I just got back from Austin. Here are my notes from some fantastic panels and keynote speeches. There is a lot to get through, but hey, stick with me.

The Real Responsive Process

These guys talked about the theory behind it, why we should be doing it, and most importantly admitting that it’s okay to not completely understand it. It’s new, give yourselves a break.

Here are the speakers, you can follow them on Twitter and check out what they do in the responsive world.

Steve Fisher @hellofisher

http://hellofisher.com/secret.php

http://republicofquality.com/projects/interactive-style-tiles/

Samantha Toy @SamanthaToy

http://styletil.es/

http://www.samanthatoy.com/

Yesenia Perez-Cruz @yeseniaa

http://happycog.com/  

http://www.cognition.happycog.com/article/one-size-fits-none

Aaron Gustafson @AaronGustafson

http://easy-readers.net/books/adaptive-web-design/

He mentioned this site as an alternative to Bootstrap http://foundation.zurb.com/

“Still discovering, still don’t totally know what we are doing, if I’m honest.”

“Knowing that you don’t know everything is key.”

Tina Roth Eisenberg

@swissmiss

http://www.swiss-miss.com/

Scroll down a while on that site and you can watch her keynote, I like having it on in the background while I’m working. She founded and runs these businesses:

http://www.creativemornings.com/

http://teuxdeux.com/

http://tattly.com/

http://www.studiomates.com/

She’s a pretty cool lady, it’s a Swiss thing I guess. I like how a company she founded goes on to produce more great companies, must be a pretty great feeling. E.g. Studiomates are responsible for:

http://symbolset.com/

http://editorially.com/

She said something that really stuck with me… “Stay away from people that are fond of disliking things.” I like that.

Dennis Crowley – Foursquare CEO – The Future Of Location

@dens

https://foursquare.com/

He talked about something that I have never really thought about, location visualisation. The shape of a place can be defined by check-ins. E.g. JFK airport isn’t just a dot on a map, it is a space defined by the location of people within it. Areas defined by density of people.

This is a video he showed, it illustrates the point well. https://vimeo.com/52883962

Let Conscience Be Your Guide, Moral Design.

@rjowen

http://www.convercent.com/

The things we use change us. 6 principles of moral design.

 1. Moral design is restrained.

- “Good design should be as little design as possible.” Dieter Rams.

- Respect restraint and constraints.

2. Moral design improves harmony.

- Sustain and improve balance and order.

- Never solve one problem by creating others.

3. Moral design is dynamic.

- Value the imperfection that comes from crafting real things.

- We should have a healthy fear of perfection. If it is perfect, it is static.

4. Moral design requires craftsmanship.

- Good things come from good craftsmanship.

- Think about people when you are creating things for people.

- This was made for me.

5. Moral design is honest.

- Does not pretend to be something other than what it is.

- Design is a promise.

- Is it achievable?

- Will it make people better people?

6. Moral design is organic.

- Treat the user, design, brand, environment as one organism.

- What is healthy for one thing has to be healthy for all other parts.

- Nothing good can come to the brand at the expense of users.

If your values are not being practiced in tangible ways, then they are bad for you. They are meaningless.

“Do the right thing, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain

Here is what I got out of this crazy week. People always say things like, “music was better in the 60′s”, “this restaurant used to be good, then it got popular”, “SXSW was better before the corporations arrived.” Yeah well thats great, personally I think it’s lazy. Here are some reasons to be cheerful about where we are, right now.

- crowd-funding, see this

- collaborative workspaces

- CEO’s admitting they are still learning, and that being okay

- definitely this

One thing though, sitting in a room with 3000 people all looking at their smartphones / tablets / laptops is scary. The bright glow and glazed eyes. Hug a tree once in a while.

- Oliver

I went to the Oregon Zoo earlier this week. The hope is that we can work together and form a partnership around the beaver habitat. Maybe some day we will have livebeavercam.edu available for you to go to (official title still to be determined). Anyways it was also quite enjoyable on a personal level because this was my first trip to the zoo. The highlight, of course, were the beavers, but there were lots of other great animals and educational opportunities as well. I strongly urge you to visit if you have the opportunity.

Things Kegan learned at the zoo

• Melody, our marketing director, has a reoccurring nightmare about bears.
• The beavers are way bigger than expected. We are talking like 20-40 lbs.
• Inside the beaver den is a magical looking place, that is warm and cozy. I really wanted to crawl in there.
• Elephants have huge bladders and well, for lack of more eloquent speech, “drop a massive load when they urinate”.
• While we are on the subject, Polar bears urinate in the their own pool, which if I remember from growing up is a big no no.
• The baby elephant lilly is incredible cute and I could watch her run around for hours.
• Monkeys are arrogant and think they are better than me (constantly plotting their escape).
• Lions are definitely king of the jungle.
• Some bird (that I don’t recall the name of) acts as a scout for the mongoose while it hunts. While the mongoose scares up insects for the bird to eat. The perfect form of animal teamwork.
• The Oregon Zoo is awesome.

-Kegan

This might seem silly, but it really is pretty accurate as I see it. My job is to balance the needs of our users (students, staff, faculty, alumni, etc..) and the needs of our leadership. We are in fact a marketing and communications division. We wouldn’t exist if there was no strategic mission our university was trying to accomplish. So I try to listen to our audiences, gather information, test, practice, etc.. Then combine that with the insight I have into higher education, our specific university and the strategic goals as handed down from our President, Provost and VP. So in essence I am the web middle man.

