Are You in Alignment? Aligning Your Mission to Institutional Mission

Today, I am presenting this professional development seminar at the Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers fall convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

Lucky for me, I had several doctoral hours in my higher education program that taught me about assessment, learning outcomes, strategic planning in higher education, general administration and financing of higher education. Most people in student media aren't that lucky. So we often think of strategic planning and, heaven forbid, ASSESSMENT, as a wicked waste of time. Far from it my friends. You can use these bemoaned tasks to ingratiate yourself with the upper administration, you alumni and your current employees. When you can point to a mission and strategy that guides all of your decisions, it makes those decisions much easier.

I hope this session helps people who are student media advisers. I hope this slideshare presentation also helps. And I hope you come back to visit me as I continue working on research about student media, mission statements, strategic planning and image.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Are You in Alignment?

View more presentations from Kay Colley.

Google Map Update for My Newsplex Weeks

After my two weeks in South Carolina, I have updated my first Google Map including a representative photo that I took at each location. Here's the map:
View South Carolina June 2010 in a larger map

It's interactive, so click on the sites to see the photos.

If you want to see all of the photos that were taken at each location, go to my Flickr streams:

• Columbia, South Carolina
• Charleston, South Carolina
• Folly Beach, South Carolina
• Savannah, Georgia

Texas Wesleyan IABC Celebrates First Year on Campus

We celebrated the first full year of Texas Wesleyan's International Association of Business Communicators chapter. This Animoto slideshow includes a photo of the charter officers and begins with a photo of our co-presidents Shelby Hofsteter-Driver and Laurence Sheehan.

Texas Wesleyan IABC looks forward to another great year, including increased collaboration with the Fort Worth professional chapter, which will be led this year by Texas Wesleyan Director of Marketing and Communication Laura Hanna.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Slideshow of Rambler TIPA Contest Preparation Day

During my second week at Newsplex, my 500 GB hard drive imploded, sending all of my documents into oblivion. Fortunately, I was able to recover everything, at least I think everything, by using a software program.

So as part of my training and to improve my skills, I created this audio slideshow of photos that I took when Jonathan Resendez, Conner Howell and Chuck Fain helped me prepare the contest entries for the Texas Intercollegiate Press Contest. I wrote and recorded the script using Visual Communicator on Wednesday.

This is my belated tribute. Hey better late than never...and a good way to get some photos off of my drive and into a format that others can appreciate. Or at least poke fun at.

Animoto Slideshow of Newsplex Week 2

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.


The final week of Newsplex is coming to a close. A great group of folks attended for the second week as well. It's been a great way to meet and learn about new people, including two international journalists/professors.

Because many of the exercises from this week were the same as last week, I didn't do most of them; however, I did do some additional exercises using some of my own content.

I also did this great exercise today--a stand up, on-camera response to a news anchor. I have a more profound respect for my broadcast friends. Wow--remembering what to do and say and listen to that person in your ear is tough! I'll definitely need more practice on this, and now I have a great exercise to subject my students to. I know you're all looking forward to that. And so am I, but I'll tough it out with you and get the practice as well.

Week 2 Newsplex Training 2010

Today starts my second week fo training at Newsplex at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. This week focuses on teaching and researching convergence.

I spent the weekend touring a couple of cities--Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA, so I'll be posting content from those whirlwind trips shortly. You all will be subjected some more multimedia storytelling techniques when I'm posting this content so that I can continue to practice some of the software programs that I learned last week.

A couple of great tips from last week's seminar:

• Adrive allows you 50GB of free storage space. Sign up for an account and begin backing up your data. Too bad I hadn't discover this until one of my external drives had a meltdown. Unfortunately for me, this is the drive that has, or rather had, most of my content. I'll be checking with the good folks at Texas Wesleyan's IT department to see if anything can be recovered--I hope; I hope.
• GimpShop provides a toned down, free version of Photoshop, so for those of you who can't afford Photoshop, download the software and play.
• Audacity also provides free audio software. Just download the software, and you can edit digital recordings, add effects, etc. before associating the ditigal recording with a slideshow.

