2011 HIGHEDWEB ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE
PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE
OCTOBER 23—26
THE JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION WEB PROFESSIONALS
SNEAK PEEK INSIDE
Connect with fellow attendees ê 2011.highedweb.org ê #heweb11 on Twitter ê More on Pg. 12
Great Web Content Is Not Created by Accident
Enter to win an iPad速 at the OmniUpdate booth!
VideoWorkflow Course Catalog Web 2.0 Developer APIs W3C HTML5 Forms Multimedia Campus Map Calendar XSLT 3.0 Section 508 Cost Calculator RSS Blogs PDFs Facebook速 Multi-Site Social Media Twitter速 Mobile Content Repurposing Ranked #1 in Satisfaction among Higher Education Web Content Management Systems*
OmniUpdate is hiring for careers in web development, customer support, and social media. Stop by booth #14 for more info!
OmniUpdate is hiring!
iPad速 is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. Drawing to be held at the OmniUpdate booth on Wednesday, October 26, 2011, at 10:00 AM (during last refreshment break). Recipient must be present to win; no purchase necessary. *http://doteduguru.com/cms-survey-2010
Conference Schedule
Contents
Sunday, October 23
Schedule Overview ................................ 3
11am–6pm 12–1pm 1–4:30pm 5–6pm
Conference Check–In & Information Lunch (for Workshop Attendees & Presenters) Workshops Orientation Session
Welcome................................................. 4
6:15–9:15pm
Welcome Reception
Link Magazine Introduction.................... 5
Monday, October 24 7:30–8:30am 7:30am–3pm 8–8:15am 8:30–9:15am 9am–5pm 9:30–10:15am 10:15–10:45am 10:45–11:30am 11:45am–12:30pm 12:30–1:10pm 1:10–2:15pm
Link Magazine
Groundhog Day Again? Really?.............. 6
Breakfast Conference Check–In & Information Opening Comments Track Sessions Exhibitor Hall Open Track Sessions Refreshment Break Track Sessions Track Sessions Lunch (SPONSORED BY OMNIUPDATE) General Session, Keynote with Shawn Henry
Google Analytics: Who Cares?............... 7 Foursquare: Lessons Learned from One of the Platform’s Top Universities....................................... 8 Top 5 Developments in HighEdWeb....... 10 Following the Conference on Link.......... 11
Conference Program
(SPONSORED BY HIGHERED EXPERTS)
2:30–3:15pm 3:30–4:15pm 4:15– 4:45pm 4:45–5:30pm 7:45pm–12am
Track Sessions Track Sessions Refreshment Break Track Sessions HighEdWeb After Dark: Link Party
Conference Info....................................... 12 Internet and Social Networking.............. 12 Parking and Transportation.................... 13
(SPONSORED BY WELCOME TO COLLEGE)
Things to See in Austin........................... 14
7:30–8:30am Breakfast 7:30am–3pm Conference Check–In & Information 8–8:15am Conference Announcements & Updates 8:30–9:15am Track Sessions 9am–5pm Exhibitor Hall Open 9:15–9:45am Refreshment Break 9:45–10:30am Track Sessions 10:45–11:30am Track Sessions 11:30pm–12:10pm Lunch (SPONSORED BY SITEIMPROVE) 12:10–1:15pm General Session, Keynote with Chris Wilson (SPONSORED BY SCVNGR) 1:30–2:15pm Track Sessions 2:15– 2:45pm Refreshment Break 2:45–3:30pm Track Sessions 3:30–5pm Poster Sessions
After Hours with HighEdWeb.................. 15
6:30–9:30pm
Wednesday............................................. 44
Tuesday, October 25
Excursion at the HighBall
(SPONSORED BY JADU)
Wednesday, October 26 8–9am 8:15–8:45am 9–9:45am 9:45–10:15am 10:15–11am 11:15am–12pm 12–12:45pm 1–4:30pm
Breakfast Best of Track Awards Best of Track Sessions Repeated Refreshment Break Best of Track Sessions Repeated Closing Remarks, Prestige Award, Door Prizes Closing Lunch Workshops
Conference Map..................................... 16 Downtown Austin Map............................ 17 Schedule at a Glance.............................. 18
Session Descriptions Sunday.................................................... 20 Monday................................................... 21 Tuesday................................................... 29
Presenters Keynote Interview: Six Questions with Shawn Henry................................... 26 Keynote Interview: Six Questions with Chris Wilson.................................... 26 Presenter Bios......................................... 45 Sponsors.....................................Back Cover
STUCK IN CUSTOMS - TREY RATCLIFF, FLICKR
Howdy Y’all! Welcome to Texas and HighEdWeb 2011. We are so excited to have you here in Austin, where we pride ourselves on being far from ordinary. In fact, we celebrate being “weird.” This is the perfect place for us to gather and share our creativity, dreams and progressive ideas for taking the Web to the next level. High Ed Web is a conference by and for higher education Web professionals. Nobody understands our unique opportunities and challenges like our very own tribe. If this is your first time at heweb, I predict you will be addicted to the depth and breadth of knowledge sharing and genuine connections. With six diverse tracks and speakers who are your colleagues, this experience was designed for YOU (and in many cases, by you). The hospitality here is authentic. That’s because Texans are friendly. In fact, the word Texas comes from the Indian word, Tejas, which means friend. Here you will meet peers who are as passionate about the Web as you are. I encourage you to connect with them, not just via Twitter or Facebook or Google+, but most importantly in person. So, sit down a spell. Kick your boots off and open your eyes, ears, and mind to new friends and new ideas that will inspire you to soar to your full potential. Onward!
Glenda Sims 2011 HighEdWeb Conference Chair
Thank you! You are AWESOME! Conference Committee Glenda Sims, Deque Systems, Inc. (Chair) Michael Hostad, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Co-Chair) Veronica Adinegara, Missouri State University Colleen Brennan-Barry, Monroe Community College Jamie Ceman, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Sara Clark, Missouri State University Cynde Fleagle, The Pennsylvania State University Cliff Jenkins, Xavier University Steven B. Lewis, The College at Brockport, State University of New York Chris Nixon, University of Arkansas Anne Petersen, University of Illinois at Chicago Doug Ruschman, Xavier University Mary Kay Tiernan, The University of Texas at Austin
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HighEdWeb could never happen without the generous support and hard work of so many individuals and organizations. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank the conference and program committees, sponsors, presenters, volunteers, and you for making this event possible. Glenda Sims and Doug Tschopp Chairs of HighEdWeb 2011
Welcome to the first-ever print edition of Link! We’ve worked hand-in-hand with the conference committee to turn out a hybrid magazine/conference program where you’ll find the information you’ll need to get around the conference, along with the kinds of articles and insight we hope you’ve come to expect from Link. And our coverage doesn’t stop there! Keep an eye on link.highedweb.org, where we’ll be blogging conference sessions, keeping you up-to-date on all the developments, tips, hints, tricks and even memes (Squirrels, anyone?) to come out of this year’s presentations. On Monday night, stop by Buffalo Billiards, which will be Link party central. (More details on page 15). We’d love to hear more about what you’re doing as a HighEdWeb professional and how Link can better serve you. (And if you’re looking to pitch a story idea, we’re up for that too!) Have a great conference - it’s one of the best! Laura R. Kenyon, Publisher Link: The Journal for Higher Education Web Professionals link.highedweb.org
About Link Link: The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals is the official publication of the HighEdWeb Association. We publish, in a way that’s both informative and fun, high-quality content by well-qualified Web professionals working in higher education. We welcome your feedback! Send us an email at link@higheredweb.org. Publisher Chief Editors Art Directors Editors Designers Advertising
Laura R. Kenyon, SUNY Geneseo Susan Ragland, Tarrant County College Dave Tyler, The College at Brockport Lacy Tite, Vanderbilt University Jeff Stevens, University of Florida Jamie Hunt, Radford University John Jackson, Virginia Tech Zac Vineyard, Northwest Nazarene University Tom Klimek, Pennsylvania State University Tim St. Martin, Texas A&M Jenny Anspach, Central Methodist University Lori Packer, University of Rochester Aimee White, Guilford College David Anderson, University at Buffalo
Program Committee
Board Members
Doug Tschopp, Augustana College (Chair) Kirk Anne, State University of New York at Geneseo Glenn Donaldson, The Ohio State University Mark Greenfield, University at Buffalo Karen Hackett, The Pennsylvania State University Brian Heaton, Missouri State University Shelley Keith, Southern Arkansas University Lori Packer, University of Rochester Susan Ragland, Tarrant County College Robin Smail, The Pennsylvania State University Michelle Tarby, Le Moyne College John Wagner, Princeton University Jason Woodward, Cornell University
Daniel M. Frommelt, President, University of Wisconsin-Platteville Steven B. Lewis, Secretary and Treasurer, The College at Brockport, State University of New York Colleen Brennan-Barry, Monroe Community College Patti Fantaske, Pennsylvania State University Dale Grady, Past President Mark Greenfield, University at Buffalo Michael Hostad, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chris Nixon, University of Arkansas
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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Groundhog Day Again? Really?
What I hear most frequently when catching up with others who work at a college or university is concern about 1) how difficult it is to get anything done and 2) the fact that nobody can make a decision. I submit that if your discipline is communications, Web, marketing, or design, it gets worse. Governance for certain aspects of campus life is more clearly defined. Everybody knows that curriculum is the purview of the faculty. Most agree that the registrar should maintain academic records and issue transcripts. But the practice of “higher-ed Web,” everybody gets a piece of that, right? Deference to the communication professionals is less typical because everyone thinks they are experts when it comes to the Web. You get more Groundhog Days.
by Susan T. Evans
How do I turn things around?
It takes a certain personality type to be a successful communications professional in higher education. There are four traits that will turn things around and get things done despite the culture of consensus decision making found on most campuses:
* TAKE RISKS. (DAVIDE) DAVIDE CASSANELLO, FLICKR
I love higher education. But like any relationship, what originally attracts and enchants can later be irritating and disappointing. When I talk (and tweet) with colleagues across the country about making a living on a college campus, we agree about the benefits. Besides the educational mission, we love the flexibility, the chance to be creative and the opportunity to connect with smart people. Similarly, what drives us nuts about higher-ed is also consistently articulated. The decentralized authority that make us yearn for top-down, let’s-make-it-happen decisions is the backside of the creativity and flexibility we enjoy. And, those really smart people we like to have around bring conflicting albeit well-supported ideas about how things should be done, and the resulting mind-numbing committee meetings where all opinions can be heard equally.
Frustrated by a lack of progress?
Close your eyes and re-experience the meetings I’m talking about—same topic again this week, same concerns as last month, same individuals stonewalling change, same missing person who has to be there before you can finalize anything, same decision-less adjournment. How to cope? With those I’m closest to at William & Mary, the coping phrase is Groundhog Day. The first words we utter after leaving said meeting? The refrain when we are copied on the same email exchange that happened last year this time? “It’s Groundhog Day again.” We chuckle, the frustration subsides a bit, we move on.
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* SAY THINGS PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO HEAR. * BE WILLING TO WORK REALLY, REALLY HARD. * MAKE DECISIONS THAT WON’T BE POPULAR WITH EVERYONE.
Take risks.
Choose the projects that you have full expertise to handle and go for it. This approach works especially well if you are riding the momentum from an earlier successful project. The day we launched m.wm.edu at William & Mary, was the first day that our campus knew we were developing a mobile site. We went mobile without a task force, without a campus discussion of what content should be present on the site and without a preview presentation to executive leadership. The internal Web team did the research, learned from other universities, applied deep knowledge of William & Mary and made the decisions that normally delay a project. We took a risk. Yes, we even selected the colors for the visuals and determined the order of the buttons.
Say things people don’t want to hear.
Many people on your campus will respond well to education about Web convention and best practices. But applying what they’ve learned to their own site takes objectivity and a change in habits. Always respectfully, I say any and all of these out loud: 1) The belief that visitors to your site won’t click and scroll is one that 40-somethings are holding onto from 90s Web days.
2) You and your colleagues are not the primary audience for your departmental website - you’re not the demographic either. 3) You have applied so much bold and italics formatting to the text on this page that, in your effort to make me focus on something, I can’t focus on anything. 4) Actually, usability testing with prospective students provides evidence that visitors to the biology department website also want global access to other department websites and to the Admission home page.
Be willing to work very, very hard.
Most people who work at a university have too much to do and too little time to do it. Your willingness to do “the work” to make something happen on the Web can stand out as unusual and welcome. About three years ago, we relaunched wm.edu with a new suite of design templates and custom banner photography for each academic department. Our approach with the faculty department chairs was, “we’ll do the hard work.” We developed their IA and navigation, shot and selected photos, rewrote copy and hired a bunch of student interns to copy and paste their content into the new CMS. We then approached each department with a preview link to a well-conceived site that was ready to launch with their approval. In 99% of the cases, the faculty were pleased even though the new design required the William & Mary global navigation and certain visual elements they could not remove or alter.
Make decisions that won’t be popular with everyone.
Before deploying an enterprise CMS, our campus Web editors had full reign and wild, wild West it was. What a departmental editor could do to a website was limited only by their knowledge of HMTL. Now, with nearly 800 CMS users, the editing of Web content is WYSIWYG and less than 20 individuals—and most of those are Web team members — can get to the HTML view. Yes, we took away functionality, but most quickly realized that editing content was easier and more streamlined. Naturally, this decision wasn’t popular with those who made regular use of HTML on their Web pages; so we talked with them individually when they contacted us about the missing option in the WYSIWYG editor.
Should I stay or should I go?
To be direct, you can’t give in and you can’t give up. If your style and strengths aren’t compatible with the four traits above, then make sure you work for a higher-ed leader who has them. If a centralized, top-down, one-right-way approach is what you crave, higher-ed might not be your gig. Love it, or leave it. I hope you love it. about the author
Evans is a former Director of Creative Services at the College of William & Mary, a post she left in September. She is currently working as Senior Strategist formStoner, Inc.
WWW.LUMAXART.COM
Telling people what they need to hear in a direct way is a skill and practice makes perfect.
Google Analytics: Who Cares? by Jess Krywosa So, you’ve been to a few conferences and have sat through several presentations on Google Analytics and its use in higher education. You may even have administrator access to Analytics and have been segmenting, reporting, and filtering to your heart’s content. If you’re lucky (cursed?), you may have even gotten the attention of your manager or sector vice-president with Web analytics and pretty reports.
SO WHAT? There. I said it. And I’ll say it again: So what? I feel comfortable asking this question of analytics reporting because of my own misconstrued bravado surrounding this particular topic. I thought that because I could pull numbers from Google Analytics that I was somehow participating in the greater-than-myself marketing efforts carried out at my university. But was I? What insight was I really adding to the bottom line? Did these numbers ultimately help gain and retain enrolled students? No. They did not. So, why do it? For me, the light bulb finally came on and I started to search for something better.
WHO CARES? Maybe you are saying that it doesn’t really matter, that campaigns and numbers, in relation to departments and offices, are what truly measure the success of our marketing tactics. You may be saying that reports are what VP’s and Deans want, and that they set the questions to be answered. This is where I’ve started pushing back. Quality data reporting is not a new theory. But if we aren’t fully integrated in our tracking of online activities across multiple divisions, how are we really interpreting these numbers as anything more than hits? For you, a Google Analytics report may be nothing more than proof that your code is still working.
LINK .HIGHEDWEB.ORG
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If we are not tying data outcomes to the large business goals (enrolled students, retained students, graduating students), then what is the purpose of our tactics at all?
NOW WHAT? So, how do we get your Google Analytics mojo working? How do we face the behemoth of online marketing at a university? Here’s where I’ve started: Code those URLs! This one is tough: not from the code perspective, but the political perspective. If you can’t take on the big guns, you’re going to have to start small with a department or office that can use your help. Code everything: online and offline, Facebook and your university Web pages. Watch traffic as it moves through the site from specific campaigns. See where people really fall off the wagon and help them get back on. Make sure you keep tabs on which entry points help you reach your conversion and engagement analytics goals.
MA YO
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I was stuck in a rut with my pre-made Google Analytics dashboard. So much so, that it defined what I reported. No more! Make the data that is most important to your university goals more prominent by highlighting them on your dashboard. There you will be able to see that data at a glance, keeping it in focus. Customize your Reports! Just like the Dashboard, the preset reports can also put you in a rut. Set up reports that will help you report on the bottom line: specific visitor information, goal conversion, keyword performance, hot content, etc. Share these with other GA users on campus so that they can have this information as well. Don’t keep that data all to yourself! How are you moving forward in your fight to ensure analytics help make decisions that affect the real issues at your university? Have you hit a brick wall at any level? Have your ideas been met with shrieks of happiness? What have been your greatest successes/challenges in taking a university outcomes based approach? about the author
Jess Krywosa is currently the Director of Web Communication at Suffolk University in Boston. She has been a champion for the importance of adequate education for all for over eleven years. Her background consists primarily of work on foundation and federally funded education reform initiatives. Jess has been involved in both marketing and Web communication for 10 years, just recently branching into university work three years ago. In her spare time, Jess writes for .EduGuru, her own blog.krywosa.com and attempts to be a runner via a variety of races in the US.
JEFF STEVENS
Change that Dashboard!
Foursquare:
Lessons Learned from One of the Platform’s Top 10 Universities by John Lucas
As social media manager for the University of Wisconsin-Madison (@UWMadison), I frequently try out new platforms to see if our students are using them and if they might become useful tools for my campus. For the past two years, I’ve channeled my inner mayor on Foursquare, a location-based social network. A bit like a northern Austin, Texas, Madison is a college town with vibrant music and social media scenes, which seem to be key ingredients for Foursquare success. When we had an opportunity to create a branded site in early 2010, we jumped at the chance. Today, we’re among the top 10 universities nationwide (15,000+ friends), and it’s been a nice addition to our mobile strategy. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.
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Campus Guide Hundreds of our campus buildings and facilities are cataloged Foursquare, along with dozens of insider tips and a whopping 67,000 check-ins. The service has essentially created a campus Wiki that encourages participants to be adventurous and explore previously unknown spaces in the community. Battles for the mayorships of some of our most popular campus venues, such as Memorial Union Terrace, have been intense.
Time Intensive Our office manages more than a dozen campus accounts on multiple platforms, in addition to daily work on publicity, internal communications, Web and media relations. On campus we have more than 500 accounts total. It’s tough to find the time for the care and feeding of all of those sites. Unlike a site like Facebook, Foursquare requires much more time and effort to help set up new locations, allow access for them to be managed, encourage people to offer discounts, known as “Specials” and otherwise educate the campus population on the merits of the service. As we currently have the ability to offer few specials across campus, we’re not seeing much user engagement. Extending the service beyond buildings to campus events has netted few check-ins.
Biggest and Best On our campus, Foursquare is far and away the most-used locationbased service, towering over others like Gowalla, SCVNGR, Loopt and even the much-heralded but poorly used (at least here) Facebook Places. The others seem to have little, if any, traction. We particularly like the offering of general higher ed badges like “Campus Explorer” and “Quad Squatter.” On the downside, only a small handful of campuses have been offered tailored badges, which would be a powerful incentive for greater use. Who on our campus wouldn’t want the coveted (and still fictional) Badger Badge?
Brands over Universities Other than creating new, potential users, there seems to be less overall potential gain for colleges compared to brands, such as MTV or Lucky. We enjoy being affiliated with the service and its cachet. And we recognize that we’re not directly generating revenue for the platform. But we’ve also had little interaction with Foursquare, or received ideas or documentation on promotions or contests that have been particularly useful. In addition, unlike a global brand like Starbucks or Virgin, we have much less to gain from specials and fewer opportunities to offer them.
about the author John Lucas: As social media manager for the University of Wisconsin-Madison (@UWMadison), John Lucas frequently tries out new platforms to see if students are using them and if they might become useful tools for his campus. For the past two years, he’s channeled his inner mayor on Foursquare, a location-based social network.
A Piece of your Puzzle It’s useful to view Foursquare as another piece of the social media puzzle when it comes to promoting locations on campus. When I recently checked into a venue, I was pleased to see tips promoting something nearby. It fills the location services gap right now. But we’ll see if it has the staying power as it continues to evolve.
The Year the Check-In Died? Despite Foursquare recently crossing over 7.5 million users, the hottest trend in social media is declaring the “check-in” era over. Our verdict: Too early to tell, but it’s telling that privacy concerns seem to be hindering growth. As it stands, we’d continue to rank Foursquare behind Twitter, Facebook and our mobile app as the vital components to our mobile and social media strategy. We’re also curious to hear how other universities have employed the service and might be using it more effectively than we are. I’m hopeful we’ll have more time this summer and in the coming academic year to cultivate it and encourage its growth.
1) The Year of Mobile You couldn’t swing a dead Motorola StarTac without hitting someone who wanted to talk about mobile sites for higher ed this year. There’s so much interest, organizers made Mobile a track at this year’s HighEdWeb Regional in Rochester. Everybody has been talking about mobile, says Paul Gilzow of the University of Missouri. “This was the first year we had clients ask us about their site on mobile device, and so far, it has been every single client to ask the question,” he says. “We went from nobody concerned about it, to everyone concerned. “ That keen interest put pressure on Web shops to be ready to handle those demands and, in some cases, get clients to cool their jets. Instead of just rushing in, it pays to have a sound Web strategy, whether you go with an app, a mobile site, a mix or something else entirely.
WILLIAM HOOK, FLICKR
Top 5 Developments in HighEdWeb By Dave Tyler
Did you know that the universe is expanding faster every second and eventually will expand faster than the speed of light? It’s expanding so fast, scientists tell us, that there are some galaxies whose light will never reach earth, because they’re already too far away. We mention this only to provide some comfort: There are things out there that are changing faster than the Web landscape for higher ed. Really. Science says so. But, man alive, it does seem like things are moving faster when it comes to the wild world of HighEdWeb. Since we all were together last in the Queen City (aka, Cincinnati) there have been some seismic changes and announcements that have sent us all scurrying around like Kent Brockman to welcome our new insect overlords. Here’s a round-up of the top developments since #HEWeb2010:
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Dave Olsen of West Virginia University, advocated a carefully considered mix in his #HEWebRoc presentation, because there’s just “so much freaking content” that your users are clamoring to access. And they’re not just using iPhones and iPads to find that content. “Does your school have one website?” he asked. “Then why just have one mobile solution?” As more and more mobile devices are loosed upon the world in 2011-2012, expect a steady diet of mobile questions to keep filling your project pipelines.
2) App companies Chances are your inbox lit up at various points this year with messages from app vendors. Apps that told us when the shuttle buses on campus are running. Apps that took you on campus walking tours. Apps that hooked you up with sports schedules. You name it, people were pitching it. The explosion of offerings posed some opportunities and challenges for higher ed. The power of a well designed and executed app can make for legions of happy campers on your campus. It can be tough though to make sense of all the competing features, and difficult to judge the benefit of using a third party versus the cost-savings of trying to build apps in-house. Are all the stakeholders in your school singing from the same choirbook or did your Law School go out and sign up with company A for a different app while you’re looking at company B? How do you avoid what Rachel Reuben, associate vice president, marketing communications, Ithaca College, calls “Oooh Shiny Syndrome?”
3) QR Codes These things spent 2010-11 multiplying faster than a wet Mogwai. You could find a QR code on everything from admissions postcards to campus tour stops, from direct mail to deodorant. Heck, three sessions at this year’s conference have QR codes in their titles. One report from Queaar.com says QR code scans are up 4,589 percent in 2011.
To be sure there’s some value in a properly executed QR code campaign. But with great power comes great potential to do nonsensical things. Sometimes, you ended up with an institution posting a QR code on their Facebook feed, and asking you to scan the code with your smartphone. You know, when you’re already on the Internet. The moral of the tale of the QR codes? Do it, but don’t blindly over do it. There’s a life lesson for ya kids.
4) Google+ You give Larry and Sergey’s gang enough time, enough money and enough do-overs and, eventually, you get a social media network that’s keeping Mark Zuckerburg up nights. Higher ed Web types stampeded through some loopholes in the beta and started vigorously kicking the tires on Google+ in June and July and waited to see what would happen. At press time, there still wasn’t a mechanism for institutional presences on Google+ but that can’t be far off. And many have already noted the possibilities for classroom and other educational uses for the network. Early in the Google+ experiment, Patrick Powers, Director of Digital Marketing and Communications at Webster University, noted the potential for targeted messaging on his blog. There “can be circles for alumni, donors, current students and prospective students, and each can receive targeted messaging,” all while maintaining privacy. The evolution of Google+, and the battle that’s been joined with Facebook, will be one of the biggest topics of intrigue in the ‘net world in 2012 and beyond. The approximately 40 million users that Google+ has attracted sure caught Facebook’s attention. The 800 lb. social media gorilla instituted a series of changes in September, culminating in a redesign that included more user lists and better search tools. Predictably, many Facebook users spent the next week posting on Facebook about how much they hated the Facebook changes.
5) The Resources Question
Blogging the Conference There are so many great sessions at #heweb2011, it might be hard to attend each one that piques your interest. To help you access all the information you need, a dedicated team of Link staffers and friends will be blogging conference sessions. Visit link.highedweb.org throughout #heweb2011 and stay on top of all the developments, tips and tricks to come out of this year’s conference.
Bonus Content If you need proof that QR codes can be a powerful force for good in the world, we can’t help you there. But we can offer you proof that they’re really awesome for adding some tasty and seriously random bonus content that we hope will leave you smiling. Get those smart phones clicking and enjoy! Be sure to scan the QR codes throughout the program for bonus online content. We hope you enjoy these as much as we do. Happy conferencing!
