College Web Guy

I’m very impressed with Xavier’s new site. And there’s more information about the “updated” homepage from the Web Services Department at Xavier. (”Updated” is a much safer term than “redesigned”, don’t you think? Nice choice of words, you savvy Xavier web people)

In particular, I keyed in on the explanation for the big flash feature spot. They explain it this way:

The current “Sights & Sounds” tab, as well as the rotating factoids, will be combined into an interactive Flash area highlighting the many great initiatives at Xavier, including items such as current construction, enrollment dates, deadlines and events, and alumni programs; all with a high-tech twist that include videos, photo galleries and other features.

I’m liking what they’ve done. Very nice. But is it just me, or is everybody jumping on the “let’s put a big flash feature on the top of our university homepage and expend gigantic amounts of development effort to make it conform to accessibility requirements” bandwagon?

And I have absolutely no room to talk. Whatsoever. None. Because I’ve been noodling with a gigantic real estate-hogging homepage flash feature myself. Why? Because it’s cool. And I’m a SlideshowPro maverick. And that first round of accessibility testing? It hurt. It hurt bad. And I’m still in recovery mode.

Screenreaders don’t like flash, and I’ve invested huge amounts of time to try and satisfy the requirements of a flash (SlideshowPro) feature spot being “cool” and compliant at the same time. It ain’t easy folks. And there are quite a few universities deploying homepage flash content that isn’t accessible. And you know who you are.

Anyway, I’m delving into ways of displaying (and hiding) alternate content, using swfobject, and maybe even forgoing the use of SlideshowPro Director for the older SlideshowPro + XML method, and using the xml file not only to control the slideshow but generate alternate content.

It’s a HUGE, all-consuming effort. All for a little bit of flashy homepage glamor. It’s like going out and buying an expensive luxury item. You know you can’t afford it, but you’re dead set on doing it anyway, even if it creates more problems than it solves.

In the end, it’s going to be worth it. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.  I welcome any suggestions or pearls of wisdom or experience you may have to offer.  I think everybody in university web development experiences the same conflict between being fancy and being compliant.

Additional Reading:

Multimedia on Mizzou-Wire
Josh Nichols goes into great detail on efforts to create accessible multimedia. Bookmark it.

Embed Flash or Die Trying
“The most common methods vary along several key dimensions, including standards-compliance, user-friendliness, and universal support. Some methods make it easy to provide alternative content, others enable auto-activation of Flash content, while others feature plugin-detection functionality. In an attempt to round-up the myriad techniques, this article presents nine of the most useful, practical, and popular methods for embedding Flash content.”

Section508 Requirements for “Web-based intranet and internet information and applications”
A list of rules. Build websites for a state university? These rules apply to YOU.

A few months back I posted an incoherent rambling string of thoughts called “other duties as assigned” that sparked an interesting conversation.

Hat tip to whoever made this nice chart:

Moving on…
Ok watch this video,

Then watch this one.

That one example pretty much sums up the beauty of Youtube.

Moving on…

I haven’t been posting much lately due to an intense workload. But I’ll always be adding stuff to my del.icio.us account.

Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products - Real artists ship, dabblers create concept products

Interactive Graphics - Interactivity - USATODAY.com - A behind the scenes look at USA TODAY multimededia and design

NPPA: Best of Photojournalism 2008 Web Site Winners - A treasure trove of great audio slideshows. - “The winner will demonstrate a mastery of photographic and visual storytelling in an online environment.”

ESPN - Getting Off The Mat - E-ticket - After losing 15 years of his life to drug addiction and prison, Richard Jensen was reborn as a 36-year-old college wrestler.

In “Night of the Living Dead”, a poor band of outnumbered yet stubbornly resistant occupants of small house courageously attempt to defend said house from stumbling hordes of grotesque zombies.

This is the first metaphor that came to mind when trying to illustrate what it’s like to defend a university homepage against unsavory intruders, and/or things that just don’t belong.

Giving prominence and valuable real estate to content that might only be relevant to a small, select group of internal administration and their comrades, is similar to unsightly zombies getting cozy on your living room couch.

Maybe my tone here is too possessive.  This is not “my” couch. The university landing page doesn’t necessarily “belong” to the web team.  And those zombies, pale and disfigured as they might be, are special and important at least to some people.

Let’s just go back to having homepages comprised of giant lists of links.  The yellow-pages approach.  That way everybody wins.

Your homepage is your storefront?  Nonsense.  It’s your directory!

