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I had a good discussion a couple weeks ago with Bucknell University about Ingeniux.

Ektron?

Lots of options are out there ....

“If you prick us do we not bleed?” lamented Shylock (most recently portrayed, and brilliantly played by the great Al Pacino) in The Merchant of Venice. The answer is as certain as George W. mangling his syntax in a press conference on foreign affairs. But the answer confounds many communications managers who still wrestle with the question of whether to blog (or not).

A recent study by Bain & Company involving 1200 executives throughout the world (see Management Tools & Trends 2007 study) reveals that 30% of those companies (a cross-section of small, medium and large companies) use blogs. Those same executives report an underwhelming rate of satisfaction with their blogs of only 3.39 out of 5.

I like LinkedIn. I can say that now that I have some people listed as connections. I guess that means I'm plugged in and I count somehow. Online validation. There's a new spring in my step and my fingers are positively flying across this keyboard.

LinkedIn is social networking with more of a genuine purpose, in my mind. I've touched base with former colleagues and former classmates, which was fun in a professional sort of way. It's made me think about my resume and my profile, which I believe is always helpful as an exercise for stepping back and considering where you are, where you've been, and where you might fit in in the greater scheme of things.

And there is always this about LinkedIn: I don't feel creepy using it, which I sometimes do when poking around in myspace.

The annual Internet Standard Assessment Report (ISAR) and WebAwards honored the best of the best last week. While this is mostly an American event and contest, the Awards have received submissions from 53 other countries. Leading the international award parade were websites from Canada with 225 awards followed by Hong Kong with 119 awards.

Those countries receiving the best overall scores on average were Spain, Thailand, New Zealand, Taiwan and Canada. The country with the worst scores on average is Brazil, followed by Japan, United Arab Emirates, India and France. In short, the Brazilians look dam sexy in those skimpy volleyball outfits, but aren’t so hot at websites; Canadians are very good at websites, but look embarrassingly pathetic in Brazilian volleyball shorts. In fact, ask a Canadian to spell volleyball and they’ll reply with a smile, “H-O-C-K…”

I meant to note this earlier this week, when Apple made its announcment that it had sold the 100 millionth iPod. That, as they say, is a lot of iPods, considering the first iPod was sold just five and a half years ago.

If a student here on campus doesn't have a cellphone pinned to an ear, earbuds are firmly implanted.

We see iPods and podcasting as a great tool for our media relations/communications efforts here at Colgate. We will soon be releasing our 20th episode of Colgate Conversations, a podcast series that highlights members of the campus community.

While it's hard to track, we do know that subscribers to our iTunes site have roughly doubled since we launched the series back in February 2006 (Colgate president, Rebecca S. Chopp, was the first guest). We also list our podcasts on our website and write stories about each guest, which generate additional "listens."

An unbelievable and horrific day at Virginia Tech University.

This tragedy in which at least 33 people were fatally shot again reaffirms the need for a solid crisis communication plan and it highlights how important the web is in that plan.

University relations officials used the university website to update the campus community and hundreds of concerned parents and others about the unfolding events. Though the website was down for part of the day, several updates were posted on the site, including a text and audio message from President Charles Steger.

In reading the news reports, some students expressed anger over the delay in communication between the first shooting and the second shooting, saying a broader and more timely message should have been sent to campus, expressing a greater sense of urgency.

It's difficult to even begin trying to understand what the campus community was going through at the time and what the university administrators were up against.

But it's a lesson for everyone involved in communications and in website management at any kind of workplace. Be prepared, and be transparent.

Our thoughts and prayers to everyone at Virginia Tech and their families and friends.

A comment on my previous post raises a great point. Michael Clendenin says the fact that the Virginia Tech website was down for parts of the day on Monday underscores the need for a "dark site" that can easily be switched on.

We've talked here about having a homepage stripped of images and graphics that would help ease download times and perhaps spare the server from crashing in the event of some kind of crisis and the resulting spike in web traffic.

Does anyone have that kind of secondary homepage in place, and has anyone had to make it live?

I thought these two items from the Chronicle of Higher Education were particularly interesting:

Virginia Tech Student's Facebook Group Offers a Way to Grieve

and this:

Students Turn to Facebook for Information on Their Friends

If anybody still needed convincing of how fluid and how open the world of communications and public relations has become, in a crisis or in everyday efforts, look no further. Students turned to the medium they use the most, online social networking sites, to look for friends, get updates, and then share their grief and confusion over Monday's tragedy.

Tom Keefe points out in a comment to my previous post that Facebook put a real "face" on the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting. That folks far removed from the VT campus were given a chance to connect in a personal way with the students and faculty there.

And it's not only social networking sites. I thought it was interesting that The New York Times also provided an interactive online forum. See it here

It's generated a lot of comments and it too puts a face to the names you might only hear briefly on a TV network news report.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.

Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).

In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.

I have a lot to tell everyone about a great CASE conference -- Communications, Marketing and Technology: Staying on the Cutting Edge -- I attended in Baltimore.

My presentation was about building social networking with Web 2.0 tools. It was a lot of fun to discuss ways that news stories, blogs, podcasts, video, and photos can build relationships with constituents and create networks -- networks that work for your institution because they have a clearly defined theme or message at their core.

There also were a lot of great discussions about higher ed institutions toying with myspace.com, products for alumni social networking, what Gen Y is doing and thinking, and an interesting primer on Second LIfe.

We also had a demonstration of building our very own social network using Ning.

That's Ning. And you need to check it out.