows you to create a questionnaire that will immediately pop up in the display for people to use and a media library where you can upload pictures and other add-ons before hand for quick access during the live chat.
The live chat itself was definitely amazing and simple! Once embedded on the site, viewers could either log in through Twitter or other social media entities or simply type in a user name and start chatting. As the moderator, on my end I could see all the comments people were posting and chose whether or not I felt they were appropriate for posting.
The amazing part of it all was this organic sense of community that instantly formed. We had a couple dozen people actually chatting and many more just sitting back to watch. One of the best things I saw was when people started recognizing other peoples' names and asking, "hey, are you so and so from the class of '78?" And YES it was! Some people reconnected while others just enjoyed the company of strangers who shared their love for Tufts.
At the end, one of the chatters actually thanked us for hosting it, and that alone made it a success in my mind.
I look forward to using CoverItLive in the future. From popular lectures to sporting events to commencement, it will be interesting to try the tool in several different environments. If you think it could work for you, I highly recommend signing up for an account (it's FREE!) and playing around with their practice tool. Happy experimenting!
Google has made steady inroads into the social web over the course of 2009, but their crowning achievement may be the one that garnered the least attention.
In September, Google launched Sidewiki, a feature in its widely used Google Toolbar product that allows users to leave comments on websites. George Snell over at High Talk did a really good job of explaining what this means, but allow me to take a stab at it: Imagine getting a license that allows you to spraypaint anything you want on the front of any building you wish -- the owner has no way of buying paint to cover up what you write.
That's Sidewiki. Basically, it unleashes social over the entire web. By allowing sharing and commenting of and on any webpage viewed in a browser using Google Toolbar, the ivy of the social web has overgrown the garden walls.
While it's incredibly powerful, it's also somewhat concerning. One implicit understanding with the social web is that we lose control over the message. But at least we can say what we want on our own websites, right? With Sidewiki, even that is potentially mitigated.
Rather than panic, we decided to be proactive. If you view www.tufts.edu, you'll see a Sidewiki entry authored under the name of our department that offers a helpful overview of where you can go from the Tufts homepage and some other sites that might be interesting or useful. At the time I posted that Sidewiki entry two weeks ago, there was only one (benign) comment, and that remains all that is there. It's not as if the floodgates have been opened and everyone is rushing to their web browser with a poison pen. But the potential is there.
My thought? Let them come. It was only a matter of time. If people post comments, even if they are less desirable, let them spark a discussion. Let the community be self-moderating. Let the cream rise to the top. In other words, let the rules of social world take hold in any new colony that emerges -- even if it is the web itself.
On Monday, Twitter announced a new feature it is currently beta testing for businesses. The feature, called "Contributors," allows organizational accounts to include tweets by multiple contributors. So, for instance, a main Twitter account for WidgetsInc could have John_WidgetsVP, WidgetsSupport and WidgetsPrez all contributing tweets. The contributors' usernames would show up in the "byline" of the tweet.
It remains to be seen how Twitter defines a "business" -- can it be any large-scale (or even small-scale) organization, regardless of whether it is for-profit or nonprofit? If the Contributors functionality is available to organizations such as universities, there could be significant benefits for organizing and empowering social media voices on campus.
As Twitter has exploded, many universities not only have "main" accounts, but a variety of accounts hosted by individual departments, schools or initiatives. While this is great, it can be a challenge to align priorities, avoid redundancy and tap the energy of a dispersed community. Through the Contributors functionality, select accounts could potentially feed up to the main university Twitter presence, which could then serve as a collaborative hub for social media presences at the university.
Facebook fan pages allow multiple admins, and this is a somewhat comparable model. But rather than every contributor appearing the same to fans or followers, it gives a greater sense of community by both fostering individual voices while giving them access to a broader, unifying platform. Sort of a social media maypole, weaving together the varying messages of the university that add up to its brand and character. Stay tuned to see how this evolves.
For a high school senior, one of the most agonizing experiences is waiting to hear back after submitting your college applications. Whether you applied early decision or regular decision, Tom Petty said it best: the waiting is the hardest part.
One of the toughest things about that wait is not knowing what's going on. What happens to your essays, your transcripts, your recommendations? Is it all fed into a giant machine that spits out a spreadsheet listing the entering class? Is the material reviewed in a giant, solemn room by people wearing long robes and reading by candlelight at oaken tables? There's a lot of mystery surrounding the admissions process, and the Tufts Office of Undergraduate Admissions is working to reverse that.
