On November 4, 2008 the nation elected the 44th president. That evening on CNN, the network revealed their new hologram technology. Funny thing is that it is NOT a hologram… it was a demonstration of augmented reality. Learn how it works, see examples of how to utilize this technology for communication, and get samples to do your own experimenting.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

As our mothers sign-up for Twitter accounts and listen to Pandora on their iPhones, we should take notice of the new prospects pop culture has made available for promoting our projects. Microsites provide unique opportunities to engage new audiences, extend our brands, and attract media attention. Because they can assume a life all their own, microsites are fun to develop, allowing for the ultimate in creative freedom. This presentation will explore several examples in which microsites were used as a key element in promoting strategic university initiatives. Practical techniques for developing creative new ideas, preparing for media coverage, and establishing metrics for impact will also be discussed. This session is intended for people with an interest in venturing away from typical development tasks. After all, how often do we get to take projects completely over the top?

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

The millennial generation has arrived. Technology is just another part of their environment. They don't use the Web to view websites, they use it to communicate with friends. They completely distrust traditional marketing approaches and instead will turn to their friends for advice. Higher education's approach to the Web must evolve to meet new expectations and take advantage of new opportunities. This presentation will focus on the intersection of emerging technology and the millennial generation, and the impact on college campuses. It will include a review of the latest research and trends on millennials with an emphasis on their use of technology and the impact on recruitment and retention in higher education.

• Podcast Transcript

This admission cycle, we decided to implement a full-fledged social network as part of our prospective student portal, myIthaca. Not only were we amazed by the popularity of allowing accepted students to meet each other, but even more so that participation in the social network became the strongest instrument we had for predicting our incoming class. This presentation will talk about how we integrated an off-the-shelf social networking platform into our portal, how we gathered data for predictive modeling, and how we involved members of the campus community in the yield process. We will also look briefly at our plans for keeping the newly formed community intact by extending the social network into our portal for current faculty, staff, and students.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Web analytics has the reputation of only being useful in a commercial context, but there is much it can offer institutes of higher education. It can help optimize marketing efforts, help you measure and improve the usability of your site, and help you create a more engaging user experience. In this session we will cover analytics basics, present a few case studies of evidence-based decision making from analytics data, and then focus on Google Analytics as an analytics tool.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Stony Brook University will share the best practices and lessons learned from its recent project to create an online student course catalog. The automation project’s goal was to go green and reduce expenses related to the printed undergraduate bulletin — a 500-page publication that is almost always out of date by the time of distribution. Now, with an online version of the catalog maintained using the OmniUpdate Web content management system, the catalog can be updated and managed easily, and uses XML to take course information directly from the university's database. During this session, Stony Brook will review the reasons behind the project, give a technical overview, demonstrate the online application, and discuss the university’s next-step development plans.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Higher education has great enterprise services, but these services exist to students, faculty and staff as fragmented functionality. UW-Milwaukee has applied various Web services that fuse and leverage existing enterprise solutions. This presentation will use real-world examples to establish what problems Web services can solve and how. Demonstrations and code examples integrating Zimbra with ColdFusion and LDAP will be shown, but the concepts, methodology, and best practices are applicable to any language and any enterprise service with an API.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Beautiful photography is a powerful way to engage visitors on any website. Great photos are even more compelling in higher education; they give prospective students a sense of place and link alumni to their past. Unfortunately, many Web editors aren’t familiar with the tools that can transform ho-hum images into eye-popping pictures. Using Adobe Photoshop and examples from the William and Mary website, this session will explore techniques for color correcting and enhancing photographs for the Web. With a special emphasis on Adobe’s Camera Raw, file compression and the magic of meta-data, this workshop is ideal for those with only a beginner’s understanding of Photoshop. Instead of delving into abstract technicalities, this session will be task-centric. We’ll take a common problem, such as I want to intensify the sky and clouds in this photo or I’d like to lay text over this photo and explore the tools and techniques that will accomplish that goal.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