It’s no secret that everyone loves to complain about their budgets but the 2010-11 budget cycles prompted much vigorous debate on how higher ed Web folks were deploying their people power and how they were spending on technology. Public colleges and universities from New York to California watched their state capitols trying to guesstimate what legislatures would do to their budgets. Some schools cut deep into academic programs or did away with them entirely. Others laid off staff or froze hiring. From the one-person shop to the school with a division’s worth of employees, directors thought long and hard about where their resources were being used and if they could save money through better strategy. Some reorganized their departments to be more efficient and play to the strengths of their staffs. Others turned to third-party vendors for help. Still others had to make difficult decisions and cut staff. But the constant, through it all, was that people still expected their Web pages to look beautiful, run fast and provide oceans of information without any downtime. How will these same offices deal with the budget dance in 2012? This is not to paint a bleak picture, or even to suggest that the questions and challenges and opportunities laid out here have a “right way” of getting done. On the contrary, you have access this week to a whole conference full of answers, strategies, and tips from friends and colleagues who are singing from that same aforementioned choir book—enjoy connecting with those in the field. about the author Dave Tyler works as a Web Writer for The College at Brockport, where he has wound up doing a heck of lot more than writing. Prior to coming to Brockport, Dave worked in PR and spent 11 years in journalism as a reporter for several papers including the daily in Rochester. He has an 8 year-old son, a 5 year-old daughter, knows his way around the grill, is a bit of beer and music geek and has a hopeless addiction to the music of Bruce Springsteen. And no, Dave doesn’t think he’ll ever get over Macho Grande.
LINK .HIGHEDWEB.ORG
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Using Twitter
Stay Connected
Conference Hashtag
Follow us Online!
The conference hashtag is #heweb11
Track Codes & Twitter Hashtags Each track has a code and number: e.g., MMP8. To tweet about a specific session, please add a hashtag to the track’s code and number: e.g., #MMP8. APS.......Applications and Standards MMP.....Marketing, Management and Professional Development SOC.......Social Media TPR.......Technical: Propeller Hats Required TNT.......Content PST.......Poster Sessions WRK......Workshops COR......Corporate
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2011.highedweb.org Share messages and get updates at attendees.highedweb.org Follow conference session blogging at link.highedweb.org Join the Conversation on Twitter: @HighEdWeb #heweb11 Share on YouTube and Flickr: flickr.com/photos/highedweb youtube.com/user/highedweb tag your content = heweb2011
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Get mobile content 2011.highedweb.org/mobile
Conference Wi-Fi Connecting to the internet To connect to the Hyatt Regency Austin’s wireless:
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Select a wireless network: Crooms1, BB1, texas1, texas3, texas4, texas6, or other networks called Hyatt*** (the asterisks represent various endings). Open a web browser. You should see a password prompt; refresh your browser if necessary Enter the log-in information
Username: webpro Password: webpro Surf the Internet with abandon. Enjoy the information superhighway
Internet and Social Networking
Parking The Hyatt Regency Austin conference hotel offers two options (both uncovered): • Valet Parking: • Self Parking: 0-30 min 31-60 min 61-2 hrs 2:01-3 hrs 3:01-4 hrs 4:01-24 hrs
$21/day with unlimited access $14/day Complimentary $2 $4 $6 $9 $14
• Trailers • Over-sized Vehicles • Buses
$15 $35 $100
Guests dining at the restaurant are able to have their parking validated by the restaurant staff. Additional parking is available two blocks away at the Long Center (thelongcenter.com) for $7 per day.
Parking and Transportation Shuttle Service
Shuttle service will be provided between the Hyatt Regency Austin and the Marriott Courtyard Austin Downtown Monday, October 24 7:15–9:15am; 5–7pm Tuesday, October 25 7:15–9:15am; 4–6pm Wednesday, October 26 7:45–9:45am; 11:30am–1:30 pm
Bus Service
The Capital Metro operates public buses with routes throughout the city and county. Fares are $1 for adults. For more information and a route map, visit capmetro.org.
Taxi Service
Need transportation around the city? Try the following companies: • American Yellow Checker Cab Co (512) 452-9999 • Austin Cab (512) 478-2222 • Roy’s Taxi (512) 482-0000
Airport Transportation
Need transportation to/from the airport? • Airport Super Shuttle is offering a 10% online registration discount to HighEdWeb attendees; please make your reservation at bit.ly/qlc9oY and use code L6GK2 to receive this discount. • Rental cars are offered by nine different rental car companies at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport. • Taxi service is approximately $25 one-way; no need to call ahead.
Airport Terminal Maps
Visit the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport bit.ly/p79zkR for terminal maps.
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Austin, TX, is a big little city that gives new meaning to “viva la difference!” From renowned museums to urban bat colonies; from live jazz to living history; Austin has it all. We invite you to hit the town and let yourself be inspired by the playful and energizing culture that is authentically Austin.
Culture Club Want to learn more about the contiguous U.S.’s largest state? Mosey on over to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and learn more about the Story of Texas. If political history is more your thing, take a trip to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museumor see history being made on a visit the Texas State Capitol. And if visual art is what moves you, be sure to plan a trip to the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, which boasts extensive collections of European, American and Contemporary, Latin American, and American West art.
City Slicker Austin has a certain life all its own, and its heart is Sixth Street. A quick walk from the conference hotel, the seven block-long Sixth Street district is the city’s main vein of music and entertainment, where you can find punks mingling with politicians, cowboys hanging with college kids as they take in a wide variety of live music, great food, and a generally hopping scene. If live music is indeed your interest, take a tour of the Austin City Limits studio where some of the best and brightest musicians have performed. For another uniquely Austin experience, visit the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. This funky movie theater hosts weekly sing-alongs, a midnight Saturday showing of the Rocky Horrow Picture Show, “Weird Wednesday” midnight showings, and more. One part quirk, one part funk, ALL parts fun, the Alamo Drafthouse delivers a cinematic experience you’ll never forget.
Natural Selection In addition to a thriving city scene, Austin is also home to some amazing natural resources for your enjoyment. Take a dip in the centuries-old, spring-fed Barton Springs Pool, or take a hike via the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail. Tiptoe through the tulips … or, rather, the native yucca, juniper and rock roses at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, or spend a serene afternoon appreciating contemporary sculpture in the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. And for something really unique, venture out at dusk to sneak a peek of the famed Austin Bats, America’s largest urban bat colony.
For more on venues, eating options, and things to see and do in the Austin area, visit www.austintexas.org 14
For Your Entertainment... Welcome Reception Sunday, 6:15-9:15pm Directly following the official conference opening and orientation session (from 5-6pm), stroll over to the HighEdWeb 2011 Welcome Reception, hosted in the Hyatt’s ground floor conference area. Weather permitting, we’ll also mix and mingle on the hotel’s deck and outside grounds overlooking Austin at twilight. The reception will include heavy hors d’oeuvres, networking and great music, as well as some of the fun activities and surprises you’ve come to expect and enjoy with #heweb.
HighEdWeb After Dark: LINK Party Monday, 7-10pm Meet up at Buffalo Billiards after dinner on Monday night and help celebrate the launch of Link: The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals. Located on Sixth Street in the heart of the live music scene, Buffalo Billiards boasts pool tables, shuffleboard, cozy couches and so much more.
Tuesday Night Excursion: The HighBall Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm Come play the night away as we celebrate the final evening of HighEdWeb in style at an Austin institution, The HighBall. Resplendent in full retro décor, the HighBall is the best diner (and more) this side of 1960. Featuring eight lanes of bowling; seven different themed karaoke rooms; skee ball; and a ballroom set to host the best dance party, Tex-Mex comfort food/heavy hors d’oeuvres, and karaoke competition that will leave you hoarse for days. And did we mention that for one glorious night, the HighBall will be all ours? Come play with us at the HighBall for our Tuesday Night Excursion. Of special note: since we’ll be so very close to Halloween, and in the retro spirit the HighBall embodies, we’re encouraging attendees to dress in their best late-1950s/early-1960s fashions, ala MadMen, Happy Days and more!
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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Hyatt Floor Map
Hyatt Regency Austin – Conference Floor Plan FIRST FLOOR
TPR LADY BIRD LAKE
APS
D
C
B
A
PERKS COFFEE & MORE
STAIRS
MEN WOMEN
HILL COUNTRY D
MMP
ESCALATORS
C BIG BEND B
Registration desk
FOYER
FOYER
LOBBY
A
ENTRANCE
RS
O AT EV
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MARKER 10
FRONT DESK
JOGGING & CYCLING TRAIL
FITNESS CENTER
POOL AND SPA
LADY BIRD LAKE
CAPITAL CRUISES HYATT DOCK
SECOND FLOOR
SOC
VII
III
IV V
Meals
FOOTHILLS I
I
TEXAS BALLROOM
Posters
II
RAMP DOWN
VI
SEVENTEENTH FLOOR
FOOTHILLS II
FOYER
TEXAS FOYER BUSINESS CENTER
Sponsors area MEN WOMEN
STAIRS
SWB SOUTHWEST BISTRO
WOMEN ATRIUM MEN RS
TO VA
E
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PADRE ISLAND BIG THICKET BOARDROOM
EXECUTIVE OFFICES
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Corporate track Conference office
TNT
Austin area map
Austin Area Map
HighEdWeb After Dark: LINK Party Buffalo Billiards
Conference alternate hotel Marriott Courtyard Austin Downtown
Conference hotel and facilities Hyatt Regency Austin
Tuesday night excursion The Highball
Conference hotel and facilities Hyatt Regency Austin
Tuesday night excursion The Highball
208 Barton Springs Road Austin, TX 78704 (512) 477-1234 austin.hyatt.com
1142 South Lamar Boulevard Austin, TX 78704 (512) 383-8309 thehighball.com
Conference alternate hotel Courtyard Marriott Austin Downtown
HighEdWeb After Dark: LINK Party Buffalo Billiards
300 East 4th Street Austin, TX 78701 (512) 236-8008 www.marriottaustindowntown.com
201 East 6th Street Austin, TX 78701 (512) 479-7665 buffalobilliards.com/austin
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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Map out your conference schedule: circle the sessions you plan to attend.
Sunday, October 23 Time
Event
Location
11am–6pm
Conference Check–In & Information
Base of Escalator, 1st Floor
12–1pm
Lunch (for Workshop Attendees & Presenters)
Texas Ballroom
1–4:30pm
WORKSHOPS - page 22
#WRK1
#WRK2
#WRK3
#WRK4
#WRK5
Big Bend C & D Introduction to PHP 5
Hill Country B Online Video Workshop
Big Bend A & B The WordPress University
C. Daniel Chase
Brad Mitchell
Stephanie Leary, Shelley Keith
#WRK6
Hill Country D A Nuts-and-Bolts Introduction to Client-side Interactivity with jQuery and AJAX
Hill Country A Developing and Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop
Hill Country C Web Manager’s Leadership Academy
Jason Woodward
Douglas Tschopp
5–6pm
Orientation Session
Texas Ballroom
6:15–9:15pm
Welcome Reception
Ground Floor Conference Area
Doug Ruschman, Daniel Frommelt
Monday, October 24 7:30–8:30am
Breakfast
Texas Ballroom
7:30am–3pm
Conference Check–In & Information
(Base of Escalator, 1st Floor)
8–8:15am
Opening Comments
Texas Ballroom
8:30–9:15am
Conference Check–In & Information
Base of Escalator, 1st Floor
8–8:15am
TRACK SESSIONS - page 23
#APS1
#TNT1
Hill Country C & D Using WordPress to Power Your Institution’s Entire News Presence
Foothills II Multimedia and Social Storytelling: Capitalize on Content
Lacy Tite
Donna Talarico
Exhibitor Hall Open
9:30–10:15am
TRACK SESSIONS - page 24
#APS2
#TNT2
Mark Heiman
Foothills II Plan to Be a Champ: Turn your School’s 15 Minutes of Fame into a Year-Around Web Effort Zack Barnett
10:15–10:45am
18
Refreshment Break
Susan T. Evans
#SOC1
#TPR1
Texas Ballroom VI & VII Customer Service & Social Media: You Can Do Better
Hill Country A & B Drupal: Not Just Your Daddy’s CMS! C. Daniel Chase
Mike Petroff
9am–5pm
Hill Country C & D Rethinking the Login
#MMP1
Big Bend Creative Services Anyone?
Texas Foyer
#MMP2
Big Bend Knowing What We Are: Refining DePaul’s Brand Deborah Maue
#SOC2 T. Ballroom VI & VII Beyond Blogging: Create an Integrated Online Student Ambassador Program
#TPR2
#COR2
Dan Sagisser
Nathan Gerber, Lance Merker
Hill Country A & B Making a CSS Framework that Works for You
Padre Island Take Your Website Mobile with OmniUpdate
Mallory Wood
Texas Foyer
Your Schedule at a Glance 10:45–11:30am
#APS3
TRACK SESSIONS - page 25
Hill Country C & D What Students Want in Their Mobile Application Glenn Donaldson, James Burgoon, Stephen Fischer
#TNT3
Big Bend Project Management According to Attila the Hun
Georgiana Cohen
Daniel Frommelt
TRACK SESSIONS - page 26
#APS4
#TNT4
John Vieth, Nathan White, Stephanie Leary
12:30–1:10pm 1:10–2:15pm
#SOC2
#TPR3
T. Ballroom VI & VII Interdependency of Search and Social to Create Engaging Strategies
Hill Country A & B Mobile on a Shoestring Quinn Madson, Joel Herron
Martha Gabriel
11:45am–12:30pm
Hill Country C & D The Ultimate Open Source CMS - A Cage Match
#MMP3
Foothills II Carrying the Banner: Reinventing News on Your University Web Site
Foothills II Lost in a Map: Understanding the Direction of Your Campus Map Nick Catto
Lunch
#MMP4
Big Bend Politics or Treason: Toeing the Line or Begging Forgiveness in Site Adaptation Anne Petersen
#SOC4 T. Ballroom VI & VII Crisis Communications on the Web
#TPR4
Hill Country A & B HTML 5—Let’s Make Progress Shahab Lashkari
#COR4
Padre Island Agile Marketing: Content Strategy & Effective Tools Eric Karaszewski, Joel Dixon
Chris Latham, Nyleva Corley
Texas Ballroom
(SPONSORED BY OMNIUPDATE)
Texas Ballroom
General Session, Keynote with Shawn Henry - see page 26 (SPONSORED BY HIGHERED EXPERTS)
2:30–3:15pm
TRACK SESSIONS - page 28
#APS5
#TNT5
Hill Country C & D Engaging Your Campus Using a NextGEN Calendar of Events System
Foothills II Homepage Survival Guide: How to Raise Content from the Dead
#MMP5
T. Ballroom VI & VII Engaging Your Global Audience with Real-Time Campus Event Coverage
Chris Heiland, Jason Beard
Seth Odell
Robert Sawler, Denise St. Jean
Brad Mitchell, Sara Clark
3:30–4:15pm
TRACK SESSIONS - page 29
#APS6
#TNT6
Hill Country C & D A Mobile Framework for the University of California System
Foothills II What Content Strategy Really Means for Higher Ed
#MMP6
Big Bend EZ QR 4 U2 Do! Cliff Jenkins
Brett Pollak
Kate Johnson
4:15– 4:45pm
Refreshment Break
4:45–5:30pm
TRACK SESSIONS - page 30
#APS7
#TNT7
Hill Country C & D Innovate and Collaborate: Using WordPress 3 to Build a Research Database
Foothills II Twin Red-Headed Stepchildren Of A Different Mother: The Usability of Accessibility
#SOC5
Big Bend Geopolitics for the Web: The Uneasy Alliance Between Marketing and IT
#SOC6
#TPR5
Hill Country A & B Fact or Question? Analytics for User Experience Julie Strothman
#TPR6
T. Ballroom VI & VII Tying it all Together: Part Deux
Hill Country A & B Feeding the Beast: Fostering an API Culture
Kevin Prentiss
Erik Runyon, Jeremy Friesen
#COR6
Padre Island Geo-Social Nonsense: The Future of Location Based Services and their Role in Mobile Jeff Kirckick, Krisna Poznik
Texas Foyer
#MMP7
#SOC7
Big Bend Buy vs. Build, and Why the Two are Not Always Mutually Exclusive
T. Ballroom VI & VII Web 2.5: The Love Story and Marriage of Your Website and Social Media
Joseph Ferguson
Lane Joplin
Chris Gabel
Michael Fienen, Dylan Wilbanks
5:30–7:30pm
Dinner on your own
7:45pm–12am
HighEdWeb After Dark: Link Party
#TPR7
Hill Country A & B Swingin’ with Sinatra: Small Apps Fast Sven Aas
(SPONSORED BY WELCOME TO COLLEGE)
Buffalo Billiards
Tuesday, October 25 Time
Event
Location
7:30–8:30am
Breakfast
Texas Ballroom
7:30am–3pm
Conference Check–In & Information
Base of Escalator, 1st Floor
8:00– 8:15pm
Conference Announcements & Updates
Texas Ballroom
8:30–9:15am
TRACK SESSIONS - page 31
#APS8
#TNT8
Hill Country C & D Cornell’s Digital Well: A Social Networking Repository for Marketing Information
Foothills II On Your Mark, Get Set, Mobile Tiffany Broadbent, Doug Gapinski
#MMP8
Big Bend Herding Cats: Web Governance in Higher Education Mark Greenfield
#SOC8 T. Ballroom VI & VII I’d Buy That For a Dollar: What Robocop Can Teach Us About Alumni Engagement
#TPR8
Hill Country A & B Drupal Workflow: Set it and Forget It! Mark Marcello, Alexander Gartley
Jeff Stevens
Dirk Swart
9am–5pm
Exhibitor Hall Open
Texas Foyer
9:15–9:45am
Refreshment Break
Texas Foyer
9:45–10:30am
TRACK SESSIONS - page 33
#APS9
#TNT9
Hill Country C & D Foothills II The Politics of Doing Going Mobile! The #IA for #HighEd How and Why of UVU’s Mobile Web Aaron Baker Initiative Nathan Gerber
#MMP9
Big Bend Lead the Horse to Water, And Make Damn Sure It Drinks: How to Lead Successful & Transparent Projects
#SOC9 T. Ballroom VI & VII A Little Birdie Told Me - What the H1N1 Outbreak Taught Us About Using Twitter
#TPR9
Hill Country A & B Mission: Impossible Content Management Jason Pitoniak
Tonya Oaks Smith
Alana Riley
10:45–11:30am
TRACK SESSIONS - page 35
#APS10
#TNT10
Hill Country C & D Drupal 7 for a University CMS Daniel Frommelt, John Vieth, Michael Steffel
Foothills II Beyond Mobile: Leveraging Data and Content Sources for Mobile Web, Apps and More Roger Wolf, Doug Beck
#MMP10
Big Bend Everything But the Kitchen Sink – A Campus-wide Web Redesign Perspective Kamalika Sandell
#SOC10 T. Ballroom VI & VII E-Expectations 2011: The Online Expectations of Prospective College Students and Their Parents
Curtiss Grymala
#COR10
Padre Island JQuery Mobile and Ingeniux CMS – Solving the Mobile Web Challenge Jim Edmunds, Nathan Eggen
Stephanie Geyer, Lance Merker
11:30pm–12:10pm
Lunch
12:10–1:15pm
General Session, Keynote with Chris Wilson - see page 34
(SPONSORED BY SITEIMPROVE)
(SPONSORED BY SCVNGR)
#TPR10
Hill Country A & B Plug It In: Writing Better WordPress Plugins
Texas Ballroom Texas Ballroom
Your Schedule at a Glance 1:30–2:15pm
TRACK SESSIONS - page 37
#APS11
#TNT11
Hill Country C & D The Status of Web Accessibility in Higher Education to People with Disabilities Jon Gunderson
Foothills II A Data-Driven Content Strategy Idea for Redesigning the Institution’s Website
#MMP111
Big Bend How to Break Things Really Good: A Non-developer’s Cheat Sheet on Testing Websites
#SOC11
#TPR11
T. Ballroom VI & VII Measuring the Result of the Bright and Shiny
Hill Country A & B The *!#* Site is Down! Again!? John Wagner
Seth Meranda
Jon Boyd
Justin Gatewood
2:15– 2:45pm
Refreshment Break
2:45–3:30pm
TRACK SESSIONS - page 38
#APS12
#TNT12
Hill Country C & D One Calendar to Rule Them All Tina Coleman, Andrew Bauserman
Texas Foyer
#MMP12
Foothills II Make Quality Content Count with Web Analytics
Big Bend What Colleges Can Learn From The Insane Clown Posse
Rick Allen
Karlyn Morissette
#SOC12
#TPR12
T. Ballroom VI & VII In the Shadow of the Colossi: Alumni Online Communities in the Age of Facebook and LinkedIn Francis Zablocki
3:30–5pm
POSTER SESSIONS - page 39
6:30–9:30pm
Excursion at the HighBall
Hill Country A & B Management and Technical Issues in Migrating a LAMP Hosting Environment and Its Sites David Herrington, Steve Albin
#COR12
Padre Island Website Content Quality Assurance, the Proactive and Automated Way Brian Stewart, Mark Kleinbaum
(SPONSORED BY JADU)
Wednesday, October 26 Time
Event
Location
8–9 am
Breakfast
Texas Ballroom
8:15–8:45am
Best of Track Awards
Texas Ballroom
9–9:45am
BEST OF TRACK SESSIONS REPEATED
9:45–10:15am
Refreshment Break
10:15–11am
BEST OF TRACK SESSIONS REPEATED
11:15am–12pm
Closing Remarks, Prestige Award, Door Prizes
Texas Ballroom
12–12:45pm
Closing Lunch
Texas Ballroom
1–4:30pm
WORKSHOPS - page 20
#WRK7
#WRK8
Hill Country A Admissions 101 For Web Professionals
Hill Country B Artistic Adventures in Adobe Photoshop
Karlyn Morissette, Mike Petroff
Joel Pattison
Texas Foyer
#WRK9
Hill Country C Going Mobile: Designing iOS, Android, and Web Apps with Standards
#WRK10
Hill Country D HTML5 & CSS3 Makeover Christopher Schmitt, Founder, Heat Vision
#WRK11
Big Bend A & B The Conversation Tree: The Art of Social Media Content
#WRK12
Big Bend C & D Web Application Security Boot Camp Jason Pitoniak
Fritz McDonald
Kristofer Layon
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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SUNDAY 1:00–4:30 pm WORKSHOPS
relations, this workshop examines the development of good Web content. The second half of the workshop looks at research techniques available for developing and assessing websites. Presenter Douglas Tschopp, Entrepreneurial Center Director, Augustana College
#WRK3 Big Bend C & D
Introduction to PHP 5 #WRK1 Hill Country D
A Nuts-and-Bolts Introduction to Client-side Interactivity with jQuery and AJAX Today’s website consumers demand a tremendous amount of flexibility, resposiveness and interactivity from the sites they visit. People have become used to Web applications like Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter that make heavy use of Web browser client-side programming in JavaScript and interaction with Web services using the AJAX programming model. This workshop will teach you the basics of Web browser client-side programming using Web standards. We’ll take a quick tour of HTTP, DOM, Javascript, XML and JSON, then jump in with hands-on exercises using the jQuery Javascript library, building up an interactive website utilizing AJAX Web services. You should come prepared with a laptop, your favorite text editor, and the latest version of the Firefox Web browser. Before the conference we’ll also provide a list of Firefox extensions you’ll need to install. A familiarity with JavaScript, DOM, XHTML, CSS and some clientside programming is necessary for this session. Presenter Jason Woodward, Special Projects Analyst, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
#WRK2 Hill Country A
Developing and Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop This popular HighEdWeb workshop is a great way to start off the conference! Using some of the cornerstone topics in communications and public
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We will cover basic PHP use with a focus on the power of dynamic pages in comparison to static HTML, including a short history of PHP, statement syntax, basic program logic statements and data types, simple PHP pages, and HTML forms. This workshop is for those people with no experience with PHP or those who are just getting started and would like to fill in their knowledge and ask questions as needed. Designers and those that don’t normally work with PHP code, but have to work “around” it and would like to feel more comfortable will benefit also. While we can’t cover everything in PHP in the short amount of time we have, this will be a good start with a focus on the most basic and useful parts of the language. Presenter C. Daniel Chase, Web Developer, Smithsonian Institution Archives
#WRK4 Hill Country B
Online Video Workshop Video should be an essential part of your digital marketing toolkit; not only is it the fastest growing mobile application, it is also the fastest growing medium in the history of the world. So what are you waiting for? In this workshop we’ll go over everything you need to know about creating high-quality videos in a short amount of time and with little cost. We’ll cover gear and setup costs and get hands-on with some basic video equipment and editing software; discuss how to properly conduct interviews to ensure you get authentic answers and quotes for your videos; create a plan for building a great team of student videographers and outline best practices for utilizing free tools like YouTube, Vimeo and iTunes U to host and spread your videos via social media outlets and your institutional websites. Presenter Brad Mitchell, New Media Producer, Missouri State University
#WRK5 Big Bend A & B
The WordPress University Is WordPress the right CMS for your department, or even your whole institution? How do you sell your colleagues on WordPress? What kinds of sites can you build with WordPress? We will demonstrate how WordPress’s theme system is uniquely suited for campus-wide branding initiatives, and how you can create a single theme that allows your users to customize their own sites to the extent you allow. We’ll do a quick walkthrough of installation process and the administration screens, including some issues specific to campus networks. Presenters Stephanie Leary, Website Administrator, Texas A&M University Shelley Keith, Web Site Coordinator, Southern Arkansas University
#WRK6 Hill Country C
Web Manager’s Leadership Academy This opportunity is open to attendees who are the highest ranking Web professional at their institution. Participation will be limited in size to allow for small group interactions and analysis. What are the challenges that you’re facing at your institution? How are you managing the ever-increasing expectations of the Web at your college? What are the ways that you are advocating for additional resources (staff, dollars, time) at your university? Some of higher education’s most knowledgeable Web professionals will share their experiences, reveal their techniques for strategic planning, and provide some ideas for moving your institution forward. You’ll also have the occasion to meet others with similar roles and create connections that will benefit you and your efforts well beyond the conclusion of HighEdWeb 2011. Individual course content includes: • Aligning goals with institutional mission: What are others doing? • The War Room: Guiding Management Principles by Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Sun Tzu • Showcasing your department’s knowledge and skills to the rest of the institution • The future of Web at an institution. Presenters Doug Ruschman, Executive Director, University Communications, Xavier University Daniel Frommelt, Director of Applications and Development, University of Wisconsin - Platteville
8:30–9:15 am
TRACK SESSIONS #APS1 Hill Country C & D
Using WordPress to Power Your Institution’s Entire News Presence We all know WordPress can do just about anything. In this session you’ll see how you can completely revolutionize (and simplify) the way your institution communicates with external and internal audiences. Vanderbilt University is using WordPress to run its entire news presence (including video and audio) – news.vanderbilt.edu – with multiple frontends available for highlighting various segments (Research, Media, Colleges, Internal Audiences, etc). Learn how we • use a tagging system so that every faculty member, department and school has their own news feed that they can pull onto their own websites • create email-client-compatible html email newsletters automatically from our WordPress content • integrated our URL shortner, vanderbi.lt, so that each story automatically generates a shortened URL and prepopulates a tweet • re-purpose stories across multiple frontends • generate correctly sized photos for slideshows, thumbnails, emails and more from a single image upload • create easily accessible help menus within WP for our non-technical content posters with “how to” tips on creating new stories, posting video, scheduling posts, etc. Presenter Lacy Tite, Web Developer, Vanderbilt University
#TNT1 Foothills II
Multimedia and Social Storytelling: Capitalize on Content Stories are everywhere. In fact, they should be splattered all over your institution’s website. Covering your
3, and how to orchestrate the transition to and shepherding the birth of the new department. Presenter Susan T. Evans, Senior Strategist, mStoner, Inc.