During their committee sessions last week, when they reviewed early decision applications, members of the admissions staff embarked on a social media experiment and live-blogged and live-tweeted the committe's goings-on to the world. Obviously, they can't divulge too many specifics about applicants or their materials, but they can give a good sense of the thoughtfulness and the process with which they approach their job.
And yes, those specifics may involve massive amounts of sweets, "Little Mermaid" singalongs, how members of the committee sound and look when reading aloud or silently and Long Island geography lessons. But it also involves real, intimate glimpses at how excited these folks get by the process of creating the class of 2014, and how seriously they take the decisions they are making.
From the sounds of the comments, people appreciated the openness. "I love how open you guys are about your approach and reading about some of the admissions officers makes me realize that you are real people who like to laugh," said one commenter. And that's what Tufts is all about, of course: real people who like to laugh. And do amazing things, to boot.
Tufts isn't the first to be creative during the admissions process. The University of Delaware created a video called "Reading Season: The Musical" that provides a fun behind-the-scenes look at the admissions process -- in song. Last spring, Brad J. Ward blogged about how Davidson College was plotting tweet-sized excerpts from applications on a Google Map to create a map of the prospective class. All of these features use technology to make a critical university function more accessible and understandable to those who are affected by it, which should always be the goal of technology in higher education.
It's great to see how Tufts and other schools are taking some of the annual rituals of the college experience and exploring how to make them new again or simply more open. With more rounds of decisions to come at Tufts and colleges around the country, I can't wait to see what comes up next (and if they'll ever share those cookie recipes...).
A while ago, I did a statistical comparison of our YouTube channel versus many of our peers. In terms of sheer output volume, we fall short. That's OK, though. It's an area where we look to make big strides in 2010 -- call it one of our new year's resolutions. But posting videos to YouTube is only one use of the service.
Right now, on YouTube, people are talking about Tufts. Whether it's positive, critical, neutral, or on some other plane entirely, they're talking about the university by publishing content about it. Relatedly, did you know that YouTube is now the second most popular search engine, just after Google (and hey, it's owned by Google, fancy that).
What that means is, a lot of people are talking about Tufts on YouTube who aren't us. We can't control what content gets published -- that's the nature of the medium -- but what we can do is curate it.
For a while, we've been tracking videos on YouTube tagged "tufts" and favoriting them. Another step we've been taking is categorizing those Favorites into Playlists. The next step? Embedding those playlists on pages around our site. Voila -- instant, dynamic, relevant content. Just add code.
That still just scratches the surface of what you can do with YouTube. Annotations allow you to make a series of videos an interactive experience. Captions and subtitles also enhance your video experience, beyond a mere entertainment value and into the realm of accessibility.
The beauty of YouTube is that with as little as a camera and a computer, you can share your message with the world, but the service also provides means of taking that message and making it even more powerful and widespread, both in the YouTube network and on your own site. And from my chair, I can easily sift through these messages and pull out the ones that, organically, tell the Tufts story.
Pretty wild, huh?
I recently attended a higher ed marketing conference hosted in downtown Boston. It was an informative three days, and I wanted to share some of my key takeaways and favorite presentations:
That's a lot, but that still just skims the surface of the great material presented at the conference. Thanks to all the presenters and attendees for making it such a valuable experience.
You may have seen our post last week heralding the arrival of Twitter lists and pointing out some of the ones we've created for the Tufts Twitter account. But now that the "OMG! They're here!" factor has died down a bit and people are really beginning to play with the new functionality and figure out what it all means, there are some interesting insights being bandied about.
One of them ties into the notion that the next phase of content management (I say that as a principle, not an application) on the web is content curation. Writing for CNN.com, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore says that Twitter lists are the latest indication of a model moving toward real-time information curation, a role he says that journalists -- perhaps being pushed out of the print model that has dominated up until recently -- are well-equipped to fill.
In the attention economy, wherein the scarce resource is time and the abundant one is content, those who effectively allocate our attention create value. Where value is created, it follows that money can be made. The inevitable outcome: Web curators are not just real-time but full-time. ... Journalists, it would seem, are well-placed to capitalize on the trend, since directing an audience's attention via links is not materially different to editing a newspaper or magazine.