The decision has come from top administrators - we'd like to highlight specific academic programs through the use of integrated websites and print materials; we'd like to influence high school seniors and increase enrollment; and we're not sure what all of this means, but you have a month to figure it out. Such a challenge was given to Xavier's Web services, marketing, and enrollment teams. We will share the successes and challenges of three separate offices from three separate divisions coming together for a common project. What resulted was a coordinated marketing and communication effort that integrated Web, print, email, and video. As Xavier University anticipates its largest freshman class in history, we will share the details of a specific integrated marketing campaign that yielded measurable results: website visitors, actual visitors to campus, and increased enrollment in the targeted academic programs.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Twitter represents a new way for colleges and universities to connect with their students. Approaches to higher education Twitter accounts vary in their purpose and audience. New Mexico State University’s Division of Student Success (DSS) focuses on using Twitter as a support channel where students can find timely information, ask questions, and connect to campus resources. This approach led to the development of a Twitter team made up of both students and staff that can serve as a beneficial model for others. In practice, the NMSU Twitter team effort continues to evolve into a wider network with families, alumni, and prospective students. In this presentation, members of the team will share how the seemingly simple idea of using Twitter to support students required us to assemble and manage a team, develop a presence, institute and examine practices, integrate tools, and include administrators in the process.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

What does it take to start a Web office? We are here to tell you the good, the bad, and otherwise. Since the Web is such a hybrid field it can be challenging to find your perfect home. Most choose IT, marketing or strike out on their own. We’ll give you tips for partnerships, things to watch out for when starting a Web office, goals, getting buy-in, and developing policies and guidelines.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

The Princeton University Office of Information Technology (OIT) provides centralized Web hosting and development services to the entire university community. Our model for providing this centralized service has been very successful and challenging at the same time. This talk will discuss the services we provide to the university community, the collaboration required within OIT to ensure the success of the service, the challenges we are facing, and some of the solutions we are developing to address those challenges.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Prospective students are one of the key audiences for your school's website, but they are also the hardest audience to understand. How do you engage a population that by definition is constantly changing? And how do you move beyond just dispensing information to involving and inspiring prospective students? Carleton College's Web team recently completed a full reimagining of our admissions site that grappled with these questions. This presentation will explore that process. We'll cover our research with prospects and what they did and didn't like about our website and those of our peer institutions; our concept development and testing process; the multiple levels on which we engaged our admissions staff to assist with content development; our wireframing and visual design process; the technical framework that allowed us to implement our new concept in about a month; and lots of geeky post-launch stats that suggest we're on the right track.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

You've integrated technology into your marketing plan, but can you tell if it's working? Now more than ever, it's important to continually monitor your online marketing strategies to ensure they are optimized for success. This presentation will teach you how to develop your online marketing strategies in a way that allows you to measure their success, and we will walk through real world examples of calculating the return on investment of your online efforts. This presentation is about giving the audience practical, applicable information that they can take back to their institutions and start using immediately.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Maintaining accurate, relevant, and timely (ART) content on your institution's website can be a challenge, especially when you have multiple content contributors with varying skills. At Widener University, we created six, two-hour professional development classes that provided the basics of HTML, Web graphics, writing for the Web, content management systems, and more. Campus participation included faculty, administrative, and office staff. Challenges included low to average IT and computer skills and a lack of general understanding about the Internet and the Web. Positive outcomes included a well-defined skill set and better understanding of the Internet/web that could be put to immediate or future use.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Stanford University's School of Humanities and Sciences recently completed a two-year Web development project, rolling out three new academic websites. These department sites help lay a foundation in our school for bringing together traditional university academics and the social Web. Our community services platform infuses all the usual departmental information with fresh dynamic content, self-managed personal profiles, blogs, groups, discussion boards, messaging, internal and external event calendaring, multimedia imagery, login/accounts, and much more. Powering the front-end is a specialized Web-based CMS application, developed in conjunction with our vendor partner, that aims to decentralize site management for the department staffs. Will online social collaboration and academics live in peace? Come see our new sites in action and catch a glimpse into the underlying story that's still being written, sometimes without a table of contents!

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Web projects are especially fun to manage as they embody the true meaning of Agile Extreme development with a mix of people that have borderline behavioral disorders: Web designers, developers, clients, marketing people, writers, etc. To get things done properly, on time, and on budget requires adopting some form of project management. This session will offer up some strategies for managing Web projects in a higher ed environment.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

We made our foray into YouTube in early 2007, a time when YouTube was still largely experimenting with its higher education component. With the backing of the university president, we developed our channel with two broad goals in mind: to promote Texas Tech research and help boost recruitment. Our office broke away from the typical look of an academic website and gave the channel a cutting-edge look, inviting one of our design communication professors, who has an international cult following for his concert poster designs, to create our wallpapers and banners. Since launching the channel, we have partnered with students, faculty, alumni and university supporters to create content for our channel. This has resulted in some content that we don’t have the time to produce ourselves while also providing fresh sets of ideas and viewpoints.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Duke University's campus, financial, and academic services are available on the Web through the different organizations that run those services. Users, however, don't know or care who owns a specific service, only how to obtain it. By offering up the services by service type, a major shift has occurred in how Web visitors locate the services they need. The two-year project led to the launch of over 20 different, yet connected, Services and Administration sites. These sites - with a consistent graphic look and feel, navigational placement, and Duke branding - run the gambit from Parking and Dining to IT and Security. This session will go over the specific challenges of bringing these groups together, developing a consistent informational tone, and actually building this many different sites (and wrangling content/content/content).

