Maastricht University's Web Video Universe

Video on the web is the big buzzword. It's not only a buzzword but a fact. ComScore estimated that in the US alone around 144 million people watched 14.6 billion videos this May and the number is increasing. Youtube alone is responsible for 1.8 billion streamed videos/day and leads the chart of online-video platforms. What holds for the consumption side is equally true for the production side. Every minute twelve hours of video is uploaded to youtube alone. Other stats speak that by 2014 around 80% of online content will be video while still others speak of 80% of users will consume it. From whatever perspective perspective one approaches this phenomenon Cisco sees no technical limit and is rather neutral in his recent report that gives an idea of why "data is the new pollution of the information age":

Today Cisco announced the results of the annual Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2009-2014, which projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes, or more than 3/4 of a Zettabyte, by 2014.  This amount is 100 exabytes higher than the projected level in 2013, or an increase the equivalent of 10 times all the traffic traversing Internet Protocol networks in 2008.
The growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. Improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds, along with the increasing popularity of HDTV and 3DTV are key factors expecting to quadruple IP traffic from 2009 to 2014.

Source here

Video is the fastest growing media on the internet and no website (in the real world) comes without one. Video captivates more than text or images can do particularly in visual dominated cultures like ours. Moving images combined with music responds to our feelings and emotions in way only really good typography can do. (and Gutenberg was aware of this fact that is visible for us even today. Just look at the care and fines Gutenberg bibles exhibit) Video is easier to digest and much more convenient to experience than TV ever was. The reasons are technological and have little to do with how one use it to create a certain effect. But there is certainly more to it than just putting videos online.

I recorded an interview and a presentation exactly one week ago with a camera I borrowed from the university. A nice Sony HD consumer camera with an extra microphone and a tripod. A students editor was supposed to edit the material for me in the coming days. Of course I informed myself about other possibilities. I contacted Media Service Maastricht and Science Vision Maastricht. They offered me a professional set for a professional price. Since the budget is always the locus of disagreement I decided to move on with the in house equipment and services available. And here is the result:

The student editor has no time to edit anything before next week. (This means that for two weeks no such service exists practically) A very nice girl who's hobby is video editing cannot be blamed for having no time. But the equipment she gets in order to do the job can. The workstation she uses to edit HDvideos is not different from the workstation I use for web browsing in the cave. The free video editing software "Movie Maker" is her editing suit. She said something about another video editing software but this is even more confusing. So, already a week ago I thought that there is something wrong with all of this. But I remembered a prayer I put on the entrence of the cave:

God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

courage to change the things I can

and wisdom to always tell the difference.

So I booked her workstation for two hours to encode the .MTS files into a editable format. I expected the other software to be installed but without the right login nothing shows up. After calling the Helpdesk and listening for 5 minutes to a female voice who repeated the same phrase over and over again I decided to ask somebody what is going on. And somebody came and explained to me that no such software was purchased by the university nor is anybody able to help me. He was very kind and really sorry for the inconvenience this situation caused. So what is the lesson?

Now coming back to video on the web. Whatever ends it serves it will not do so here. The lack of basic facilities (software and hardware) for their production is a major barrier and not easy to overcome. Skilled professional personal is the next barrier that needs serious meditation when one wants to embrace on-line video. As long as those obstacles are not eliminated nobody should talk about embracing the "fastest growing media on the web". It needs more to successfully utilize video to accompany the educational program of the University than thought experiments and guesswork. What it needs is investment. Once this is in place a fruitful discussion about what content is available and how the University can make use of it in a way that promotes the values it stand for can begin. But as long as the university has amateur videographers equipped with stone age tools nothing will happen.

Reseachgate and its prospects

A number of points where raised today. Among the most interesting was a small remark that our website does not allow viewers to report errors. That's true and a valid point. A small link on the bottom of every page (in the footer) that invites people to share a piece of information that improves the website. How to implement it is another question. Any ideas?
Another interesting point was mentioned regarding researchgate dot net. The social network for scientists recently got funding to improve their site. Since we are considering promoting it as part of the internal branding strategy for Faculty members here are the key points what you can do with it:

• you can login with your existing facebook or linkedin account (so you dont need to remember another password)
• you have full control over your profile (that shows on the department website or wherever you want it)
• you can publish your papers there and make it accessible to over half a million researchers within the network
• you can start your own blog 
• you can create your own groups and share files with anybody who has the right permissions
• you can easily share information about events, news, seminars ect. that can be syndicated in a structured form
• ...