Avoiding this university website scenario involves realizing that a homepage that tries to be “all things to all people”, will end up being “nothing to nobody”.

It starts back at the critical beginning step of establishing which audience(s) take highest priority (think prospective students), and outlining a core set of “tasks”:

• that YOU want them to perform
• that THEY most often need to perform.

Remembering of course, to provide logical link pathways for all the other stuff.  And pathways to the zombies, which should be, well, buried.

Yes, I’m going to keep posting this collection every month. Here are personal favs from my morning google reader habit. Old folks read newspapers to start the day. The rest of us do rss.

Gold Nuggets for July 2008

10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments - Derek Powazek

Newsrooms are top-down places, but the internet is not. Get used to the fact that people online won’t do things just because you told them to. In fact, the only thing you can absolutely count on is that something will happen that you didn’t expect. When it does, you’ll be defined by what you do next.

The Accessibility Checklist I Vowed I’d Never Write - Schalk Neethling

I don’t think it’s reasonable (no matter how much I would like to try) to make our devs and designers into accessibility experts, so what can we do? If we can’t yet achieve excellent accessibility, what about simply doing better than we are doing now?

Being the Conductor of the Web - Ron Bronson

The problem can be when the voices of the orchestra are louder than that of the conductor. Some conductors simply aren’t given the freedom to actually choose the ‘music’ and lead the band the way that she does best. That can be a real problem when you measure your success on benchmarks set by actually getting the web to a different place.

So How Dumb are we? - Lisa Anderson

Ironically, Web sites demand that people read, but their information often is more to be accessed than retained, more to be consumed than assessed and more to be gulped than savored, unlike with a book, a poem or a lengthy article. “The material isn’t lodging in their minds. There is not enough internalization of knowledge,”

On Being a Web Communications Guy at a University: - Dave Baker

When I was trying to come up with a snappy title for this blog using the words ‘University’ or ‘Higher Education,’ nothing seemed to capture the amorphous challenges that we wrestle with as web people in the college setting. The concept of making websites for a university is like grabbing a handful of pudding. It’s not HTML anymore. It involves building coalitions, exploiting technologies, using vendor applications, open source and social tools, herding a collection of web presences spanning servers both on campus and around the world, identifying content contributors and subject matter experts and thought leaders and so on. It’s simply hard to explain. When someone asks me what I do, I usually mutter, “computers,” and then we change the subject and start talking NCAA sports or how nice it is to raise kids in a college town.

Dancing around it - The Old College Try: High Marketing Ed

It’s kind of like in higher ed, we dance around the meat of what we really are. We think people want to hear about a “community” and “belonging” when all they really want to know is “Do you have my major?” and “What are my job chances when I graduate?” and “How much in scholarships will you give me?”

From Big Glorious Mess, a new blog you should bookmark:

When I was trying to come up with a snappy title for this blog using the words ‘University’ or ‘Higher Education,’ nothing seemed to capture the amorphous challenges that we wrestle with as web people in the college setting. The concept of making websites for a university is like grabbing a handful of pudding. It’s not HTML anymore. It involves building coalitions, exploiting technologies, using vendor applications, open source and social tools, herding a collection of web presences spanning servers both on campus and around the world, identifying content contributors and subject matter experts and thought leaders and so on. It’s simply hard to explain. When someone asks me what I do, I usually mutter, “computers,” and then we change the subject and start talking NCAA sports or how nice it is to raise kids in a college town.

But get a bunch of us web folks together and we will go one endlessly (and with great enthusiasm, angst or passion) about the challenges, novelties and wonders of building web stuff in this setting. We have the privilege of working in a field where we are daily exposed to the oddest and most dynamic collection of pursuits imaginable. Today we’ll meet a dog therapist in the veterinary school. Tomorrow we’ll talk with a researcher who climbs three hundred foot trees. We’ll work with poets, artists and genetic engineers doing freaky-cool stuff with animals and plants. We’ll get to know incoming students who are leaving the farm for the first time and outgoing students who have traveled the world. We’ll hire interns ostensibly to do grunt work and populate databases but who will end up doing important and amazing things that make us jealous of their abilities.

And we’re expected to build a website, or series of sites, that serve them all.

And we must do this while dealing with a fickle public who finances our existence via grants and gifts, tuition and appropriation, leaving us little room for planning or forward thinking despite the fact that our jobs require leaps of imagination and daily wranglings with the latest technology.

Working in the web field in higher education is a big, big undertaking. And it is often messy. And occasionally glorious.