#SOC1 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Customer Service & Social Media: You Can Do Better Give your audience a better experience online. If your customer service strategy is solely to provide an email address and phone number to call during office hours, you’re probably not doing enough. You can do better. Most colleges only see marketing opportunities when establishing a presence in social media. Little do they know that customer service IS a huge marketing opportunity and encourages positive word-of-mouth reviews from their communities. In this session, learn how to provide a 24/7 online service center for your audience by utilizing social media monitoring, live chat and video functionality, and other online tools that allow users to assist each other. Build a culture around customer service and you’ll see an immediate boost in audience satisfaction.
Presenter Donna Talarico, Web Content Editor, Elizabethtown College
#MMP1 Big Bend
Creative Services Anyone? This presentation will focus on the assessment required to evaluate needs and build consensus for a creative services organization on your campus, the transitional and organizational development challenges that will be present when bringing a new creative services unit to life, the metrics used to evaluate the success of the first 18 months. You’ll learn how to evaluate communications and marketing on your campus, making the case for creative services – marketing benefits and ROI
Presenter Mike Petroff, Web Manager for Enrollment, Emerson College
#TPR1 Hill Country A & B
Drupal: Not Just Your Daddy’s CMS!
STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN, STUCK IN CUSTOMS - TREY RATCLIFF, FLICKR
MONDAY
printed materials. Playing on video. Getting liked. Getting Tweeted. Before the printing press and even electricity, people were sharing stories. The oral nature of stories is much like today’s social media savvy culture – it’s the interesting ones that are passed on to others. In this session, you’ll learn how the age-old art of story-telling can be used to enhance your website content, engage constituents, create calls to action, drive traffic to your website and more. You’ll learn how create memorable stories in multiple ways, and how repurposing your stories allows you to better capitalize on content.
While Drupal has now been around for over ten years, it is now coming into its own as an Open Source CMS because of the flexibility it gives along with structure and tools. The Smithsonian Institution Archives recently converted from a static web site to one built around the power of Drupal for just this reason. A couple of samples of the flexibility will be explained and demonstrated in the integration of the site with an external collection search and digital asset management systems, including leveraging industry standard XML-based EAD (Encoded Archival Description) finding aids. In addition, a historic database that has been in development since the 1960’s – yes, the 1960’s, punch cards and all – will be demonstrated as it has been converted to MySQL and is now integrated with Drupal. Presenter C. Daniel Chase, Web Developer, Smithsonian Institution Archives
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#TNT2 Foothills II
TEXAS STATE HISTORY MUSEUM, DAWILSON, FLICKR
Plan to Be a Champ: Turn your School’s 15 Minutes of Fame into a Year-Around Web Effort
MONDAY 9:30–10:15 am
TRACK SESSIONS #APS2 Hill Country C & D
Rethinking the Login OpenID and Facebook Connect have gained growing acceptance as ways to decentralize authentication – allowing people to log in to Web services using credentials from other services, like Gmail or Facebook – but have seen limited adoption in higher ed. Based on Carleton College’s recent experience offering OpenID login to our Web site for alumni, prospects, and parents, this session will explore how these technologies work and why one might deploy them, discuss implementation and usability issues, and provide any early look at our adoption rates and user feedback. Presenter Mark Heiman, Senior Web Application Developer, Carleton College
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All universities make a national – or regional – splash sometime. Are you ready to turn that splash into a wave of support? Learn from successes and failures of the University of Oregon’s Celebrating Champions program, which turns attention from big-time college athletics into a year-around narrative of university excellence. See how you can apply strategic communications principles – goals, objectives, strategies and tactics – to prepare your staff and your school for a sustained communications program that builds on existing enthusiasm and momentum. Presenter Zack Barnett, Director of Web Communications, University of Oregon
#COR2 Padre Island
Take Your Website Mobile with OmniUpdate Come see a demonstration of OmniUpdate’s Web content management system (CMS), OU Campus and how it can be used to quickly and easily establish your institution’s mobile presence. The first five attendees to this session will receive a free gift! During this session you will learn about what makes OU Campus ideal for more colleges and universities seeking to launch or enhance a mobile site. In addition, Nathan Gerber, Director of Web Development Services at Utah Valley University (UVU), will share how OU Campus is successfully utilized at his institution for UVU’s Web and mobile initiatives. Presenters Nathan Gerber, Director, Web Development Services, Utah Valley University
with it over many years. The key is to understand what your brand IS, gain agreement to how to evolve it (not easy in a decentralized higher ed environment) and develop an action plan to close the gaps between where you are and where you want to be. In this session, I will share the process that DePaul University recently used to refine our brand, starting with in-depth audience research, moving to strategy sessions, and ending with a plan of action, which included gaining agreement to how we wanted to evolve the brand, integrating the brand work into the university’s strategic planning process (the “what we do”) and the development and execution of a marketing plan (the “what we say”) to communicate the brand to all internal and external audiences across all media, including advertising, print, the Web, and social media. In addition to telling you what we did and how we did it, I’ll also share what I think we did well, the problems we faced, and the things we learned along the way. Presenter Deborah Maue, Associate VP for University Marketing, DePaul University
#SOC2 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Beyond Blogging: Create an Integrated Online Student Ambassador Program What is your institution’s strategy for connecting with prospective students online? Does it involve your student ambassadors? (Hint: It should!) Take your bloggers beyond blogging! In this presentation you learn how to expand, integrate and manage your institution’s student bloggers’ presence across multiple social networking platforms including: Twitter, Formspring, Facebook, NING, YouTube, and more! Presenters Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager, mStoner
Lance Merker, President, OmniUpdate
#TPR2 Hill Country A & B
#MMP2 Big Bend
Making a CSS Framework that Works for You
Knowing What We Are: Refining DePaul’s Brand At DePaul, we believe that a university brand isn’t something you create one day. It is a representation of the lived experience that many people have
This session will cover making a CSS Framework to use at your college or university. The presenter will cover how and why the University of Minnesota College of Education made a framework that now powers around 100 Web sites. This framework was built out of necessity during a time of staff reductions, and used
to both encourage individual department designs, while also increasing simplicity in producing and maintaining those sites. The first part of the session will go over the background of making a framework that fits your needs, and the process for deciding what to include and what to leave out. The second part of the presentation will cover that individual code we used in our framework. The code used will of course be made available at the end of the session as well! Presenter Dan Sagisser, Information Architect and Project Manager, University of Minnesota, CEHD
MONDAY 10:45–11:30 am TRACK SESSIONS
#APS3 Hill Country C & D
What Students Want in Their Mobile Application Technology staff at The Ohio State University has formed an unprecedented partnership with students to deliver a mobile application that meets students’ needs. Three technology workers from different department with very different roles will discuss their process of surveying students to understand their needs, working with them to test the application, and using them for development work. The most important new feature on the recent OSU Mobile launch was the ability for students to look up grades and schedules in real time. We’ll discuss the usage and popularity of these and other features, and plans for future phases. We’ll share the technologies used, some of the challenges on a large campus, and how involving students can make things run more smoothly than one might expect. Presenters Glenn Donaldson, Associate Director, OCIO Enterprise Applications, The Ohio State University James Burgoon, Senior Web Developer, University Communications, The Ohio State University Stephen Fischer, Associate Director, Student Life IT, The Ohio State University
#TNT3 Foothills II
Carrying the Banner: Reinventing News on Your University Web Site A standard of any university website is the news section, but are we keeping pace with how our audiences discover and consume news content? Do we monitor, promote and publish in realtime? How does news tie into our social media strategy? Are we effectively using content types beyond the written word? Are we doing all we can do to make sure our stories get covered by an everchanging media? Are we making the most of collaborations and integrations that can improve the quality and expand the visibility of our news content? In this session, I will lay out a range of strategies and tactics for changing our news offices into news organisms in order to more effectively communicate our stories to our online audiences. Presenter Georgiana Cohen, Manager, Web Content and Strategy, Tufts University
#MMP3 Big Bend
Project Management According to Attila the Hun The concept of project management may have only been around since the 1950’s, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist previously. Get a new prospective of project management from the viewpoint of an unexpected management role model – Attila the Hun. See how a simple nomad used basic principles of leadership and problem solving to achieve some outstanding results and achieving victory in numerous campaigns (read as ‘projects’). Come see what a fourth century nomad warrior has to teach us about project management. Presenters Daniel Frommelt, Director of Applications and Development, University of Wisconsin - Platteville
#SOC3 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Interdependency of Search and Social to Create Engaging Strategies
experience social connection, search and mobile ubiquity in the intensity that the digital technologies and platforms have provided recently. This new scenario is transforming learning, relationships, business and how people communicate and interact. No wonder that a search engine and a social network website are among the top valuable brands today. What is the importance of search, how is it connected to social, and how does it impact higher education today? Is it possible to still maintain marketing or educational strategies without considering that? This presentation will address the roles that digital search, social and content play in marketing strategies and their implications for higher education professionals. Presenter Martha Gabriel, Professor of Intelligence Marketing and Digital Marketing, Business School Sao Paulo
#TPR3 Hill Country A & B
Mobile on a Shoestring The need to support the ever-growing population of mobile users is critical, yet institutions interested in entering the mobile arena face a multitude of challenges. In the current economic climate, funding for new initiatives is scarce. With IT staff asked to do more with less, many have little time to learn new programming languages and design patterns to support the multiple mobile platforms that exist. Join developers from two University of Wisconsin campuses while they demonstrate a free and open source toolkit used to create crossplatform, native mobile applications. The tool uses familiar Web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to generate Java and Objective C source for Android and iOS devices. Using the JavaScript API, developers are able to quickly build applications, as well as take advantage of platform specific features, resulting in best of breed native mobile applications. Presenters Quinn Madson, Lead Web Developer, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Joel Herron, Web and New Media Programmer, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
The human being nature has always been mobile and social. Search is a main part of human behavior, too. However, we have never been able to
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MONDAY 11:45–12:30 pm TRACK SESSIONS
#APS4 Hill Country C & D
The Ultimate Open Source CMS - A Cage Match
a no holds barred cage match! Words and ideas will be mercilessly exchanged, and visual aids are allowed in the cage. A celebrity moderator will be on hand to maintain some semblance of order. Presenters representing each CMS will have eight minutes each to make the case for why their CMS is the ultimate Open Source CMS. After the first round, each presenter will be allowed a three minute rebuttal. The last 10 minutes are reserved for audience questions. This session provides a fun and informative opportunity for conference attendees to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of these three open source CMS options. Presenters John Vieth, Web Design, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
Watch and listen as Drupal, Reason, and WordPress MU battle for supremacy in
Six Questions with Shawn Shawn Henry focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. Her most recent book, Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design, offers an approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone. Shawn leads the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities. Before joining the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), she developed and implemented strategies to optimize user interface design for usability and accessibility with Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit organizations, education providers, government agencies, research centers and international standards bodies.
1. How did you first become involved in the field of accessibility? I was working in user interface design when I started having difficulty using the computer because of vision and physical problems. I learned about accessibility at first out of self interest. Once I understood how important it is to peoples’ lives, I was hooked. With accessible technology, the impact of disability is radically changed. People with disabilities can learn, work, flirt, etc., so
Nathan White, Web Application Developer, Carleton College Stephanie Leary, Website Administrator, Texas A&M
#TNT4 Foothills II
Lost in a Map: Understanding the Direction of Your Campus Map Ready to begin your new campus map project? It’s easy to get lost along the way unless you have clear goals in mind from the start. Building a road map designed to improve driving directions
MONDAY Sponsored by HigherEd Experts
1:10–2:15 pm KEYNOTE
much easier via the Web, when it is accessible. But when it’s not accessible, it creates barriers that exclude people from the Web. Accessible technology opens up a whole world of communication and interaction.
2. What are the common Web accessibility pitfalls in college and university sites? The majority of higher education websites have accessibility problems that cause barriers for students accessing educational opportunities, which is a concern given the obligations of educational institutions to ensure equal access for students with disabilities. We see accessibility barriers throughout websites – from online registration, to online course materials and lectures, to student discussion forums that are often required for participation in courses. Some college and university websites are still not designed and coded well overall, and things that might go unnoticed to most users can prevent people with disabilities from using the website effectively or at all. Simple accessibility checks can tell you a lot about the accessibility of a website.
around your campus might not help with student recruitment, just as your stylized admissions map might not help students find their classrooms. We’ll discuss the needs of several different end users and show how to adapt a map design to suit each of their needs. For example, a 2010 Hobson’s study showed that 84 percent of prospective students consider a campus visit to be one of the most valuable factors in their college decision-making-process. A map aimed at student recruitment should be attractive enough to keep the student’s interest while on your website and practical enough to help them find their way around during a campus visit. Other topics to be discussed include gathering map resources, key asset identification,
content organization, design mockups, and usability testing. Presenter Nick Catto, CIO, nuCloud
#COR4 Padre Island
Agile Marketing: Content Strategy & Effective Tools With the rapidly changing landscape of prospective student marketing channels, it is increasingly important to be able to adjust your marketing efforts as quickly as possible. While you may have an overall long-term marketing strategy in place, the concept of agile marketing focuses on developing shorter strategies in order to maximize
3. Sometimes it seems like making a website accessible is overwhelming. Where should HighEdWeb professionals begin when looking to increase Web accessibility? Begin by learning the basics of how people with disabilities use the Web. If you start out just with the standards, it is overwhelming. Instead, read a little, watch some videos, and find some real people to show you their adaptive strategies and assistive technologies. Not only does that help you understand the technical aspects of accessibility better, it shows you the human side of accessibility. It’s very motivating to know that your work can make a huge difference in real peoples’ lives. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) resource “Involving Users in Web Projects for Better, Easier Accessibility” (bit. ly/8An4RF) is a great starting point for this. Next, check out “Improving the Accessibility of Your Website” (bit.ly/o5Xi0n). It provides approaches and tips for increasing the accessibility of existing websites, such as guidance on developing a plan by identifying accessibility barriers and prioritizing fixes. There are a lot of tools to test the accessibility of your website. “Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools” bit.ly/fhao9 helps you determine what types of tools will work best for different situations. Along with tools, include testing with real people with disabilities.
Accessibility and mobile website design are intertwined. If you make a website accessible, it will work better on mobile devices.
flexibility. This way, the marketer can instantly and accurately measure the success of each campaign, which will then affect both the overall strategy and the immediate next steps. Some of the characteristics of agile marketing: Shorter marketing campaigns, larger variety of marketing channels, constant measuring and adapting, awareness of ROI, and a strong focus on fresh content. Joel Dixon and Eric Karaszewski will discuss the characteristics of agile marketing and demonstrate how Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server CMS Spectate Web marketing tool can help you optimize your campaigns. Presenters Eric Karaszewski, Spectate Project Manager, Hannon Hill Joel Dixon, Solutions Consultant, Hannon Hill
You can learn a lot from quick, informal usability testing. WAI has a resource on that as well: “Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility” (bit.ly/az8T5M).
4. How does accessibility factor into mobile website design? Accessibility and mobile website design are intertwined. If you make a website accessible, it will work better on mobile devices. And when you’re focusing on making your website work on mobile devices, you can get help from accessibility guidelines because people using mobile devices and people with disabilities experience similar barriers when interacting with websites. This is addressed in resources linked from “Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices” (bit.ly/o3y5eA).
5. Do you secretly wish the people at MIT would name a unit of measure after you (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot)? Nah. I wish that all the people developing websites, Web tools and Web technologies would make them accessible to people with disabilities and more usable for everyone. I wish Web developers, designers, managers, instructors, and everyone would embrace accessibility as personally important, excitingly challenging, and highly rewarding – especially in higher education.
6. Cake or pie? Both is not an acceptable answer. Neither, I don’t each much gluten or sugar. I’ll take fruit over cake or pie any day. I love berries: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, even gooseberries – preferably ones I’ve picked fresh.
#MMP4 Big Bend
#TPR4 Hill Country A & B
Politics or Treason: Toeing the Line or Begging Forgiveness in Site Adaptation
HTML 5—Let’s Make Progress
The fine art of tightrope-walking in site management and adaptation: when to toe the line, when to beg forgiveness. Playing politics can be dangerous, but it’s sometimes beneficial--but it can also be beneficial to commit treason. Our landscapes have changed--now each customer and every person you work with has power. Improve the lives of both yourself and your site visitors: find out when in your workplace it’s best to fly below the radar or when it’s better to engage in the politics you prefer to avoid. Learn methods to make politics become immaterial and even make treason seem truly reasonable through usability testing, setting goals and creating or working with standards. How? Start being transparent with those you might have to play politics with. Make sure your objectives are clear and your reasoning evident. With intriguing examples from business, higher education, and hackers of systems and life, Politics or Treason will show how to change your corner of the universe. Presenter Anne Petersen, Director of Digital Marketing, University of Illinois at Chicago
#SOC4 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Crisis Communications on the Web During the Sept. 28 shooting incident at The University of Texas at Austin, communications such as text alerts, e-mail, sirens, Web and social media were used to alert the campus and local community of the emergency situation. This session will discuss the successes and challenges experienced while communicating during the campus lockdown. We will share results and look at the tools and channels we used, our roles and responsibilities, the communication time line, the community response, server woes, technology considerations and lessons learned. Visit our micro site at www.utexas.edu/safety/ webcrisis/. Presenters Chris Latham, Web Designer, The University of Texas at Austin Nyleva Corley, Web and Social Media Manager, The University of Texas at Austin
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It is often said, “Without a struggle there is no progress.” Isn’t that the truth? So, let’s get past the fact that adopting HTML 5 may take some effort, accept the pain, and dig in for results! Come hear OmniUpdate’s Shahab Lashkari, Product Manager, talk specifically about using the new features of HTML 5 to improve your Web applications—not replace them! Shahab will share how to use some of the new Web form input controls of HTML 5, like sliders and date pickers, to build upon your current HTML 4 applications. He’ll also talk about JavaScript interaction with HTML 5 features, such as video, using the Document Object Model (DOM) API, and using the DOM API to build a rich user experience around the tags (e.g., video) themselves. And, of course, no conversation on HTML 5 would be complete without a discussion of the new canvas and semantic elements. Finally, Shahab will give you a look at how some impressive .edu websites are taking advantage of these techniques. Shahab promises that you’ll leave this HTML 5 session with some great new ideas and practical next-steps for success. So, let’s get started. Presenter Shahab Lashkari, Product Manager, OmniUpdate
MONDAY 2:30–3:15 pm
TRACK SESSIONS
individual’s calendar. With the University of Ottawa’s new Calendar of Events tool, you can create a personalized event “shopping” experience – allowing site visitors to do faceted searches for events based on their interests, audience type, location etc. and then subscribe, request notifications or share events online using social media tools. With its streamlined event creation form and workflow approval processes, backend administration is also a breeze. Get your entire campus on the tool and offer a window into what life at your campus is like. Presenters Robert Sawler, Manager, Student IT Services, University of Ottawa Denise St. Jean, Manager, Student IT Services, University of Ottawa
#TNT5 Foothills II
Homepage Survival Guide: How to Raise Content from the Dead In this session, we’ll showcase how we used our braaaains to bring content from many different sources to life by adding an institutional lifestream to our homepage. This stream combines Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, Flickr, blog and RSS items from multiple accounts into one listing. For 45 minutes we’ll create a stronghold with food, water and basic supplies (bring your weapon of choice) and discuss how we became infected with the idea, developed a solution to manage the hordes and found immunizations to keep the content plague from spreading out of control. Presenters Brad Mitchell, New Media Producer, Missouri State University Sara Clark, Director of Web and New Media, Missouri State University
#MMP5 Big Bend #APS5 Hill Country C & D
Engaging Your Campus Using a NextGEN Calendar of Events System Getting students, staff and the general public to attend institutional events and build a sense of community is a difficult job. It takes a lot of coordination, marketing and a Web presence to attract interest and get an event on an
Geopolitics for the Web: The Uneasy Alliance Between Marketing and IT It takes a certain blend of expertise to create a great Web team. You also need to forge a delicate balance between the goals of Marketing and Information Technology (IT). Marketing wants to set standards for content and be in charge of creating the brand. IT wants to set standards for technical features and restrict who has the potential for doing
what damage. Marketing owns the brand and IT owns the servers. What about everything in between? Who should be in charge of putting the look and feel of the brand into a template? When is requesting development time necessary for launching a site rather than just a luxury? Does helpdesk handle all the training even when Marketing sets all the content and design standards for the site? This presentation will attempt to answer some of these questions by comparing two distinct environments. The University of Washington runs the central CMS out of Marketing, with IT providing very limited support. Seattle University has outsourced their entire helpdesk and relies on a vendor for most tasks. Who is right and how effective is one way versus another? There is no single answer, but tradeoffs and compromises, wins and losses, come with the territory no matter which route you choose. In this session we will explore the effectiveness of either approach. Presenters Chris Heiland, Web Developer, University of Washington Jason Beard, Web Designer, Seattle University
#SOC5 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Engaging Your Global Audience with Real-Time Campus Event Coverage Thanks to the likes of Ustream, Facebook, and Twitter, our global audience can now experience our campus events without having to be there in person. This new found geographical freedom means we can dramatically increase the reach of our current events - without breaking the bank. So in an era of belt-tightening and budget cuts, why are we restricting access to our events to only those that can physically attend? Sharing takeaways from more than a hundred successful live streams, this presentation aims to break down the tools of the trade and share stories of success. Going beyond just live streaming video, you’ll learn how to incorporate a variety of social media platforms to directly engage your audience in real-time. The events are already happening. The technology is already here. It’s time to engage our global audience. Presenter Seth Odell, Video Marketing Manager, SNHU
#TPR5 Hill Country A & B
Fact or Question? Analytics for User Experience Analysis of online activity (analytics) has growing attention in the work of user experience design. How do we know when our findings are actionable answers and when they serve as refined questions begging for further exploration through qualitative user research? Can you really learn about your users through analytics? This session will demystify Web analytics, addressing common misconceptions. Through tips and examples of tactical applications of free tools and Web analytics data in a ‘UX friendly’ context, this session will show that analytics can be an efficient tool for gaining rapid insight into user behavior and improving the value of our designs. We will explore ways to recognize findings that demand further investigation. By incorporating Web analytics into our projects we gain the ability to iterate rapidly and with more precision, resulting in increased satisfaction for both our clients and their users. The session will illustrate ways analytics data can be brought into play with familiar user experience techniques and provide examples of how metrics extend the life of our user research and demonstrate return on investment. Personas help drive search analysis, audience targeting drives useful segmentation, internal search data informs content strategy, and suggested metrics support project closure. We will demonstrate useful tools and show how easy it can be to access the data you need. Join in as we hear business goals from the audience and generate metrics and insightful data on the spot. Presenter Julie Strothman, Director of Web Strategy, Landmark College
MONDAY 3:30–4:15 pm
TRACK SESSIONS #APS6 Hill Country C & D
A Mobile Framework for the University of California System Most higher ed institutions don’t have a single IT department. Creating a cohesive mobile presence in this decentralized environment poses a challenge. The University of California system developed and adopted the Mobile Web Framework, allowing each UC campus to build and deploy mobile applications that look and feel the same regardless of the technology used to develop them (Java, .NET, PHP, etc.). This has allowed for broad framework adoption and an explosion of mobile Web applications in the last year. This session will focus on how the framework is unique, how the UC campuses are collaborating on its development, and how other institutions can benefit. Presenter Brett Pollak, Director, Campus Web Office, UC San Diego
#TNT6 Foothills II
What Content Strategy Really Means for Higher Ed Content strategy has become quite the buzzword these days, with books and blogs calling for in-depth processes and strategy documents. How is this theory useful in the day-to-day higher ed environment, where often a small team is trying to oversee dozens or even hundreds of decentralized sites with independently managed content? And in one-man shops, where one person is responsible for all the content, design, and maintenance for a site--how can they incorporate content strategy into their already-overflowing to-do list? This session will boil down the fundamentals of content strategy into a process and a set of tools that higher ed Web professionals can implement right away.
