If We Build it, Will You Come?
Lately, there has been a strange convergence in my work life. I find myself going to a series of three standing meetings. This, in and of itself, is not at all strange. The longer I work for Cornell, the more meetings I seem to attend. (Back in 1993, my meeting count per week averaged ZERO. Now it’s typically in the lower double-digits.)
But, these meetings are oddly similar to one another.
One to talk about re-vamping internal communications at Cornell through some sort of revisions/re-working of CUInfo.
One to talk about Uportal as a tool and assess whether or not it is the BEST tool for Cornell.
And one to talk about building community at Cornell through the use of internal communications.
Despite the fact that these meetings are in different locations and contain a small cast of rotating players, I find myself starting to realize that I’m having the same conversation three times a week. Or, rather, pieces of the same conversation. Because, while there is an eerie sort of synergy going on with this, they’re not quite all the same meeting.
Still. Close enough for government work.
So lots of smart people are gathering and talking (and talking)(and talking) about internal communications at Cornell and I’m wondering what Cornellians think about the issue.
What are YOUR internal communications needs, anyway?
Here are some questions to get you thinking:
Do you want to be able to talk to other Cornellians (and by “Cornellians”, I mean other people with connections to Cornell, be they staff or students, or faculty–ignoring Alumni, for the moment) about things? [By “talk to”, I mean something along the lines of community building–whether that comes in the form of a website, some sort of “social networking tool”, or a series of online bulletin boards on given topics (Ezra’s List?)….or something else entirely. Think…casual.]
Do you want information from ThePowersThatBe (translation: Senior Administration) about things like the Campaign, the items currently found in Safety Zone on CUInfo, HR matters, etc?
Do you want ONE place to do your business (the things you have to use Uportal for) AND your pleasure AND get your words from on high? Or is it best to separate these sort of things?
Chew, ruminate, digest, and get back to me?
Just…no regurgitation, please.
Lisa
Drive By Blogging
- The Lab of Ornithology is entering a redesign for the site and has started a blog to chronicle the process.
- we have recently re-vamped the Student Life, Alumni, and Outreach sections of cornell.edu with new photos and features. Carrie tells me that the President’s section is on deck.
- We also added a prominent link to the Campaign down in the middle column of the home page. Any thoughts?
- Somewhere in the not-too-diatant past, the Cornell Facebook Page crested 1000 fans, which is only noteworthy because I remember when we had five, three of which worked in my office.
Long time, no blog.
I know. I know.
I have no excuses. Well, no good ones, anyway.
Instead, I offer some brief updates about what’s been going on lately.
Events Calendar Upgrade
I wish I had better news, but the truth of it is that the project is delayed. As you may recall, our timeline initially had a September launch date.
There have been some issues with the server environment necessary for the latest release of Bedework and it’s going to take some time to get them resolved. We’re hoping to go live in January instead (fingers crossed, please).
Meanwhile, Ken and Zac have been working on skinning the public interface to be a nearly exact replica of the current calendar on cornell.edu. It’s pretty darn impressive, if I do say so myself.
We actually have a meeting this afternoon to discuss the administrative interface, which has been re-skinned and re-worked a little from that with which the current calendar users are familiar. All for the better, the easier, the more streamlined, I promise.
Life on the Hill Blogs
Here, we have good news! We finished hiring for the student blogging project last month and I’m pleased to say that there are two major firsts:
1. For the first time since we launched in 2006, we will have all of the undergraduate colleges represented.
2. And, for the first time ever, we will have a Freshman blogging from the moment she lands on campus.
Next year, there will be nine bloggers, total (up one from this year, which was up two from the pilot year of the program). I have been calling it “The Year of the Menfolk” because (another first, I suppose) we skew decidedly male in our demographic–six to three, in fact. Let’s hear it for the boys!
Zac is in the middle of a redesign for the Life on the Hill page on cornell.edu and early comps are looking great. Expect something fun and different from anything we’ve done before.
And I have spent a goodly portion of my recent days assiting one of the students in getting his blog set up early so he can jet off to a summer dig in Tuscany without worry. Jealousy does not even begin to descrivbe my feelings on this matter.
cornell.edu Changes
How strong are your powers of observation?
Notice anything different about the homepage, lately?
No? Go on, take a look. We’ll wait. [HINT: Scroll down. Way down.]
Look at that. The “Any person…any study” quote that used to be in the grey bar under the pano images has been not only moved, but expanded to it’s full glory.
Currently, it’s linked to the page for the University Mission Statement, but we are gathering content for a new page about the quote itself–both history and intent. You can expect that to launch sometime over the summer and I will, of course, make mention of it here.
Any blog…any tagline,
Lisa
[Superpoke] LC Norfleet has solicited your opinion!
Earlier this semester, we had a CU Web Forum Meeting about Social Networking (scroll down to February) and how people were experimenting around campus. One of the many things that came out of it was a request from my boss, Diane, for me to draft a position statement about Facebook.
Another thing to come out of it was a (short) list of what people are doing–please check that out and add your own links if you’re not already listed. Anyone with a Cornell net-id should be able to edit the page.
Anyway. The idea behind this was not to create a policy or to try to force people to use Facebook in any given manner. Rather, we wanted something that we could (possibly) pass around at the senior administration level–a brief cheat sheet about what Facebook is good at, what it’s not, and how Cornell might consider using the application as a communications tool.
I cannot even begin to count how many drafts of this thing I have written, but a relatively “final” version is linked below.
Facebook Position Statement MS Word file [50k]
I welcome any and all feedback you might have to offer.
Lisa
PS. I’m heading out of town for three days, so any delay you might experience re: return of comments, etc is not deliberate.
Don’t learn safety by accident
As you may recall, my last post made passing reference to the launch of Safety Zone on CUInfo.
Since then, we’ve had the chance to gather some (not a lot) of feedback from the community. But, you know me. I’m all about the feedback. And it does say “Join the conversation!” up there at the top…
So, here’s a screen shot of the Safety Zone (click to enlarge).
The question is, is it working?
Several folks have wondered aloud about whether or not having such information so prominently displayed on a regular basis will dilute the message. Others have gone so far as to complain that adding it to the upper part of the page and moving the directory links to the bottom does them a real disservice in the realm of functionality.
Fact of the matter is that, in today’s climate of potential shooters on campus, possible terrorists lurking around every corner and–oh yes, I’m really going there–irresponsible people whose lack of sexual savvy leads to syphilis outbreaks on campus, we need to have a place to communicate emergency and safety related information.
Here are the sort of things you can expect to see in this area:
- Health alerts
- Travel Advisories/Road closures
- Campus Outages (power, water)
- Emergency alerts
- Crime alerts
And here are some questions for you to chew on–because I know it’s always easier to start with something to jump from.
- Do road closures belong in the Safety Zone?
- Is SZ something that you want to see all the time, whether or not there is something going on?
- What about those links to safety resources? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
- How long should something stay up on SZ?
- Should there be an archive of old postings?
Drop us a comment with your answers to the above or your thoughts on the SZ in general?
Remember: Danger never takes a vacation!
Lisa
(and, apparently, neither does syphilis)
— keep looking »