Kegan-

Here are three things you can learn today.

The Grande Super burrito at La Rockita (downtown Corvallis) is too big. I know wouldn’t typically ever think of saying that phrase, but the thing is just way to big. It broke open and spilled every where. Quite tasty, but a big disaster. Sorry I don’t have any pictures to back this up (was a hot mess). You are going to have to take my word for it.

The Cannon 5D Mark (mark I) is almost eight years old. It is easily the most seldom used camera in our office. Since it has no video functionality it is typically left in the drawer, as we don’t do very much still photography. However, we have been doing a ton of time lapses lately and the fact that it is a full frame camera (not cropped sensor like most of our other DSLR’s) means you can do some really brilliant time lapses. There are tons of options out there as far as cameras, but if you are an in-house production unit and are looking to ramp up your time lapse capability getting your hands on an original 5D would be well worth the investment. You can pick up a refurbished one between $500-$800. Like I said, it doesn’t shoot video, but can really bang out some stunning time lapse scenes.

The University Marketing Department at OSU (in our division) has recently put up new banners around downtown Corvallis. They depict all the many things that make up Beaver Nation. I think they turned out great. On the way to the aforementioned  burrito lunch (still too big) we snagged a picture outside the lovely Benton County Courthouse.

Kegan-

http://data.oaa-web-accessibility.org/schools

http://www.educause.edu/annual-conference/2012/athletic-rivalries-and-web-accessibility-who-sweet-16-year

Having a committed and knowledgable team at Disability Access Services and the Office of Equity and Inclusion is a big reason we’ve been doing so well. Also, commitment from IT and Central Web Services has also helped move this forward. Web accessibility isn’t the domain of one department, and to do it well you need collaboration across campus communications, IT and administration. We’re lucky to have a great team.

However, none of this would work if we didn’t also value hard work and have pretty high quality standards. As the title suggests whatever it takes to get the job done is sort of our mantra. If that means working from a coffee shop, or alone in your office. If it means blasting 80′s rock or listening to Mozart on your headphones. We do what works best.

The video below is what gets me pumped up in the morning and ready for my day. What is your ideal work environment? Let us know in the comments.

-Kegan

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Every year as a part of our paid sponsorship with Athletics we get to create a short video to be played during football games. Yes, that is accurate we (the university) have to pay to get a 30 second message up on the Jumbo Tron at each of our home football games. I understand it, but I certainly don’t respect it.

Anyways it is a typically fun, but challenging project. One thing that stands out, as a positive, is the collaboration it takes to make something like this happen. We work closely with the Marketing office on messaging, style and delivery. We also rely on Media Services to help us get the technical specs correct and to do all the work during the actual game.

Pretty much everyone in our department gets to work on these in some way or another. We also pull in random staff members from other units on campus to be our “talent”.

The shot above is from the one we did for the 2012 football season. It is an ESPN Sports Center style spoof.

-Kegan (aka Kevin)

They also value customer service very highly. In the store they are energetic and enjoyable. On the phone they greet you with a phrase like “Hello Jimmy Johns you are awesome, how can I help you?”. The last thing I should mention is that they deliver. Like everything else about them the delivery is fast. I clocked them at six minutes from the time I ordered to the time they pedaled up to my office. I should also note that they will deliver one single sandwich. Can you believe that? They will hop on their bike zip all the way across campus and hand off one single sandwich then zip back. Just so lazy jackwads like myself don’t have to walk allllll the way over there (like 6 blocks) and get one.

At this point you might wonder what this has to do with web communications and the answer is nothing really. It really is a look into customer service and attitude. Like I said before they pride themselves on presenting an enjoyable experience to anyone who comes into contact with them. They also keep a great attitude. If I had to pedal across campus, (like a bat out of hell I might add) just to hand one sandwich to some fat lazy dude, I wouldn’t be all that happy. Yet every single time they are polite and friendly.

So, to sum up this hot mess of a post. If we could model our web communications after Jimmy Johns we would be doing a pretty good job.

• Stress your points of differentiation in everything you do
• Perform incredible customer service
• Gain positive influence and win big in a pretty competitive market

-Kegan

Webcomm and Marketing walking the trail.

We took a trip over to Bend today. The 2-year OSU Cascades campus is located in Bend and we are in the middle of trying to establish a full four year branch campus. Part of us met with local team members to plan out our marketing strategies for the next two years. The other half got to tour the downtown area looking for environmental advertising locations.

Hipster pic of an overturned tree stump.

After that we stopped by Suttle Lake and took a nice walk on one of the trails. I guess it can be argued which activity was more valuable/enjoyable. We have a few new staff members and any chance to get out of the office is a good opportunity to get to know eachother. We didn’t do any trust falls or sing camp songs, but I think we all had a good time.

Gloomy picture of Suttle Lake. Perfect spot for a slasher movie.

Kegan-

Oliver Day joined Web Communications on June 4

And, since people are our greatest and most important resource, our biggest recent success is adding a new interactive designer to our team. Oliver Day has joined us, bringing a world traveler’s perspective and work experience ranging from web retail to winemaking in two hemispheres. We’re excited to have his creative eye and excellent portfolio of work on our team. And we also won’t mind if he shares some of his home brew with his officemates.