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

As Web professionals, every day we use software that implements the HTTP protocol. Usually, the details of HTTP are hidden from our view: browsers, servers, programmers, and system administrators make it so the average user thinks http is simply a 4 letter symbol that goes at the beginning of a link. However, to a Web programmer or even Web designer in these days of client side XMLHTTPRequest scripting, knowledge of the details of how HTTP messages are constructed and interpreted can be useful. This session provides an introduction to the basics of HTTP including its concept of requests and responses, agents, error signaling and cache control, character sets, and media types. We'll cover techniques to inspect HTTP transmissions on-the-wire to help troubleshoot and debug your applications. We'll cover tips on how to speed up your website and applications by interpreting the contents of the communications between browsers and servers.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

When it comes to building or redesigning a website, everyone has an opinion. By conducting usability testing of your websites, you and others around you can temper those opinions and sometimes superheated emotions with data about how people actually use the site. By conducting Web usability of our own we were able to learn how potential site visitors interact with our site, witnessing first hand their successes and frustrations. Our usability testing took a number of forms, such as asking volunteers to perform tasks on our site while recording what we observed; distributing an online survey to our site visitor base; and asking volunteers to perform a card sort to organize site content into a limited number of meaningful categories. Not only did these strategies help us to better understand how visitors interacted with the site, but they also provided others in our organization the ability to make rational decisions.

• Podcast Transcript

Reaching your audience today takes ingenuity and creativity. With audiences turning their attention to the Internet and away from TV, newspapers, and radio, universities need to get innovative in how they reach their audience. In this session we'll discuss how a promotional video to publicize a campus-wide festival went viral. Initially, the video was shared within the university and via Facebook. Before long, the video was posted on popular international design inspiration site NotCot.org and the blog of musician/record producer Mark Hoppus of Blink-182. Those two blog posts alone led to almost 30,000 views from around the world in a single day. More recently the video has been featured on Digg and Gizmodo.com. During the video’s first three weeks of release, the video received more than 120,000 unique views on video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. The video has become an example of how new media can be used to reach international audiences who help spread the word and pass it along, creating a powerful social impact.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Does your institution often mistake its current marketing campaign for a brand? Does your institution’s leadership assume that the school colors are the brand, rather than just components of it? This session will focus on some different ways of thinking about and evaluating your institution’s brand, and will focus on some successful brands in higher education, including examples from larger institutions and smaller institutions, as well as some thoughts on how new technology such as social networking fits into branding.

• Podcast Transcript

The University of Waterloo has the largest co-op program in the world. When we want to do something big on the Web, we hire a student, set the parameters, speak to them in their language, and are always astounded by the results. This presentation will cover strategies for getting the most out of your Millennials on the Web. We will look at case histories for some of our Web-based initiatives including our home-grown CMS, online forum, chats, Bayesian comment analysis, poster design, website usability, online video production, and virtual tour. We will also be sure to bring our fair share of the horror stories and jaw-dropping amazing adventures of our Millennials.

• Podcast Transcript

Now more then ever it's important to listen to the conversation that is happening about you and your competitors online. Hearing what people have to say can help you with your social media strategy, website enhancements, and marketing initiatives. During this session I'll give you 10 reasons why you should listen, demonstrate different social media monitoring tools that you can use to listen to the conversation, and explore ways to measure the conversation.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

As you may have heard, video is the new Web. But getting started making original videos can be daunting, especially if you feel as if you have no experience, few resources, and little time. This session will meet you where you are. It’s hardly film school in a box, but it will orient you to key steps as you start making Web video. If you suspect you ought to get into video but don’t know how to start, or if you're looking to supplement professionally produced marketing videos with homemade, YouTube-style videos, this session is for you. We will discuss the whole life cycle of a short video, from pre-production brainstorming to post-launch promotion.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Rolling out an online brand is more than the university marketing team sitting in a room deciding on colors and fonts. Branding starts with research and planning, and centers on institutional collaboration. Using the right communication tactics and involving the campus community in brand development builds the grass roots-level support that is critical during the brand roll-out. This session will outline a case study on a successful, cost-effective online brand roll-out, and is especially relevant for those in Web, communications and marketing roles.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Every university has maps - campus maps, construction maps, parking maps, special event or service maps. When everyone uses different maps, this creates consistency issues and duplication of time and effort. Not to mention that finding the right map can be frustrating for your visitors. This session will outline a work-flow and framework for succeeding in building an interactive map platform that works for you.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Facebook and Twitter - they're just for fun and socializing, right? Not any more. Online social networks, when used intentionally and effectively, can be powerful community-nurturing tools for educational projects and events. And while there can be modest costs associated with some of these tools and services, much of it is free and simply requires you to invest time and patience to get tangible results. This session will focus on social networking best practices, case studies, and examples of impressive ROI, all of which will demonstrate that social networking use has matured beyond fun and socializing. Social networking tools can be an integral part of enhancing higher education communications, professional networking, media relations, and community-building.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