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I’ll break down a series of reasonable, realistic steps that any site owner can use to manage content strategically, from content auditing to systematic content maintenance. Good content will never be easy--it will always be a challenge no matter how you approach it. But with some basic strategy and a good set of tools, you can build good content without losing your mind. Presenter Kate Johnson, Senior Web Content Strategist, University of Denver
beginning to adopt them in interesting ways. But are they worth the hype? This session will discuss the sustainability of geo-location apps as they exist today, how they will likely evolve, and why these nascent forms of location-based social media will become the back-bone of what mobile looks like in the future. Presenters Jeff Kirckick, Universities & Independent School Specialist, SCVNGR Krisna Poznik, Social Media Manager, LaRoche College
#MMP6 Big Bend
STATE CAPITOL BUILDING. TRIGGZBB, FLICKR
EZ QR 4 U2 Do!
#COR6 Padre Island
Geo-Social Nonsense: The Future of Location-Based Services and their Role in Mobile Geo-social applications like Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and others have received a lot of attention over the past year, and higher ed institutions are
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QR (short for Quick Response) code is increasingly making its presence known here in America. Touting everything from Gap jeans to ice cream, advertising agencies are using QR in billboards, magazine ads, and in-store displays. The higher education field has taken notice, using QR in their advertisements and around campus tours. More and more, students have smartphones with the ability to read intelligent code, opening up QR to a broader college-bound audience. Generating QR code is a breeze using third-party applications and Websites. Error correction allows you to design your custom code without compromising the core information. Get a basic introduction into creating and using QR code in and around your campus. Also learn how to customize your QR code and see tracking information so you can watch your hard work pay off.
#TPR6 Hill Country A & B
Feeding the Beast: Fostering an API Culture Higher-Ed sites should no longer survive as information silos. To prevent duplication headaches and to ease in data reuse, Notre Dame developers are writing API’s into each application we produce. You need the next 40 days of Student Life events in JSON or XML? We got that. Map data for the Golden Dome in XML, KML or JSON? Not a problem. You can even get your departments page content, news and databases in multiple formats. During this track, we’ll discuss the who, why and how this is done, and give several examples of how these API’s are being used to feed content to a variety of sites and devices at Notre Dame. Presenters Erik Runyon, Manager of Interactive Development, University of Notre Dame Jeremy Friesen, Web Developer, University of Notre Dame
MONDAY 4:45–5:30 pm
TRACK SESSIONS
Presenter Cliff Jenkins, Video Manager, Xavier University
#SOC6 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Tying it all Together: Part Deux Two years ago, Kevin Prentiss won “best in track” for a future looking presentation about how colleges could build an online student union by aggregating student social media content. This session, like good reality television, will check in on the story. There’s hope and pain with lessons both big and small. In the usual industrial speed blender, we’ll make awesome-sauce out of technology, open source, business models, change, higher ed, vendor silliness, and the future of heweb professionals. Saddle up your unicorns kids, we’re going for a ride. Presenter Kevin Prentiss, CEO, Red Rover
#APS7 Hill Country C & D
Innovate and Collaborate: Using WordPress 3 to Build a Research Database Sometimes Universities move at a glacial pace to make decisions, but occasionally administrators have ideas that just can’t wait. It’s in those instances when WordPress can save the day. The University of Kentucky College of Engineering decided to go a new direction with their Research publication. Instead of producing a large print piece full of facts, figures and descriptions of everything going on in the college they decided to emphasize a few key areas and the collaboration between disciplines. But the college still needed the details of all the active projects available, “just in case,” and
they needed it in two weeks. The site needed to contain all active projects with the title of the project, the start and stop dates for funding, the research areas, PI’s, Co-Pi’s, funding amount and the abstracts. And each project should link out to other projects and researchers in the same department or the same research area. Once you found a researcher that page should include contact info, links to personal sites, research keywords, a NSF style bio and a list of projects that researcher was currently involved in. With the release of WordPress 3.0 two advances made the project possible: custom post types and custom taxonomies. Without WordPress the project would have taken months but instead only took three days. Presenter Chris Gabel, Webmaster, University of Kentucky - College of Engineering
#TNT7 Foothills II
Twin Red-Headed Stepchildren Of A Different Mother: The Usability of Accessibility Web accessibility as a discipline is extremely varied and potentially complicated. The issues can take time to learn, but are not just important for fulfilling the legal requirements for disabled users but also for enhancing usability and user experience of your site for all visitors. We’ll look at common development traps, form techniques, video, and more to help you create a core foundation for producing accessible content for your university sites. Presenters Michael Fienen, CTO, nuCloud Dylan Wilbanks, Web Developer and Designer
#MMP7 Big Bend
Buy vs. Build, and Why the Two are Not Always Mutually Exclusive Joseph D. B. Ferguson from The Ohio State University describes the decision making process from the perspective of the project manager and developer when comparing purchasing third party software versus building an in house software solution. The process is detailed with examples from some
of the most recent projects Joseph has been involved with. The concept of turnkey solutions is explored and in some cases that attribute’s limits exhausted when combined with the 60,000+ student population at The Ohio State University. This presentation will include questions and ideas to consider when deciding to buy or build, tips for forecasting effort required with turnkey solutions, installation and support costs analysis and comparison, along with the ever present “Things we didn’t expect.” The unique makeup of the university’s decentralized information technology services leaves a select number of departments around the university with the name recognition of a big school, but in some cases, the resources and budget of a non-profit. As a big target for vendors, departments across the university are frequently “sold” the concepts of ease of installation and lower support costs associated with 3rd party applications when compared to on campus or in house development. This presentation will walk through the decision making process with information on expected vs. actual cost and time estimates for a few applications in various parts of the process. Attendees should expect to get details on the project management process when faced with comparing costs to inhouse development vs. third party application/service purchases, tips and questions to ask when investigating third party solutions, concerns surrounding security with institutional data and third party solutions, and the importance of service level agreements for post implementation support of applications. Presenter Joseph Ferguson, Developer, The Ohio State University
#SOC7 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Web 2.5: The Love Story and Marriage of Your Website and Social Media For years websites existed with static content, a place to go for information. There were very few ways of integrating dynamic content with sites. Then this new idea of social media came on scene. A place of interaction and sharing. As social media grew, the desire for online interaction grew as well. Standard websites are no longer acceptable. Somehow these two were going to have to get married. Last fall, I was challenged to bridge the gap between our website and social media; to marry the two.
Learn how we integrated YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and more with our website in a few easy steps and increased the user experience. Presenter Lane Joplin, Enterprise Services Division Neustar, Inc.
#TPR7 Hill Country A & B
Swingin’ with Sinatra: Small Apps Fast We all see this regularly: one of our sites needs a special piece of functionality that’s just a little too different to handle with our usual tools. Sometimes it’s something big, something that needs a task force, a team, a committee. Other times it just needs a little developer love and a new tool in your toolkit. In this presentation I’ll introduce you to Sinatra, a Ruby-based framework for rapid Web application development. How rapid? I’ll show you the tool, present a development challenge, live-code a solution before your very eyes, and still leave time for questions AND answers. Presenter Sven Aas, Web Team Lead, Mount Holyoke College
TUESDAY 8:30–9:15 am
TRACK SESSIONS #APS8 Hill Country C & D
Cornell’s Digital Well: A Social Networking Repository for Marketing Information This non-technical IT presentation will present the Digital Well Web tool, discuss some key decisions which were made in its design and creation, and outline how other Universities can leverage Cornell’s investment. Target audience: Software Development Staff, Web professionals, marketing staff. The dissemination, storage and easy access of accurate, up-to-date marketing information is
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an important part of coordinating a consistent university-wide message on a wide variety of topics. Keeping track of all marketing materials is difficult, especially when they are generated across colleges and departments and not in one central place. Cornell University solved this problem with a Digital Well-a repository which provides access to over 220,000 photos, videos, press releases, newspaper articles and other materials. A single location to access all marketing information dramatically empowers marketing staff, reduces the time to create materials, and enables the correct messages to be quickly spread across all campus stakeholders. The repository also has a number of other advanced features, such as an adaptive ranking algorithm, the ability to “follow” departments and individuals, the ability to associate different types of content to facilitate browsing, and features to enable easy sharing. Presenter Dirk Swart, Assistant Director of Administrative Computing, CALS, Cornell University
#TNT8 Foothills II
On Your Mark, Get Set, Mobile There is a lot of buzz about mobile technology and “everything going to mobile.” The mobile market is growing steadily every day; the College of William & Mary’s website saw a 300 percent increase in mobile traffic over the past year alone. Despite this radical growth, less than 10 percent of colleges and universities have a mobile website according to a survey conducted by Dave Olsen at WVU. Building on the success of a webinar we co-hosted with mStoner, we’ll use this session to help you take those first steps into the mobile world with confidence. We’ll give you an inside look at how William &Mary’s mobile site was created, how we’re measuring results, and how it has evolved since launch in August 2010. We’ll also cover the types of information you should offer in mobile format, the decision to create a mobile app or a mobile website, the choice of purchasing an off-the-shelf product or going open-source, trends and guidelines for styling and coding, and examples of mobile content from other colleges and universities Presenters Tiffany Broadbent, Web Programmer, College of William & Mary Doug Gapinski, Creative Director, mStoner
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#MMP8 Big Bend
Herding Cats: Web Governance in Higher Education Welcome to higher ed--the toughest gig in all the Web. Campus politics, silos, consensus decision making, corporate expectations on a not-for-profit budget, and decentralized organizational structures all combine to create a very demanding environment. And the best way to thrive? Create a true Web governance structure, something only a few campuses have done. Yes, I just used the words Web and governance in the same sentence. No, this was not a mistake. A true Web governance structure will provide the framework to move your site to the next level and get senior leadership to view the Web as a strategic asset rather than a cost center. This presentation will show how Web governance and management is essential to achieve a sustainable, efficient, and cost effective Web presence. Learn how Web governance can help you get senior leadership truly engaged and interested in the Web; get more resources; eliminate HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) so the right people are making decisions; overcome campus politics; establish authority and accountability; understand the role of the central Web team (it’s not what you might think); get the right people involved, even in a decentralized organizational model; and move from a production shop into a strategic shop. Presenter Mark Greenfield, Director of Web Services, University at Buffalo
#SOC8 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
I’d Buy That For a Dollar: What Robocop Can Teach Us About Alumni Engagement Today’s economy puts alumni, foundation and development officers in a unique position: creating a model of engagement for an increasing number of college graduates who will not be able to provide recurring gifts for decades. Building on examples from non-profit and Web 2.0 businesses, this TED-style talk will present a model for reaching this demographic and making them involved and eager members of the larger campus community.
Presenter Jeff Stevens, Web Content Optimizer, University of Florida Academic Health Center
#TPR8 Hill Country A & B
Drupal Workflow: Set it and Forget It! Like many Universities, Rochester Institute of Technology remains very print-oriented. Our Bulletins (catalogs) have traditionally been created in print first and then converted into a website over the weeks or months following the release of the print material. This printcentric design model left the website with old content, when most of the users use only the Web! Our solution was to reverse this role, and let the Web drive the print. We changed the entire process of our publication, allowing content contributors from across campus update their program content all year round, so that the website is always up to date. Once a year, an XML snapshot is converted to an InDesign friendly format and then produced as our two print Bulletins. This new process saves tens, if not hundreds, of work hours in the conversion from Word Documents to Web pages, and saves the designers many hours as well, since the XML is pre-formatted for InDesign, allowing for minimal layout tweaking. The roadblocks along the way have been vast, but we believe to have overcome them all. CMS selection, robust workflow and revision systems, training, and XML conversion solution were crucial to the success. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks in our CMSdriven Bulletin system. The initial time invested was approximately 3 months of work for 2 employees, but once it’s complete, you can Set it, and Forget it! Presenters Mark Marcello, Web Designer, Rochester Institute of Technology Alexander Gartley, Associate Web Designer, Rochester Institute of Technology
TUESDAY 9:45–10:30 am
TRACK SESSIONS #APS9 Hill Country C & D
The Politics of Doing #IA for #HighEd Information architecture is how we organize and label website content and navigation. In an ideal world, planning the information architecture is a lot like designing and building a designer kitchen for a newly-constructed home. But let’s face it, in Higher Education our house is usually pretty old, the major appliances don’t match, and nobody can agree on which drawer to put the silverware. Best practices in information architecture do not necessarily prepare us for the inevitable semantic political battles regarding organization, labeling and navigation. We work for large, bureaucratic organizations with complex and illogical organizational structures that our users may never understand. We deal with eccentric and sometimes unknowledgeable individuals. Given this reality, how are we supposed to organize large amounts of content, create common vocabularies, and advocate for consistent labeling in order to produce a positive user experience? I will cover basic information architecture principles and elaborate on how these are usually applied to higher education websites. I will offer some tips and tricks on how you can measure user engagement in order to better inform you and other campus decision makers about what is working and why. Finally we’ll open the discussion to how we can adapt what is best into what works for our own institutions. Ultimately, a successful information architect in higher education is one who can successfully collaborate with campus leaders and navigate through university politics. Presenter Aaron Baker, Web Services Coordinator, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
#TNT9 Foothills II
Going Mobile! The How and Why of UVU’s Mobile Web Initiative Change is in the air – literally! Usage of the Web traditionally has been on desktop computers, but mobile device usage is growing exponentially. Some studies predict it will pass traditional Web traffic by 2015. Higher education is also seeing rapid growth and the new generation of students arriving at institutions are digitally literate, connected, social, and immediate. Utah Valley University has seen this change occurring and moved forward with a mobile Web initiative to better serve students. Come see how they did it, why they did it, the tools used, the questions asked, and decisions made to meet the needs of their mobile users. Presenter Nathan Gerber, Director Web Development Services, Utah Valley University
#MMP9 Big Bend
Lead the Horse to Water, And Make Damn Sure It Drinks: How to Lead Successful & Transparent Projects When it’s your job to be sure a project gets done and gets done right, there is limited room for error. You need to lead your team to the finish line on-time and on-budget or face the music. Let me remind you of an all too familiar scenario: A project is dumped in your lap and you’re given limited information as to how it came to be, and possibly where it’s headed. Your availability wasn’t considered, and now you’re caught between a rock and hard place, left to clean up someone else’s mess. Newsflash: A project led poorly will likely fail miserably. We’ve all seen it happen or have heard the horror stories. It’s important to remember that in these moments, the leadership within your organization doesn’t begin and end with your director or vice president; it shouldn’t “end” with anyone -- you have the power to raise the bar; to set the standards; to become a project rockstar by being innovative, creative, professional, and most of all, a leader. When filling the shoes of a project
manager, you need to develop and keep a very specific toolset nearby (hint: it has nothing to do with a PM certification hanging on your wall). That toolset will help you avoid dangerous terrain, keep the people you’re working with happy, energetic, optimistic and on-track, and give you the confidence to communicate effectively with your stakeholders, be it the newest staff member or the most rigid department chair. Join me in this session as I share with you my project experiences, show off some great tools you can put to work right away, and provide tips on how to lead your team of 5 or 50 or 500+ on down to the watering hole! Presenter Alana Riley, SharePoint Administrator, Berklee College of Music
#SOC9 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
A Little Birdie Told Me What the H1N1 Outbreak Taught Us About Using Twitter Traditional media scholar Michael Skoler recently said, “Today, people expect to share information, not be fed it. They expect to be listened to when they have knowledge and raise questions. They want news that connects with their lives and interests. They want control over their information. And they want connection – they give their trust to those they engage with – people who talk with them, listen and maintain a relationship.” Though Skoler was talking about traditional media, the principles of engagement apply to social media as well. We all know that we have to have conversations with our audiences and more importantly listen, but why is this approach so important? Do folks actually listen to what we have to say when we tweet? What do they do with that information? After studying Twitter interaction surrounding the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, prevalent themes (reasons people Tweet) were identified. How information about the virus was shared, reshared, and modified - as well as how individuals acted on that information - was eye opening. This research has concrete implications for how we use Twitter in an university environment, and how we integrate it into our communication plans. Presenter Tonya Oaks Smith, Director of Communications, UALR William H. Bowen School of Law
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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#TPR9 Hill Country A & B
Mission: Impossible Content Management Your mission, should you choose to accept it: deploy a enterprise-class content management solution that runs entirely on your existing Web server environment, supports multiple sites, maintains existing user access, security, and disk quota protections, is easy for non-technical contributors to learn and use while being flexible enough to handle
a wide range of sites, and is relatively simple for IT to maintain—while still being expected to do your day-to-day job functions, as well. All of this, of course, is expected on a budget of zero. While this may sound like the plot of a sci-fi thriller, it is the very real challenge presented to a team of five IT and Publications staff at RIT two years ago. After polling contributors on the options they’d expect from a CMS offering and convening a group of developers from across our campus community to evaluate several options, we decided that Drupal would
Six Questions with Chris Chris Wilson began working on Web browsers in 1993 when he
best fit our needs and started down the long, bumpy road to deployment. Despite many technical hurdles, project members leaving the university mid-way through the project, and many late nights and weekends, our team was successful. This session will demonstrate the final approach we took to achieve our goal— including our unique configurations, custom module development, and automation tools—while discussing the
TUESDAY Sponsored by SCVNGR
12:10–1:15 pm
KEYNOTE
co-authored the original Windows version of NCSA Mosaic, the first mass-market WWW browser. He joined Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team as a developer in 1995, and spent the next 15 years representing Microsoft in many standards working groups, in particular, helping to develop standards for Cascading Style Sheets, HTML, the Document Object Model and XSL through the W3C. Chris also developed the first implementation of Cascading Style Sheets in Internet Explorer – the first in any massmarket Web browser. In 2010, Chris left Microsoft and joined Google’s Developer Relations team. He is currently working on the Google TV project.
1. What do you see as the most challenging and exciting problem facing Web developers today? I think the most exciting problem facing Web developers today is simply finding enough time to build awesome applications. With the latest emerging features in the standards and the latest browsers, it’s possible to build incredibly powerful, responsive and adaptive applications, and the wealth of social and data services available is mind-boggling. The Web platform is still emerging in some areas, though, and tools support is still not ideal (and it’s hard to build tool support for such a fast-moving platform), which makes creates a few unique challenges for Web developers.
The biggest challenge for Google TV in the consumer market is one of misunderstanding. Google TV was really founded on three ideas: 1) making your cable/satellite TV experience better by applying search to live TV; 2) bringing Web content like YouTube videos to the biggest screen in your house; and 3) providing a platform (two platforms, really, with the Web and Android) for building TV applications. The first of these ideas is somewhat unique in the market, and I think has been underestimated. With the second, a number of other devices do quite well also although Google TV uniquely has a full Web browser, and does a good job at adapting content to the TV. The third idea hasn’t really seen its time come, because the critical mass of TVs with the same platform support isn’t there yet, but it’s an immensely powerful idea, and Google TV’s bet on the Web platform is obviously one I have a lot of passion for.
2. What challenges does Google TV face in a market crowded with other net+video applications and devices?
3. Should colleges be putting more of a focus on the mobile Web and less on their actual traditional Web pages?
problems and pitfalls we encountered along the way. We’ll also look at management, performance, and scalability enhancements that we are considering as part of a “phase two” of the project. Anyone looking to deploy Drupal, or any content management system for that matter, should attend to learn from our successes...and our frustrations. Presenter Jason Pitoniak, Web Services Technical Team Lead, Rochester Institute of Technology
TUESDAY 10:45–11:30 am TRACK SESSIONS
I think it’s always best to focus on content and utility first, and only then focus on an adaptive experience across a range of devices. I’d rather have the content (or function) work, even if it’s less than an ideal experience across all devices, than be locked out of functionality on a device. I think the real question you’re asking, though, is whether a desktop or a mobile experience is more important. I tend to be a pragmatist - so I’d say the general guidance is “know your user.” For a college - basic information on the college, say, that I might be researching when I’m figuring out where to send my daughters - I’m not so likely to be doing that research on my mobile phone, so I think a good experience on the desktop is important. On the other hand, I would expect that students would want great access to their student account, their syllabus and textbooks, and their class schedule on their mobile device. The best advice I can give is build an adaptive experience, figure out where your users need the experience sweet spots to be, and then optimize your experience for those appropriate sweet spots.
4. Sticking with mobile, what are your thoughts on developing applications for specific devices? Should the focus instead be on developing apps for a wide array of devices using HTML5 and CSS3? Native apps (like iOS or Android applications) vs. Web apps is always a hot topic. Again, I’m pragmatic. If you need access to something in the native platform that’s not there yet in the Web platform - if you’re building a 3D game, when WebGL isn’t there in most mobile browsers today - then by all means, you’ll probably want to build a native mobile application. But ultimately, I think you’ll want to have the flexibility of the Web platform, because Web applications will go anywhere. Between a Windows desktop, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, an Android phone or tablet, a Windows phone... that’s five different native platforms you might have to develop for right there. Native platforms come and go - the Web is forever.
5. Does IE deserve its third rate reputation? Heh. I think IE was a cutting-edge browser from IE4 through IE6 - in fact, because it was from Microsoft a lot of people didn’t give it the credit it deserved. But there was a five-year gap between
#APS10 Hill Country C & D
Drupal 7 for a University CMS Let us walk you through our experience implementing a campus-wide redesign of our entire University Web presence using Drupal 7. We’ll talk about the power of Drupal 7, technical underpinnings, information architecture, managing content, bells and whistles, leveraging external expertise, and getting buy-in from all of campus.
IE6 and IE7, and the investment just didn’t seem to be there again until some time in mid-IE9 to really catch up to the other browsers. That made IE look like the paste-eating kid to the Web developer community. Now, there are some really smart people on the Internet Explorer team - and I’m glad they built IE9. IE9 was a big step forward technically for Microsoft, and frankly the first time in a long time that I think they were really investing even remotely as they should in the Web platform. IE10 seems on track to continue their investment. Another huge factor in the perception of IE is IE user upgrade complacency. IE6 still has more desktop market share than Apple’s Safari and Opera put together. That browser is more than a decade old! So probably Microsoft’s biggest perception challenge is that when you combine IE’s history with their two-year-long release cycles, compounded by the slow adoption curve of their users, even if Internet Explorer does everything ahead of everyone else it doesn’t really get in the hands of most of their users (and therefore Web developers) for a year or two after Firefox or Chrome.
... build an adaptive experience, figure out where your users need the experience sweet spots to be, and then optimize your experience for those... 6. Cake or pie? Both is not an acceptable answer. That depends on the cake or pie in question. :) In my opinion, a bad cake is worse than a bad pie. But a great cake is better than a great pie. I’m a hopeful pessimist, so if I have to choose cake or pie, sight unseen, then I’d choose cake, hoping for a rich, buttery, flavorful chocolate cake with loads of tasty frosting, despite the risk of getting dry, chewy cake with tasteless sugar on top. But then there’s meat pie... mmm... meat pie...
Presenters Daniel Frommelt, Director of Applications and Development, University of Wisconsin - Platteville John Vieth, Web Design, University of Wisconsin-Platteville Michael Steffel, Web Programmer, University of Wisconsin Platteville
#TNT10 Foothills II
Beyond Mobile: Leveraging Data and Content Sources for Mobile Web, Apps and More Building a top-level mobile Web experience for your university is easier than you might think. By leveraging readily available data sources on your campus, you can quickly build a wide-range of customized Web modules and adapt them to be displayed as a mobile website or a device-native application. Before moving forward you should have a clear mobile strategy have some knowledge of the differences between a mobile Web site and a device native app. A strong mobile site or native app is rarely a data authority but instead pulls it’s data from alternate sources and displays it for the mobile medium. Employing the mobile framework was our first step in building out our mobile environment; once in place we discovered many ways to get and sustain good content. With a strategy in place and some good data sources, you too can have a robust mobile experience for your users. Presenters Roger Wolf, Assistant Director of Web Communications, UCF Doug Beck, Web Applications Programmer, UCF
#MMP10 Big Bend
Everything But the Kitchen Sink – A Campus-wide Web Redesign Perspective Are you launching a campus-wide reassessment and redesign of your institution’s Web presence? This presentation will explore American University’s eventful journey from concept to launch to a mature and thriving distributed Web publishing culture. The journey began with assessing the legacy Web that lacked brand realization, consistent design, defined architecture and timely content. The assessment involved understanding AU’s key audiences and coming up with a concept that appealed to those key audiences.
