No one can say that the University of Florida isn’t attempting to maximize every ad penny spent. But how they’re doing it is what’s surprising. (Here is a correction provided from UF via email shortly after publishing this post. The NCAA and SEC provide the ad spots for free, as UF is a non-profit public university. But the idea stands: they’re maximizing every minute of airtime.) They’ve launched the seed for a social-media based support system to connect viewers of TV ad spots running during UF games with each other, with key information about the UF experience and academics, and more. They’re enlisting students, alumni, parents — yea, the entire Gator Nation — to contribute photos and works of video and to network with each other online through the experience of sharing and mashing media.

According to Joe Hice, Associate Vice President, Marketing & Public Relations, goGatorNation.com will be supported by groups on Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube. They’ll run contests, and winners’ videos will be displayed on the basketball arena’s Jumbotron.

“We talked about including a discussion board on the site, but will instead create a Facebook group devoted to goGatorNation.com. Most of our students are Facebook aficionados and we believe this is a better place for discussion. We also expect groups to pop up on Flickr and within YouTube as well,” he said.

“I guess you could say we’re doing everything we can to create a social networking site for everyone who is a member of The Gator Nation and for those who are curious about what we’re up to here in Gainesville.”

What’s going to happen to the brand, you say? I almost cringe when I hear that term. But it sounds to me like UF realizes their people are the brand — if “brand” is even a useful concept any more. In a 1000-word email to me explaining the idea, Joe managed to do it without using the word “brand” even once.

“This is a very different approach than just about any other college is taking,” he said. “Most feature the classic “beaker shot” or students in the classroom. Not us. We have happy members of The Gator Nation sharing good times and encouraging each other to go out there and make the world a better place.”

Among feeds added recently to the College and University Feed Directory is one from Babson College’s New Blog. It’s a FeedBurner feed. Something I noticed is that they have a a photo or two with each entry - very cool. Unfortunately the photos don’t come through to my feed reader. Bummer! (I suspect it would come through if they fully qualified the link in the IMG tag instead of using a relative link - in my RSS reader the relativity is lost.) In the first image below is what an item ends up looking like in my reader (Sage for Firefox) - with the image showing as undefined. Below that is an image of what an item looks like when when an image is present in a feed, through in the Sage reader for Firefox. (Looks like Dimitri has some new hardware!)

So the question is: Do you include images in your RSS feeds? Why or why not?

On Thursday, Rob Pongsajapan and I will be leading a panel at the SNCR fall event in Boston. The panel will feature representatives from three institutions who’ve implemented successful blogging programs at their institutions, and who we’ve interviewed in-depth within the last few months. Here are the topics and questions we’ve asked the panelists to be prepared to address. The emphasis of the study is on generating best practice recommendations for the higher ed community, so the questions here will be oriented towards perceived outcomes for selected approaches. The full questionnaire we’ve been using in the study is much lengthier, but we’re limited here to 60 minutes and had to make choices. I’m expecting that one of us will be blogging the session.

Control

How do you strike the balance between providing a “true representation” and maintaining control of the blog? Is this an issue? What are your thoughts on official versus unofficial blogging?

Interaction
How would you characterize the level of interaction on the blog? What steps have you taken to increase interaction?

Platform

Do you use open source, paid, or home grown blogging software? Why did you select your particular type of blogging software?

Institutional presence/authority

Does the institution have a presence on the blog? How do you balance authority with authenticity?

Management, measurement, and evaluation

How can you tell whether blogging is right for your institution? Which tools/methods do you use to assess your blogging efforts? Quantitative/qualitative feedback?

The Orlando Academic Impressions conference on interactive technologies turned out to be just the ticket to get revved up again about new media. I wish I’d had the opportunity to stay through the finish, but this morning’s case study workshop turned out to be a total blast. (And instead I’m sitting in the Orlando airport on a three-hour delay to Philly.) Many thanks to all of you for sharing your ideas and concerns about new media at your institutions. It was great meeting and spending four hours with you all. Heck, eight hours wouldn’t have been enough. I have a feeling that we’ll see some new blogs launch after this week. To quote Matthew Winkel, Bring it on!

Takeaways -

There are still lots of concerns about needing new staff to implement some of these initiatives, despite the fact that, for example, none of people in our admissions blogging study have had to add staff to pull off some great blogs. Mind you, some are compensating students, but it usually doesn’t amount to more than $500 per student per semester, or the equivalent. And about half aren’t compensating students at all.