A lot of you have already signed up for the training but some are still missing! Please fill out the form and tell me when you have time for the training.

Here one of the newest highlights here at Maastricht University.

Here a hand picked comment from facebook:

Training Material and Registration

Since more and more people want to participate in the training I hope to provide you here with some additional information. A document that describes the upcoming training activities is available here. If more people want to sign up here is the form.

Results of the second and third talk

"It sounds as a blessing..." was the first line of an email I received and who's sender was today in my office to discuss his ideas for the department website. After agreeing on what has been discussed here so far he made some new remarks about the STAFF section. The right word would be FACULTY instead of STAFF. This is how it is done oversees. This is also the way it is done at Nyenrode University at the Faculty of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. On the other hand, the university of Twente, Department of Management lacks such a Faculty&Staff section completely. Unlike MU both universities have integrated all their departments and research institutes into their CMS.

Besides this rather banal discussion more relevant information surfaced quickly. One or two persons in the department should work on the department website and keep it up to date. One for updating information, the second for adding and building pages for special occasions. That Faculty and Staff should be able to update their profile pages via a webform is not new. How to implement it another topic. But having a website with a login and a page where people update their own information is definitely in. A guide for event pages and overall consistency was being asked for as well.

A third topic concerned the private web space under (http://www.personeel.unimaas.nl/) which every faculty member can start building his own presence. This requires a lot of technical know how and expertise that few possess. The university of Amsterdam, Faculty of Law provides its members instead of just web space an easy to use, good looking website with a uniform appearance. This makes it easy also for people with little HTML skills to maintain a fairly attractive website. Instead of using a home-brew application I would propose to utilize Researchgate.net which offers the same functionality. What do you think?

Another talk I had yesterday interrelates with the one I had today. Most people confuse marketing with communication as if this is all it is about. It is obviously not, but marketing plays an important role. Since Commerce took over the world wide web since the end of the 90's it became its main vehicle. As far as the UM website as an instrument to communicate its services and products to an audience is concerned it differs little from f.e www.apple.com. But unlike Apple Inc., MU is more interested in creating a replica of its internal procedures and organisational structure than it is to engage with its audience. An attempt to integrate Departments is just the next step into the same direction.

Now, from the perspective of a department there are numerous ways to engage with your audience. You can use Social Media, weblogs, podcasts, videocasts, wikis, customer relations ship management systems (mentioned in the first or second post here) and many more. The argument that no policy is in place distracts from the fact that one can set the example that if successful others will follow. In this way a department can become driver of innovation rather than its victim. Coming back from a meeting about SBE's internal branding strategy leaves no doubt about the "rebellious" and "forward looking" self image people here have of themselves. Instead of waiting for a policy to come along, one can experiment and discuss results. But not even this is happening here. (I can be wrong, so please let me know if you do!) The costs of communication are lower than ever before in human history and many take advantage of it. The same is true for the production of digital content in general. The "domestication of the web" by everybody creates an environment not anticipated yet here at the university. But whatever strategy is embraced it will not change the fact that students nowadays are internalizing the services they carry around in their mobile phones which connect them to everybody instantaneous.

Interview with Geert Hofstede and some followups of last week

Yesterday I recorded an interview with Geert Hofstede, an icon at Maastricht University. The interview was quiet good and will be uploaded here soon and presented at the upcoming alumni event. Some questions from last week are still open and I try to discuss them brief in this post.

First of all, on the right hand navigation at the bottom I added a list of links concerning the wish of some departments to get more information about social media. They will not answer all questions but should suffice at the moment. For the future I hope we find someone who can give an in house training in the use of social media. To freshen up the post here is a video on what to think about before using Twitter in your marketing strategy.



the Another question ask was how to integrate polls, forms and other interactive elements into the website. Contact Forms can be realized in GX. Polls like the one you see on top of the right hand navigation do not. Another way to create forms is by using a free service offered by Google. Microsoft's rival introduced Google Documents quiet a while ago and updates it regularly. It is for free and the only thing you need to do is to register. A more recent update includes a service called google forms. It allows you to create forms that one can embed into the website using the PARAGRAPH element. (I will explain this in one of the videos in the future). The input from users are stored in an google excel file. It is also a good solution to conduct online surveys. But since GX allows for this function as well there is no real need for it. For an example see the form made by postgraduate education here.

