Mark Greenfield

The uwebd social site hit a major milestone yesterday with the addition of the 1000th member. As of this morning, there are 1005 members,  47 groups, 27 videos, and 379 discussions in the main forum.  Over the past month, we’ve had 5,718 visits, 25,022 page views, and visits from 104 countries.

I would like to extend my thanks to all the members, especially those whom have taken the time to contribute. 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. You can visit my page on the site at cuwebd.ning.com/profile/Mark.

I have had discussions with many people about how to improve the site.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be starting discussion at the site on how best to move forward.  I look forward to the continued growth of this site and hope it becomes a valuable resource for the higher ed web community.

The 2008 Campus Technology Conference is being held in Boston from July 28-31. Here is a description from the conference website:

Campus Technology 2008 welcomes attendees to its 15th annual summer conference, where leading innovators and experts in technology for higher education guide faculty, instructional designers, eLearning program managers, information technologists, and campus administrators into the new realm of teaching and learning in a Web 2.0 world.

This year’s conference offers a blueprint for adapting to the new demands of Web 2.0 teaching and learning, both in and out of the classroom, and explores how educators are coping with the ever-increasing demands on their resources, skills and time. You’ll come away armed with tricks, tips and techniques to survive and thrive in the “Next Gen” educational environment.

This is the one conference that I really wanted to attend but had previous commitments.  The good news is that Jay Collier will be providing coverage of the conference through Twitter and a conference coverage wiki (thanks Jay).

I will be following the proceedings and encourage you to do so as well.

Random thoughts from my first trip to the eduWeb conference:

• First, I’d like to thank Shelley Wetzel for the invitation to speak at the conference. Kudos to Shelley and her staff for the time and effort it takes to run the conference.
• For those of you interested, Matt Herzberger has done an amazing job of collecting all of the web resources related to the conference. See All of eduWeb 2008. (Thanks Matt, and sorry you couldn’t make it this year.)
• As I have said before, I have recently seen the light regarding Twitter. This was the first conference I’ve attended that provided a real-time commentary on the proceedings via Twitter. It takes the idea of live-blogging to a whole new level. The level of activity was so high that #eduweb2008 showed up as a trending topic on search.twitter.com Many people who couldn’t attend said that following the conference on Twitter and watching the ustream channel was almost as good as being there.
• My keynote speech generated considerable buzz both online and offline with the segment on the future of e-mail getting the most attention. For the record, I don’t believe e-mail is dead. I do believe that e-mail is broken. I’ll be writing about this more in the coming weeks. My goal is to think strategically about how e-mail fits into the myriad of communication channels now at our disposal.
• The “Join the Conversation” workshop on social media I taught with Brad Ward was well received. I enjoy teaching workshops because the additional time allows me to go into greater detail. I look forward to working with Brad on future endeavors. In fact, we’ll be heading to a conference out west together in a couple of weeks.
• I had numerous conversations with several people from the United Kingdom. It was great to get their perspective on the web and interesting to see the differences in how social media usage differs across the Atlantic.
• I found Karine Joly’s closing keynote to be a wonderful conclusion to the conference. In addition to the references to Marshall Mcluhan, I particularly liked her idea about “Build it (with them), and they will come”.  Well done Karine!
• Much of the talk of the conference was around social media. I am a big fan of social media, but I am starting to get concerned that too much attention is going to the social web and some of the basic building blocks of good, effective web design and development are being ignored. Usability, accessibility, information architecture, web standards, etc. still matter. Let’s not lose site of that.
• Finally, the main thing on my mind as I drove home was that the higher education web profession has a bright future. I had the chance to meet and interact with many of the new faces in our profession and was thoroughly impressed. These young guns bring passion, excitement, optimism and talent that will help move college web sites forward.

The eduWEB Conference is now only a couple of days away.  Here is some additional information on social media use at the conference:

• Everyone should use the tag “eduweb2008″ on all social sites (del.icio.us, flickr, youtube, blogs, etc.).
• You can follow the action on Twitter
• Brad Ward has created a Flickr Group for the conference. (Thanks Brad!)
• Brad and I will be broadcasting a small segment of our workshop on a ustream channel

See you in Atlantic City.

I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming eduWEB conference in Atlantic City.  I’m in the process of finishing the keynote speech.  There have been numerous new tools emerging recently so I’ve completely revamped the speech since the last time a gave it just a couple of weeks ago.  One of the themes I’ll discuss is the relevancy of .edu websites as the web continues to evolve.  For those of you who didn’t see this on bloghighed, here is a 3:00 video clip on the subject:

In addition, Brad Ward and I will be teaching a preconference workshop called Join the Conversation: Social Media in Higher Education where we will be providing an in depth look at how higher educational institutions can leverage the full power and potential of social media.

And one final reminder, the bloghighed meetup on Monday, July 21 at the Poolside Cafe, located on the 5th floor.  See you in Atlantic City.

eduWeb is now less than a week away.  Brad Ward and I are teaching a workshop called Join the Conversation: Social Media in Higher Education where we will be providing an in depth look at how higher educational institutions can leverage the full power and potential of social media.

We are using a wiki to compile a list of colleges and universities using social media and we  would like your help creating this list.  Please visit http://higheredsocialmedia2.pbwiki.com/ .  The invite key is located at the top of the page.

Thanks in advance for your help.  I hope to see many of you at the workshop.