We have all done the same old press releases: insert headline, byline, body. What we will explore in this session is how to, as Emeril would say, "Kick it up a notch." We will talk about how to create a press release that will draw in users and address the changing needs of the end consumer and increasing ease of use for the media. It’s important for us to adjust our message format and delivery to respond to the needs of today’s Web-savvy audience. In the presentation we will explore the use of images, video, tagging, RSS, social bookmarking, Technorati, and other tools to create a release that will be more engaging and useful to a broader range of users.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

The WVU Office of Information Technology has been working to implement WordPress Multiuser as a content management system. We are transitioning from a static HTML-driven website using Dreamweaver and Contribute. Currently we have about 18 content managers and have been looking for a more integrated approach to managing content, design, and user access. This session will describe why we chose to take a chance on WordPress MU over other Web content management systems and what we’ve learned from the process.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Everything in college recruiting is changing. The forces of change range from the social Web to the need for authenticity to shifting student demographics to the increasing role of parents -- and now the economy. It's time for a revolution in how we recruit students. We have to use the communication tools that students prefer, which means becoming comfortable with social media. We have to be willing to give up some control of the message, which involves letting students see the real institution, blemishes and all. We have to see ourselves as sales people. This session will provide specific ideas as well as motivation for pursuing the changes necessary to succeed in an increasingly challenging environment. These ideas will include how to become more efficient, focus on core competencies, better manage outsourcing, retain key employees, redistribute budget dollars, enhance your leadership skills, and become more of a visionary.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Conducting usability research can be challenging – even with multiple team members. But how do get the job done if your Web team consists of just one person? In 2008, the College of Arts and Sciences Web Team at the University at Buffalo was streamlined to one employee. Performing usability research along with regular web projects for 30+ departments and programs seemed nearly impossible. Learn how this web team of one managed to beat the odds. In this time of shrinking budgets, this session presents useful ideas and efficient techniques to perform usability research with one-person Web teams.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Cross-site scripting (also referred to as XSS) is still the number one form of Web attack. From government websites to Google and Apple, it seems that no one is immune. In my presentation, we’ll explore what cross-site scripting is, how an attack occurs, and demonstrate a live exploit. We’ll then discuss why cross-site scripting can be damaging for a website, and we’ll look at methods one can use to prevent a cross-site scripting attack.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

and Facebook and YouTube, etc. Perhaps you've dabbled in social media personally and have some ideas on how your institution might participate. Or perhaps you've read about the impact of social sites and worry about being left behind. But how do you convince your boss that something called "Twitter" is a worthwhile investment of your time? This session will cover both strategies and specifics to help you demonstrate to your boss, your VP, or your board the value of social media.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

CSU, Chico is in the middle of redesigning our home page. In our case, this process has been as much about defining who we are as a university and discovering the unique voice of our campus as it has been about creating designs and wireframes. It has been a messy and occasionally frustrating process. In this session, I'll provide an overview of what we've learned in our redesign process: things that have worked amazingly well, as well as those that were doomed from the start. But through the entire process has run a thread about how, by bringing all these voices together, we have begun to bridge communication gaps that had never before been breached on campus. About how, faced with this large undertaking involving units and personnel from all across campus, staff and administrators have had to begin to think outside their silos. About how a new voice of the university is emerging. And about how it could all still end in tears.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Whether an institution has the ability to undertake a complete Web site redesign or not, editing the content found within the site can increase the site’s usability as well as create a positive user experience. We will look at best practices regarding content usability and how to apply it. Content revision may not solve all usability issues of a site, but it may be a good place to start for those institutions that are unable to address all three areas of usability: content, information architecture, and design. During our session, volunteers can have pages within their existing sites assessed. As a group, we can apply the information presented to discuss possible edits to increase usability.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