In a similar vein, multimedia journalist Adam Westbrook recently blogged about a new venture, led by London's Headshift, exploring the marriage of social media, journalism and user-generated content using a curation (as opposed to moderation) model. Headshift's Robin Hamman blogged in more detail about the idea, which is currently being demoed at Climate Pulse around the topic of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
In plain English, Climate Pulse basically monitors and aggregates blog posts, news websites, twitter tweets and a wide range of other sources we've configured in the backend. An editor can then curate this content and display it as they wish - for example letting the flow appear as a raw feed, tagging or geo-tagging content, featuring the best stuff, etc.
Though the functionality and the ideas are relatively new, they were put to the test in the journalism world last week in the wake of the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas. Major news organizations, as Poynter explains, used Twitter lists as a means of curating information on the breaking news story in real-time from a variety of sources.
Currently, we try to curate some of the Tufts-related content we find on the social web. It's a rewarding, albeit manual process. It will be exciting to see more tools like this develop as content curation becomes an increasingly popular model of managing and presenting user-generated and social content on the web.
The real-time web continues to evolve and define itself -- and defy definition. Hard to say what will come next, but it's sure keeping us on our toes.
Last week, I attended a brown-bag lunch meeting at the offices of Academic Technology, a group within University Information Technology that provides technological support to learning initiatives on campus. They are an innovative bunch -- just check out their projects (including the suite of applications that powers this blog!) -- and I was excited to sit down and chat with them.
The topic was Twitter, and I talked about my experiences running the @TuftsUniversity account -- successes, failures, lessons learned. We talked about listening in the social space and building community. They are interested in potential applications for Twitter in the classroom, so we brainstormed about ways that might work (e.g. live hashtag stream projected during a lecture, tweets from the field during experiential learning opportunities).
One thing we all agreed on is that Twitter is not an endpoint; rather, it's a model for a new way of communicating, and we have to be prepared to adapt to future iterations of that model as they come down the pike. I am excited to see how models of community-driven, two-way communication on the web will be applied in the classroom, and I am sure the sharp brains in AT will bring some good ideas to the table.
Above all, it's always nice to reach out to other groups around campus and trade experiences and ideas, meet new people and see things from a different perspective. We're all busy at our desks with our tasks at hand, but lunch meetings like this one are great ways to get out of the office, learn something new and develop a relationship.
The wait is over! The @TuftsUniversity Twitter account finally has Lists, Twitter's new tool for organizing and promoting collections of followers. Right now, we've created lists for official university entities, student groups, schools and a list for each campus, but since this is so new, that all may change.
Also, @TuftsUniversity is already listed on nearly 20 lists, mostly those created by members of the Tufts community or other higher ed professionals. Thanks!
It will be cool to see how the use of Lists evolves. Half of what has made Twitter a compelling tool is how the users have hacked what was given to them, so we'll see what the masses make of Lists!
Oh, what will they think of next? In the growing trend of finding ways to get all of our online ducks in a row, Google has unveiled Social Search, which extends the Google gaze on any given topic to all social content -- YouTube videos, blog posts and, yes, even tweets and public Facebook status messages -- created by our contacts.
George Snell over at High Talk has some good observations on this topic -- mainly, are we becoming too dependent on our social circle as information filters? In a similar vein, lots of folks talk about Twitter as an RSS-killer. But as discussed in this space a few months ago, a peer-mediated forum for information on any given topic is no substitute for an unfiltered stream subjected to our individual judgment and discretion.
Here's a thought: What happens when social search expands beyond simply my Google contacts? What if I do a search for a restaurant or a individual on Google and I can see every tweet, yelp or blip on that topic, along with the relevant webpages? The closer we get to a single stream, the more excited I get. But that excitement is tempered by a couple of reminders that the emergence of Social Search brings to the fore.
One reminder is that content published publicly -- no matter if it's a news article on the front page of NYTimes.com or an unprotected tweet -- is out there. Once you hit "share" or "post" or "update," it's out of your hands and it's just currency in the information marketplace. So while we get the benefit of so much more information and perspectives at our fingertips via Social Search, we also have to be mindful of our own contributions to that data pool.
It's also a reminder any given entity is no longer necessarily the prime authority on itself. For people seeking information, there is an increasing number of voices to listen to. The challenge for that entity? Not to speak louder, but to speak better -- and, of course, to keep listening.
A few weeks ago I tossed out a question to the Web Comm staff over email: What are some blogs you like? In other words, what's Web Comm reading?