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Numerous focus groups, surveys and in-depth interviews were held through the entire lifecycle of the project. Starting with a broad study and assessment, AU successfully launched a fully rearchitected, rebranded website with fully redone, new content in 18 months. The scope included all the university’s offices, schools, and academic programs. The AU team successfully debated brand identities and sub brand statements, deliberated design decisions, selected and implemented an enterprise content management system, rolled out Web applications, and completly redid over 30,000 pages – all in 16 months. Content leads worked with staff, faculty, students and alumni to shape the content for the new Web. This presentation explores an overall approach to Web redesign, role of multiple governance committees, methods to achieve balanced compromises, resulting in a successful launch. After almost two years of launch, the site still looks fresh with new, timely content, the campus community feels connected, and AU is well on its way to incorporate the newly developed brand! Presenter Kamalika Sandell, Associate CIO, Office of Information Technology, American University
#SOC10 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
E-Expectations 2011: The Online Expectations of Prospective College Students and Their Parents To recruit prospective students today, you have to look beyond your website. The rise of social networking and the growing use of mobile Web access have fundamentally expanded how students access information and interact online. You also have to look beyond students to their parents, who often play a key role in the college decision process. How can you meet what may be two very different yet equally important sets of online expectations? This session will discuss research into the online expectations and behavior of collegebound high school seniors and their parents. Based on a parallel survey of both groups, you will learn what students and parents expect from college websites, the content and features they value most, their expectations for mobile site content, and how they perceive Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as recruitment tools. The presenters will also review the attitudes of students and parents toward new online applications such as cost calculators, interactive
maps, and QR codes for smart phones. At the end of the session, you will have a better understanding of how to serve prospective students and their parents online, how you need to adjust your strategies between the two groups, and most importantly, how you can engage them, connect with them, spur communication, and provide an online experience pushes students toward enrolling. Presenters Stephanie Geyer, Associate Vice President, Web Strategy Services, Noel-Levitz Lance Merker, President, OmniUpdate
#TPR10 Hill Country A & B
Plug It In: Writing Better WordPress Plugins Writing a WordPress plugin can be extremely simple, but in order to write a good WordPress plugin, it takes a little more work. I will walk you through five simple tips to help improve your WordPress development skills and techniques. Some of the topics covered in this presentation are making your plugin extendable - allowing other developers to add functionality to your plugin without having to modify the plugin itself; avoiding conflicts with other plugins; making your plugin multisite, and even multi-network, compatible; helping to future-proof your plugin; and spiffying up your readme file. Presenter Curtiss Grymala, University Webmaster, University of Mary Washington
#COR10 PADRE ISLAND
JQuery Mobile and Ingeniux CMS – Solving the Mobile Web Challenge Do you think the mobile Web it too complex and too expensive? No longer. Ingeniux will demonstrate Web Layers, a new approach for building rich mobile websites and applications using standard web technologies like JQuery Mobile. Lean how to set-up mobile device detection and forwarding, create taskbased mobile experiences, leverage your existing content, unlock on-device capabilities, and create intuitive multitouch interactions that work on any leading device – from Apple iPhone and iPad to Android and RIM Blackberry. Presenters Jim Edmunds, CEO, Ingeniux Nathan Eggen, Director of Product Development, Ingeniux
TUESDAY 1:30–2:15 pm
TRACK SESSIONS #APS11 Hill Country C & D
The Status of Web Accessibility in Higher Education to People with Disabilities Web accessibility is an increasing problem in higher education, but little data is available on actual implementation of Web accessibility policies. This presentation will give some light to the types of Web accessibility problems faced by universities by analyzing over 23,000 Web pages at over 180 universities, including home pages, admissions pages and liberal arts sciences pages. The analysis focuses on key accessibility indicators including page titling, use of headers to provide document structure, labeling form controls, alternative text for images and header markup for tables identified as data tables. The results show that Web accessibility continues to be a major problem. Most institutions have policies on Web accessibility but very few institutions actually implement programs and assign administrative responsibilities to insure compliance through auditing accessibility. The data from this study shows that most higher education websites still lack basic accessibility features. Developers need to learn more about the accessibility of their Web resources in order to develop Web accessibility management plans for their institutions. Accessibility has to be treated in a similar way as security--as a necessary and import part of making Web resources accessible and usable to all students, including those with disabilities. Data on Web accessibility is the first step in raising the awareness of IT professionals to take away the plausible deniability of not knowing the accessibility of their Web resources. Presenter Jon Gunderson, Coordinator of IT Accessibility, Univiersity of Illinois
#TNT11 Foothills II
A Data-Driven Content Strategy Idea for Redesigning the Institution’s Website As the only Web professional at my institution, the idea of coming up with a strategy to redesign the institution’s website seemed ridiculous, so I took a few steps back and looked at what I was already doing. Google Analytics had been in place for five years collecting data, Google Site Search--the free one--was integrated with those Analytics and had been online for nearly the same length of time, and an online FAQ/Knowledgebase system has been running for more than two years now with its own reporting/ analytics data. But I needed a bit more information to bring context into the mix of this sea of data: a website satisfaction survey! I now have thousands of contextual responses from site visitors to go along with the other three data sources. Putting that all together, I now have a solid base of statistical information with which to argue my case to administrators, and with which to build a solid, usable, requested site structure for our site visitors. The best thing about all of this is that three of the four systems I’m using are totally free and easy to setup/ implement. I will present the steps I have taken to evaluate/analyze the data I’ve collected, and demonstrate how that data is helping me to put together a content strategy that is backed up by solid statistical information that is enabling me to get administrative buy-in as well.
how being judgmental, skeptical, picky, and paranoid can actually be professional assets. I’ve got some deceptively simple principles so that you can break your own site first before your visitors have the chance. We will talk about usability, consistency, and security, and how to tell a launch-blocker from a nice-to-have; what kind of bug-tracking tools can help and how to catch some often-overlooked steps; that delicious, secret satisfaction when you break something really good. But it’s not all smashing glass and banshee shrieks. I’ll also share tips about how and why to love on your developers, and what you should include when you report the problems you find. In the end, they will truly thank you for being so good at breaking their handiwork — and helping them fix it. Presenter Jon Boyd, Director of Digital Communications, North Park University
#SOC11 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
Measuring the Result of the Bright and Shiny
Presenter Justin Gatewood, Webmaster, Victor Valley College
Social media is transforming online communications. Facebook, Google+, Twitter and the likes have all captured our interest and have become the hot topic in digital communications, and institutions are beginning to conduct social experiments on their .edu. Whether using these tools for recruitment, retention, brand awareness, or because everyone else is, we need to focus on what works well. In this presentation, we’ll look at what it takes to set up a measurement strategy, the tools available to track social media efforts and how to gauge the success or failure of your social media efforts.
#MMP11 Big Bend
Presenter Seth Meranda, User Experience Architect, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
How to Break Things Really Good: A Non-developer’s Cheat Sheet on Testing Websites Developers are some of my best friends, so please do not take this the wrong way, but never trust a developer — at least when it comes to whether their latest Web project is ready to go. But it is hard for a non-developer, someone outside the technical thick of things, to evaluate the quality and launch-readiness of a Webdevelopment project. This session will offer a set of principles, disciplines, and tips that can turn you into a top-notch quality tester. At long last, you’ll learn
#TPR11 Hill Country A & B
The *!#* Site is Down! Again!? At any Web conference, there are always presentations zeroing in on how to communicate with a desired audience, but the best built site becomes useless when the platform it runs on is down. I will talk about the things you can do to provide a Web platform in the cloud experience without platform in the cloud expenses. Presenter John Wagner, Systems Programmer, Princeton University
2 0 11. H I G H E D W E B . O R G
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TUESDAY 2:45–3:30 pm
TRACK SESSIONS #APS12 Hill Country C & D
One Calendar to Rule Them All Do you know what’s happening on your campus today? If you do not, can you easily find out? Until recently, anyone curious about what was happening at the College of William & Mary would have answered “no” to both of these questions. We will share with you how we successfully created an integrated events calendar for the William & Mary community. We will share why it was important to have our campus events accessible in one place; what kinds of events are included; how we decided to build it, style it and integrate it into other systems; our strategy for getting the campus to buy into it and use it; and how we measure its success. Presenters Tina Coleman, Associate Director, Creative Services, College of William & Mary Andrew Bauserman, Senior Web Architect, Creative Services, College of William & Mary
#TNT12 Foothills II
Make Quality Content Count with Web Analytics Instinct and gut feelings are nice, but numbers are better. Analysis and measurement are the “so what?” of content strategy, demonstrating content value. With these elements, you can quantitatively evaluate content quality, including the efficacy of communications, usability, SEO, branding, and user experience design. Web analytics is an essential part of this process: it identifies how users interact with your Web content. It informs content audits, analysis, and governance. But you will not find these insights through mere dashboard metrics. Better insights and smarter decisions depend on context—and that is where
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analytics can help. An analytics strategy puts data in context. Without context, your data is meaningless. This session will discuss how you can develop an analytics strategy with methods for assessing content quality; understand how to define useful, contextually relevant metrics and KPIs that support your content strategy and governance plan; evaluate content types and delivery channels; measure conversions and engagement; identify influence and reach; and enable content owners to adapt to evolving website and user goals. Do not just go with your gut: create and maintain content that proves to be effective. Presenter Rick Allen, Principal / Content Strategist, ePublish Media
#COR12 Padre Island
Website Content Quality Assurance, the Proactive and Automated Way Learn how hundreds of schools are managing the quality of their website content when budgets are tight but Web presence remains important. Most websites have errors such as broken links, misspellings, and countless accessibility issues. For academic organizations these errors cost more than time and manual labor but also represent a loss in prospective students. Siteimprove prevails with SiteCheck as a cost effective SaaS solution which checks your website every five days and will automatically email the exact positions of these errors to individual editors. When your school’s website is in transition or mapping new Web initiatives, it is fundamental to know what lives on your site and where it is located. SiteInventory, a unique component to SiteCheck, is a rolling site audit that
includes all documents, email addresses, phone numbers, media files, expose social security numbers, java script, and more to provide unmatched accuracy. Go live with your new site with SiteCheck ensuring your standards are met; protect your investment. Presenters Brian Stewart, Account Executive, Siteimprove Mark Kleinbaum, Account Executive, Siteimprove
#MMP12 Big Bend
What Colleges Can Learn From The Insane Clown Posse It sounds crazy, right? What could respectable institutions of higher education possibly learn from a controversial rap group comprised of high school dropouts dressed in clown makeup? Well, love them or hate them, the Insane Clown Posse make millions each year by applying basic marketing and branding techniques that any college would be wise to use. This presentation shows you how. I will discuss concepts like finding your uniqueness, owning your identity, creating an experience and community building, and then showing real world examples of how colleges have applied these concepts to build their brands. It does not matter if you love them, hate them, or will not let your kids listen to them - you cannot ignore the power of the lessons they have taught us. If you do, they are just laughing all the way to the bank. And no, you (probably) will not be forced to listen to their music :-) Presenter Karlyn Morissette, Director of Social Media, Southern New Hampshire University
#SOC12 Texas Ballroom VI & VII
#TPR12 Hill Country A & B
In the Shadow of the Colossi: Alumni Online Communities in the Age of Facebook and LinkedIn
Management and Technical Issues in Migrating a LAMP Hosting Environment and Its Sites
Your alumni online community cannot compete with Facebook for social conversations, and it cannot compete with LinkedIn for career connections, so do not even try. It can, however, provide tools and information that alumni cannot find anywhere else. Find out how to combine the benefits of your proprietary network with the major social media outlets to create a one-stop toolkit to help your alumni do what they want to do quickly and easily. Unlike admissions, where the demographic is largely homogenous in terms of age and technological aptitude, alumni span many different generations and a wide spectrum of comfort levels with technology and preferences for media consumption. It is a real challenge to successfully utilize the right online tools for the right alumni sub-audience while keeping everything under one cohesive brand. I will speak about the approach I took to U-Knight and what progress and stumbling blocks have been encountered along the way. Specifically this presentation will be useful for those working with Harris Connect, iModules, and other online alumni directory software; Alumni relations websites; and Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn pages that are targeted towards alumni audiences.
At Princeton University the Office of Information Technology recently completed a project that replaced our old home-grown LAMP Web hosting service and its 238 sites with a new LAMP hosting service using the cPanel Web hosting environment. This talk will cover the highlights of this large project, including the project methodology we used and how the team was structured; how our architecture sub-team chose a replacement product; our customer communications strategy, and how we got 145 customers not under our direct control to migrate their own sites according to our schedule; some technical specifics concerning the cPanel hosting setup we are using; the challenges we faced in creating customer sites in cPanel; the issues and seeming incompatibilities we encountered as in-production Web applications were migrated to a fundamentally different technological environment, and the steps we took to overcome these problems. Presenters David Herrington, Manger, Departmental Application Services, Princeton University Steve Albin, Web Hosting Administrator, Princeton University
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Presenter Francis Zablocki, Online Community Manager, SUNY Geneseo
3:30–5:00 pm
THE FOUNTAIN & THE BELL TOWER. STUCKINCUSTOMS - TREY RATCLIFF
POSTER SESSIONS #PST1
A Brief Trip Through Content Strategy In 2009, the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, along with University Communications and IT, embarked on a multi-year project to change how we “do” our
websites. Instead of the usual new coat of paint, this project re-examined all assumptions and practices from the very start. Employing practices from Kelly Goto’s “Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works”, Indi Young’s “Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior”, Kristina Halvorson’s “Content Strategy for the Web” and other best practices, we designed new websites with information architectures and content strategies that align with our audience’s mental model-identified tasks. As a result of this project, the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences employs content strategy on a daily basis in the ongoing development and migration of existing sites. This presentation will trace the development of a Web page through the entire process, from content audit to production. The role of stakeholder interviews, best practice review, a business case, mental models, wireframing, usability, information architecture, content strategy steps along the way will be included. Presenter David Anderson, Director of Strategic Digital Communication, UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
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An Integrated Database System: New Connections CRM Case Study As a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, New Connections provides funding, mentoring, and career development to diverse junior and mid-career researchers in health and healthcare. Faced with multiple databases (Web and non-Web based) and a network of 1000+ members, the New Connections national program office (NPO) turned to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Working with a certified Microsoft partner, Axonom Inc., New Connections customized the out-of-thebox version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM into an integrated platform that allows the program to efficiently and effectively track grantees and network members; communicate with grantees, network members, and speakers/presenters; create a case management system; and manage events Presenter Mohamed Jalloh, Project Coordinator, OMG Center for Collaborative Learning
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Baseline Web Accessibility Report - Why am I Doing This? This presentation addresses the role of baseline research and studies for Web accessibility, method and approach to creating a baseline report for a university Web presence that spans multiple Web servers, introduces the Serviceable Accessibility Index (SAI), and working with university administration and campus departments to successfully navigate resistance and issues impeding rapid remediation. A baseline study is the only historical document used to reflect upon when forming the direction to improve and ultimately achieve full compliance with Section 508 guidelines of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C. 794d) in 1998 to the Rehabilitation Act, U.S. Public Law 105-220 of the Rehabilitation Act. Section 508 criteria are not exhaustive and the California State University (CSU) system of 23 campuses interweaves WCAG 2.0 guidelines and an additional 57 checkpoints, to go beyond compliance to achieve a fully accessible and rich Internet experience. This presentation discusses the research and study of baseline reports, discusses the method of testing using both automated software and manual testing leading to the baseline report that introduces a Serviceable Accessibility Index (SAI) in support of remediation efforts. Further discussion includes: Identifying individual Web sites and Web pages that sabotage an entire presence, the role of search engines and accessibility in the university, working with administration to breakdown “department silos”, and moving a medium to large university Web presence forward to complete remediation efforts. Presenter Cher Travis Ellis, Information Technology Consultant, California State University, Fresno
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Choose Trust Over Control Great Sites Come from Happy People A website in an academic environment is a project in constant production with stakeholders that range from front-desk staff to the dean. How do you move gracefully across layers of leadership to design and manage college websites in order to present a new and cohesive
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Web experience to your students and the public? Learn what the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota did to make this a success. After giving the Web team the autonomy to do the work, a peer-group was developed that included existing staff in each unit. With people working collaboratively, traditionally tricky issues such as implementing new software, political buy-in for new visual designs and setting priorities are now implemented with ease. We will share the benefits of trust and how the peergroup of Web editors works together across two cities in their college. With over three years of success with this model, Amanda and Jeff will touch on the success of having autonomy to build sites to the trends of the Web first and the institution last, the job satisfaction and engagement that results from this trust and the enhanced skills in communication and technology that are gained. And it all started a few years ago when senior management chose trust over control. Presenters Amanda Costello, Web and Communications Specialist, University of Minnesota Jeff Abuzzahab, Web and Multimedia Lead, University of Minnesota
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Crowdsourcing Governance: If You Let the Community Build it, it’ll Work (Better) Managing the Web in a post-secondary environment is often analogous to herding cats. Well, what would happen if you give a cat a wiki? Truly wonderful, really surprising things. The University of Ottawa, like many other universities, has a fairly de-centralized Web governance with a core corporate Web team, a core IT team and multiple other Web teams/ coordinators/webmasters (we also work in two languages: French and English). At uOttawa, we call everyone else the “Web university community” and that community is passionate, proactive and engaged. When the question of “Should we have a universal Web CMS and what should it be?” was posed, we put the question to the Web community and through working groups and collaborative sessions, and Wiki-ing and Basecamp-ing and PPT-ing, they gave senior management the answer. University of Ottawa Web Director of Communications Nichole McGill tells a tale of how to harness the eagerness and wisdom of a community with Web
2.0 collaborative tools, how to continue to keep them engaged, and how your Web community can show management what the path of the future is and where it leads. Let your community lead you. When you give a cat a wiki, you might just get a Web roadmap out of it. Presenter Nichole McGill, Web Communications Director, University of Ottawa
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Facebook Insights & Creating a Custom Social Media Strategy This poster will describe how Gettysburg College uses the data provided by Facebook Insights, along with other available data, to create a Facebook strategy tailored to our audience. Over the past year, Gettysburg College has tried a few different methods of posting to Facebook in an effort to find a pattern or strategy that would work for our audience. Using data analysis on Facebook Insights from June 2010 through May 2011, We hoped to find what does and what does not work on Facebook, and use that information to engage more successfully with our fans. I looked at variables such as time, day of the week, type of post, inclusion of photos or videos, and more, and then determine if significant relationships exist between those variables different measures of engagement on Facebook (likes, comments, feedback, impressions, etc.). Presenter Katie Lemanczyk, Assistant Director of Web Communications, Gettysburg College
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Flick of the Switch: Turning on the LAMP in Just 30 Minutes In this session I will demonstrate how to get a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server up and running in just 30 minutes. This setup will include how to enable the mod_rewrite Apache module so servers can make use of friendly URL directives in .htaccess files. This session will focus on starting LAMP on a Debian core Linux distribution (namely Ubuntu). I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t love command-line? Presenter Zac Vineyard, Web Programmer, Northwest Nazarene University
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Form vs. Function: Should That Be a WordPress Theme Function or a WordPress Plugin? Because WordPress is such a flexible platform, it is extremely easy to add features through many different avenues. Just because you can, though, does not necessarily mean you should. This session briefly explores the difference between the functions.php file in a WordPress theme, a regular WordPress plugin, and a WordPress Must-Use plugin before laying out some guidelines to help determine which avenue should be taken when adding a new feature to a WordPress installation. Presenter Curtiss Grymala, University Webmaster, University of Mary Washington
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Getting Started with HTML5 Are you a front-end developer, template coder, or HTML/CSS jockey who is wondering whether it is time to start designing and building in HTML, or how to convert your existing (X)HTML sites? This session will introduce you to this still-evolving standard. We will run through some of the new tags, the browser-compatibility issues, and strategies on how to structure, re-structure, or re-think your content for HTML5. And we’ll throw in a little HTML5 video and -- what the heck -some mobile Web techniques as well. A note: this session will NOT cover CSS3. We also will not cover the canvas tag, because frankly I don’t understand that one at all. Presenter Lori Packer, Web Editor, University of Rochester
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Giving Prospective Students the Feel and Flavor of Your Campus: Video Style As the cost of travel rises both domestically and abroad, the importance of introducing your school via the internet soars. We will look at the differences in videos targeting domestic and
international students, what types of things to include in each and how to use these videos to generate traffic to your social media initiative and ultimately, your admissions pool. Presenter Alex Winkfield, Videographer, The College of Wooster
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If You Don’t Play, You Can’t Win: What High Ed Web Can Learn from Games From the early dice games of ancient Greece to modern geo-location games and Angry Birds, games have long been part of human history. No matter the situation or environment, the urge to play crosses all boundaries – and that urge is growing. More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of 21. This presentation explores the qualities of the gaming mechanics that drive us – the common elements of modern gaming, the ways that gaming makes life better and fills a need in modern life – and how our websites can apply those qualities to meet student needs and achieve institutional goals, all while creating community, communicating key stories and messages, and having fun. Presenter Colleen Brennan-Barry, Web Communications Manager, Monroe Community College
to engage one another while on “The Hill.” Foursquare University offers many benefits to colleges and universities, ongoing, personal one-on-one service and support being one of the most notable. WKU soft-launched the service across campus in the spring of 2011, but a campus-wide launch in the Fall of 2011 will begin the year with integration of Foursquare activities during WKU’s week-long freshmen orientation events. This poster presentation will tell you a bit about how WKU connected with Foursquare, how we prepared for the service, our launch marketing plan, and results since the beginning of the fall semester. Presenter Corie Martin, Manager, Creative Web Services, Western Kentucky University
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Localist at Cornell: Social Calendaring Cornell University recently upgraded its central events calendar from an ancient PHP/ MySQL system to one operated by Localist. This presentation covers Cornell’s experience with this young company as well as the new product’s most interesting aspects: integrating events and calendaring with Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, and E-Mail, as well as their Trending Events list. Presenter Ken Stuart, Senior Web Developer, Cornell University
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Integrating Foursquare University on Your Campus Looking for new ways to generate buzz across campus? A well-connected campus can make a huge difference in the perceptions of prospective students, incoming freshmen, alumni and visitors. Western Kentucky University recently partnered with Foursquare University to officially claim campus venues on Foursquare and create a presence where campus constituents can check in, unlock specials, share tips and more. From a managerial perspective, departments such as Housing and Residence Life, Campus Dining Services, Athletics and retail establishments such as the campus bookstore have all joined in the excitement toward this new way to reach out to students and to get them
Lowering the Barriers for Content Contributors: Can You Email? This poster will describe how Gettysburg College is using a Posterous blog to feed content to academic department Web pages and social media. The blog format also creates an instantly accessible archive. With Posterous, users can submit posts via email. Within the academic departments, faculty can forward news to one one blog and job opportunities to another, all via email. Within minutes, these are featured on their Web page and Facebook pages. Behind the scenes, the RSS feed from the Posterous blog is run through Feedburner, where it is possible to create an html code snippet to put on the Web pages. Posterous has built-in features that allow you to push to Facebook,
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Twitter and other social media. You can also use one of the Facebook RSS apps to push to Facebook if needed. Presenter Paul Fairbanks, Director of Web Communications, Gettysburg College
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Mapping Campus with Google Map Maker Google opened up the U.S. map for editing in Google Map Maker in April. At that time, the maps data for St. John Fisher College was incomplete and often incorrect. We seized the opportunity to correct the data on the map, add buildings, walking paths, and parking lots, and remove roads that did not exist. Now we are better able to leverage Google Maps to solve map-related issues on our website and campus visitors can easily navigate campus using Google Maps on their mobile devices. This poster presentation will share lessons learned, strategies for getting your edits approved when your satellite imagery is out of date, and share some best practices and ideas from the Google Geo Users Summit. Presenter Jody Benedict, Webmaster/ Graphic Designer, St. John Fisher College
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Meetups and Videos and Deals, Oh My! Mounting Your Campus Celebration, Facebook-style Every college and university puts on hundreds of events, celebrations and awareness-raising campaigns in a given year. Whether sponsored by a department within the institution, a student group, or the university itself, it can be challenging to get people to show up to events, not to mention expensive to run them. Enter social networking. Tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare provide an alternative, allowing you to mount hybrid events that are inexpensive and interactive, without sacrificing impact. In the spring of 2011, the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries ran a weeklong Facebook campaign to celebrate National Library Week. Blending virtual activities with physical ones, the UTSA Libraries created a campus buzz with
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a slate of events intended to raise awareness of the libraries’ services among current students, faculty and staff. Features of our campaign included a Facebook Check-in Deal, a video quiz using YouTube annotations, and posting secret passwordsin Facebook to entice students to attend meetups in the library. The campaign resulted in a 40 percent increase in our Facebook likes, strong turnout at our in-person events, and abundant positive feedback on our Facebook page. Join us to learn all the details on how we mounted our Facebook campaign and walk away with ideas on how you can launch your own social media celebration on your campus. Presenters Anne Peters, Communications Coordinator, University of Texas at San Antonio Damon Bullis, Web Specialist, University of Texas at San Antonio
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NYU’s Virtual Computer Lab: Finding the Sweet Spots In Fall 2010, New York University launched a virtual computer lab (VCL) pilot program. During the year-long pilot, lessons were learned that helped inform the final production environment. This poster session will present the lessons learned and the sweet spots found during the pilot. Lessons learned will include key technical decisions (e.g., all virtual environment versus a mixed virtual/ physical environment) as well as policy and student-experience decisions (e.g., how long is an application idle before the session automatically terminates). Deeper discussion will be driven by participants, and participants will get to test out the VCL. Presenters Meredith Rendall, Senior Faculty Technology Specialist, New York University Jorge Najera Ordonez, Team Leader, Residential Network Services, New York University
one-on-one basis. Office hours provide the stage for students to seek clarification on class material, seek assistance on assignments, and to generally interact with the instructor in a more personal fashion. Many students, however, find attending office hours to be a challenge due to scheduling conflicts. By offering the opportunity for faculty members to hold video-chat office hours, we can provide students and faculty with an alternative to physically attending office hours. While there are alternatives to developing an in-house solution, such as Skype, developing a home-grown product provides several advantages: students can use their own accounts and faculty members do not have to manage who is allowed to access the video-office hours. By using an existing course-management system, such as Blackboard, we can allow only students in a specified course to contact the instructor. This presentation seeks to demonstrate one in-house solution and opens a forum for discussing extending the product. Presenter Christopher Martinez, Instructional Programmer Analyst, St. Edward’s University
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PloneEdu Plone is a powerful, flexible Web CMS in use by hundreds of educational institutions worldwide, including Penn State, Nazareth College, University of North Carolina, and Harvard. In many cases, Plone has replaced products such as SharePoint, Drupal, WordPress, Ektron, or Cascade for intranets, public websites, and systems for document management, digital asset management, and knowledge management. In this poster presentation, gain an overview of Plone from IT, marketing, and user perspectives, and learn how Plone can make all of these stakeholders happy. Learn about the vibrant PloneEdu Community, see some examples of how Nazareth College has rolled out Plonepowered websites institution-wide, and get thinking about ways to incorporate this tool into your Web presence. Presenter Steven Smith, Web Developer, Nazareth College
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Office Hours: Moving Beyond Four Walls The performance of office hours provides one of the few opportunities for students to interact with a faculty member on a
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Pragmatic Preparedness for Emergency Notification In an emergency situation the Web’s potential as a communication tool is
undiminished. But you do not have to wait for a crisis to provide a good place on the Web for crisis communication. There are simple steps that you can take in advance to save you time if the need arises. I will show you how to use your existing tools to prepare to communicate urgent messages on your websites. Presenter Sven Aas, Web Team Lead, Mount Holyoke College
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QR codes - Why You Need Them in Your Social Media Strategy QR codes are 2D barcodes that can be read by using a mobile device’s camera. Allowing the encryption of URLs in the codes, the process can add a digital and/or online layer to any physical object, connecting it to the Web. There are many types of 2D barcodes, with the QR codes and Datamatrix being the most popular formats. It is possible to encrypt many kinds of data into them: texts, contact information and URLs. Since the mobile tags are simple, inexpensive printed tags that can be placed on virtually any physical object or person, added to the fact that the cell phones with cameras have become a very popular and pervasive device, the use of QR codes can be said as one of the easiest and simplest ways of creating mixed realities and one of the ways of contributing to the Internet of things. In other words, Mobile Tags work like physical links to the Web, so that virtually anything can be part of an expanded mixed reality environment. The presentation will introduce the main concepts related to 2D barcodes and then explore how use them in innovative ways in any university to leverage social media strategies. Real case examples and a guideline on how to create and read the 2D barcodes will also be presented. Presenter Martha Gabriel, Professor, Martha Gabriel
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QR Codes: The Missing Link A case study about how Emory University experimented with and decided to implement QR codes as a missing link that can connect print materials to social, Web and mobile. Specific applications of how Emory has
applied QR codes to undergraduate student recruitment, promotion of Emory Mobile, and other selected campaigns. I will cover strategy and implementation specifics. Presenter John Mills, Executive Producer, University Marketing, Emory University
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Telling Stories or Selling Experiences? Crowdsourcing Great Content With A Personal Touch
Presenter Melissa Schultz, Director of Web Communication, College of Wooster
Everyone loves a good story. Great stories traverse demographic, psychographic and sometimes even geographic boundaries to bring people closer together. Stories connect people to each other and break down barriers. What do you do at a cocktail party? Tell a story. When you get together with family that you have not seen in a year? You tell stories. When you write a greeting card? Send an email? You talk about things that connect you to each other, things that others relate to. Stories make great content. When it comes to marketing, each time a piece of content is created its intended for a group, but decisions are ultimately made by individuals. Content that is most effective reaches a broad group, yet still hits on a personal level. Stories are an effective mode of marketing communication higher education and should capitalize on crowdsourcing and the Web. In this highly competitive arena, colleges and universities should consider the power of a story a great asset to marketing initiatives. This presentation will examine different ways to gather stories, platforms for presenting stories, how to best promote stories and where to find great personal content from students, faculty, parents, alumni, staff and more.