For polls GX offers a solution that I dont see implemented anywhere yet. But it is there. Another solution for polls are services like polldady. If you want to know more about your Twitter follower you might want to use Twtpoll. And since the more choice you have the more freedom you get here is a list with polling services you can use and most of them are for free.

The topic of weblogs came up for the IRO office. What they want is to give incoming students the possibility to blog about their experience. Solutions for this vary between the poles of being able to control the message and embracing the chaos. Hosting a wordpress multiple user account on our own facilities or using a hosted version are on the table. Asking the students if they already write a blog another one. After a good night of sleep I think that the solution that justifies the costs and results is the following: We open a free wordpress account and create for every student a user profile. Somebody in the IRO office gets editor rights and manages the blog. In this way we can maintain control over the look and feel of the blog and content while keeping the administrative workload at a minimum. Blogger dot com does not allow for multible users and other blogging platforms don't offer the intuitive User Interface wordpress has.

reply to comments

As was commented there are some menu points missing. EDUCATION and RESEARCH as top level menu items really belong to the department site. And it is as if the commentator could travel through time because at a meeting today with the other faculties we discussed exactly this. The first guidelines concerning the 'basisnavigatie' were being presented today and contain exactly what most of his comments where about. I like the example of Tilburg University and think we should aim for something similar.
"Database" was the most used word in the comments. Well, and there we have to look into solutions.I had a talk today concerning how an interface between the Digital UM Library could look like. In fact it looks very promising that we can connect the content with the system managing the department website. However, this is a longer process but possible in principle. A personal publication list can be created as easily as a repository of a single department's written output.

Concerning "thesis topics" I am aware that this refers to topics proposed by professors to students. Such a list including the thesis's title, short description, date, contact details, professor, etc. should be available somewhere for interested parties to consult. But should it be on the department website? I don't know what do you think?
Another thought about the staff page and personal pages. There will be a style guide coming up on the horizon for this and the images. Since this is something that will change, I am thinking of not putting to much effort in it and keep it simple. Ideally we put this information into a database, make a website where everyone can login and update his/her details which gets then presented on the website. At least in an ideal world this would be the case. But this takes more time to think. Everybody who has ideas on how to come up with a simple and good solution is welcome to share it here!!!

In two other meetings today the issue of weblogs kept popping up. Some people want to blog for marketing purposes or to strengthen their ties with exchange students. Again others want to have more training on how to use Social Media to engage with their audience in a new and exciting way. I promised to post some videos in the future that concern the later point. Well, and thanks for the many comments :)

Training and Meeting Results

<glimpse of what goes on somewhere else>

 Three people from the department of quantitative economics visited me and we talked about their ideas concerning the new department website. Stressing that they want a hierarchy free menu structure they added some points that are missing from the current minimal version. The points should be on the top menu:

• Research and Education
• List of research projects containing a short description and a link to the research project website.
• List of programs where members of the department teach
• List of topics for theses
• general links

Another point discussed was the need for a calender that includes events, seminars, conferences, et cetera. How to aggregate this information is hard to do for one person. The solution should allow everybody who knows about an appropriate event/seminar/conference to update this calender with little effort. Now such information is on the personal pages like this http://www.personeel.unimaas.nl/e-tsakas/EGT/Conferences%20%28EGT%29.htm.

One solution can be a small form on the website where people can suggest events that then get put into the Calender by another person (editor).

Privacy is also a big topic it seems. Nevertheless there is the demand for having a profile picture together with contact information visible on the STAFF section. The images should have the same style and background and will be taken in the department. An additional point was raised  that the three tracks and the division between Professors | PhD students | staff are also represented in the STAFF section. Interesting for me is whether or not this is a real improvement or just a way to make differentiations where non should be. 

LATEX for google.documents is available here. It would be good to see if it also works, maybe somebody can try this out. 

For now I hope that somebody provides me with the content for the additional points.

