• Read a book of my own choosing
• Help myself to a hell of a nice bottle of wine
• Once again go to the gym, snowboard and rock climb
• Nothing, absolutely nothing, just sit there and have no cares
• Sell a few textbooks (thanks Bree!)
• Play the guitar again (what did I do with it, come to think of it?)
• Revamp this site- long overdue

As an Apple customer, I’ve been the beneficiary of the best computer products ever made in their time- innovative, easy, elegant. Apple detractors, on the contrary and on principle, put up with all manner of utter crap for an entire decade.

If your a Rush fan, watch this video.

I love Boston.com’s Big Picture and want to bring it to the University of Denver. We already get a stream of student supplied photos, but we hide them behind our password protected internal system. A true shame, but hey, new year’s resolutions…

I’ve been a proponent of the wade it up and shove it in the closet technique, but maybe after this lesson, I’ll do it differently.

(probably not)

via Kottke

• Have a script or storyboard before you even show up to the shoot: figure out the flow of what you want to capture so you can scope out the right camera angles, get the necessary sequences filmed and ensure you don’t forget anything. For example, I didn’t film an intro sequence where our baker introduced herself to the world. I made up for it during editing with an overlay of her name and title, but it would have been better for her to introduce herself.
• On the heels of the above example, if you intend to create a series of videos, make an intro and credits sequence to bookend the entire production.
• Have note cards somewhere out of camera view, but available to the person in the shot to ensure they sticks to the script and don’t forget anything important.
• Don’t belabor anything for too long. Web video typically needs to be short and sweet. If there’s a ton of information to communicate, do it over a series of videos instead of one overly long one (how often do you sit through a 30 minute video? Hmmm?). Also, YouTube has time limits except under some instances like edu accounts, so time does need to be a concern. You can also include supplemental information as text based video notes that accompanying the piece.
• Learn from existing cooking shows and have all of the ingredients pre-measured and ready to go to simplify the shoot. This allows you to avoid lots of cuts which can be distracting and problematic when editing.
• Have enough ingredients on hand to do the shoot several times, just in case.
• If you have the resources, shoot with multiple cameras so that multiple angles can be captured at once. Efficiency is a good thing.
• Keep the counter area free of distractions: no stray bottle caps, unnecessary towels, bowls, etc. When you add an ingredient that’s measured out in a dish of some sort, set it out of camera view after you no longer use it. If you keep things clutter free, that’s half the battle.
• Again, if resources allow, use a mic in order to ensure a consistent audio level. I only used the mic that came with the camera. The camera placement was far enough away in some shots that our host sounded distant. I augmented it during editing, but why not get it right during shooting?
• And yet again with the resources theme, use good lights. If you’re relying on natural light, you’re at the mercy of clouds rolling by. If you’re relying on indoor lights, you’re at the mercy of odd shadows, odd color casts, and the weird spotlight effect that never looks good. Spotlights can also cause harsh reflections off of metal or plastic that’s no fun to deal with.

We usually clammer for more people, more money and more tools as salvation. They’re not. Those things will solve today’s problems, but new ones will arrive tomorrow. No set of widgets, plug-ins or third party add-ons will stop the inevitable. No workflow, processes or project manager from heaven stands a chance. Can you think of any CMS so good that it doesn’t let anything through the cracks? I can’t. Can we supersize it to an EMS and lick the problem? That’ll probably make it worse.

I bring all this up because after two days of great information and conversations at the AMA Higher Ed Symposium, It’s clear that higher ed is lurching forward in fits and starts to leverage all the wondrous new tools and services appearing daily on the Web. But in all the excitement and drama lies the everyday needs of everyone’s website. You’ve gotta remember to take care of the small, non-glamorous details that keep your site alive and well. Don’t lose sight of the daily grind because entropy is always there with you.

Is there hope? Well… just about the only thing any of us can muster in defense is vigilance. Stay attentive, be nimble and don’t let small problems fester into big ones. Keep the daily grunt work moving along efficiently, but also keep an eye on what’s coming up ahead. If the new thing on the horizon goes unchecked until it’s too late to deal with effectively, you lose. It’ll turn your hard work and good intentions into chaos and doubt. Don’t let it get to that.

This site used to be a fun place and I’m bringing that positive vibe back. So while I may continue to talk about web matters, I’ll mostly just write about my observations of the world. I hope that suffices to any readers left out there.

My current title is Web Designer/New Media Specialist, a moniker bestowed on me after our university’s restructuring. Before that, I was simply Web Designer. I’ll take a wild guess that these titles won’t be looked upon favorably by the admissions reviewers. After all, after 12 years in the business, I effectively have the same title as I did when I started. The cynics out there might say, well maybe you’re a crap designer. Yeah, maybe. But after 12 years in the business, my work must be somewhat passable. Maybe I’m a jerk and alienate myself into low level positions. Maybe my bosses have researched my online profiles and think I’m a liability. Whatever the real reasons, my own self diagnosis for a lack of impressive title is due to my personal motivations and the age of the web. 

So back to the meeting. I found myself in a strange, apologetic tone. Surely, I needed to excuse my lack of title. Ironically, after my meeting, I was to meet with the Chancellor and Provost to present ideas on how a new website would save the university money, allow us to be much more customer centric than ever before, produce content with less effort and, in general, be more nimble and current in our approach. Isn’t this the kind of presentation a mid level manager at a big company would give to senior management? I thought about this juxtaposition for the rest of the day. What’s in a title? Why are web world titles so… arbitrary? And how do we, as a community, effectively translate our contributions via titles to outsiders?

Do Web Titles Do Us Justice?

There’s no doubt that I’m on the low rung of my university’s hierarchy (though I consider that the university’s loss). I have a breadth and depth of experience that my organization could put to effective use. Instead, my school has proven unwilling, unable or, worst yet, indifferent to fully utilize me. Why? I certainly hope it’s not because of my title. How disappointingly sad would that be- not only for myself but for the school? Would my job, my credibility and my contributions be any different if I had a title like Director of Web Communications or Vice Chancellor of All Things Web? Given the web team’s tiny staff size, I don’t think my job nor my contributions would be much different, but credibility? Probably.

When you only have a couple warm bodies available to work on a site with tens of thousands of pages and millions of yearly visitors like we do, you can bet that lofty titles or not, everyone does grunt work, everyone sweats the details and everyone is accountable to visitors. That’s just how it is from a practical standpoint. In this regard, titles in our industry don’t matter. What does matter, at least in my experience, is the promise of making great things. The web world is littered with people who want to elevate the web, and hence the organization, to a higher level. That seems to be the major motivation rather than fancy titles, corner offices or windfall year-end bonuses (though I wouldn’t turn any of those things down along the way).

The View From the Outside

The web, as we know and interact with it today, is a very young industry- 15 years, perhaps? My executive MBA peers, in contrast, work in health, finance, sales, etc.- professions that have been around for centuries, even millennia. Is it any wonder our industry still debates what our titles should be? It’s still too young and needs to sort itself out. 

For example, I’m considered a generalist in the field- someone whose skill set crosses many specialized functions. Other people consider themselves specialists- someone who knows all the ins and outs within a particular area like Flash or Ruby on Rails. Which is the right approach? Is one type of person more “senior” than the other? Should one manage the other, but not vice versa? The web is so collaborative and job functions are so permeable, a sense of hierarchy hasn’t solidified and this causes people outside of the business to easily misunderstand what it is we do and the importance of our work to an organization. Those things are changing, but it is slow. As Jesse James Garrett in the podcast linked above says, things won’t markedly improve for us until our group begins to house the VP and C-level ranks of major organizations.

Until then, I would argue that titles act as shorthand for your professional status. That’s why people are so concerned with their titles (since I’ve largely worked in smaller organizations surrounded by like minded people, titles haven’t mattered much). But I don’t find this race to the top as prevalent in the web. Maybe our young age has everything to do with that. Since we’re all relatively young, perhaps there’s a generational shift away from placing so much power and respect into titles. I don’t know. All I do know is that the admissions people who review my executive MBA application may not understand what my title of Web Designer really means or confers upon me. Hopefully they do, but until I’m sure, it goes without saying that I need to ensure that my title doesn’t arbitrarily stereotype me, demote my contributions or limit my worth.