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Presenter Andrea Genevieve Michnik, Director of PR and Social Media Marketing, International Studies Abroad
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Redesigning Your Redesign Your institution has paid a gazillion dollars to a consulting firm and hundreds of committee hours battling away at your redesign. What happens after it goes live? You quickly discover that, even with the best intentions, planning, and execution in the world, things need to be changed. Less than six months after the launch of a major redesign, my team and I found ourselves making major adjustments including an overhaul of our homepage, new social media strategies, and back-end structure changes. With one year’s worth of analytics as ammunition and a consulting firm that no longer existed, we were blessed with the freedom to re-work our own redesign inhouse to great results. From the invisible to the unmissable, we re-tooled and re-worked creating something that was more us. Not only did we end up with an improved website, we increased our team’s confidence and peer-respect as a go-to office on campus.
Social Media Policy Enlightenment
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Want to put your school on the map using social media? Start by taking a critical look at your social media policy. Discover why having a policy is important for everyone involved, and see what factors most university social media policies have in common--good and bad. If you believe in the power of social media, do not kill it by accepting a bad institutional policy. Social media policy enlightenment is the Tao of an effective social media campaign. Presenter Bryan Fendley, Director of Academic Computing, University of Arkansas at Monticello
Thank *You* Biggest. “Thank you” card. EVER. #MBteamS will provide a brief back story of the Mercedes Benz Tweet Race, go over the odds of winning (read: follower counts, Maxim models, mommy bloggers, etc.) I will show how a community came together to help charity and two social media douchebags as well as what we learned on the road. Presenter Todd Sanders, Social Media Specialist, UW-Green Bay
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The Digital College Quad How higher education institutions can effectively work with local media websites college and university websites are constantly struggling with a lack of resources to get top-shelf Web applications and features on their sites. In these economic times, budgets are tight, technical resources stretched, and the staffing may not be in place to identify and evaluate good Web products that would bring your site to the next level. The result is classic private-sector envy - and the prospects of catching up look dim. But you can change that. I will offer some simple tips on how you can catapult your website from drab to fab. I will also discuss the successful partnerships between Boston.com’s hyper-local network of community sites, “Your Town,” and Boston University, Northeastern University and Emerson College. Student journalists are providing these communities with even more content and news than ever before, while their education is enriched with this valuable experience of reporting. Opportunities for partnerships like this exist in every small college town and major city across the country, and I will discuss how the model is working at Boston.com and what more can be done in the future.
overall use. Each major has its own URL doorway. What this means is that if you are a biology major, your are launched in the biology story, and if you are a global business major, your entry into the project is through your own path. There are 25 doors into this project and code tracks the entire trip through the project. This builds a virtually exclusive launch point for the experience. Also, parents have a unique URL launch that enables us to track parent usage. The access points are always through direct email personalized and from the accepted student cohort. This project is emailed at a time when the decisions are being made--and is not otherwise available-thus boosting the viewing since it can not be reached via stealth decision making. The proof for us is the fact that average time on site bests six minutes; engaging for sure, but valuable when becoming familiar with the people and stories of Suffolk University. This project was produced, directed, designed and edited in-house with a talented communications team. We recently were awarded a Gold Medal as part of the TwentySixth Annual Educational Advertising Awards, sponsored by Higher Education Marketing Report. Presenter George Comeau, Associate Chief Communications Officer, Suffolk University
Presenter Ronald Agrella, Editor, Boston. com
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uoMobile: Enhancing the University Experience with Mobile Technology
The Best and the Brightest - Targeting Communications Design for Accepted Students The project is about conversations, stripped down and without glossy campus shots, that place our best and brightest upperclassmen in a stark clean setting that avoids the marketing hype and gets right to core storytelling. Outcome driven, the production is supported by cheeky images shot through the lens of a 22 year-old photographer. The photo settings are amusing and serious and the music is changeable according to the mood of the viewer. Viewers can share and post to social networking hooks and the entire project is largely produced in-house with technical support from the team that created our Campus Tour. The best part: extremely focused and granular analytic codes that track individual sessions and
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Capturing the attention of prospective and current students requires meeting them where they are, which increasingly means delivering campus services through the iPhone, Android, and other smartphones. The University of Ottawa, a 36,000-student bilingual university, has addressed this challenge by implementing a comprehensive mobile portal, uoMobile. Using the infrastructure established for the full uoMobile site, the university developed an additional mobile site allowing prospective students to learn more about the university through mobileenhanced experiences (video, slideshow, contest entry). Pairing this recruiting technology with the university’s CRM system allowed uOttawa to connect with prospective students using the newest and most relatable technology available. Presenter Robert Sawler, Manager, Student IT Services, University of Ottawa
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Usability of Graduate School Websites From a Student’s Perspective This project focused on the review of graduate school websites – specifically physics programs (both experimental and theoretical). A comparative analysis of features was undertaken,including if the graduate program pages have a consistent look and navigation, if the site offers a print option, width of the site, and the navigation terms and methodology. I have a sample of 30 schools that range in various types of physics programs, from schools like the University of Iowa to Harvard. After looking at each site independently, each site will be compared based on what works and what does not for a graduate school site from the view of a prospective student. Presenter Joe Santucci, President Augustana Web Guild, Augustana College
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Versatility on the Cheap: WordPress to the Rescue While we can publish urgent notices through our CMS, it takes at least an hour for a publish to go through--way too long for any notice to be effective. What could we possibly come up with on such short notice that would not require spending a lot of money? With Microsoft’s new Web Platform Installer, WordPress can be installed and ready to set up in 5 to 10 minutes. Why WordPress other than it is free and easy to setup? In many cases someone other than the technical staff, most likely the PR and Marketing department, will be responsible for coordinating and creating the emergency message for the website. With WordPress, anyone with the proper credentials can log in and post the information from wherever they may be, either by smartphone or computer. For some, just having a link to an emergency page may be enough. In our case, once the information is posted by PR and Marketing, someone from the technical side of the house will then click a checkbox in IIS on the two production website servers to redirect all requests in the tccd.edu domain to our emergency site: emergency.tccd.edu. With budget cuts affecting most all of education, it is always important to have solutions on hand that can be executed with reasonable ease and at a low cost. Again,
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this is the beauty of WordPress. Not only is it our choice for our emergency site, but a separate installation is our social hub for all faculty and staff. This social hub not only allows for faculty and staff to have their personal blogs, but they can post podcasts and other materials for their students. Students have the ability to see all the material posted, as well as interact through comments with the faculty and their classmates. If you are looking for a one-stop-shop that can be managed by the smallest of staffs with the smallest of budgets for any use you choose, WordPress can rescue YOU! SENATE CHAMBER AT THE TEXAS CAPITOL, MDCONNELL, FLICKR
You Can’t Buy Love, But You Can Buy Access
Presenter Heyser, Online Support Technician, Tarrant County College
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What an MBA taught me about User Experience When you think of interaction design you immediately think of human resource best practices, right? If you hear the word usability, your mind gravitates toward cost management, of course. And if confronted with the phrase content strategy you go directly to your understanding of organizational structure theory. Obviously, you just earned an MBA. The fields of Web design, information architecture and user experience have matured over the last decade and the language that is used by its practitioners is increasingly the language of business. Learn what a newly minted MBA, who has deep roots in creating and building Web experiences, has learned about the commonalities and advantages a business degree has bestowed on his outlook, approach and vision for the Web. Presenter Mike Rivera, Senior New Media Strategist, University of Denver
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What Do You Mean There is No Web Strategy? You inherited a website that was last redesigned in 2002. Your ADA policy is nonexistent. Your social media guidelines have never been shared. You have no video footage of campus. There is no mobile strategy and the Web strategy is “hire someone who can figure this out.” Hey ... that is you! Now what? Starting from scratch in 2011 means covering a lot of ground just to catch up. And
it means covering that ground FAST. Whether you are starting from scorched earth or just fell a little behind, learn how to bring your university’s Web presence up to speed -- and maybe even figure out ways to get ahead. Presenter Jaime Hunt, Director of Web Communications, Radford University
The buck stops at procurement. Vendors of information technology will pay attention to Web and application accessibility when it is an enforced requirement of the procurement process. Does this mean that the procurement office must become accessibility experts? Can we rely on the VPAT? Knowbility worked with the California State University System in the development of their Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI). Together we developed standards and processes to ensure that procurement officers had the tools they needed to meet mandates and include all students and faculty. We propose a session through which we will share practical tools of policy development, RFP language, vetting processes, scoring rubrics, and more. Presenter Sharron Rush, Executive Director, Knowbility
WEDNES DAY 1:00–4:30 pm
TRACK SESSIONS
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When “m.” is NOT an Option We all know by now that our institution should have a mobile portal that lives separate from our homepage, but what do you do for the small department and school sites that can neither afford a mobile specific site, or simply do not need one? I will show a variety of techniques to present these smaller sites in a mobile-friendly format. Topics will include thinking mobile during the IA and design stages, semantic markup that presents well in multiple formats (what html5 elements you should be using now), using @media queries and javascript to present a custom experience to a wide variety of devices, techniques for keeping download sizes small, and progressive enhancement. Presenter Erik Runyon, Manager of Interactive Development, University of Notre Dame
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Admissions 101 For Web Professionals A college’s website is primarily a tool to recruit prospective students. But do Web professionals really understand the world of admissions? According to Noel-Levitz’s E-Expectations 2010 survey of 1,000 college-bound high school students, 92 percent said that they would be “disappointed with a school or remove it entirely from their lists if they didn’t find the information they needed on the school’s website.” Having a grasp of the big picture and understanding your audience’s needs can be the most powerful tools in your arsenal. This workshop will give you an overview of all that you need to know about recruiting students, including the admissions
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funnel, demographic trends, the campus visit, recruiting events, tele-counseling, student search, social media, predictive modeling, the role of print, and more. We will then tie these elements back to your school’s website to see how they apply. Presenters Karlyn Morissette, Director of Social Media, Southern New Hampshire University Mike Petroff, Web Manager for Enrollment, Emerson College
#WRK8 Hill Country B
Artistic Adventures in Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a veritable Swiss Army knife for producing digital media. From editing photography to creating animation, Photoshop is a flexible tool for Web professionals. A followup to last year’s successful “More Photoshop Secrets for the Web” this half-day workshop gives designers the tools for building inventive websites, editing photos, and producing unique multimedia. This workshop provides step-by-step methods for everything from designing simple graphics to perfecting video footage with Photoshop. A few of the topics we will cover include: Adobe Camera Raw for photo editing; the benefits and limitations of Smart Objects; the power of adjustment layers and masks; Photoshop blend modes and filters, including lens correction and liquify; Panorama and HDR photography from Adobe Bridge; animation and video correction tools. This session will not dwell on technical abstractions— instead we will explore the power of Photoshop with simple demonstrations and examples. While helpful to anyone who prepares photos for the Web, this workshop is most relevant to those already familiar with the basic functionality of Adobe Photoshop. Presenter Joel Pattison, Associate Director, Creative Services, William & Mary
#WRK9 Hill Country C
Going Mobile: Designing iOS, Android, and Web Apps with Standards There ha been a lot of hype about mobile devices since the debut of the iPhone in 2008, followed by Android and other platforms shortly after. Now that there
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are thousands of apps being distributed in app stores, many content providers and Web designers would like to participate in this space. But making an app is really technical and requires a lot of programming, right? It can, but it does not have to. In this workshop, you will learn how to design a native mobile app by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – and you will get the code that needed to continue working and designing your own apps. In the process, you will learn that your skills as a standardsbased Web designer are much more valuable than you may have realized! This workshop will be an expanded version of HighEdWeb 2010’s popular iOS app workshop; it will also cover how to design native Android apps, as well as Web apps (for any mobile device), that use similar techniques. Participants of this workshop need to provide their own Macs and download and install the free Apple iOS SDK prior to the conference to fully participate in all aspects of the workshop. Note: the iOS SDK is a very large file and should be downloaded and installed prior to the start of the workshop. Presenters Kristofer Layon, Mobile Product Manager, Capella University
#WRK10 Hill Country D
HTML5 & CSS3 Makeover This workshop is a hands-on walk through of practical HTML5 and CSS3 examples found in typical Web projects. Rather than being a tediously technical and theoretical overview of the stillunder-development HTML5 and CSS3 specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium, we will focus on what is possible in today’s browsers and what you can put into practice the next day. Presenter Christopher Schmitt, Founder, Heat Vision
#WRK11 Big Bend A & B
The Conversation Tree: The Art of Social Media Content What is the secret to creating effective social media content? Does an institution actually create it or leave it up to community members—or both? Let’s face it: the concept of social media content has many of us baffled. While it is easy to call social media content a conversation, it is a conversation that demands tremendous commitment if it is going to be used for marketing. It
is also a conversation that takes place in numerous formats and virtual spaces that alter its perception and meaning. Think of it like a tree: a sparkable topic, question, or thought starts at the top, and if it is managed well, it unfolds into a profusion of branches that nurture and grow a community. The successful community manager then is more like a horticulturalist than an alpha geek—or perhaps a bit of both—pruning and shaping your institutional social media conversation into something useful and meaningful. This presentation will explore the nuances of cultivating a social media conversation that will help you achieve your most important marketing and recruiting goals. Presenter Fritz McDonald, Creative Content Strategist, create20
#WRK12 Big Bend C & D
Web Application Security Boot Camp Unlearn everything you thought you knew about building Web applications! This highly interactive session will first look at some common Web exploits to determine how and why they occur. Then we will explore many of the common pitfalls that allow Web applications to be exploited, with detailed examples and discussions around best practices to prevent them. We will delve into aspects of Web application development that most books and training courses leave out, such as the proper uses of GET and POST; the best ways to authenticate users; when, what, where, and how to validate when it comes to user input; proper database techniques to avoid SQL injections; and system tweaks and third-party libraries that can help you make your applications more secure. This session is designed for anyone that does any kind of server-side scripting or Web application development. Most examples will be based on a PHP and Apache environment, but the concepts discussed apply to Web applications running on any platform. You will leave with a new way of thinking about the applications you build, allowing you to write better code. Presenter Jason Pitoniak, Web Services Technical Team Lead, Rochester Institute
Presenters Sven Aas
Web Team Lead Mount Holyoke College @SvenAas Sven has worked as Web Team lead at Mount Holyoke College since 2006, where he is responsible for the development and support of a wide variety of Web systems and solutions. He has 15 years of professional computer experience in Web and application development, including positions at Rare Medium and HBO. He has a master’s degree in computer science from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Jeff Abuzzahab
Web and Multimedia Lead University of Minnesota @Abuzzahab Jeff Abuzzahab is the Web and multimedia lead at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. A designer with a fine arts background, Jeff works in the information technology field where he specializes in design production. Jeff started his career at the University of Minnesota in 1995 where he has been involved with research projects and online course development. In 2007 Jeff turned his focus to administration, heading up the Web and multimedia team for the College of Education and Human Development.
Ronald Agrella Editor Boston.com @RonAgrella
Ronald Agrella graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He started his career at Ottaway Newspaper Co., where he began building websites and developing online content. In 1997, Ronald became the liaison to the newly created
Web operation. Within two years, he became executive editor for Community Newspaper Company’s Townonline.com, and in 2000, was asked to spearhead the operation as senior vice president of editorial for both Townonline and BostonHerald. com. Ronald’s next move was to the Newhouse Family’s Advance Internet operation in Syracuse, NY. As editor-inchief of Syracuse.com, Ronald helped grow content across the site. In 2004, he moved back to Boston as content manager and features editor for New York Times Digital’s Boston.com operation. In 2010, he became director of Web communications for the UMASS President’s Office, implementing a new CMS and alumni site redesign. He returned to Boston.com in 2011 as editor.
content principal of ePublish Media, a content strategy consultancy in Boston, Mass., Rick works with organizations to create, publish and govern effective Web content. Rick writes and speaks often about higher education Web publishing topics, advocating for a “content first” approach to the Web in support of branding, communications, design, development and governance. He is the founder of Content Strategy New England and co-founder of Meet Content, a blog and online resource aiming to empower higher education to create and sustain Web content that works.
Steve Albin
David Anderson is director of strategic digital communications for the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. A highly respected member of the higher education community, he has significant experience in content management systems, content strategy, accessibility, usability and writing for the Web. He has been involved in HighEdWeb since its inception, when it was an email list for higher ed Web people in New York. He has been the Webmaster at Plattsburgh State University and the University at Buffalo CIT Webmaster.
Web Hosting Administrator Princeton University Steve Albin has been introducing and shepherding new computer technologies to Princeton University for 24 years. From the earliest networking of personal computers, the first stages of the Internet, the first Web application, the first clientserver database application, straight through to the website hosting services of today, he has been at the center of its earliest creation and/ or adoption at Princeton. He currently manages two Web hosting environments for the University: one providing LAMP service and one providing Microsoft .NET service.
Rick Allen
Principal/ Content Strategist ePublish Media @epublishmedia Rick Allen has worked in higher education for more than twelve years, helping to shape Web communications and content strategy. As
David Anderson
Director of Strategic Digital Communication UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Aaron Baker
Web Services Coordinator University of Arkansas at Little Rock @helveticaman Aaron Baker is the Web services coordinator at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Aaron has been at UALR for nine years. With a background in technical writing, his primary
responsibility is managing the information architecture of the university’s Web space. He regularly monitors analytics, conducts usability tests, and works on developing Web policy, standards, and guidelines for the ualr.edu Web presence.
Zack Barnett
Director of Web Communications University of Oregon @ZackBarnett As director of Web communications at the University of Oregon, Zack Barnett oversees the institution’s home site, as well as a cluster of other high-level sites, including the Celebrating Champions site. The UO’s Web communications team handles Web design and development as well as photos, video and feature stories for websites and social media channels. Over the last year, the team launched a new home site and mobile site while also working with in-house GIS experts to release UOregon, the university’s official iPhone app. Zack earned his master’s degree in literary nonfiction from the UO in 2007. A storyteller at heart, he likes to think his journalism experience helps infuse strategic narrative into his team’s sites.
Andrew Bauserman
Senior Web Architect, Creative Services College of William & Mary @wabaus Andrew Bauserman is a husband, father and unapologetic geek. After graduating from the College of William & Mary (B.S. in Physics, 1991; M.Ed. in Supervision, 1994) he served as director of technology, theater technical director, and science teacher at a local college-preparatory school. Andrew returned to his Alma Mater in 2001, and is now a senior Web architect for creative services.
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When he is not hacking alphabet-soup Web code (HTML+CSS+JS+SQL+PHP), Andrew can be found serving as lead audio engineer for his church or listening to netcasts related to technology or audio engineering.
Jason Beard Web Designer Seattle University @iamjasonbeard
Jason Beard has worked as a Web communications professional in higher education for 14 years. Early in his career he realized that making things look pretty was much more fun than coding Perl, so he abandoned the server room and taught himself how to design attractive usercentered websites. In 2010, he joined Seattle University as the Web designer. Jason is on the CASE District VIII Board of Directors and is currently pursuing his Master of Public Administration degree.
Doug Beck
Web Applications Programmer UCF Six years experience as a Programmer/Web Developer.
Jody Benedict
Webmaster/Graphic Designer St. John Fisher College Jody Benedict has worked as a Web and print designer in higher education for over 10 years. Her current job title, Webmaster/graphic designer, translates to “jack of all Web trades with a little print mixed in for flavor.” What she enjoys most in her current position is Web content strategy and finding creative solutions to various campus issues on and off the Web. She recently had the opportunity to attend the Google Geo User’s Summit to learn more about using Map Maker.
Jon Boyd
Director of Digital Communications North Park University @octothorp At North Park University in Chicago, Jon Boyd leads
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a cross-disciplinary team responsible for all digital communications, online and off-. He came to the university after a decade in Web and event production and content strategy with a national nonprofit, a stint as senior editor at Britannica. com, and a Ph.D. in history at Johns Hopkins. He reads books on paper, keeps score at baseball games, and favors mid-’70s Grateful Dead shows downloaded via the Internet.
as a squirrel on Twitter. She came to the College with significant high-tech experience working with two start-ups doing peer-topeer VoIP networking and Web software development, respectively. She attended the University of Richmond and The College of William & Mary getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science. She has a love of photography, travel, cooking, fine dining and her DVR.
Colleen BrennanBarry
Damon Bullis
Web Communications Manager Monroe Community College @ColB Colleen Brennan-Barry is Web communications manager at Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., where she directs external Web communications and strategy. She gets to have many, many identities on a daily basis--no two days are ever the same-and that’s the way she likes it. Colleen also sits on the Board of Directors of the Higher Education Web Professionals Association and has been a member of the #heweb annual conference committee since 2006, acting as communications and attendee relations manager (if you have talked with @HighEdWeb, you have probably talked with her). When not playing on the Web, Colleen can be found enjoying bad movies with friends, working in her garden, or living it up as her alter-ego with the Roc City Roller Derby.
Tiffany Broadbent Web Programmer College of William & Mary @tb623
Tiffany Broadbent is a Web programmer with Creative Services at The College of William & Mary. Her duties range from developing the College’s mobile website and authoring iOS and Android apps to dress a pantsless mascot, to managing the College’s Foursquare presence and masquerading
Web Specialist University of Texas at San Antonio Damon Bullis is the Web specialist for the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries where he is responsible for researching, implementing and maintaining new applications/ platforms to enhance the user experience.
James Burgoon
Senior Web Developer, University Communications The Ohio State University James manages day-to-day operations of the main osu. edu website. His background includes Web design as well as Web development. Prior to coming to Ohio State, James worked in marketing. He’s married and enjoys his dogs, skiing, and well-designed automobiles.
Nick Catto CIO nuCloud @nickcatto
Nick Catto is currently the lead designer and CIO of nuCloud. com. A scalable multimedia services company, nuCloud. com provides an interactive mapping framework that allows clients to easily maintain their own interactive maps. Nick also serves as Web developer for the University of South Carolina Upstate, www.uscupstate. edu. He graduated from USC Upstate in 2005 with a degree in Information Management and Systems and began working for the university in 2006. Nick has been building websites
since 2001 and maintains his own consulting company, Mrcatto.com, where he helps to develop the Web presence of small businesses and nonprofit organizations in the community.
C. Daniel Chase
Web Developer Smithsonian Institution Archives @cdchase Dan Chase brings a sense of humor about life to his specialty in Web development, having worked for the past 10+ years in a university as Webmaster, systems administrator, database specialist, and developer; as a contractor; and currently for the museum and archives environment. Dan’s experience has given him the knowledge to share with his audience how they should be using Web technology in their implementations. The major advantage that Dan brings to a speaking engagement is his special ability to translate technical jargon into English for the audience. He loves to help audience members get simple explanations for problems or issues they have not been able to find elsewhere in an understandable manner.
Sara Clark
Director of Web and New Media Missouri State University @smcl Sara Clark is the director of Web and new media for Missouri State University. She oversees the organization, design and functionality of the university’s website and new media efforts. Sara has an MS CIS degree and over 15 years’ experience in managing and implementing university Web projects and procedures.