Now I’ve got to go videotape a dog getting therapy at our vet school. See you later.

Big Glorious Mess is a new feed on my reader. Only 3 posts so far, but all of them (like above) are great. I’m particularly interested in the blog because the author (like me) is a web guy working under the Advancement umbrella, specifically in Communications.

Several months ago i attempted to describe why I like my university job, but his explanation hit real close to home. Well said.

I’d link to the videos but I think the audio alone is more powerful.  For the past few days I’ve been listening to TED podcasts on my drive home.  These two relate to education; are particularly moving and worth sharing.  I recommend you stop what you’re doing, sit back, and turn your speakers up.

Do Schools Kill Creativity? - by Sir Ken Robinson

The Story of a Passionate Life - by Ben Dunlap, President of Wofford College

Working in academia and avoiding the plague of lethargy can be a challenge. There are carriers of this plague all around, and it’s important to take necessary precautions to avoid infection.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the working climate at my university in many ways mirrors that of yours, and most all other colleges and universities in the entire, world.

There are people who do things, and there are people who talk about doing things. There are people who make decisions, and there are people who gather consensus to form committees which in turn form subcommittees that will eventually meet to consider hiring consultants, who’ll someday make decisions.

People avoid doing and deciding, often because they fear being responsible and accountable.

This kind of culture is truly like an infectious plague. If your goal is to move, make progress, and get results, then you’ll need to limit your exposure and keep your nose to the grindstone, because lethargy and conformity are the enemies of good work.

So now what I’d like to do is discuss a 10 step plan that’ll keep you active and productive.

In offering this list I’m assuming your priority is to work on (and complete) great projects, keep your boss happy, and be a valued asset to your university employer.

1. Don’t join unnecessary committees or agree to needless meetings. I’ve found this to be a gigantic time-saver.
2. Act like a project manager even if it isn’t in your job description. Talk about “action items” and work to informally associate and attach people to those items.
3. Don’t chain yourself to Outlook. Don’t have email open 24/7. I try and “do” email 3 times a day: First thing in the morning. Right after lunch, and quickly before I leave work. Constantly going back and forth between email and web projects will end in lackluster web projects.
4. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Word will travel fast if you get a reputation for “doing” things. The goal is to do a great job on a core set of projects, not to do a crappy job on a big pile of “oh by the way, hey can you…”
5. Work to remove yourself from unproductive situations and endeavors. Occasionally you’ll come to the realization that a particular project or initiative is going nowhere. Those involved aren’t really “involved” outside of sitting around waiting for something magical to drop out of the sky. This is the part where you look for the nearest exit and slip our the door like a ninja. Politely excuse yourself. Go back to working on projects capable of yielding tangible results within an acceptable time period.
6. Identify the loafers and email-shoveling meeting schedulers. This will take time, but be observant and make mental notes. You’ll have a comprehensive working list of loafers in a year or two. Don’t get entangled with these guys. Limit your contact.
7. - 10.  Off to a meeting.  No time to list the last 3 tips.

I hope this list may find some of you who are just starting your career at a University. And I welcome any suggestions for additional items.

I’m glad we had this talk.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Jason Santa Maria has been pushing the curve with his personal website lately.

He writes in his latest post about something dear to my heart, as it relates to where I want to take our university web templates.

“I’m trying to maintain a fairly tight visual identity, while exploring the flexibility for change under time, technical, and visual limitations. The point is to find variation within constraints.”

“In the scope of this site, I’m defining art direction as bringing the visual design into the fold as an equal partner to the content, while maintaining a consistent overall identity. When a newspaper runs a special feature, they may flex the layout a bit differently, add imagery or typefaces to evoke a mood present in the writing, or merely to reinforce the story. When a magazine has a feature on a topic, they might do the same thing. It isn’t always groundbreaking, but it’s treated like something special apart from the main run of design. In my mind, art direction isn’t simply nice visuals, and more times than not, it’s a practice of restraint.”

Of course, this is all fine and good for one person working on his personal site.

The challenge for university web designers is that we’re trying to deploy options for a large group of website owner/operators, and those users in general will, (let’s be honest) inevitably misuse any measure of flexibility we provide ….to screw things up.  Not everybody should be able to “art direct”.

Balance that realization with my dislike of all-things-cookie-cutter.  Colleges and Departments want to differentiate.  And I want to help them, within reason.

