life|organized

Mind if I stream you?

The fraternity of bloggers is here. They are the young, well dressed, fresh outta college, with business marketing degrees, or whatever working in admissions, this is what they do. Fluent in social media taking social networking to a new level. Using ustream to stream the presentations to the web for free, and broadcasting the url’s via twitter. It’s a machine, the twitter storm, creating a buzz that moves faster than anything before. Push ideas, thoughts, and presentation reviews directly to the phones, computers, rss feeds, websites with minimal effort. The instant gratification of twitter is where it’s most powerful.

Email is dead. You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it six times already today. Next: business cards don’t exist. We carry them around as a formality, In case we meet someone over 35. It took me seconds to realize I wouldn’t be handing out the business cards I ordered for this conference, but would be networking and making contacts via Twitter. Yeah, behold the power of twitter. So one of the first things I did was redesign my twitter page (http://twitter.com/nshontz).

PowerPoints here don’t have have phone numbers or websites, some don’t even have email addresses. But they all have their twitter account. The keynote speaker says “if you want to keep up on my reading list just follow my twitter.” I’ve been here for 2 days, and I’ve been followed on twitter 15 times and handed out 1 business card.

I’m sitting in Head in the Cloud. About using “the cloud” in higher ed to maximize your cost/exposure ratio by using the infrastructures that exist. Using the Amazon API, Using the Elastic Computing Cloud. Using Amazon you can get 8 processors 16Gb of ram for $0.80 an hour and manage it all from your location by using *nix commands.

Using S3 to store and serve videos, they were able to give users an better experience without worry of bandwidth issues, and they did some IP address filtering so folks on campus pulled the video from the local copy and off campus users got the video from Amazon, faster smoother, and with no change in the user interface.

Another use of the cloud they discuss is the ability to manage data archives. A comparison of backup systems: to buy a Dell system with 9Tb of space stored in a storage array, it would cost 14,000, for the same space in the cloud using S3 it costs $392 a month. Using S3 you loose the headaches of server management, uptime, admin support. The cost breakdown comes down to using S3 for 3 years is about the same as buying the same storage in a Dell Server. But you will save even more by not having to provide bandwidth to the server, not having to pay someone to administer, and manage a server with that kind of responsibility.

A personal solution they mention is Mozy. I think i’ll give it a try.

Life’s a ride, Enjoy the trip

The presentation is over. Time to relax and enjoy the ride. The topic table I lead was really just that, a place to discuss a topic. I gave a quick introduction of myself and The University of Montana’s journey into open source. We talked about our similar experiences, getting tied into large products and paying support, and running into road blocks due to lack of flexibility and ability to customize and tweak the different systems we work on.

One of the things that I noticed was that several of the people there didn’t really care if these tools were Open Source, but the fact that they were free and easy for non-techy folks to set up, try out and use. And they’re free. The point no one can get over. It’s free. The red tape disappears. The bureaucracy is bypassed. The pain, is mostly, averted. Really trying out 3 or 4 products, full installations, is an option and gives ownership and power to the people who have to manage them.

Sitting in Branding is not just for cows, (by Ms. Alka Joshi, Director, Marketing and Community Relations, and Shashi Naidu, Web Technician, Evergreen Valley College) given by a marketing director of a community college surrounded by something like 8 other institutions that offer courses in California. They really played up their diversity and the feeling student had of being embraced by the college. Their style guide features colored dots to signify the diversity, a photo collage, and their tagline: We’re proud of you. Their ad campaign focused on the stories of several individuals. This is something the University of Montana admissions office is doing, and the new UM homepage will also be able to do. Really highlighting the individuals, and their goals and achievements.

Budgeting:
Using Open Source tools frees up money that can be spent on marketing exposure.

Points:

  • something she hear from a faculty member: We’re an academic institution, what does branding do for us, we’re above that.
  • Grandmother Research works. She worked for a research firm and was amazed how no matter what the results were, they could always be spun into a favorable statistic. Be skeptical.
  • Web function is a Marketing Function

The Trump Marina Greets with open arms

So I’m here. I made it. W00t.

with only one minor bus mishap i have successfully ended my journey to eduWeb. Now begins the real journey. My initial impression of the Trump Marina hotel was, wow: not bad… a nice room on the 25 floor, with a great view. It all goes a little down hill from there. It started when I tried to set up the laptop in the room. No desk, no biggie I clear off the coffee table and get my stuff set up. Wireless is apparently available in room only for $12.95 a day. So I’m here for 4 days, thats as much as I pay for a month of internet at home. Unimpressed. There must be a mistake, a web conference with no web? Surely there are arrangements made. No I’m assured that I can simply use a credit card to get online, or if I prefer I can head to the business center. Now we’re getting somewhere! The front desk gives me the access code. They are the first three digits of my cell number, that’s handy. Then “…if you’d like you use the computer you will need to enter your credit card number…” a business center, with a computer I have to pay for. Great.

So bored out of my Skull I start wandering. At first I assume Atlantic City is gonna be like Vegas, lots to see places to walk and people to watch. No, the marina section of the AC is way away from all that. I can see two other monster casino’s from my hotel room but a raging interstate, nearly overflowing it’s banks makes me think twice about that venture. Meandering around the hotel I realize why Donald Trump is rich. There is Nothing to do here but gamble, no stores to shop in, no place to walk, just gamble.

There are a handful of restaurants, The Cafe, where a burger costs $10. a steakhouse where the steaks start at $50, an Asian joint with a fixed menu for $65. I enjoy restaurants with a fixed menu, I like trying new things but that would blow like 2 days of my per diem meal allowance. The saving grace is a nice little Pizza shop, down in the basement, a deep dish rectangular piece of pizza is $4.03 (after tax), and I have to say they are amazing. There are two veggie pizza’s I’ve tried thus far: grandma’s pizza and the Garden of Eden (can’t help but think of Garden of Eatin’ an odd little joint in the Great Falls Mall)

The final restaurant, one I’ve never been fond of until this very moment. Hooters. They have given me the gift of the internet. Thank You Hooters for you publicly available internet, even though you’re closed I sit here in the hall way of the hotel and shamelessly use you.

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