Georgiana Cohen
Manager, Web Content and Strategy Tufts University @radiofreegeorgy Georgy Cohen, www. georgycohen.com, is manager
of Web content and strategy at Tufts University, where she oversees a range of content creation and strategy initiatives involving the university website, online news, social media and multimedia. She is also co-founder of Meet Content (meetcontent.com), a blog and resource that aims to empower higher education to create and sustain Web content that works. With a background in journalism, including a three-year stint working in the fast-paced online newsroom of The Boston Globe, Georgy is focused on aligning higher ed Web communications with the expectations of our increasingly savvy audiences.
Tina Coleman
Associate Director, Creative Services College of William & Mary @mstinalc Tina Coleman is an associate director of creative services at the College of William & Mary. The Creative Services team works to develop integrated communications for William & Mary through Web, print and multimedia. Tina manages the university’s top-level Web presence and blogs, provides guidance to departments on their websites and oversees the technical aspects of team projects. When she’s not working, Tina and her husband stay busy with five children, three grandchildren, their loyal golden retriever and their somewhat mischievous tabby cat.
George Comeau
Associate Chief Communications Officer Suffolk University George T. Comeau is a highly skilled marketing professional with over 20 years of strategic marketing experience within the higher education space. In his various leadership roles at Suffolk University, Comeau has been responsible for activities such as video production, multi-media design, website support, strategic communications, segmentation strategy, multibrand management, Internet
marketing strategies, event management, new product and process development, mentoring, creative idea generation and creative problem solving. Annually, Comeau supports the oversight of more than 150 creative contracts valued at more than $500,000. George is a practicing Massachusetts attorney and was appointed by Governor Mitt Romney and reappointed by Governor Deval Patrick as a Commissioner of Public Libraries where he has served for over seven years. Comeau is a fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society and active advising several non-profits including the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
Nyleva Corley
Web and Social Media Manager The University of Texas at Austin @Nyleva Nyleva manages Web communications for the university’s Office of Public Affairs. From crafting feature stories to engaging in social media efforts, she’s responsible for the content strategy of the university’s Web presence, including the university’s home page.
Amanda Costello
Web and Communications Specialist University of Minnesota @amandaesque Amanda Costello is the Web and Communication Specialist in the department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. She has worked for the University in various departments and colleges since 2002, and joined the College of Education and Human Development in 2007. A former English teacher in Japan, Amanda values clear communication and having a plan (and a couple of backups). She’s a fan of content strategy, responsive design and the Minnesota Twins.
Joel Dixon
Solutions Consultant Hannon Hill Joel Dixon is a solutions consultant with Hannon Hill Corporation. Over the last five years, he has worked with a variety of Cascade Server’s 160+ higher education organizations and gained valuable insights as they pursued Web marketing efforts through website redesign projects and content management implementations. Prior to joining the Hannon Hill team, Joel worked in sales and marketing management within the financial services and home improvement industries. He has traveled extensively overseas in Asia, Europe and Africa including study of Mandarin Chinese in mainland China. Joel graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems/HumanComputer Interaction.
Glenn Donaldson Associate Director, OCIO Enterprise Applications Ohio State University @gdonaldson
Glenn oversees many of the enterprise systems at OSU that manage student data. He has formerly worked in the Office of the Registrar. He is married with two young children.
Susan T. Evans Senior Strategist mStoner, Inc. @susantevans
Susan T. Evans is senior strategist for mStoner, leading a consulting team that develops comprehensive communication strategies and solutions for colleges and universities. Before mStoner, Susan spent 22 years working in higher education at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. She directed marketing and communications units responsible for the university Web presence at wm.edu, social media channels, the campus portal, multimedia, print, and university
publications. Also, during her time at William & Mary, Susan spent 12 years on the management team of the CIO and nine years in human resources management.
Paul Fairbanks Director of Web Communications Gettysburg College
Paul has worked at Gettysburg College since September 2008 and was recently promoted to director of Web communications. For the past four years, Paul has been immersed in the Web. Recent work has focused on video production, using CMS to enhance dynamic content, improving e-communications, and figuring out social media. He is also very interested in usability and the evolution of Web design.
Bryan Fendley
Director of Academic Computing University of Arkansas at Monticello @Bfend Bryan Fendley is the director of academic computing at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is a passionate speaker and trainer with fifteen years of experience in higher education and Web administration. He has a talent for making complicated things simple and always giving his audience something they can use.
Joseph Ferguson
Developer The Ohio State University @joeferg Starting as a student developer while enrolled at the university, Joseph has been a part of the growth of the Student Life IT department from its infancy. This process has given him the opportunity to gather the technical chops as well as build invaluable relationships with clients. Working with a small staff early on required Joseph to be extremely versatile as the organizational structure has grew into its now much
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more mature state. All of the experiences offered in higher education information technology have allowed him to grow professionally, to develop an overall understanding of the division’s initiatives and goals for the future. In Joseph’s spare time he is a music producer and DJ and also plays bass in his office band.
Michael Fienen CTO nuCloud @fienen
Michael has been working in Web development for more than a decade. He currently wears many hats, functioning as the director of Web marketing at Pittsburg State University, CTO at the interactive map firm nuCloud, and working as a consultant with organizations around the country. He is a respected speaker at conferences on subjects ranging from video to mobile, accessibility, and content strategy, and also writes for the award winning higher ed Web development blog .eduGuru.
Stephen Fischer
Associate Director, Student Life IT The Ohio State University Stephen heads up application development in Student Life. Prior to this he was a Web developer in Geriatrics & Gerontology at OSU. He’s married and has two young children.
Jeremy Friesen
Web Developer University of Notre Dame @jeremyfriesen Part recluse and part oldschool geek, Jeremy cut his teeth programming by dutifully transcribing monospaced computer code from a magazine onto our venerable Atari 64K. Ever focused on helping others, he enjoys using tools from his problemsolving tool belt as well as learning new ones. Sometimes Jeremy wishes he had a cape, but not the kind that gets
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caught in engine turbines nor the ones that are ironically hip. And maybe he’d like a mask too. Since starting his programming career in 1998, he as worked on proprietary insurance billing and collection software; document management systems for contracts, addendum, and other legal documents; health and life insurance quoting and renewal software; databasedriven e-commerce; and developing custom content management and legacy data integration.
Daniel Frommelt
Director of Applications and Development University of Wisconsin Platteville @Frommelt Daniel Frommelt has been the director of applications and development since 2010 and previously held the Web coordinator position for the University of Wisconsin Platteville from 1997-2010. He manages a staff of 12 full-time programmers, developers, and database specialists, in addition to 12 students who assist with the duties of managing the university’s ERP, Student Admin, and Web environments. His background is in publishing, teaching, management, and computer technologies. He is currently president of the board of directors for the Higher Education Web Professionals Association and an executive committee member of the Campus Web Council of Wisconsin. He has his Master of Science Management in Information Technology from Colorado Technical University, is a graduate of the State of Wisconsin’s Club Tech 2000 program, and an undergraduate of Loras College. He has written multiple articles on Web standards and design techniques for “A List Apart” online magazine.
Chris Gabel
Doug Gapinski
Chris started out in broadcasting and multimedia design for the thoroughbred industry. He made the jump into higher education Web development two years ago. He is currently the Webmaster for the University of Kentucky College of Engineering, maintaining the sites for nine departments, various student groups and professors. He recently pushed for and implemented the use of WordPress for the College and replaced the 38,000 static pages that made up the site.
Doug is the creative director at mStoner, a company that provides smart, sustainable communications solutions to colleges, universities, and professional and graduate schools. At mStoner he works with strategists, designers, and writers to brand research, websites, enrollment publications, email, logos, video projects, interviews, and photo shoots. Doug received his BFA in graphic design from Indiana University in 1999 and owned a successful freelance business prior working for mStoner.
Webmaster University of Kentucky College of Engineering
Martha Gabriel
Professor BSP Business School São Paulo @marthagabriel Professor of the MBA courses at BSP Business School São Paulo. Reviewer for LEA Leonardo Electronic Almanac, MIT, 2005, and Networked Book, Turbulence. org, 2009. CIO at NMD New Media Developers, winner of 11 Internet Best Awards from 1998 to 2005. Awarded speaker presenting on Marketing and Technology conferences in Brazil, US, England, Austria, Macedonia, China, Japan, Singapore. Engineer, postgraduate in Marketing, postgraduate in Graphics Design, Master’s in Art & Technology. Pursuing her Ph.D. at University of Sao Paulo with researches on mobile technologies and social media. Author of the books “Search Engine Optimization on the Web” (2008), “SEM & SEO: Mastering the Search Engine Marketing” (2009) and “Marketing in the Digital Era,” 2010. Personal website: www. martha.com.br /
Creative Director mStoner @thedougco
Alexander Gartley Associate Web Designer Rochester Institute of Technology @gartley
Alexander is a graphic designer with expertise in both print and the Web. After graduating from RIT with a BS in new media publishing in 2007, he began working at RIT as a designer. Since then, he has worked on countless print and Web projects/initiatives. In his spare time, he does freelance Web design for various individuals and nonprofit organizations.
Justin Gatewood Webmaster Victor Valley College @lightjump
Justin has been online since 1985, a Web professional since 1996, and in higher ed since 2006. He worked at a dial-up Internet service provider in the mid-90s, has been published in statewide Web development publications, and has presented at HighEdWeb 2010 (CSS/Mobile), eduWeb 2010 (CSS/Mobile), ACCCA 2008 (Engaging Communities), and the OmniUpdate User Conference (2009 –presented on CSS/Mobile and in 2011 –presented on Using Online Video for CMS Training).
Nathan Gerber
Director - Web Development Services Utah Valley University @NathanGerber Nathan Gerber is a Web solutions advocate specializing in helping educational institutions build effective and productive Web solutions. Since 1993, before Web browsers were invented, Nathan has assisted dozens of businesses, educational institutions, and many state and local organizations in creating their Web systems. As technologies driving the Web have evolved, Nathan has worked as an associate consultant on the Web Strategy Services Team at Noel-Levitz to be a driving force in helping his clients move with the changes and gain the expertise to head in the right direction with the flexibility of turning when necessary. Busy and involved would be good descriptive words for Nathan. He is a devoted father of five children and loving husband of Janelle, his wife of 20 years. You will often hear Nathan say, “I’ve never met any technology that is as good-looking as my wife.”
Stephanie Geyer
Associate Vice President, Web Strategy Services Noel-Levitz @StephGeyer Stephanie Geyer directs Web site development, social media and e-communications projects for Noel-Levitz. Her services are based on current best practices in enrollment management and are frequently integrated with recruitment and marketing consultations and market research projects. She frequently delivers conference presentations about using the Web as a recruitment communications tool, including at the National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing and Retention as well as the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. She
directs the E-Expectations market research project which explores the habits and preferences of college-bound students and their parents. Prior to joining Noel-Levitz, she directed recruitment marketing programs for Wilkes University (PA). Previously, she held media and public relations positions for an advertising agency, resort center, and a television news program.
Mark Greenfield
Director of Web Services University at Buffalo @markgr Mark Greenfield is a highly regarded, influential member of the higher education Web community. He is an accomplished speaker who frequently presents at a wide range of higher education conferences and meetings where his thought-provoking commentary on the impact of emerging technology on college campuses challenges audiences to rethink their basic assumptions about Web communications. Mark has worked at the University at Buffalo for 25 years. He has been a full-time Web professional for the past 14 years, currently serving as director of the Office of Web Services. He began his career at UB as a supervisor for Instructional Technology Services where he played a significant role in integrating technology into the classroom. Mark has also served as a visiting instructor in UB’s former School of Informatics. His research interests include emerging technologies, social media, the Millennial Generation and their use of technology, and the impact of globalization and technology on the academy.
Curtiss Grymala
University Webmaster University of Mary Washington @cgrymala Curtiss Grymala serves as the primary WordPress developer at the University of
Mary Washington (UMW) in Virginia. In that position, he is responsible for preparing WordPress to perform as a large-scale, multi-network content management system; developing new plugins and features specifically for multi-site and multi-network WordPress environments. Before moving to UMW, he worked as the Webmaster at Lord Fairfax Community College (LFCC), where he acted as the main developer and consultant for all Webrelated projects. While at LFCC, he developed a completely custom, enterprise-level Web content management system for the institution. Grymala is formally trained in PHP and MySQL, with expert level experience in HTML and CSS. He spends much of his free time doing the same things he does at work: developing and customizing websites.
Jon Gunderson
Coordinator of IT Accessibility Univiersity of Illinois @jongun Dr. Gunderson is the coordinator of assistive communication and information technology accessibility in the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. He is currently responsible for supporting computer and information technology accessibility issues for students, faculty and staff with disabilities at Illinois. His continued interests focus on how to improve the design Web technologies for accessibility and usability by people with disabilities. He is currently involved in making dynamic HTML more accessible as part of the W3C Protocols and Formats Working Group work on the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specifications and with the OpenAjax Accessibility Task Force. He leads the development on a number of Web accessibility evaluation
tools including the Firefox Accessibility Evaluator, Firebug Accessibility Inspector and the Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) Tool.
Chris Heiland
Web Developer University of Washington @nightspry Chris Heiland is a Web Developer for UW Marketing at the University of Washington. As an alumnus from the business program with over 15 years of experience in both Web development and system administration, he has a unique perspective on technology. Always driving toward the simplest solution, Chris has lead the acquisition and implementation of various Web technology solutions across multiple platforms.
Mark Heiman
Senior Web Application Developer Carleton College @ wyrdebeard In 19 years of supporting higher education technology, Mark Heiman has done a little of everything, from technical writing to system administration, help desk to programming. He is currently senior Web application developer for Carleton College’s Web team, specializing in data integration and social tools.
David Herrington Manager, Departmental Application Services Princeton University
David Herrington has been building end-user computing solutions at Princeton University for over 30 years. He currently manages a work group called Departmental Application Services whose mission is to create custom Web applications for Princeton departments, programs and centers. They also manage the middleware services these custom applications run on. Dave is a hands-on manager and uses the following tools in the creation of the websites he personally works on:
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Dreamweaver, PHP, MySQL, Joomla, Drupal, Photoshop, and Fireworks.
Joel Herron
Web and New Media Programmer University of Wisconsin Oshkosh @h3r2on Joel joined UW Oshkosh in the summer of 2010 to be the lead Web and mobile developer. Previous to UW Oshkosh he was the Web architect at UW Whitewater. While not a fan of writing about himself, Joel is a fan of standards, open source, and open bottles of Jack Daniels.
Robert Heyser
Online Support Technician Tarrant County College Robert attended Francis Marion University from 20042007, graduating with a BBA in Management Information Systems. From 2007-2009 he worked as a Web programmer for Florence-Darlington Technical College in Florence, SC. Robert’s job not only entailed server maintenance and Web programming, but also heading social media and being responsible for writing the Web content. Robert is currently an online support technician with Tarrant County College, where he maintains all district Web presences (mostly on the technical end). He also maintains the virtual server infrastructure for the college, as well as all Webrelated servers. Robert is the chairman of the district’s Web Advisory Council.
Jaime Hunt
Director of Web Communications Radford University After five years as a reporter, Jaime Hunt “sold out” to public relations in 2003. Eventually Jaime realized that the best parts of her jobs involved working on the Web. After developing sites at two other universities while simultaneously handling media relations, she accepted a position as director of Web
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communications at Radford University. The recipient of 16 industry awards and a frequent conference presenter, Jaime loves being able to focus on Web communications. When not building websites, she spends her free time making stuffed monsters, taking pictures of the daily adventures of a toy flamingo, working on her master’s at West Virginia University, and trying to convince her husband that a third Chihuahua would be a really great idea.
Mohamed Jalloh
Project Coordinator OMG Center for Collaborative Learning At OMG Center, Mohamed works as a project coordinator on New Connections: Increasing Diversity of RWJF Programming. His major responsibilities include working with the deputy director on management and administration of this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation national program. Along with other program staff, Mohamed develops communication strategies aimed at engaging the program’s grantees and network members. Building on his experience in Web design and electronic media communications, he uses social media and other Web 2.0 tools in promoting New Connections. Mohamed holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) and an Interdisciplinary Communication Certificate from UNC-Chapel Hill. Mohamed received his Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University.
Cliff Jenkins Video Manager Xavier University @cliffyballgame
Cliff Jenkins has long toiled in the video and Web world where he has come to love the convergence of social media, multi-media, and the Internet. As the Video Manager for Xavier University, he concepts, shoots and edits video as well as creates animation graphics
for various departments across campus. Before that he cut his teeth in higher education as the interactive media manager at the College of Mount St. Joseph. Cliff spends his free time (which isn’t much) as a freelance videographer and editor with a host of organizations including FOX Sports Net, ESPN, the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Kate Johnson
Senior Web Content Strategist University of Denver @katedjohns As a Web content specialist and leader of a small content group at the University of Denver, Kate has been delighted to see the field of content strategy emerge and come into its own over the past few years. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in writing and literature and worked for years as a print editor--all of which gave her a strong foundation in and respect for good writing. She moved into Web editing six years ago and became an enthusiastic champion of the principles of writing for the Web. Shortly after that she began learning how all the issues surrounding Web content in a strategic framework, and she has been a happy content geek ever since. In addition to creating and maintaining central, highpriority sections of the DU website, Kate and her team serve as content consultants to departments around campus.
Lane Joplin
Enterprise Services Division Neustar, Inc. @lanejoplin Lane worked at the University of Advancing Technology for three years successfully creating and executing social media plans for the University and other constituents. In June 2011 she left the UAT to work for Neustar, Inc., a technology and analytics company in Sterling, Virginia.
At Neustar Lane is responsible for social media and community building for the Enterprise Services Division.
Eric Karaszewski
Spectate Project Manager Hannon Hill @Karaszew Eric serves as the product manager for Spectate, Hannon Hill’s inbound marketing software platform. His primary responsibilities are business development and directing the product roadmap. Eric leads demonstrations and training sessions for prospective clients, partners, and peers while gathering feedback and making recommendations through an agile development and marketing process. Prior to joining the Spectate team, Eric served as a solutions consultant for Hannon Hill where he was responsible for acquiring new business for Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server content management system via a consultative, relationshiporiented sales cycle. Eric also served as a district manager for ALDI where he mentored and managed the operations of several retail stores and dozens of employees. He attended Texas Christian University’s M.J. Neeley School of Business where he received degrees in both entrepreneurial management and marketing as well as a minor in Psychology.
Shelley Keith
Web Site Coordinator Southern Arkansas University @shelleyKeith Shelley is the sole Web professional on a campus with more than 3,000 undergraduate students, a thriving graduate studies program, and 400 faculty and staff. Her primary focus is juggling the site needs of several dozen departments while also supporting recruiting and retention initiatives campus-wide. She handles all social networking and outgoing e-mail marketing communication for the entire
university. Shelley is actively involved with the higher education and Wordpress communities online, displays all the symptoms of Twitter addiction (@sk140) and may have actually launched the first university Facebook page. She was the technical reviewer for “Beginning Wordpress 3.0” by Stephanie Leary and recently completed a HigherEd Experts Webinar on WordPress in higher ed. Now entering year two of a campus-wide WPMU implementation, she’s incredibly happy the days of 16,000 static pages and duplicated template files are behind her.
Jeff Kirckick
Universities & Independent School Specialist SCVNGR @JeffreyKirchick Jeff Kirchick is a universities and independent schools specialist at SCVNGR, a Google-funded geo-social networking and gaming platform in Cambridge, Mass. In his role at SCVNGR, Kirchick works with the company’s 350+ university clients to develop locationbased games and mobile strategies with SCVNGR’s platform. Jeff has been a guest of HigherEdLive, spoken at Boston University, MIT, Emerson College, CASE’s Social Media & Community Conference, NYSACAC, and GPACAC, and has been featured in several higher education blogs. He graduated from Princeton University in June 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in English and certificates in creative writing and French.
Mark Kleinbaum Account Executive Siteimprove
Mark has been an account executive in the Minneapolis location since 2009. He particularly enjoys partnering with marketing/ communications professionals who increasingly understand the primary impact their websites have on their schools and the way Siteimprove’s
services support that Web presence. Mark appreciates the everyday interaction in the office with co-Siteimprovers and giving Brian a hard time. He has a golfing addiction that is healthily managed by the Minnesota winters.
Shahab Lashkari Product Manager OmniUpdate @OUShahab
With a lifelong passion for computer science, Shahab enjoys all things technical. Currently he is working on his master’s degree in computer science at California State University Channel Islands, where he has taught courses in Web Development, Android Game Programming, and Human-Computer Interaction. His experience as a programmer and an educator helps give Shahab a unique perspective in his role as product manager at OmniUpdate.
Chris Latham
Web Designer The University of Texas at Austin @lathamdesign Chris works as a Web designer for University Operations at The University of Texas at Austin. His background is in visual design, information architecture, and usability.
Kristofer Layon
Mobile Product Manager Capella University @klayon Kristofer Layon is the author of “The Web Designer’s Guide to iOS Apps” (New Riders). Previously at the University of Minnesota, Kris is now the mobile product manager for Capella University and was the co-founder of MinneWebCon, the University of Minnesota’s annual Web conference. Kris has been a graphic designer since 1993, a Web designer since 1995, and a mobile application designer since 2009. He has designed applications for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android
OS, and teaches standardsbased mobile app design workshops to Web designers across the country. Kris has an MFA in interactive design from the University of Minnesota’s College of Design. He presented at HighEdWeb 2009 in Milwaukee, and taught the iOS app design workshop at HighEdWeb 2010 in Cincinnati.
Stephanie Leary Website Administrator Texas A&M University @sleary
Stephanie Leary is a Web developer for Texas A&M University, where she manages a dozen departments’ and organizations’ sites in WordPress. She is a cofounder of UWeb, a grassroots organization for Web education and advocacy on campus. Her book, “Beginning WordPress 3,” was released in 2010 from Apress.
Katie Lemanczyk
Assistant Director of Web Communications Gettysburg College @KatieLemanczyk Katie is a 2010 graduate of Hamilton College, where she studied public policy and environmental studies. In 2006 Katie started working as a student intern in Hamilton’s Communications & Development office. By the time she was a senior, Katie helped with a website redesign by researching, consulting on many design and information architecture elements, and creating graphics for the site. In August 2010 she joined Gettysburg’s Web Communications team. Currently, she manages Gettysburg’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, in addition to writing stories, making videos, and keeping the website up and running.
Quinn Madson
Lead Web Developer University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Quinn is the lead Web developer at the University
of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, specializing in ColdFusion Web applications, emerging Web technology, and integration. Over the past year, Quinn’s focus has been on mobile technology and he has recently become a Titanium Certified App Developer. Quinn dislikes writing biography information in the third person but will have no problem opening up over a pint.
Mark Marcello
Web Designer Rochester Institute of Technology Mark has attended HighEdWeb for five years now, and a presenter for one year (The Domino Effect of a Viral Video). He has been a Web developer at RIT since 2006. Mark’s undergrad and grad degrees are both in information technology, and he is currently a third year Ph.D. student working on Artificial Intelligence and Emotion Recognition from Text.
Corie Martin
Manager, Creative Web Services Western Kentucky University @coriemartin Corie Martin has 15 years of experience in marketing and media relations and specializes in Web marketing. She joined Western Kentucky University in 2008 as communications coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, where she specialized in e-recruitment and the use of social media in higher ed. Corie moved to the WKU Division of Public Affairs as university Webmaster and manager of the newly-formed Office of Creative Web Services in 2010 and together with the WKU Division of Info Technology has spearheaded a campus-wide website redesign/CMS conversion and has implemented a new interactive virtual tour. You may follow Corie on Twitter at @coriemartin, @WKUCWS and @WKU.
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Christopher Martinez
Instructional Programmer Analyst St. Edward’s University An instructional programmer analyst with 13 years of experience in Web development and five years experience in higher education, Christopher has experience in a variety of languages and platforms, including ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, and PHP. His current interests include HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, mobile development, and video applications. Chris’s work includes adjunct instructing in Computer Mediated and Media Communication and he currently serves as the comanager for the Austin Flash Platform Adobe User Group.
Deborah Maue
Associate VP for University Marketing DePaul University @debmaue Deborah Maue joined DePaul University in September, 2005. In her current role as associate vice president for university marketing, she is the primary developer and driver of the university’s strategic marketing plan. She is responsible for the DePaul brand, leads university and enrollment marketing campaigns and programs, leads strategic planning and analysis efforts, and spearheads innovation, including leading DePaul’s social media efforts. Deb has 15 years of experience in consumer packaged goods marketing, including brand management, new product development, trade marketing, and innovation leadership. She spent 11 years in brand management at Helene Curtis/ Unilever, where she developed new personal care technology, products and brands, and marketed such well known brands as Suave and Finesse. Deb is a graduate of Juniata College, and the Kellogg
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School at Northwestern University. She is also a member of WOMMA and of the American Marketing Association.
Fritz McDonald
Creative Content Strategist create20 @create20 Fritz McDonald has more than 25 years of experience as a professional writer, editor, and creative strategist. He earned his bachelor’s degree at UCLA, and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. For more than 15 years, Fritz was a creative leader at Stamats where he developed marketing communications, websites, digital strategy, and branding programs for colleges and universities across the country. He has an extensive background in social media, has written an industryleading white paper on social networking strategies, and presented at such well-known conferences as HighEdWeb, EduWeb, EduComm, and the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. He has written on social media most recently for “University Business.” Currently, he runs his own consulting firm, create20, specializing in creative content strategy and development.
Nichole McGill
Web Communications Director University of Ottawa @nicholemcgill Nichole McGill, director of Web communications at the University of Ottawa, is new to PSE, but not to social media. She helped pen “Use of Social Media Policy at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada,” where she also launched the department’s main Flickr channel and helped launched their two Twitter channels. She also advocated the use of blogs, mobile devices and Web 2.0 engagement at Culture.ca way, way back in 2006 and 2007, and in the Government of Canada was an active member in technologies
working groups and a frequent contributor to GCPedia, the government’s internal wiki for public servants. A published author and expert in electronic publishing, she has worked in Web for nearly 12 years and blogs at nicholemcgill.com
Seth Meranda
User Experience Architect University of Nebraska-Lincoln Seth Meranda Seth Meranda is the user experience architect at the University of NebraskaLincoln. In his current position, Seth oversees the user interface and user experience of unl.edu. In addition, Seth is a nationally known expert on Web analytics in higher education, and speaks at many conferences on Google Analytics, and other metrics used to measure success in the online realm. Seth is also an associate consultant with Noel-Levitz, an enrollment management firm, where he works with institutions across the country on recruitment and retention best-practices for the Web, as well as setting up effective measurement strategies.