I'll offer more tips that I've gleaned from Newsplex throughout my two weeks of training, so stay tuned.

Flash Animation Exercise from Newsplex

This is my final Newsplex post for this week--a brief Flash animation that we created. Now I'm off to Charleston.

My Newsplex Video with My Awesome Group

Thursday was video day at Newsplex, and my team shot this video using a Kodak Zi8 and MovieMaker. It was a good learning tool and a really basic video. Hopefully, I can remember how to do this for a movie of Charleston and Savannah. Check back after my worldwind tour this weekend, and thanks to everyone for their suggestions of sites to see in Charleston.

Thanks to Sue and Warren. You two are awesome!

Adobe Photoshop Allows for the Kay Colley iPhone

colleyiphone
Originally uploaded by klcolley

It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop. As you can see, my face now appears on the iPhone. Not really. But at least on this iPhone it does.

The IT department at Texas Wesleyan will be upgrading The Rambler's Photoshop software this summer, so don't forget to check us out in fall. You'll never know what you might see.

St. Patrick's Day Slideshow Exercise Using Visual Communicator

The slideshow software program Visual Communicator offers the ability to record on-camera video (see opening), audio and provide some cuts along with a teleprompter-like running script--a really cool feature!

Thanks to Newsplex for making the content available. Hopefully, I can provide some of my own content and create something of my own, but for now, here's St. Patrick's Day in Columbia, SC.

Last Day of Newsplex Convergence Bootcamp

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.


During the last day of the Newsplex convergence software bootcamp, we learned how to put together a quick video using Animoto.com. This quick and simple program gives s brief glimpse of the facility and the folks who spent the week toiling over software challenges.

My Newsplex Journey Using Google Maps

This week has been a week for Convergence Software bootcamp at Newsplex, including use of Google Maps. One of my students did an awesome Google Map for murders of journalists in Mexico, but this is my first Google Map. I'll update it as my weekend between Newsplex training sessions progresses.


View South Carolina June 2010 in a larger map

What I'm Doing This Summer (at Newsplex)

So check out my Grammy coverage created today at Newsplex using the free software program Audacity and some clips that were provided. My voice overs aren't the greatest, but it does take practice.

I hope my students are keeping up with this, especially you Rambler folks, because you're in trouble now. I'm actually learning how to use the software to create multimedia projects so the bar will be raised once again.

Maybe by the end of the week, I'll have a unique project to post. Stay tuned to see.

My First Week at Newsplex

Today starts the first week of my convergence training at Newsplex at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. That's the back of my curly hair on the far right while Dr. Augie Grant speaks at front.

Eleven other intrepid journalism faculty members from around the nation are here, and right now, we're all trying to blog. I've been fortunate to have the blog established, so I'm cheating...no new blog created; you all are just going to be exposed to my Newsplex experience for the next two weeks. Lucky you, and lucky me--since I'm here for two weeks instead of just one.

Again, the basic skills of journalism were stressed as imperative in convergence journalism: reporting, writing, editing, basic photography, basic videography and basic audio production.

I'm always floored by how public relations people seem to be ahead of the curve in this struggle, since they've been needing to learn everything for so long. Now, it seems all of the folks who practice communication have fallen into the same boat--the all or nothing boat. Learn it all, at least the basics, or no job.

So stay tuned to see what happens this week. You can also check out my Twitter or Facebook accounts to get updates as well.

Personal Branding and the CETL Faculty Spotlight Video

Recently, Texas Wesleyan's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning did a faculty spotlight video of me that now appears on YouTube. It gave me the chance to article my philosophy on social media and to practice something I preach all of the time--personal branding.

Personal branding is an impact part of getting a job today. For most of us, including me, it's difficult to determine what our "brand" is. And after we've discovered our personal brand, what happens when we need to change that brand?

Well before you start wondering what happens when things change or you change, it's important to take that first step and establish a brand. I've been working on this for a while now, including my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Slideshare, Flickr and YouTube presence in addition to this blog. What takes work is continually creating the content to make these tools valuable in constantly updating my "brand."

I encourage all of you, especially my students or former students, to jump into the world of social media and establish your personal brand. It's easier than ever to do this, and it will pay off in the long run when that great job you want includes outlining social media strategy in support of a company brand or news dissimenation efforts.

In the mean time, check out my video created by the CETL and let me know what you think...am I too gray?

Continued: The Rambler Marketing Plan and Increasing Online Presence

So last time we talked, The Rambler's staffers had put in a concerted effort to increase fans, followers, friends and e-mail distribution of The Rambler online.

We've continued those efforts, and since that time, we've also won several awards from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association from its annual convention, including honorable mention for general overall excellence for the web site--a great endorsement. Now, we're working to let everyone know about that and increase our valued readers/viewers.

For our campus community, we have a story in our online only edition of the student newspaper and a story just appeared in the campuswide newsletter. A specific e-mail was sent from me to several members of the campus community--our student publications board, the provost, my dean and my department chair. Next will be a story to our local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The announcement is also scheduled to appear on our social media entities, and will be added to our staff box for a recurring effect.

In the works, signs posted around campus, maybe a congratulations banner on our building, and some statement in our recruitment efforts for students.

We've put our alumni outreach on hold for a week or two, with a kickoff associated with our end of the year banquet.

Next up will be direct emails from me to department members from my own department and then departments within the School of Arts and Letters.

So to recap, we've taken the mass media approach (macro blasts) on campus, and now we're following up those blasts with more personalized e-mail blasts and papering the campus.

One wrinkle in the plan: we have two Facebook pages. Next week, we tackle that.

Friends, Fans, Followers and Subscribers on the Rise

So an update on how we're working to build community at The Rambler. Part of my strategic plan for the next few years is to increase our web presence. To that end, the students have created a YouTube channel, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter sites, with more in the works. We also signed an agreement with College Publisher to host our web site, which is going all right. Could be better, could be worse.

As part of the service provided by College Publisher, there is a news digest that can be sent to members who sign up. In the past couple of weeks, we've had an all out push to increase those numbers. First, students and professional staffers have been using their Facebook and Twitter feeds to point people in the direction of The Rambler online, www.therambler.org and one of its many social networking sites.

Next, an email was sent campuswide to all students, inviting them to sign up for the news digest. The results, a 100% increase in registered users in the week following the campuswide email.

A story appeared in the campus internal email newsletter, and a slight increase in users followed.

For Facebook, etc., The Rambler has sent invitations to members and sent links to other Texas Wesleyan entities to belong. Our followers, friends and fans are increasing steadily.

Next is this blog, and the entire time, we have been running a 1/4 page advertisement in the printed edition of The Rambler to encourage new friends, fans, followers, and subscribers.

We're continuing our onslaught of the campus community on a weekly basis, and now we're about to expand into the alumni realm. An update on that strategy for next edition.

Moving Steadily Toward Your Goals

Creating community or growing a community is challenging, and time consuming.

Going into my second semester as student media director for the Texas Wesleyan student newspaper, The Rambler,I am beginning to see the results of the long hours of work in the fall.

Students are "hanging out" in the office, showing a sense of pride, and really communing with each other. Success is in site on this front...at least until our seniors graduate.

This semester, I'm working to tackle on-campus perceptions.
Since journalists are held with about as much esteem as salesmen (just see the studies on this), my main focus has been to get to know people around campus and improve credibility.

Getting to know people takes time...something that I have a limited supply of as a full-time, tenure track faculty member and administrator of student media. So how do you get to know people and sustain relationships?

Well the getting to know people is pretty easy if you just schedule meetings. The sustaining relationships part is more difficult. Scheduling lunch with administrators, faculty and staff can become challenging when you're also trying to sustain community within your organization, do some writing/research, prepare for class, teach class and retrofit a building.

I'm not sure I always choose the right priorities, but prioritizing is the only way to go.

Rome wasn't built in a day, as the saying goes, and it will take some time and continued work to achieve all of our strategic goals. I guess the point is to move steadily toward those goals and continually put the community first.

After all, people still take precedence over things. I learned that in my reporting classes many years ago. And it's still as relevant today.