The answer: A lot. We're a diverse bunch here--developers, writers, editors, managers, administrators, and often several of those at once--and that's reflected in what we read. We're also a little goofy and zany at times (more on that later!). Dump that in an office suite, stir liberally, let stand near a computer, and you get a reading list that looks a bit like this (cue up some background music, please).
If there's one place where everyone's interests converge, it's social media. Mashable, one of the more all-encompassing social media blogs, came up a few times in the responses I received, as did Chris Brogan's blog. Because the very nature of social media is connection and convergence, most of the blogs that cover it do so in combination with one or more other topics, or from a specific perspective. It's hard to talk about social media without talking about the technology behind it or without discussing what it is that people are being social about. Some of the more tech-oriented blogs Web Comm reads--sites like TechCrunch and Web Worker Daily, both mentioned by developers--also have a heavy social media component these days. You just can't talk about communicating on the web, or the nuts and bolts of the web, without talking about social media.
There's also a whole category of blogs about higher education and the web that are popular with Web Comm. The web is the web is the web, you might say, but in higher ed, we work with different constituencies with different information needs and varying levels of technical skill and understanding, and it's helpful--and I'll admit it, at times a good reality check--to read what others in the same boat are doing and thinking about. Georgy, our managing editor, is particularly in tune with this genre of blogs, and collegewebeditor.com, .eduGuru, and Karlyn Morissette's blog are some of the places we turn to for information on trends and innovations in web marketing and communications within higher ed, and for comic relief that sometimes hit a little close to home, more than one person mentioned Tales from Redesignland.
Many of us in Web Comm would identify as journalists or recovering journalists, and even if we weren't, we'd probably follow what's going on in journalism. News organizations, in spite or perhaps because of precarious financial situations, are at the heart of many of the debates about the future of content and communications on the web. I can't start my day without a little doom and gloom from Jim Romenesko at the Poynter Institute, and for heavy thinking about where journalism is going, The Nieman Lab is not to be missed. The Columbia Journalism Review's suite of blogs, including The Kicker, offers an insightful critique of the full spectrum of journalism, and for astute media criticism from a local voice, a lot of us turn to Dan Kennedy's Media Nation (dork moment: we sat next to him at an AEJMC event in Boston in August!). Engaging blogs about the practice of journalism abound, and two of our favorites are Adam Westbrook's blog, which has a focus on multimedia, an area where we're expanding our reach, and the diverse and fascinating 10,000 Words.
You can start reading here if you've been skimming until now because you're just interested in the zany side of Web Comm. Web Comm is a state of mind, as I like to say, and a grab bag of hobbies and interests creates that state of mind. Kaitlin likes The Uniform Project. Teresa doesn't miss Neatorama (exactly what it sounds like!) or Mike Reiss's ESPN blog about the New England Patriots. Georgy and I often greet each other with, "Did you see Passive-Aggressive Notes today?" Web comics like xkcd and Cat and Girl are popular, and the list wouldn't be complete without two of my favorites, Boston.com's first-rate photojournalism showcase The Big Picture and the flashback-inducing We Have Lasers!!!!!!
But... the prize for best answer to my question goes to Mike, one of our developers, who submitted one blog, and one blog only: Upcoming Horror Movies. That, my friends, is Web Comm, and what we are reading.
Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event uniting the world's bloggers around the issue of climate change with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Sustainability and environmental awareness are incredibly important issues here at Tufts, and Web Communications is no exception.
Here is a neat little tidbit: Did you know that darker website color schemes can save energy? Mark Ontkush estimates that if the homepage of Google.com went black, we would save 750 megawatt hours per year. Someone even created Blackle, a black-backgrounded version of Google. This information makes us doubly proud of the darker hues that mark the new Tufts.edu, a page that many folks on campus load up daily.
What else can you do? University Information Technology publishes a helpful set of Energy Saving Guidelines for Personal Computers [PDF], with tips on how you can adjust your day-to-day computing habits to save energy.
To complete our Blog Action Day contribution, here are some fun green facts about our office:
Check out our Blog Action Day post on Jumble, where we'll hopefully be aggregating more Blog Action Day content from the Tufts community.
Google Wave invites are finally dribbling out, and here in Web Comm we've been lucky enough to snag a few. Not much to report yet -- the potential is still more impressive than the practice, at this point -- but we're continuing to play and push it to see what it can do.
