Archive for November, 2005
November 25, 2005
Feel the Power of Standards-based Design
Chris Spurgeon works on the American Public Media family of web sites. He recently posted on the Well about some changes he made to the Marketplace web site:
I just changed the tab navigation of the Marketplace radio show website (www.marketplace.org) from vertical tabs along the left hand side of thepage to horizontal tabs along the top. Other than uploading the new tab graphics, all I had to do was tweak 2 CSS rules and the change instantly appeared on more than 5 thousand static pages. So damn cool.
Chris graciously gave permission for me to quote his post here. This is a fantastic example of how going to a CSS design allows you to make significant changes quickly by editing just a single file.
Another thing to note is that if you look at the source code for the page, you can see that it includes corporate branding and search elements for the overall organization that do not cleanly separate content from presentation. The reality of web design in large organizations is that you often don’t have control of everything and have to work around various things that are not open for negotiation. However, the rest of the page does separate presentation from content markup, which enabled Chris to make that big change so easily. This shows how you don’t have to follow a purist approach to still benefit from these techniques.
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November 23, 2005
Thank You Phil Murray!
Kevin just thanked his first blog commenter since he started writing as part of Thanksgiving. Great idea!
So, without further ado, thank you Phil Murray for posting the first comment to my blog on August 2nd, 2002! The post Phil commented on was one I wrote questioning whether a KM system had to be deployed enterprise wide in order to be considered a success. Why not just do something locally within a group using free tools for their own benefit? I still think that makes as much sense now as it did to me over 3 years ago. And Phil agreed with me and expanded upon the idea substantively, which is a nice bonus for a first comment. :)
I have truly learned so much from writing this blog and connecting with others who read and write on the same topics. Thanks to all of you for participating in this public conversation.
Update: To continue being a bit meta, this turns out to be my 500th post on this blog. Only took 3 years! :)
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November 22, 2005
Extension to RSS Spec Released
Microsoft has just published an extension to RSS and OPML to enable updates to be share back and forth (I think) via RSS and OPML.
Ray Ozzie has a post on how it came about.
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November 21, 2005
Warning Label Generator
This is fun: Warning Label Generator.
(Via Ben Martin.)
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November 18, 2005
Conference vs. Unconference
I’ve been thinking lately about how an unconference style event for an association could work. I’ll be posting some ideas on that later on. I thought it would be good to start by comparing the characteristics of conferences and unconferences. So, in no particular or meaningful order, here is my initial list:
| Conference | Unconference |
| Attendees | Participants |
| Exhibitors | Participants |
| Recruiting speakers | Recruiting participants |
| Content planning | Content facilitation |
| Direct marketing | Word of mouth marketing |
| Handouts | Wikis |
| 12 month planning cycle | 12 week planning cycle |
| Sponsorships | Donations |
| Once a year | As often as needed and desired |
| Large budgets | Shoe-string budgets |
| Maximize value for organizers | Maximize value for participants |
| Best practices | Innovation |
| Top down | Bottom up |
| Wisdom of experts | Wisdom of crowds |
| Magazine coverage 2 months later | Live blogging/podcasting |
| Slides | Stories |
| Panels | Conversations |
| Best practices | Practicing |
| Hierarchy | Networks |
| Directive methods | participatory methods |
| Participants | Contributors/creators |
| Speakers | Conversation starters |
| Sharing information | Learning collaboratively |
| Instruction | Discovery |
| Best learning in the hallway | It’s all hallway! |
I’m sure a lot more can be added to this but it’s a start.
I also just created a Wikipedia entry for unconference. I was surprised it didn’t exist yet.
Update: Added a couple more items suggested by Rich Westerfield. (I changed Powerpoint to Slides.)
Update 2: Added several more contributed in the comments by Nancy White and Jeff De Cagna. Thanks Nancy and Jeff!
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November 18, 2005
The Drucker Paradox
Slacker Manager has a interesting post on what he calls theDrucker paradox:
…why Drucker’s ideas are so widely quoted and so rarely practiced…
Good question! I posted my thoughts on it in the comments of that post.
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November 17, 2005
W3C Forms Working Group on Web APIs
The W3C is forming a working group to look standards for Web APIs. This will be good in the long run for making AJAX interfaces much easier to develop across browsers and platforms.
The W3C Web API Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer Web Applications.
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November 15, 2005
On Marketing and New Conference Models
Rich Westerfield posted recently about how you might use a pay what you feel model for meetings. He raises this point:
But we’re forgetting something: cash flow. We often need that early registration cash flow to fund the final mailings and pay for some of the onsite work. For many small and some mid-sized events, B/E doesn’t happen until the final couple of weeks when 50% or so of registrations are in.
I think this misses a point about some new models for meetings that are currently evolving: they don’t use traditional marketing. They can’t afford it. These new meeting models focus on word of mouth, attracting opinion setters as early registrants and using lots of social tech (blogs, wikis, etc.). I doubt that the BlogHer conference has done or ever will use a mass paper mailing to attract participants.
You can’t just blow-up one aspect of a meeting and expect to have the rest of it be business as usual. The entire enterprise has to be re-concieved.
Doc Searls has a good article on unconferences, which is a new way of holding meetings and letting the participants drive the content of the event.
I just did a presentation for the KCSAE yesterday and unconferencing was one of the topics I covered. I think there is a lot of potential in this model for associations and I’ll be writing more about it in the near future.
I’m not trying to pick on Rich with this post, he is a constant source of new ideas for meeting marketing. His post just triggered something for me that I wanted to write about. Thanks, Rich!
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November 10, 2005
Boxwood Technology Adds RSS to Job Board Service
Boxwood Technology is pretty much on top of the heap for hosted job board services for associations. (Disclaimer: I was a client of theirs when I worked at ASHA and I serve with Boxwood Chairman John Bell on the ASAE Tech Council.) They have just added RSS feeds to their service, which is a fantastic extension. Now job seekers can subscribe to all new jobs or to the results of a specific search. After they subscribe, any newly posted jobs will appear in their newsreader of choice. Nice! They should mention this service on their web site.
For an example, see ASAE’s job center. There is an orange RSS button at the bottom of the screen.
A couple of improvements I think they could make include:
- Include an RSS autodiscovery tag in the page markup that will allow people to more easily subscribe with newsreaders that look for the tag.
- Make the RSS buttom a direct link to the RSS feed rather than a pop-up window (not sure why you would want a pop-up unless they are trying to discourage indexing of the feeds).
- Add some buttons for easily subscribing via some of the more popular online newsreaders (such as Yahoo!, bloglines, google, etc.).
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November 3, 2005
The 15 Minute Web Plan
I had a call this morning with someone who runs a summer camp talking about how their web site can help their organization. It was a pro bono thing I did for a friend (I have a soft-spot for camps, being a former camp counselor myself). Here is my 15 minute method for developing a plan of action for your web site:
- Identify the top 2 or 3 objectives your organization has for the next 12 months or so.
- If you have no formal objectives, make some up. (I’m not kidding. It’s not hard if you know your organization well.)
- For each objective, identify at least one thing that your web site can contribute to success in that area.
- Go do them.
Simple but it lets you quickly identify actions you can take that will make a difference. Your planning can get more complex and comprehensive down the road if you feel the need for that but the important thing is to begin doing something, see how it works, and adjust going forward. It also lets you act even if your organization has little in the way of strategic direction at the moment.
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