Mark Greenfield

The Cluetrain Manifesto remains one of my favorite books. Written in 1999, I still consider the message very timely. Doc Searls recently spoke at a conference that discussed the relevance of Cluretrain as it approaches 10 years.

Here are his presentation slides,

I recommend anyone interested in Cluetrain watch the video. The 38 minutes is time well spent. Searls talk provides great insight into the history of the book. He believes that advertising as we know it will die. The Cluetrain was a rant against BS, and he is concerned that this basic advertising paradigm continues today. His takes on Facebook (starting at the 22 minute mark) is that now BS gets personal. On Facebook, you’re not just a face, you’re a target. It’s still about selling eyeballs to advertisers, and ultimately this model will fail.

I came across this great video on Seth Godin’s blog. To get the full effect, take a look at the video before reading the remainder of this post. The video lasts 1:09.

One of my favorite ideas from the book Don’t Make me Think is tunnel vision. From Chapter Two, the first Fact of Life is that we don’t read web pages, we scan them. We are in a hurry. Web users are like sharks who need to keep moving or they will die. We don’t look at an entire web page, we focus on the task at hand or our personal interests. Everything else is white noise. For those of you who haven’t read the book, here is a link to Don’t Make Me Think - Chapter Two, including an illustration of what designers build and what users see.

So think twice about all the extra bells and whistles you add to your designs. IMHO, the simpler the better.

It took longer than expected, but I have successfully moved this site to a new web hosting company. It looks like the transfer was relatively smooth. A couple of comments may have been lost during the transition, and there are special character issues on a few posts that I will correct over the next couple of days. If you see anything else amiss, please let me know.

I will be back posting on a regular basis tomorrow. Again, I thank you for your patience.

As regular readers of this site know, for the past two months I have been experiencing issues with my domain names. This weekend I will be trying to resolve these issues once and for all. I am hoping there are no problems, but this site may be down intermittently over the next 72 hours.

I thank you in advance for you patience.

See you on the other side …

Yesterday marked a major milestone for the uwebd social network when we reached 500 members. Activity on the site continues to grow. I set up Google analytics back in late December and here are some statistics as we approach 3 months of activity:

• 2,238 unique visitors
• 8,300 visits
• 43,581 page views
• visits from 63 countries

For me, the site has been very beneficial. I have received excellent feedback on a number of questions and ideas. More importantly, I’ve met many new people involved with higher ed web development and these relationships will prove valuable down the road.

I look forward to the continued growth and evolution of this site. From my travels, I know first hand the collective intelligence of the higher ed web community. I’m excited about the possibilities of this site which has the potential to allow higher ed web professionals to connect and collaborate in new and exciting ways. I encourage everyone involved with higher ed websites to not only join, but to participate as well. Again, the site is located at cuwebd.ning.com.

This June I will be giving several presentations at a conference hosted by Innovative Educators called Increasing Enrollment and Retention via Technology: Blending High Tech and High Touch. Here is the conference overview:

Using technology is essential in attracting students to your institution and creating an atmosphere that cultivates success. Some feel that when incorporating technology you lose the personal touch that makes institutions memorable. However, high tech and high touch do not have to be mutually exclusive. Knowing how to use technology to target the individual needs of students is the key to successful implementation.

As students move to the web for information and more and more services are provided online, combining high tech and high touch becomes imperative. One of my main messages at the conference will be the value of Web 2.0 tools in achieving this goal. For me, Web 2.0 is the social web. Web 2.0 is about connecting people. It’s about conversation. It’s about building and sustaining relationships.

I’m really looking forward to this conference. There are many great speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds and the program covers many interesting topics. Hopefully I will see you there.

I’ve had several discussions this week about the unique challenges of managing a college or university web site. Sometimes it is easy to get totally consumed with campus politics. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Kissinger “University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small”. I’ve made this quote into a poster which I pull out and put on my wall when I need a friendly reminder to rise above the politics.

So my advise is to understand the culture of higher education. Universities are devolved organizations, with individual schools and departments operating with a great deal of autonomy. Don’t waste energy fighting this culture, but learn how to work within it.

The 2008 Horizon report was recently released and as always contains valuable information on the latest technology trends impacting college campuses. The Horizon Report is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative and identifies emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning. As in previous years, the report identifies six emerging technologies that will likely enter the mainstream within three adoption horizons:

One Year or Less

• Grassroots Video
• Collaborative Webs

Two to Three Years

• Mobile Broadband
• Data Mashups

Four to Five Years

• Collective Intelligence
• Social Operating Systems

Among the critical challenges outlined in the report, one really struck a chord with me:

“It is critical that the academic community as a whole embrace the potential of technologies and practices like those described in this report. Experimentation must be encouraged and supported by policy.” (emphasis mine).

And finally, the report lists seven metatrends that extend out beyond the five year horizon:

1. Evolving approaches to communication between man and machine
2. The collective sharing and generation of knowledge
3. Computing in three dimensions
4. Connecting people via the network
5. Games as pedagogical platforms
6. The shifting of content production to users
7. The evolution of a ubiquitous platform

I was happy to see that this report maps well to my ideas about the top web trends. And be sure to check out the report’s extensive use of del.icio.us tags for additional information.