To that end, I created a public wave for the Tufts University Office of Web Communications where hopefully, down the line, people can engage with us to share ideas, offer feedback and perhaps collaborate on content initiatives. You can find it by searching for "Tufts University Office of Web Communications" or looking for the public wave tagged "tuftswebcomm" (hint: you want to use the query with:public tag:tufts -- more Google Wave tips here).
No matter what purpose Google Wave ends up serving -- because I think that is still very much up for grabs -- it's definitely pushing us toward the next phase of the web: collaborative communication. We're opening up the creative process and making it more participatory and two-way, less top-down. It's pretty exciting. Stay tuned!
I joined the GFWC Marlborough Junior Woman's Club in spring 2003. In September, after we returned from our summer hiatus, I saw in the newsletter a request for donations for the 9/11 baskets. I had to ask someone what they were. I found out that our club collected snack and fun items then distributed them into several baskets. Then, on 9/11, we'd deliver the baskets to the police and fire stations in town - just a simple thank you for their service to us. This project has always been near and dear to my heart. So this year, I got the wild idea of proposing it as a community service project for our division - University Relations. Mary Jeka, the Vice President of University Relations, loved the idea and asked me to coordinate with the Community Relations department to make this happen. So I did.
Initially, I started out thinking we'd deliver baskets to the Tufts police station and those stations closest to the Medford/Somerville campus. Ultimately, we decided that it was best if we delivered to all the police and fire stations in Medford and Somerville as well as the Tufts police stations in Boston and Grafton. That turned out to be 17 baskets - much more than I'm used to working with. I sent out an email to the division proposing the project and it was well received. People could participate as much or as little as they wanted. They could donate items for the baskets, help make the baskets and help deliver them. The response was great from all over the division! We collected plenty of terrific things. Community Relations gave us recyclable tote bags with the Tufts logo on them to use as the "baskets." On the 10th, a bunch of us gathered in a conference room and assembled the bags. It was a lot of fun and a bit of a challenge to make sure we had evenly distributed baskets.
The morning of the 11th, we loaded up two cars with bags and set off in different directions. We had three routes all together. Suzanne from PR and Gail from Publications delivered to several stations in Somerville. Georgy, Kaitlin, and I from Web Communications and Julie (our photographer) delivered to the other side of Somerville. We came back to the office and got another load and picked up some more people. This time Leslie and Lisa from Publications joined Kaitlin, Julie and me and we set out for the Medford deliveries.
We had a great time talking to the police and fire personnel and hearing their stories. Some were funny. Many were sobering. In all instances, they were surprised and happy we took the time to thank them. I get the impression we don't thank our police and fire people very often. Yes, they chose that job and yes, they know what they're getting into, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't tell them from time to time that we appreciate them. For me, that's what 9/11 has become. A day of remembering. A day of appreciation. The attack on September 11, 2001, while physically in New York, was an attack on America. And while I can't begin to imagine what it was like to be in New York that day, much less to deal with the tragedy first hand, I can recognize that our police and fire, from all over the world, run into dangerous and deadly situations every single day while we're running out.
There is a brotherhood among police and fire that is especially evident on this day. Every single person we talked to today mentioned their "brothers" in New York. Some knew people personally who died. Others know people who continue to work in the city today. Still others jumped in their car and drove to New York to help. So, while our local police and fire may not have been there on that horrible day, if there had been a magic time machine, they would have been there instantly.
So on this day of service and remembrance, we hope the police and fire who service the Tufts Medford/Somerville campus know we truly do appreciate what they do for us!
We've been pretty busy over here in Web Comm since the fall semester started up, so apologies for the blog silence. Here's are the highlights of what we've been up to:
- Check out events.tufts.edu -- we've dressed it up with a new front door where we highlight some of the coolest events coming up on campus.
- If you are on campus and see the infoscreens, you may notice some new types of content. We've routed more of our content feeds to the screens to keep them better updated with more content.
- We did a whole bunch of coverage for the students' return to campus, which we collected here.
- We're still going strong on Twitter -- won't you follow us there? -- and working behind the scenes to build real-life user communities to talk through our successes and failures in the social media space.
- We're expanding our collaborations with our colleagues in University Relations -- stay tuned for continued joint efforts with Photo, Publications and others.
There's more, of course, but that's some of the fun stuff. Any suggestions for directions we should explore? Let us know!