Lance Merker President OmniUpdate @lancemerker
Lance Merker is the President and CEO of OmniUpdate, Inc., located in Camarillo, CA. Under his leadership, OmniUpdate has become the leading provider of Web content management software (CMS) to higher education. The company’s flagship CMS product, OU CampusTM, is used to manage more than 550 college and university websites. Lance is a regular guest speaker on the subject of Web CMS and social networking at industry conferences nationwide. He has more than 15 years of experience in the software industry, and for the past several years has participated with Noel-Levitz and other partners in the E-Expectations research study.
Andrea Genevieve Michnik
Director of PR and Social Media Marketing International Studies Abroad @AndreaGenevieve Currently, Andrea works as the director of public relations and social media marketing for International Studies Abroad, an international education provider. She holds a BA in Journalism/Mass Communication as well as an MA in Integrated Marketing Communication, both from St. Bonaventure University. Throughout her career she has gained experience in public relations, Web development, new media, marketing and corporate communication. Over the past five years Andrea has worked at George Washington University in Washington, DC and now as an adjunct teaching PR at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. As part of her position with GWU, she was responsible for digital marketing and a website redesign project for the Semester in Washington Journalism Program, which was presented at EduWeb 2010 national conference. Additionally, Andrea sits on governing boards for the Austin chapter of the Association of Women in Communication and the Social Media Club EDU. Andrea also contributes to a variety of national and regional blogs.
John Mills
Executive Producer, University Marketing Emory University @jbmiv John has led www.emory.edu for the past 11 years.
Brad Mitchell
New Media Producer Missouri State University @emarg0ed Brad Mitchell is the new media producer for Missouri State University. He is responsible for developing, adapting and coordinating Web-ready content in a variety of new media formats to support the
University’s mission, with a focus on student recruitment, alumni relations and athletics.
Karlyn Morissette Director of Social Media Southern New Hampshire University @KarlynM
Karlyn Morissette is loving life as the director of social media for Southern New Hampshire University and as a staff writer for award-winning higher education blog .eduGuru (www.doteduguru.com). She holds a BS in communication from Boston University, an MBA from Norwich University, and is pursuing a PhD in psychology from Capella University. To quote a friend of hers: “Karlyn is a super rad ninja marketing genius who will make your target demographic submit to your every whim through sheer willpower. Oh, and she’s smarter than you.” We’re not sure about the smarter part, but “super rad ninja” is true enough.
Jorge Najera Ordonez
Team Leader, Residential Network Services New York University
Tonya Oaks Smith
Director of Communications UALR William H. Bowen School of Law @marleysmom Tonya Oaks Smith serves as Director of Communications for the UALR Bowen School of Law. In this role, she manages the communications, marketing, and public relations strategies of the law school in accordance with its mission, objectives, directives, and policies. Smith is particularly interested in developing Bowen’s communication and marketing strategies through the use of new media. She recently completed her master’s degree in applied communication studies.
Seth Odell
Joel Pattison
Seth Odell is a New Hampshire-based digital marketing specialist. Recently joining Southern New Hampshire University, he works as Video Marketing Manager, utilizing live streaming and web video in university marketing initiatives. Prior to joining SNHU, he spent four years in marketing and PR at UCLA, helping to conceptualize and launch strategic university-wide social media marketing initiatives, including UCLA’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.
Joel leads a team of professional designers, photographers and project managers at William & Mary, where he is Associate Director for the amazing Creative Services office. Joel is also a key member of the university’s central communication and marketing team. Joel leads a wide array of creative and technical projects. His recent endeavors include managing the development of an iPhone/ Android app, producing video pieces for thousands of alumni and students and participating in a reinvention of William & Mary’s admission material. Joel is also chairing a design-centric subcommittee on William & Mary’s visual identity project. When he’s not working, Joel enjoys spending time outside - particularly camping on the beach or hiking through the mountains of Virginia. He’s never met a National Park he didn’t like; one day he hopes to visit all 58.
Video Marketing Manager SNHU @sethodell
He is the founder of Higher Ed Live, the industry's only live weekly web show network, and co-founder of Connect & Engage, a boutique marketing agency focused on video marketing and public relations in the education and tech sectors.
Lori Packer
Web Editor University of Rochester @LoriPA As Web editor at the University of Rochester, Lori Packer is responsible for the design, maintenance, and content strategy for several central University websites, including the University’s homepage and news site. Lori is also part of the design and editorial team for Futurity. org, an online magazine for research news from more than 50 universities in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. Before coming to higher ed, Lori was the lead U.S. editor for MSN Search, Microsoft’s pre-Bing search engine and received a master’s degree in communications from the University of Washington. She has served on the HighEdWeb organizing committee since 2003. She is a Phillies fan, a beer snob, and an insomniac, and she blogs sporadically at www.goddessofclarity.com
Associate Director Creative Services, William & Mary
Anne Peters
Communications Coordinator University of Texas at San Antonio @aconawaypeters Anne Peters is Communications Coordinator at the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a bachelors degree in communication from Stanford University, and a masters degree in education from the University of Vermont. Peters has 17 years of experience doing strategic communications, branding and Web development for higher education institutions.
Anne Petersen
Director of Digital Marketing University of Illinois at Chicago @apetersen Anne Petersen leads online communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). A Web director with
an emphasis on usability, she launched a new site and a new Facebook design within her first five months in the central Marketing and Communications office at UIC after consulting from within UIC’s College of Applied Health Sciences. Both redesigns integrate community and grassroots participation: students, faculty and staff contribute ideas and vote events and pages onto the UIC homepage. Before UIC, Anne headed electronic communications within the Undergraduate Admissions Office at Penn State University, coordinating efforts for Penn State’s 20 undergraduate campuses. Her work there included a site redesign, producing a virtual tour and coordinating a Spanish-language microsite. While at Penn State, Anne also chaired the Penn State Usability Group. Anne serves on the HighEdWeb Conference Committee and is also their official photographer.
Mike Petroff
Web Manager for Enrollment Emerson College @mikepetroff Mike is the Web Manager for Enrollment at Emerson College in Boston and leads Web marketing and online recruitment efforts for undergraduate and graduate admission. He also chaired the Social Media Group at Emerson, working with about 20 other staff members from a broad range of campus departments to share ideas, implement marketing initiatives, and help people at the college understand social media. In 4 short months, they implemented a college Facebook fan page, Twitter account, Flickr account, and YouTube EDU channel, all running sustainably with positive growth and audience engagement. He is the creator of @eduTweetups and writes for the award-winning .eduGuru blog, covering topics in marketing, social
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media, admissions and online communities.
Jason Pitoniak
Web Services Technical Team Lead Rochester Institute of Technology @kodiak324 If you ask Jason what a typical day at work looks like, you might get a funny look. As the team lead for Web hosting services at RIT, Jason handles everything from applications development to server maintenance to user support. Jumping from consulting with customers to setting up new accounts, to conducting information security investigations, no day for Jason is typical. When away from the office (on the few occasions he gets out) Jason enjoys hiking, biking, camping, and just being outdoors. Jason volunteers with the Boy Scouts and frequently mentors Eagle Scouts considering careers in technology.
Brett Pollak
Director Campus Web Office, UC San Diego Brett Pollak is the Director, Campus Web Office, UC San Diego. He is responsible for campus Web offerings including a campus-wide CMS, mobile strategy, and application user-interface design.
Krisna Poznik
Social Media Manager LaRoche College
Kevin Prentiss CEO Red Rover @kprentiss
Kevin Prentiss has been an internet entrepreneur for 12 years. For the last 5 years, Kevin has been speaking about opportunities to use technology in innovative ways to create community, increase group engagement, and foster retention in higher education. He is also the founder of Red Rover, a social software
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directory designed to increase engagement and knowledge sharing. He has presented lectures at over 200 college campuses, as well as keynotes and training for the ACPA, NACA, APCA, ACUI, HEWEB and the FYE conferences. He loves acronyms, especially FTW. Kevin is the author of Macmillan’s “Social Media, Higher Education’s New Best Friend.”
Meredith Rendall
Senior Faculty Technology Specialist New York University After graduating from the University of Florida with a Bachelors degree in Classical Studies, Meredith moved to Philadelphia, where she earned a Masters in Science in Arts Administration from Drexel University. She spent the next few years working in the Information Systems & Technology Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, after which she worked in the private sales and Post War / Contemporary divisions of Christie’s before returning to school. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she studied information and library science, and studied the accessibility of cultural institution websites to the visually impaired. As a Senior Faculty Technology Specialist at New York University, Meredith manages the virtual computer lab project, the Luna image repository, and work to centralize software licensing.
Alana Riley
SharePoint Administrator Berklee College of Music @alanariley Alana Riley is the SharePoint Administrator for Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. In the Summer of 2010, Alana was charged with leading all efforts in conjunction with her project manager to facilitate the selection of a new Web portal. Now that the implementation phase is in full swing, Alana is responsible for assisting
project sub-teams develop their strategy (Training, Governance, Technical and Communications), leading the Taxonomy & Design team, which is responsible for developing and executing a college-wide content inventory and migration plan, and for configuring the SharePoint environment. In years prior, Alana served as the Web Services Manager at Berklee, and was part of a team that established a ground-breaking program that brought specialized musical training to students with vision impairments. The program was recognized by the Perkins School for the Blind and the National Center for Accessible Media.
Mike Rivera
Senior New Media Strategist University of Denver @heavywinter Mike has 14 years of Web experience wearing many hats: production, design, IA, strategy, HTML/CSS code and, most recently, social media management. For the last three years he’s worked in higher education at the University of Denver, an 12,000 student private 4-year institution. Follow Mike on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/ in/mcrivera.
Erik Runyon
Manager of Interactive Development University of Notre Dame @erunyon Erik began his career in the Web by creating websites for his sisters using Photoshop 3 and Pico while a student at the University of Michigan. After several jobs in small agencies, Erik began his career as an Interactive Developer with AgencyND at the University of Notre Dame in 2007. He is a staunch advocate of Web standards, semantic markup, mobile experience, and data portability.
Doug Ruschman
Executive Director, University Communications Xavier University @ruschman As Executive Director of University Communications at his alma mater, Doug Ruschman lead the Web Services and now leads Xavier’s overall Communications and Marketing team which includes all of the University’s Web professionals. Doug chaired the 2010 HighEdWeb Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio and in 2009, was presented with the Grand Gold award from CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) during their annual Circle of Excellence Awards for Xavier University’s strategic enrollment Web site for accepted students. It was the first Grand Gold award presented in the ten year history of CASE’s Web category.
Sharron Rush Executive Director Knowbility
Sharon is the co-founding executive director of Knowbility.org producer of the Accessibility Internet Rally. She is the co-author with the late Dr. John Slatin of “Maximum Accessibility Making your website more usable for everyone.” She also is an invited expert to the W3C Education and Outreach Working Group and co-chair of the sub-committee for Education of the CODE for Accessibility Initiative at the ATIA.
Dan Sagisser
Information Architect and Project Manager University of Minnesota, CEHD @dansag Dan prides himself in his ability to connect with audiences and give useful strategies that can be put into practice the next day. Dan leads the University of Minnesota’s Web Standards group, a professional group
of Web developers, as well as having presented over the past two years at the MinneWebCon conference. Dan has a strong working knowledge of CSS and HTML, which compliment his skills in advocating for a user centered approach to Web design.
Kamalika Sandell Associate CIO, Office of Information Technology American University
Kamalika Sandell is the Associate CIO and head of Enterprise Systems at American University. In this role she provides leadership to the university’s wide array of enterprise systems, including Web and portal applications, data warehouses, ERPs and various transaction processing systems that form the information and service backbone of the university’s schools and colleges. Prior to joining American University, Kamalika spent over 17 years in a variety of IT leadership positions in financial and for-profit organizations. Her last job was with CapitalOne, where she spent almost 10 years providing leadership to IT departments, building the company’s intranet and internet, positioning collaboration tools, building on-line communities, implementing a variety of business applications, including the company’s ERP system. Kamalika is a member of several national and international committees and is a frequent speaker at many conferences.
Todd Sanders
Social Media Specialist UW-Green Bay @tsand Todd has worked as a higher ed Web designer since 2002. He’s currently abandoned the .edu and moved all marketing, recruitment and retention efforts off server to a place they call the social Web.
Joe Santucci
President Augustana Web Guild Augustana College Joe is a senior at Augustana College working toward a physics degree. He have been involved with the Web Guild since his freshman year and has been President of the group for the past three years. His Web experience has varied from programming template based sites to full WordPress controlled sites and blogs.
Robert Sawler
Manager, Student IT Services University of Ottawa Rob came to the University of Ottawa in 2006 after 11 years as a software developer in the telecommunications industry. For the past five years, he has worked in the Student IT Services department of the university leading various initiatives which focused on using technology to improve both student services and internal operations. Along with leading the rollout of the university’s Imaging solution, he also primes uOttawa’s admissions technology, the student portal, and delivery of the university’s mobile Web application, uoMobile. Rob graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1994 with a Bachelor of Commerce Degree and then obtained a Computer Science degree from the same institution in 1996.
Christopher Schmitt Founder Heat Vision @teleject
The founder of Heat Vision, a small new media publishing and design firm, Christopher is an awardwinning Web designer who has been working with the Web since 1993. As a sought-after speaker and trainer, Christopher regularly demonstrates the use and benefits of practical standards-based designs. He is Co-Lead of the Adobe Task Force for the Web Standards Project (WaSP) in addition to
being a contributing member of its Education Task Force. Author of numerous Web design and digital imaging books, including “Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites” and “CSS Cookbook.” Christopher has also written for “New Architect Magazine,” “A List Apart,” “Digital Web”, and “Web Reference.”
Melissa Schultz Director of Web Communication College of Wooster @myschultz
After a seven year tenure as a multimedia developer and Webmaster for an international branded been company, Melissa made the leap to higher ed and joined the College of Wooster in 2008 tasked with taking the college through a complete overhaul of the College’s Web presence.
Steven Smith Web Developer Nazareth College @StevenLukeSmith
Ever since the age of 8 when he disassembled, and successfully reassembled, his parents’ dot matrix printer, Steven has had a natural curiosity for all things technical. By age 13, he had created his first website, using CompuServe’s Home Page Wizard. Finding the output to be extremely limited, Steven taught himself HTML. CSS soon followed, and in High School, he learned PHP. Throughout High School and College, Steven dabbled in several other programming languages, and eventually landed an internship developing sites for a local marketing agency. After graduating in May 2008 with a B.A. in Music from Nazareth College, he was hired as Nazareth’s full-time Web Developer. Working with the rest of the Web Team, he develops Web applications for Nazareth, and helps maintain the technical aspects of the college’s main website. Outside of work, Steven
enjoys all things music, and spends most of his free time at the local hackerspace, doing ham radio stuff, or playing with technology.
Denise St. Jean
Manager, Student IT Services University of Ottawa @deniseybby Denise transitioned in 2006 to leading developers in the Student IT Services team after five years working in operations with Strategic Enrollment Management. Her expertise is in admissions, communications, student services, and overall business analysis for the Student Information System. She was key in the acquisition of TalismaCRM in 2006 and managed its implementation and go-live in 2007. With a strong focus on student services, she has been able to influence the adoption of CRM as a strategy throughout the University of Ottawa. She is currently leading development projects in the areas of Enterprise Wide CRM, Calendar of Events, E-billing and Student Finance and is working on developing the five-year plan for Student IT Services at the University of Ottawa.
Michael Steffel
Web Programmer University of WisconsinPlatteville Mike Steffel has worked in the Web Development field since 1999. After working in the private sector for over ten years, he has entered the public sector as the Web Programmer for U.W. Platteville. His programing skills include, but are not limited to, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and CMSs such as WordPress, Drupal and Joumla.Though he brings programming skills to the table he also has background with SEO, Content Management, and Web Design. He believes in clean code, well presented information, and nothing as holy.
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Jeff Stevens
Web Content Optimizer Universityof Florida Academic Health Center @kuratowa Jeff has worn many hats in higher education: graphic designer, Web developer, content manager, social media manager, and writer. He has worked for the University of Florida for ten years, first as Webmaster for Student Financial Affairs, then Webmaster for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and now as the Web content optimizer for the Academic Health Center, where he advises on analytics, search engine optimization, usability, accessibility, information architecture, and social media metrics for six colleges and a the UF&Shands health system. Jeff is also the Creative Director for Union Design & Photo, a freelance graphic and Web design agency that has worked with hundreds of business and non-profit clients around the country.
Brian Stewart Account Executive Siteimprove
Brian has worked for Siteimprove Inc. since 2007 when Siteimprove began in the Minneapolis location. He is excited to work with many higher education Web marketing teams to help provide best practices and insight on their website with the SiteCheck services we provide. He specifically enjoys working with administrators to overcome the challenges and chaos they face associated with larger websites and multiple content contributors. Brian enjoys a number of activities in his free time including golfing, fishing, playing hockey, and getting frustrated watching the Vikings and the new quarterback they choose every year.
Julie Strothman
Director of Web Strategy Landmark College @strottrot Julie Strothman directs Web strategy at Landmark College, a small college for students with learning disabilities. Julie generally works as a team of one, collaborating with subject matter experts and administrators to cover a gamut of design activities. Previously, she managed user research at Landmark, working on NSF-funded projects to broaden participation in computing among underrepresented groups. Julie’s current challenges include building a culture and practices that focus on consistent user experience across environments. Strothman works to expand the range of data sources we use to improve design, and ensure accessibility is a guiding principle for all the college creates.
Ken Stuart
Senior Web Developer Cornell University Ken has been ‘enjoying Internet-based technologies since 1991” while working for Cornell, USC, UCLA and CSUN. He’s currently in his second tour of duty at Cornell. In his spare time Ken develops, codes, publishes and supports Web-based games.
Dirk Swart
Assistant Director of Administrative Computing, CALS Cornell University @dswart Dirk Swart is the Assistant Director for IT at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He was the technical lead for the Digital Well while at Cornell’s Communications division, and jointly served as a visiting fellow at Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future. His most recent publication is Africa’s Technology
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Futures: Three Scenarios, ISBN: 978-1-936727-00-1, which he presented as an invited speaker to the African Leadership Conference for Sustainable Development (ALC2011) in September 2011. In his spare time, Dirk designs and builds open source embedded hardware.
side projects are working with JMI (justiceandmercy.org) and serving as Art Director for LINK (link.highedweb.org).
Donna Talarico
Cher’s experience and multi-disciplinary skills includes project coordination targeting online business and Internet development, software and Web site design, and eLearning; leading up to her current assignment ensuring Federal Section 508 Web Accessibility for the University’s Web presence. She graduated BA in Business Management from National University in 1997; has certificates in Grant Writing and Entrepreneurial Studies from Fresno State. She is currently working to complete an MA in Education in the Kremen School of Education. She is an accomplished public speaker and educator in information technology and Federal Grants. She maintains a strong commitment to improving all aspects of Web based information technology in her role at Fresno State, and in the course of her career has developed what has become a life-long passion for seeking out new ways to use technology to improve the student experience.
Web Content Editor Elizabethtown College @donnatalarico Donna Talarico works in Office of Marketing Communications at Elizabethtown College as the Web content editor. She was an adjunct faculty member at Wilkes University, where she designed and taught a course in PR and Social Media; she frequently presents in classrooms and boardrooms on the same topic. From 2007 to 2010, Donna worked in sales and marketing at Solid Cactus, a leading eCommerce developer. She’s also worked in the continuing education field as a career school admissions representative and in various aspects of radio, including promotions and on-air. Until she relocated to Central Pa., she was a long-time contributing writer for Wilkes-Barre’s highly popular alternative weekly, The Weekender, landing dozens of covers stories. She is the founder and publisher of Hippocampus Magazine, a online monthly literary magazine dedicated to creative nonfiction. She has an MFA in creative writing and a BA in communication studies, both from Wilkes University.
Lacy Tite
Senior Web Developer Vanderbilt University @lacytite Lacy is the lead Web developer at Vanderbilt University in the office of University Web Communications. Her office oversees the top level websites for the university and provides web application development and design services. Two of her favorite
Cher Travis Ellis
Information Technology Consultant California State University, Fresno
Douglas Tschopp Entrepreneurial Center Director Augustana College
Doug Tschopp is the Entrepreneurial Center Director at Augustana College in Illinois. He has also served as the Director of Marketing since 1992 and served as the school’s Webmaster for eight years. He is a full-time administrator who teaches public relations and advises student organizations focused on Web and advertising. His long history with this conference includes pioneering a track focused on content and design, and he is now in his ninth year as
John Vieth
Web Design University of WisconsinPlatteville John is a front-end Web developer and member of the Web production team at University of WisconsinPlatteville. John specializes in front-end Web development, content management, Web marketing, SEO, SEM, e-mail marketing, and usability testing. His previous experience includes Web development for online retailers and Internet service providers. Technical interests include HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP, Drupal, MySQL, and Linux. Personal interests include family fun, music, movies, office humor, toiling away in the yard, reading, and amateur philosophy.
Zac Vineyard
Web Programmer Northwest Nazarene University @zvineyard Zac Vineyard has been building websites for almost 10 years. He specializes in front-end Web design, content management, application development, and search engine optimization. He loves PHP, jQuery, HTML, CSS, and a variety of content management systems. He lives in Meridian, Idaho, with his wife and twin girls. You can follow him @zvineyard.
John Wagner
Systems Programmer Princeton University John has been playing with computers since they first taught him to program “You have $100 and 3 animal types and you have to buy 100 legs” in fortran. He is currently part of a group that does Infrastructure Services (email, Web systems, video streaming, and sharepoint).
He subscribes to the motto, “If you know we are there, we haven’t done our job.”
Luke Wertz
Web Developer University of Cincinnati @iLuke Luke is the Web developer at the University of Cincinnati College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services where he oversees their 53site network of WordPress websites. In addition to being a WordPress hacker, he writes a lot of code for CodeIgniter and is passionate about making the Web a more beautiful, accessible, fun place to live and work.
Nathan White
Web Application Developer Carleton College @natepixel Nathan White, a graduate of Grinnell College, is a Web application developer at Carleton College, and lead developer of the Reason CMS. Before coming to Carleton he provided training and consulting services on accessible Web development in Portland, Oregon.
Dylan Wilbanks
Web Developer and Designer @dylanw Dylan Wilbanks was a Web producer in higher education for a decade, but then the Red Stapler he won last year told him it was time to go to the Magical Land Of For-Profit Late-Stage Startups. He misses his family very much. He speaks in metaphors, dreams in CSS, and fights for an accessible, usable Web.
Alex Winkfield
Videographer The College of Wooster @AlexWinkfield Alex is the videographer for the College of Wooster. Working with the Office of College Relations and the Admissions team he creates Web-based video for the college’s home page and YouTube page. Alex is also a hack cyclist, a Boston sports fan and perhaps most
importantly, has an extremely attractive wife.
Roger Wolf has spent the six years experience as a Web Strategist for the University of Central Florida. Roger’s experience includes 15 years’ experience as a Web professional and two years teaching Web/UI design. He holds a Bachelors in psychology and a MFA in computer art and design.
Web content management and administrative Web applications for Cornell University. Most recently he moved into a part-time position in order to dedicate more time to pursuing a private venture in the areas of semantic Web and linked data. His interests lie in the areas of human cooperation, information interoperability, and where those topics meet: communication of information and knowledge. He holds a BS and M.Eng in computer science from Cornell University.
Mallory Wood
Francis Zablocki
Mallory Wood joined the mStoner team in August 2011 as marketing manager and is responsible for marketing and business development activities. Prior to working at mStoner, Mallory worked at Saint Michael’s College as an Assistant Director of Marketing and the college’s social media strategist. In this role, Mallory developed and executed a social media strategy for St. Mike’s; provided training for social media users on campus; created and managed content for various social networks; produced Web video; and managed the online student ambassador program. Mallory has presented on marketing and social media topics at Penn State Web Conference, NEACAC, .eduGuru Online Summit, SUNYCUAD, Higher Ed Live, and more.
As a Web communications strategist and producer, Fran has written for the Web, developed marketing and editorial plans for new Web media, and is currently at the hub of a college social networking communications effort at SUNY Geneseo. As a Web project manager, he has experience planning, designing, building, and implementing many Web sites and databases for higher education. Fran currently manages an online alumni community, U-Knight, which includes career, networking, and social media tools for the alumni of SUNY Geneseo. As an MBA focusing on information systems, he approaches all projects strategically, making sure that the right technology is being used in the right ways to meet business needs and result in the best possible ROI.
Roger Wolf
Assistant Director of Web Communications UCF
Online Community Manager SUNY Geneseo @Zablocki
Marketing Manager mStoner @Mallory_Wood
Jason Woodward
Special Projects Analyst Cornell University School of Hotel Administration @jdwcornell Jason has been a software engineer since 1996 and has been building Web applications since 1998. He built the software running the world’s first downloadable music subscription service, EMusic.com, in the first dotcom boom. After returning to school, he built
DRISKILL HOTEL - DAVE WILSON PHOTOGRAPHY, FLICKR
the conference’s program chair. Doug received a BA in accounting and business administration (and a minor in economics) from St. Ambrose College. His MBA is from the University of Iowa.
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Milwaukee Conference October 7 – 10 http://2012.highedweb.org
@HighEdWeb #heweb12