Penn State and University of Florida have big time new media initiatives going - the size and shape of which you have to behold to appreciate. RSS, student video upload, audio and video podcast. And the pace at which new content publishes is staggering. Penn State’s news office, for example, is second in output in Pennsylvania only to the Philly Inuirer, and I bet it won’t be long before they’re #1. No wonder they have great Google juice — the Google news crawlers must love them.

Matthew Winkel says your institution or organization needs to be pumping out at least 100 RSS feeds. I’m not sure how he arrived at that number, but it seems like the right place to start. A year ago, there would have been gasps all around the room. Today, there were nods of agreement. Three or four people raised their hands indicating their institution or organization has at least 100 feeds. I was one of them.

Paul Baker reminds us of the importance of remembering basic communication principles as we go about implementing new media. He’s right on the money. Too often we get caught chasing the shiny objects of new media and forget about business planning, audiences, stakeholders, etc. I thought today’s session showed a nice balance.

There’s still the impression that RSS is a bit obscure. I’ve been using it so long, I tend to forget that feeling. I think it was Steve Rubel who recently expressed disappointment about the state of RSS aggregators and ease of use, compared to advances in some other areas. I think I have to agree that it often takes some explaining. That said, I should report that we’re seeing really nice usage against the feeds of college and graduate school information available on Petersons.com, and use seems to be on the rise - this with zero promotion other than displaying icons where feeds are available.

All in all, a great event. I’m back to the office for a few days, then off to Boston for the SNCR gig for the panel on admissions blogging best practices.

10/27 UPDATE: Check out the summaries and thoughts from session faculty Paul Baker and Charlie Melichar.

This is a note for those attending the case study series on new media as part of the Academic Impressions event taking place in Orlando on Thursday morning, but the rest of you are free to read, too.

Presenting cases that morning are Matthew Winkel (RSS), Paul Baker (Blogging), and Joe Hice (Podcasting). I’ve been asked to facilitate. There’s some time budgeted to introduce the case studies and get people revved up. It’s a relatively small group (20 or so), and so I’ve decided to put you to work, so to speak. Each of you, I’ll venture to say, is there because you’re considering implementing some kind of new media program at your own institution, or tweaking an existing one. (I hope I’m not far off!)

So here’s the idea. I’m going to ask each of you to write and present your own mini case summaries, but in doing so you’re going to have to project yourself to October in the year 2007, after you’ve successfully implemented the new media initiative you’re imagining. It’s not going to be an easy thing, but there’s going to be help from the presenters, and help from fellow colleagues in attendance. It seems like a good way to get starting thinking about your own context and plans as they relate to the cases being presented, and also a good way to help the presenters learn about what you’re all up to. Of course, we will declare everything off the record.

The spirit of new media begs us to create our own futures. Do you agree?

See you there!

So let’s say your VP of executive education drops by your desk and tells you she’s got $600k to drop and wants to spend it to set the program apart in a very technologically hip yet practical way. Well, here’s a suggestion for her: high definition video conferencing or “telepresence” as Cisco is calling it. Now the London executives enrolled in the program can easily join the Palo Alto executives in a virtual-immersive executive education experience without the expense and inconvenience of traveling across the pond.

What are the specs? Glad she asked. Three 65″ plasmas, 1080p, compressed using H.264 to 3-3.5 Megabits/second, all-IP based, and all controlled through a telephone. It’s essentially a turn-key package you can set up in virtually any room. The $600k will cover a triple-plasma setup in London and a triple-plasma setup in Palo Alto. Supports smart boards? Check. Supports document sharing? Check. Recording and multi-casting are coming soon.

Read more about it and grab the video press conference/demo from Robert Scoble’s blog.

I’m looking forward to the inaugural Society for New Communications Research Research Symposium on Nov. 1-2 in Boston. As a fellow with the society, I’ve been working to help develop practice recommendations surrounding corporate and institutional blogging.

We’ve assembled a panel from Higher Education for this cross-industry event in November. Nancy Prater (Ball State), Glenna Ryan (RPI), and Daniel Fredman (University of Vermont), each of whom runs a successful admissions blogging effort, will be there to share what they’ve learned. Rob Pongsajapan and I will be moderating and sharing some of what we’ve learned in our interviews with these three and others in the last few months.

I’m also looking forward to the awards celebration, where SNCR will recognize excellence in new media and communications efforts in a variety of sectors including Higher Education.

Hope to see you there.

Great post from Karine about how your university can prepare to handle crises connected video and video sharing sites like YouTube. We both got the same email from one of our readers that prompted her post, but Karine managed to turn it into an artful, actionable recommendation.