The people directory on most college websites still works on the online phonebook model and hasn't changed much in ten years. Web 2.0 has given us folksonomies; it's time that we used them to better connect the students. This session will cover the Red Rover project, currently running on 15 college campuses. With Facebook Connect, OAuth, and Google Connect, students can attach their preferred social network to the school directory. This mashup creates a rich profile for increased searchability within the educational context. The combination of various online tools, including blogs, Twitter, and delicious, can create streams of student created content. Whole new worlds of live assessment open up when we allow the students to combine their preferred Web tools and networks with the school Web presence.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Back in the day, if you worked in a university public relations office, you spent a good deal of your time writing news releases about the great things your school was up to, and then distributing those releases - in envelopes, with stamps! - to reporters. So what happens now that the humble news release has broken out of its envelope to live a long and full life online? If you are struggling to find your feet in the world of Stumbleupon, Digg, Slashdot, and the blogosphere, this session will help, with real examples of successes - and cautionary tales.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

What we will explore in this session is how to, as Emeril would say, Kick it up a notch. We will talk about how to create a press release that will draw in users and address the changing needs of the end consumer and increasing ease of use for the media. It is important for us to adjust our message format and delivery to respond to the needs of today’s Web-savvy audience. In the presentation we will explore the use of images, video, tagging, RSS, social bookmarking, Technorati, and other tools to create a release that will be more engaging and useful to a broader range of users.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Sure, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for higher education websites, but how do you hit this moving target? We will take a look beyond META tags to see how Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has evolved. There's a great deal of information about SEO, but much of it is written for organizations with a fundamentally different mission than ours. So, we will place extra emphasis on the unique needs of higher education SEM. Since we all learn through cause and effect, we will take a look at how relatively simple site editing measures have changed Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Other points covered: "King Content" rules the SEO kingdom; organic vs. pay-per-click; keyword strategy and tools; what is a higher ed conversion; current weight of search engine ranking factors.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

WAVE is a free tool that can be used to help evaluate how accessible a page is for users with disabilities. Instead of creating a text-based report of accessibility errors or alerts, a WAVE report displays the original Web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility information within a page. WAVE has been available since 2000 and is currently used to evaluate nearly one million web pages each year. Recent updates to WAVE have made it more powerful in evaluating complex, dynamic Web content, including Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). This session will outline how to use WAVE as part of an accessibility methodology. This methodology allows thorough and accurate determination of the true accessibility of Web content.

• Podcast Transcript

Adobe AIR is a runtime environment for rich internet applications that can be deployed on the desktop. AIR applications run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and are a hybrid between Web-based applications that run in a Web browser, and traditional desktop applications. Developers create AIR applications using existing Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash or Flex. AIR then packages the application in such a way that allows it to run on the desktop. In this presentation, we will discuss: 1. the anatomy of a simple Adobe AIR application; 2. strengths and limitations of AIR; and 3. how AIR can be used with HTML and Ajax.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

In recent years, the Office of Communications and Marketing at IUPUI has won numerous awards for its electronic media, especially related to podcasting. Why? IUPUI's approach is different. With just one full-time staffer, the department produces over 100 videos each year, distributed via the Web, podcasts, sites such as Youtube and Facebook, digital signage, campus cable, and traditional broadcast. This high-volume approach keeps audiences engaged with fresh content and allows the department to simply tell more stories. Discover IUPUI's model for video communication, including workflow, staffing, and funding, and how it all fits with other communications.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

As more users rely on the custom Web applications built at our institutions, testing and development strategies need to evolve to professionalize the software development to ensure the robustness of the applications. Test-driven development is a software design philosophy that emphasizes writing tests and implementing software to meet those tests. The foundation of this development philosophy surrounds writing tests for the fundamental pieces of the application, before the code for the application is written. This ensures that all features are accounted for before hand, and can lead to better understanding of the client & software requirements. This presentation will introduce the concepts of test-driven development, inform the audience of the benefits and drawbacks of this approach, and emphasize how testing can create more robust applications. Specifically, the talk will focus on unit testing for the underlying code, as well as functional browser-based testing for Web applications. I will introduce unit testing frameworks for major Web languages, as well as automating functional browser-based testing using Selenium.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

This is a live demonstration of WordPress installation and setup. The first half will cover the basics of installing the software, adding users, and installing themes and plugins. The second half will dig into the various user roles and how themes work, with an eye to using WordPress as a CMS rather than a simple blog.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Years before Web 2.0, four visionary men proclaimed that "a powerful global conversation has begun." "The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual" stated that technology-enabled conversations among and between markets and workers would quash command-and-control hierarchy, mass market advertising and uninspiring corporate rhetoric. On the Internet, people in markets and communities could share knowledge and stories directly with each other – in authentic human voices – and by doing so, would get smarter faster than companies. In higher education, our markets and communities are among the most connected and comfortable with the Web 2.0 world. In this presentation attendees will discuss strategies, successes, risks, tools and steps towards changing organizational culture and adopting new communications models that will allow us to engage effectively with our markets.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Across colleges and large universities everywhere, budgets are tightening and expectations are soaring to meet the demand of Generation Y and above. It's time to get our heads out of the clouds and start taming the cloud - the Web 2.0 cloud. With the recent advent of Google App Engine, Adobe AIR, and Amazon's S3, Web applications are going portable, and so is the data. No longer shackled to home-brew code and developers, users are flocking to the Web for applications, information, and communication. This presentation will demonstrate illustrate the tools and resources available to help university developers to tap into the 'cloud' - from file storage, office productivity, online conferences, to social network integration. Use the Flickr API to integrate with news release engine or slideshows on your site, the YouTube API to create a "youUniversity" channel on your site, or the Twitter API to start conversation.

• Podcast Transcript

This presentation explores the multi-user virtual environment Second Life and the power of avatars as vehicles of personal expression and learning community identity. We will review a general overview of Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association's Second Life efforts - the necessary steps to generate and support a multi-institution pilot in Second Life. Questions presented include: What is Second Life? What is embodiment, and how do we embody through avatars? How does avatar expression support community? What do we know about community and best practices for education at a distance? How do we generate and support community at a distance through Second Life?

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

By using a CMS, Princeton has increased the number of sites for which the IT organization provides operational support from a few to almost 200. This presentation will discuss some of the reasons we believe we have been so succesful, the challenges we are still facing to provide service approaching the mythical "100% uptime", and how this success plays into our planning for a major disaster scenario.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

This presentation is a case study of Ithaca College Human Resources' move from static pages to a home-grown content management system to a commercial CMS.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

In today’s world, emergencies can happen because of things like natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina), school shootings (Virginia Tech and NIU), or even terrorist attacks (9/11). Colleges and universities has spent hundreds of hours writing plans and going through exercises to prepare for these types of events, but do those plans include using the website for crisis communication? This session will show you how easy it is to leverage the power of free Web 2.0 technologies to create an emergency website that can been used even when you have no power or Internet access. Learn how the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, using free Blogger and Jott accounts, has set up the site emergency.uwgb.edu, and how this site fits into the campus crisis communication plan.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC) in Springfield, Missouri, enhances its community relations, recruiting and marketing efforts with routine integration of videos on the college’s website. The initiative began in August 2006 by frequently showcasing college events, programs, departments and employees. Current videos spotlight the institution’s fitness center, the first-ever theatre production and the announcement of a new education center for the region. In addition, a video newsletter is produced every month, and the president of the college also addresses the community by recording a video to discuss new endeavors and news of interest. The webcasting effort utilizes many departments to ensure its success. The entire scope of the program will be discussed: the initial monetary and staffing commitments, as well as the production scheduling and time budgeting. Also, the presentation will elaborate on the positive impact on the institution, from community relations, internal and external communication, recruiting, marketing, and enhancing the college’s image. Several colleges and universities produce videos and post videos on their institution’s websites. OTC’s webcasting takes the process to another level, by offering a visual media that is fresh, updated, and dynamic.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

In this followup session to HTTP 101, we look at the HTTP protocol as a transport for manipulating resources. We introduce the concept of RESTful Web service interfaces, and discuss how HTTP requests and responses can elegantly implement such interfaces. In this context, we discuss more advanced topics such as conditional, partial (byte-range) and non-idempotent requests, as well as touch on cache control mechanisms.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Texas State University is a mid–sized public university serving 28,132 students. In 2003 it embarked on a project to implement a university-wide Web content management system. After three years the project was in shambles; only a dozen websites were using the system, potential customers were avoiding the CMS, the development team was highly stressed and the original project manager was off to greener pastures. Fast forward 18 months... Within six months a new CMS was in place and at the end of its first year of operation 120 university websites were live in the system and over 500 users had been trained. Customer satisfaction was very high and 95.9% of users surveyed said they would recommend the system to others. The team was less stressed (it’s still work, right?) and were very happy with a product that what was faster, easier to program, easier to teach, more reliable and much less expensive. We’ll present what went wrong and what went right so you can learn from our missteps and good ideas.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Although humanity has used colors in an intensive way for only the last 100 years, colors are very important in our lives because they define actions and behaviors. Colors instigate physical and psychological reactions. They attract, warn, excite, calm, and convey many feelings. The way we use colors in a website contributes greatly to the way the users react and feel. The presentation will explore color psychodynamic effects and the use of colors on the Web through several real-case examples. 3-D color effects on the Web will also be discussed.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

We've all gotten them: a silly image with some electronic music wishing us a happy birthday or reminding us to "hang in there." E-Cards are a quick and popular way to let a friend know that you're thinking of them...and they can be a powerful tool to let prospective students know the same thing. In the past year, Southeast Missouri State University has developed institutional e-cards for the general public and targeted cards for its admissions counselors. These cards provide a visually attractive way for counselors to introduce themselves to prospective students and are a great way to "break the ice," as well as reinforce a positive brand image for the university. We will demonstrate how e-cards can be created with inexpensive and easy-to-use software, and be created with simple photo images or complicated embedded Flash clips.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

We will discuss and show the various Web services that Xavier University has created to increase productivity and reduce the stress within the Web office. Some tools include: A smart 404-error page that uses a single XML file to redirect the user and an anonymous 'report this broken link' button. The broken link reports are processed using a tool that allows the Web services team to manage broken link reports, and returns quantifiable statistics. A Web standards and style guide for Xavier University’s content management system. CSS styles for font sizes, colors, tables, and feature boxes are defined on a demo page for campus web updaters to reference. Web services request form for handling incoming Web design/development requests.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

When used properly, Web site interactivity can help you present information effectively and bolster your institution’s reputation as a technology leader. However, many higher education Web developers are too understaffed and overworked to devote large amounts of time to learning or implementing new technologies. The JQuery JavaScript library is an easy way for you to add functionality to your site. This presentation will show you how to begin using the JQuery library on your own website. Topics and examples will include: * an introduction to JQuery * selecting HTML elements (traversing the DOM) * creating a menu using the accordion plugin * inserting remote content with AJAX * where to find more information. Basic familiarity with HTML and CSS will be assumed. JavaScript programming experience is not necessary.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

St. Louis Community College deployed a new website that integrates all campus locations and provides a user-centric experience targeting many types of visitors and their individual needs. We identified user experiences, new content, navigation, website organization, image and branding, and the look and feel required to successfully provide a sense of uniqueness and connection. Learn about committees and personnel, goals, decisions, branding, best practices and the Web content management system and processes the college deployed. Learn about the things that we could have done better to make for a more successful transition.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

The heart of every university is its students, and the nature of recruiting these students has changed significantly in recent years as more students shift their focus from print communications to the Web. There are many opportunities for Web professionals to be involved in enrollment area, where key questions need to be addressed: What are current admission practices, and what can Web professionals do to help? This presentation will tie the processes and needs of admission offices to the work of Web professionals, sharing the approaches of Xavier's Web services team to provide support to the university's enrollment goals.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

Web development used to be simple: all you needed to know to develop a website were a handful of HTML tags and how they appeared in a couple of browsers. Today nothing is certain: the Web is being accessed on devices that didn’t exist a few years ago, and when you factor in JavaScript, platform incompatibilities, and the need to accommodate assistive technologies,it’s enough to make ever the best Web developer’s head spin. This session will look at how you can ensure that websites and applications can be used by the broadest segment of users possible. We’ll look at: problems common to many “Web 2.0” websites, progressive enhancement techniques that add advanced features, and emerging standards, such as WAI-ARIA, aimed at improving the rich web application experience for users of assistive technology. Experience with JavaScript and server-side programming concepts are recommended.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

In this session, we will explore Web accessibility in higher education from three perspectives. We will discuss results from a recent Web accessibility survey, conducted by Access Technology Higher Education Network (ATHEN). The survey examines colleges and universities' policies and practices related to web accessibility. We will share current practices at the University of Washington, where improving Web accessibility has become a campus-wide cooperative effort. We will explore strategies for influencing the accessibility of vendors' Web-based products.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

As Seton Hall prepares to launch the Luminis portal on campus, there is much to consider and do. We find ourselves working on the entire spectrum of the launch - from justifying why we need another portal since we already have a well-oiled Blackboard portal in place, to mastering the technical underpinnings of Luminis, to preparing content for the portal in a wholly revolutionary manner all the way to getting word on the new portal out on campus. In addition, the campus also embarks on a shift in strategy for email and collaboration platforms as well as identity management solutions and we will discuss how the portal pilot launch sets the stage for these oncoming pilots.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

Corporate, government, and higher education institutions now create their own style guides to maintain their institutional identity or brand. These guides are typically a compendium of preferred grammatical usage regarding punctuation and spelling. However, there is little by way of “best practice” for creating a style guide for a website. How is a Web style guide created, implemented, and maintained? Do rules and conventions for creating a style guide for print documents still apply? This poster session charts the principles, processes, and prototypes one needs in order to create a hybrid Web style guide for an academic institution. The poster covers usability and accessibility principles, successful work flow processes, and prototypes based on exemplary Web style guides.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

Authenticity: it's the new buzzword in marketing, and it's especially critical when attempting to recruit today's hype-averse students. The millennial generation wants to know the real you -- blemishes and all. That means being less of a control freak, learning to find and tell good stories, being comfortable with student-generated content, using tools like blogs and social networks more effectively, identifying the intangibles that differentiate you from your competitors, and other practices that help students decide if your school is truly the right fit for them. This session will show you how to add authenticity to everything you communicate online.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

Like it or not, social networking technologies have changed the Web game forever. MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, blogs and other communication and social sharing systems have literally taken over the Web activities of your student audience. How does your current website measure up to their expectations? Your Web strategy, and your website, must evolve with the times or your institution’s marketing, branding and recruiting capability—and even your own job—may become marginalized. This is your wake-up call; it’s time to embrace the change! Come learn about some new, creative and cost-effective tools and solutions that can be quickly and easily implemented—and that will put you and your higher education website into the competitive driver's seat.

• Podcast Transcript

Cross-site scripting (also referred to as XSS) is currently the number one form of Web attack. From Google to the websites of Obama and Clinton, it seems that no one is immune to attack. In this presentation we'll explore what cross-site scripting is and how an attack occurs, as well as demonstrate a live exploit. We'll then discuss why cross-site scripting can be damaging for a website, and we'll look at methods one can use to prevent a cross-site scripting attack.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

Solid analytics when interpreted correctly provide you with true information about site visitors and how they use your site. Analytics can be used for trend analysis, benchmark comparison, setting the direction for future development, and justifying spending on certain areas. Analytical data, when presented correctly, is something that administrators and decision makers can grasp and act on instead of hunches and speculation. Understanding what data is valuable and how to present it in a nontechnical manor can be a challenge, but it's worth the effort.

We will look at some Web traffic rankings sites (Alexa, Compete, Quantcast), show how easy it is to install Google Analytics on a site, discuss some advanced filters to better parse and understand the data, and look at some actual Google Analytic reports and interpret the data explaining what terms like bounce rate, average time on site, and unique visitors actually mean.

• View the Presentation Online
• Podcast Transcript

Leading a campus Web redesign is as much about bringing people to the table as it is about the technology needed for the website. Using the Web redesign at William & Mary as a model, we will present strategies for achieving buy-in and executing exceptional internal communication for university-wide projects.

The session will be especially relevant for those in leadership roles for Web redesign, including campus administrators, IT directors, Web project managers, and Web, communications and marketing professionals. Those leading campus-wide initiatives will also benefit from the strategies for communication, collaboration and consensus.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

In selecting a Web Content Management System (WCMS), a common mistake is to limit the selection process to sitting through vendor demos and building checklists of features. But vendor demos and checklists tell you little about how the WCMS actually works, how well the features are implemented, and how well the product works with your existing Web content processes.

At CSU Chico, we learned from our mistakes and experiences with our first WCMS and developed a process that allowed us to select a WCMS that better meets our needs and works with our existing content processes rather than against them. The keys to this process include developing realistic expectations of what a WCMS will and won't do, involving the right people in the selection process, identifying the real issues behind your desire for a WCMS, understanding your existing content processes, and developing a product review process that works for you.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript

The age of video on the Web is here! Both content creators and users have high expectations and you may become caught in the middle. Learn how to create an accessible media interface that will allow your institution to deliver high quality Flash video with closed captioning, convey a consistent design across your Web presence, and remain easy to maintain even after your "small" project is unexpectedly scaled to include hundreds of videos.

First, we will take a look at the options for compressing the video content into the Flash FLV format. Next, we will create captions using the Media Access Generator (MAGpie) provided by the National Center for Accessible Media. This free application is easy to learn and exports captions into the W3C supported dfxp.xml timed-text authoring format. With the separate components ready, it is time to dive into Flash and start laying out a video player. I will show you that it is possible to create an interface customized to the look and feel of your institution. We will also explore the code needed to dynamically insert the individual video and caption files.

• Download the Presentation
• Podcast Transcript