By the way, here is the list of people who will get a training in GX: You will be contacted in the coming weeks:

Pomme Theunissen (EuropeanCorner) - PLHM.theunissen@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Walter Hendriks (NSI) - w.hendriks@maastrichtuniveristy.nl
Claudia van Oppen (SME/MKB portal) - C.vanoppen@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Renée Rijnders (IRO) - r.rijnders@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Nicole Hulsman (Assistent, Economics) - n.hulsman@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Y. Paulissen (Assistent, Quantitative Economics) - Y.Paulissen@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Adela Buttolo (Organization and Strategy) - a.buttolo@maastrichtuniversity.nl
M. Vanwegberg (Organization and Strategy) - M.vanwegberg@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Luijten Cecile (Assistent, Finance) - l.cecile@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Datta Hannes (PhD Student, Marketing & Supply Chain Management) h.datta@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Glenn Westenberg (Technical Assistant; Education Research and Development) - g.westenberg@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Paul Jacobs (Managing the old Education Research and Development Website) - p.jacobs@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Erik Peek (Accounting & Information Managment) - e.peek@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Rick Cuijpers (Accounting & Information Managment) - r.cuijpers@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Department Website Structure

Since the first people show up tomorrow to discuss changes on the department site I think its a good idea to reveal the structure I came up with. My basic premise is "keep it simple". Since the deadline is tight and I have no clue what departments really want I hope to get some input here from you.



1. The initial plan to give every department the same layout (assigned design in GX) that schools (former faculties) and maastrichtuniversity.nl (former universitymaastricht.nl) got dismissed because of technical problems. But this does not matter for now. What I consider a well done department side is Oxford University - Department of Biochemistry. The front page should show off what there is to show. It should be inviting and to the point. If it was updated on a regular basisabout the department's activities it would serve as a good example on how I see our site. So far I propose this mockup as a starting point.

Presentation

Here is the presentation I did not held at todays meeting with all the web coordinators of MU. It was a relaxed atmosphere with me as the newest attraction. Tim talked about the steering board and showed two organisational charts depicting the relationship between people involved in the "webproject" and an overview of the functional parts the "webproject" actually consist of. I think his presentation is available on the intranet. The next round was about the upcoming training for the flexible knowledgworkers that we are here at UM. Yesterday I finished the list of people at SBE that will participate in that training. So if you find yourself here than you get a free skills upgrade.

Download Document here.
SBE is among the first schools at MU to implement the training and the migration of the departments into the new Content Management System. This gives us a first mover advantage and the possibility to experiment within some limits. But it also means that there will be a lot of people watching us. And to make it easier for them I do the blog a bit about the experience and progress.
In my presentation I wanted to point out that the real challenge is not a technical one. The real challenge is the attitude change that is required to confront the demands of new technology.As an engineer I know that once a technology works its obsolete. To illustrate this one can look at the telephone on his/her desk. It works fine if one has the right number to get a hold of the right person. And once it works, nobody spends time thinking about what it does to the speaker/listener or the organization. The same is true for the Microsoft Outlook. The moment it works nobody cares about it any more but uses it in their daily routine. The same is true for the 'webproject' that everybody is obsessed about. As soon as the website works, something new will come along and replace its function. Nobody in the media business talks about websites any more. Cloud computing, Augmented Reality, Application Programme Interfaces (API), mobile ubiquitous computing, .... are tags like web3.0, the real time web or the semantic web. At todays meeting it was the same. The tag 'Social Media' causes questions among my fellow colleges like how to use it? is there a policy? how can I embed this or that? So in this sense the website as it is currently online is already obsolete. Social media (which as a matter of fact is just the continuation of what was 15 years ago called the Web) is already knocking on the doors of MU. But beyond that, there is already a whole industry preparing and orchestrating the "next new thing" that will make everything else obsolete. Second Life is already obsolete. Nobody talks about Second Life anymore because everybody lifes already a second life but on one of millions of other platforms.

A stable user base of 1 million is not exactly 80% of all internet users in 2011. But to make the point clear I am not preaching that as a school we have to go with every trend. I oppose most of the developments but I am willing to understand them.That they are as irresistible as artificial is a further point of reflection.
The question I kept myself asking after the meeting was how to facilitate the attitude change required? Is training in GX enough and even wise? I have no clue but it cannot harm.

The five stages of Griev

The Kübler-Ross model as visualized by Tomfishburn describes my situation best. After two weeks of trying to get a hold of seven people (who work in the same building) I introduced myself to everyone of them. All seem quiet accepting my plans to migrate their websites into the GX system. With the exception of one person who was still in stage one, all others are already accepting the intrusion of a sadist into their daily working life.
The next step is to get all people together and discuss the plan in more detail. For this I fear to prepare a bit. Maybe with a fancy presentation. Online, using Google presentation. By the way, interesting enough that after a mistake in the Database the person behind the Second Life Assignment Website discovered Google Docs to create a simple registration form for students.