The beauty of  top-level stylesheets and content management, is that we can now plan for and MANAGE “variation within constraints”.  We can build-in options.  We allow for and “curate” a certain measure of customization.

This struggle is the all-consuming part of my job, and I’m my own worst critic.

I posted something on this blog, a year or so ago about the goals we have for our “templates”:
Awesome. This is the part where I use blockquote to quote my own self.  A new threshold of egotism has been reached.

It’s been a goal since my first day on the job, but now it’s of even higher priority to reshape/refine/upgrade/expand and yes redesign some major design elements of our college website.The challenge of web design for universities, for me, is rooted in the conflict between flexibility and maintainability. Yes, you want all the pages, everyone’s page, or site, to look good, and to communicate. So the easy answer is to provide EVERYONE with the same look and feel, and identical framework to build on. But within a university are different organizations, different colleges, departments, administrative offices, etc.. many of which have their own marketing goals. They want the ability to differentiate.

The goal I have, the challenge I’m taking on is to expand our online design options, to allow for variety. Sustainable, maintainable, variety. …If there exists such a thing.

It isn’t an easy task. I’m burying myself in different template ideas. And “template” may not even be the operative description. Another way to label this challenge is to think of it as building a “design library” made up of interchangeable elements that fit together as a whole. Website managers will have the ability to select specific options and activate certain content areas from within our content management tool.

The vision for this project is shared by the other members of our web team, and we’re all invested in the idea of providing an ever expanding variety of layout and theming options for websites that carry our university logo.

You should see some of these mockups. A few have potential. Several are catastrophic failures. In a month or so I’ll come up for air and try to make sense of it all.

Design. Redesign. Rinse. Repeat.

I’ve started collecting the highlights of things I read, and/or dig up.  The good stuff.   And like a dirty old miner emerging from a dusty cave, I intend to pack those gold nuggets on a mule and bring them to town for everybody to see.  Possibly also to trade for hard goods like Snuff, liquor, and additional mules.

So here they are:  Gold Nuggets for June 2008: 

Ubrander: Webcentricity And The Future Of Print Designers

To summarize, print and Web should not be seen as competing with each other. The essence of both is design. In the future, we will only hire designers who can work on both platforms. And it will be more common to see Web developers moving out of IT and into the marketing department, not as Web designers, but as those who oversee functionality.

Reading, Writing and Big Ideas: Authenticity U:

…No one cares what you think of your institution. They want to hear it from the customers themselves.

…It’s communicating the simplicity of the authentic experience of your institution that will make your admissions marketing materials and especially the college web site speak to its audience.

.eduGuru: You want my Blogging Manifesto well here it is:

Using SEO on a webpage isn’t about keyword stuffing, it’s about creating a interesting and unique piece of content that people will find useful and share with each other.

Jason Santa Maria: A New Day

We’ve made so many advancements in how we publish content that we haven’t looked back to what it is we’re actually creating.

Newsweek: Microsoft After Gates. (And Bill After Microsoft.)

Gates understands that his identity as a philanthropist will be drastically different than his role as the king of software. “We don’t have a CES on malaria, so you don’t get 50,000 people converging on a city and saying, ‘Oh, Bill’s keynote on malaria is coming’..

TreeHugger: Quote of the Day: Felix Salmon on Commuting

Over the very long term, I suspect we’ll look back on the era of the 85-mile commute as a historical curiosity. That kind of distance is so enormous compared to any kind of human scaling that it just doesn’t make sense as a way to live.

Notes from KarlynMorissette: An Event Apart: Understanding Web Design

“Teaching Excel is not the same as teaching business.” Learning software is not the same as learning web design. Generally educational programs teach you software and not strategy.”

“Web Design Competitions award certain kinds of work and perpetuate certain kinds of work. This work is not necessarily about users.”

Robert Hoekman: Throwing User-Centered Design out the window

User research, as it’s typically done, results in a set of persona descriptions, which are, well, less than useful as project deliverables. Managers care about results. Numbers. They want to see progress, not fictitious character descriptions. They hired you to design, not write movie scripts. …I just believe it’s far better to focus on activities rather than people.

It seems like everybody has heard of Wilkes University and their bizarre method of marketing to individual students on billboards and tv commercials.  I didn’t know that all those tv spots were on Youtube.

Really great stuff.  What makes them all-the-more powerful, I think, is the way they stand out from other commercials because of not having an audio voiceover.  Oh and, great copywriting.  Of course.

The ads are the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing firm 160over90, which had a mandate from Wilkes to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs. 

One of eight: