November 2010
Posted by Carlyn Foshee Chatfield on November 10, 2010
Summary
Chat Notes from Coffee Shop session, scribed notes below, followed by Resources for all three topics
Chat
Carlyn - Rice: Topic Order: Strategic Communications Plan, So You Think you can Write, College Services Tracker
Carlyn - Rice: Strategic Communications docs: http://www.educause.edu/wiki/November+2010 and many thanks to University of Georgia's Bert DeSimone for sharing!
Carlyn - Rice: are you hearing okay on the phone line?
Kristin Lyman (St. Cloud State University): Just signed in. Will be right back. I can now hear you.
ITCOMM CG Leader 1: Randy - Lansing Comm College (LCC) just joined
Carlyn - Rice: Crisis Communications Binder: http://www.educause.edu/wiki/Crisis+Communications
Cathy - Miami U.: See the crowdsouring tool we have used as part of our strategic planning information gathering: www.muohio.edu/itideas
Tina - Okstate: It is great see this concept in higher ed. Looks similar to this - http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
Cathy - Miami U.: LOL - we actually did borrow from the Starbucks site
Tina - Okstate: Awesome! I think it is really a cool set up!
ITCOMM CG Leader 1: www.lcc.edu/its/cst
ITCOMM CG Leader 1: jobskir@lcc.edu
Keli - MCCCD: Scottsdale's Newsletter with video is: http://plone.scottsdalecc.edu/its/about-it/itnewsletterfall10.pdf, the video is on page 3.
Larry - Univ of Hawaii: Mahalo Keli!
Carlyn - Rice: Thanks, everyone, catch you in December!
ITCOMM CG Leader 1: If anyone is interested in using CST, please just have a manager at your institution contact me via my email - again, jobskir@lcc.edu... thx!
Carla - UT San Antonio: thanks, Carlyn!
Scribed Notes
Strategic Communications Plan
see documents shared by Bert DeSimone from University of Georgia on the wiki page.
Q: what about overall IT Strategy?
A: Various schools in planning stage for IT Strategy; after strategy set, the communications strategy will follow.
Examples:
LSU-Sherri is 50% responsible for IT Strategy, 50% for IT Communications; She uses a strategic communications plan as her calendar to determine which initiatives will be communicated and when.
Miami U (Ohio) - go to established sources (deans, councils, etc.) and also created channel for community to give input. See IT Ideas web site: www.muohio.edu/itideas
Q: what is response like for U Miami?
A: Miami U - a faculty member on our council is very up on social media and gave us several resources to read before we began this channel, not to expect a large response rate. Cathy will share links to these resources.
Dealing with other people who think they can write
Example One: One IT Communicator had to deal with another manager who writes long detailed messages and the communicator would revise to distribute, and the manager would get angry responses from the original writer. Had to say "I was hired for my communications expertise."
Example Two: After a lot of push back on the Microsoft Daylight Savings time messages (input was to make it more detailed), another IT Communicator organized a non-technical council to be reviewers of drafts. These council members agreed to review IT communications from time to time and give feed back on whether or not they "get it." This allows the communicator to use real customer input on creating simpler, more effective messages. The CIO absolutely loves the idea.
Rule: stop talking about Linux and Windows and talk instead about what services they affect. (Faculty member said "windows are what I have in my bathroom, Linux is just a bunch of letters.")
Example Three: It was so painful to deal with multiple writing styles and voices, another university IT Communicator created a focus group to create communications for a specific project and everything is submitted to a coordinator coordinator, that person brings everything together in one voice.
Example Four: In order to really get our message across, convinced leadership that we needed a consistent IT voice, which also allows the other IT staff members focus on their roles. This helped the IT Communicator "be" that voice.
Q: Does the push for a single IT voice come from the bottom up or from the top down?
A: To get everyone on board with the single IT voice, it needs to come top down from the CIO or VP.
Example Five: We are creating videos to help faculty learn more about the technical side of IT. Put together in a really fun setting, on YouTube. Have completed one video and it was so successful that two more videos are in the works.
College Services TrackerRandy Jobski, Lansing Community Colleges presenting
In a meeting of Michigan Banner schools, a common theme across higher ed seemed to be a willingness to share solutions.
The idea is, for institutions who are willing to participate, go into a tool and load in their services, doesn't have to be Banner. Information captured, based on the list of services.
Instead of sending queries to various listservs, can search College Services Tracker for current tools/options. Easy way to find out which peer institutions are using which tools, apps and services.
Demo of College Services Tracker, see PPT on wiki page
Q: Can Educause host this? It will be easier to get my institution to participate if the parent organization is the one hosting it and I can sign in and update at the same time I am updating Core Data Survey, etc. Also be assured that a peer server won't be hacked or otherwise share our data with vendors who will then start calling us to find out why we aren't using their product.
A: will follow up with Catherine Yang and Lida Larsen at Educause to explore possibility.
RESOURCES
Just say NO when someone outside the Communications team offers to write - Many good business people are very poor writers...they think that the use of a lot of fancy or obtuse words and excessive language makes them somehow seem more intelligent. In reality, this has quite the opposite affect....There should be a hard and fast rule taped to every worker’s computer that reads simply, “Spell Check.” - from Essortment's Career Tips
Generally, whatever you are writing, get to the main point, quickly and simply. Avoid lengthy preambles. Don't spend ages setting the scene or explaining the background, etc....Identify the main issue and make that the sole focus. Introducing other points distracts and confuses the reader...Use language that your reader uses. - from Businessballs' writing tips
One-third of corporation employees are poor writers, costing $3.1 billion each year in remedial training - see "Spotlight on Skills: E-mail Grammar" in Understanding Management by Richard L. Daft, Dorothy Marcic
College Services Tracker (CST) - A way for HE institutions to track the services they are providing, or will be providing in the next two years, at their institution, and for other HE institutions to seek out those institutions that are either currently supporting similar services, and/or will be deploying similar services in order to increase cross-institutional collaboration on those topics. Contact information can also be added into this application to quickly reach out to a specific person with a given skill set for a given service.
Attachment
Size
Comments
Hi ...
Bert DeSimone here, from the University of Georgia. I am posting a few links here regarding communications planning.
OCIO/EITS Communications Strategic Plan
http://eits.uga.edu/communications/planning/sp/communications-strategic-plan-08142010.docx
(Still in draft because it has not been officially approved.)
Planning Template for EITS Communications and Policy/Procedure for Use
http://eits.uga.edu/communications/planning/conv
(First part includes some background, including a link to an ACM proceedings paper. The real planning guide - tactical; really getting it done - is 3 pages into the document.)
- Bert DeSimone
EITS Communications Officer
The University of Georgia
Posted by: bert55 on November 12, 2010
http://eits.uga.edu/communications/planning/ir/conven.docx
Posted by: carlyn@rice.edu on November 12, 2010