Lets get it done

Forward through the rear-view mirror. "I think to much like our generation" was the comment of a PhD student during a casual chat. I took it as an offence and listened to what he had to say. The department is unhappy with its current website presence. Than they are not alone, I replied. It is not only what you see on their website but also what you don't see. The problem is that students take very long to write their thesis. And no system keeps track of this process. Another problem concerns the publications published by members of the department. Since publications are the sort of product that results from the intellectual endeavour academics are engaged in they have an interest in presenting them. The curious thing is that nobody can tell me where they publish them in the first place.
The current department website has 200 clicks per day according to their webmaster. My analytics tells me something else. Its about 60 clicks per day and most of them come from internal IPs. After a fruitful discussion about relative vague concepts we agreed to meet with the other web editors in the School and engage in a dialogue about the Operation Switch Over.
Talking yesterday to the Network administrator I am really impressed by the facilities of the School. 64TB storage NAS, virtual servers and a department that has everything under control. Thats a positive message. But thats the only one at the moment.

Youth Media and Next generation Classroom

One recent initiative that offers some insights into the major theme of this years opening of the academic year is the Youth media and next generation Classroom seminar series. A full conference coverage where international top educators, innovators and media experts meet in October 2009 here in Maastricht to discuss how they create the future for universities.
The Department of Education Research and Development should be interested in what Prof. Anne Balsamo from the University of South California has to report on her experience with new media and new literacies.

How to use CRM Tools for education

Nicolaas Pereboom told me in his presentation that the future revolves around CRM tools. Since I know a good deal about the future but did not know what CRM stands for here the translation: CRM - Customer Relationship Management. Online community platforms don't need to be build from scratch but are for rent since many years. Already in 2007 my attention was captured by kickapps and since then many other companies sell a similar product. If we need more of them or less is not the question. But what to do with them and how to implement them to empower communities online?
This blog deals with many practical implications of Customer Relationship Management and how it is used for educational purposes.

Read the newest article here:

What is yours? What kind of community will you develop? What is the purpose? What is the focus? What sorts of strategies will you use to get people engaged? What roles? What activities? What artifacts? Will you be an open community, a social network, or a walled garden. Is growth important? What kind of growth- slow and sustained or wildly viral?

Planning ahead is strategic, however you also need to be willing to adjust your plan and let your community evolve as the needs and skills of the community surface.

Overview of the website

The current website is the target of criticism from all corners. I am not inclined to give a value judgement but I think that it represents to a visible degree the universities organisational structure. To back up this claim I went over every page and compiled the list that you see here:


Download PDF here
(note that the website is a work in progress or fluid)

Whether this was intentional or not I don't know. But it turns out that the most relevant information (by this I mean programme details, certificates, research results,...) is at the back of the website. It takes me eight clicks to get the programme's deadlines f.e. as it took me about half an hour to scan in some documents in the first week. This said, I see the same thing in other schools at MU.

Plugins you need

Some tools make your life easier, others only more convenient. For my work I found three tools that combine both characteristics - Firefox (Browser) - Firebug (Add-On) and Open in IE 1.3 (Add-on) and make my life in the caveyard much easier. Firebug lets you see what GX is actually doing and is not for no reason advertised as the "most powerful tool for webdevelopment". Open IE gives you a way to render any website you surf to in firefox to be rendered as if you use Internet Explorer. It proves very powerful in that it allows you to make use of the faster Firefox browser while still see what most people experience in with their IE

Introduction to Hello World

They say that writing a weblog is like taking a hot shower. "They" are consultants like Nicolaas Pereboom from Crossmind. He came to my office with a presentation about web2.0 and all the rest of it.

The purpose of this blog is to share my experience as webcoordinator at SBE with everybody who is interested in it. I will talk about the problems with the CMS and post solutions when I have some. My goal is to keep track of my doings and offer insights and news from the webfront. Since nobody except other web coordinators might find it interesting what I write I will keep it fairly technical and to the point. Research into the phenomenon of weblogs found that less than 30% who start one still write half a year later. I will see how this goes. Iam happy for every comment and firmly believe that it is possible to have an open discussion about the future of the "wepproject".

Thanks,
A. McClueless