Foursquare rolls out with a new interface for its desktop web users. The interface is similar to it's mobile counterparts and includes not only a live stream of where your friends are, but a map interface that visualizes thier exact location.
The badges page has been improved also. They now break badges down by Foursquare, Expertise, and Partner. This more than likely runs in line with the badges that level up, an addition added to the service earlier this week.
The 2011 University of Iowa Foundation Annual Report is finally live! This is the first year that UIF has gone with an electronic-only format. The site is filled with tons of interactive multimedia that includes stories, photo galleries, and interviews. The intro video uses HTML5 and popcorn.js to walk you through inspirational stories of giving. Check it out at http://www.uifoundation.org/inspire.
Here is a quick summary of this morning's presentation from Deborah Maue (@debmaue) of DePaul University. I apologize for any typos in advance!
A quick snapshot of DePaul. It is located in Chicago, IL and has over 2,500 full-time employees, 100,000 alumni living in Chicago, and is the largest Catholic University at 25,245 students (No, it isn't Notre Dame).
Deborah mentions that a brand is defined by experiences that people have had with you, and that you are not starting from scratch. There are usually many different audiences that want different things from their interactions. There include and aren't limited to, prospective students, alumni, donors, and employees. With most institutions there is a decentralized organizational structure which means there isn't always clear process for gaining agreement.
To make things simple she talks about her principles of higher ed branding. "To be effective, your brand must be, distinctive, own-able, and benefit-oriented". Lots of people tend to over look the own-able and benefit oriented part of the brand. DePaul started to talk about the concept of branding in 2000 at start of their last strategic planning process. They condensed around 20 brands to around 10.
The process of Defining the DePaul Brand included understanding what people though about DePaul and its main competitor schools and the gaps between how they wanted people to think about Depaul and what they thought about it.
Objectives included developing a unified brand language, refine the individual audience messaging strategie and develop key messages to support the unified brand. To understand this information she sought out to find what characteristics were important to people in determining the reputation of a university. She came up with 44 characteristics people associated with DePaul, and used those same 44 characteristics to compare DePaul to its competitors that include Marquette, Layola, and UIC among the others.
Lots of information grabbed from quantitative research including being associated to a world class city, wide variety of programs, and the faculty focused on teaching, surprisingly athletics fell on the back end.
When compared to competitors Layola, and Marquette, faculty connection to student separated them from the rest of the field. They found characteristics that they knew they couldn't compete on. It brought on discussion which is still great at knowing where they stood vs their competitors "Allowed us to get a clear picture of what we owned, and what we needed to include in the brand".
After looking at the benefit areas, the language seemed very common to what other institutions are using. "There are very limited number of words in the english language", it is a challenge that all marketing departments face.
At DePaul, they recognized that everything needed to start with the brand, and leadership agreed. Brand Positioning included their areas of research which worked its way to their brand identity. The identity included the the primary, and secondary areas of interest from audience. She mentions you never have enough resources to teach people about your brand or police it. It has taken them about a year to get around to everyone. You prioritize based on the size of their audience.
They made presentations to key college and divisional staff, admissions, career center financial aid, student records, and relaunched brand resource site. New advertising campaign started.
Moving forward, she mentions that the brand statement is inspiration for moving forward. The biggest gap is in academic reputation - it is a hole that they hope to fill in the future.
The entire project cost the university cost the university around $125,000. Most of it was on the quantitative analysis.
College football season is upon us. Ah the smell of beer, burgers, and a combination of other things I care not to mention. Along with this time of the year, come the Hawkeye-inspired songs. Some may deem these annoying, laughable, or Grammy worthy, but at some point in time these daring YouTubers had heads turning. Check out the videos below.
Katy Perry you are not.
I'm not sure who is officiating, but it must be official by their rule book
I was really hoping this transitioned into some Reggaeton.
...
Have any other songs I may have missed? Leave them in the comments.
Boy does time fly. Last April, me and the Live Weekend gang had the opportunity to bring Mike Posner to Iowa City before his worldwide stardom. Here is some awesome footage captured by Zardon Richardson at the Blue Moose last April. Enjoy! Mikey P will be performing in Iowa City again tonight at Hubbard Park for the 3rd Annual Hawkapalooza. Hawkapalooza is the University of Iowa's Pep Rally that happens every fall that is put on by HawksNest and SCOPE. Past artists have included Lupe Fiasco, Big Boi, and Super Smash Brothers.
Thought it would be a good time to start blogging again. As you can see I have been pretty consistent with posting something once every four months [sarcasm]. I wanted to share some thoughts for my design and web friends out there.
We are going through another transition on the web. With the growing support of HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery, we are seeing a new standard across the board as far as functionality and integration with social netorks. In turn people want to see their website interact the same way other websites are. You'll start to notice a growing trend of easy to use lightboxes, contact forms, AJAX elements, and the use of API's from sites like Twitter and Facebook. Of course a good rule of thumb is to use these add-ins in moderation - take it from my man Tony Sinclair [YouTube].
Helpful reads on HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery
CMS Integration. Believe it or not a many businesses are still operating on a static site. A static site requires a user to constantly make changes via FTP. Constantly diving into the code to make changes to text and images can lead accidental breaks in code; if the files are not backed up, they can take hours or even days to fix. Content management systems allow you to build the site, add code to the editable regions, so once the site is live, the client (or you) aren't actually diving into the code, they are viewing an interface that is similar to a text editor or email client. Did I mention version control? Easily reference previews edits in case you have some sort of blooper.
Instead of seeing lines and lines of code, the client will see a nice interface, that will in turn lead to a happy client/customer relationship. Kiss that tile of webmaster goodbye!
Check out these content managment systems: WordPress, SilverStripe, Drupal
Another segment that has a strong future is the mobile web (not to get confused with mobile applications, you need to start somewhere). Anaylsts from Morgan Stanley believe that based on the current rate and change, mobile web will be bigger than desktop internet use by 2015. Why? Smart phone handsets are taking over the mobile market and mobile internet speeds are getting faster. One of the best ways to adjust to this growing trend is by building device adaptive websites. This can save a lot of time and work. Device, adaptive sites allow the website to adjust based on the device it is viewed on.
This is an example of an apadtive website. As you can see there is a desktop, tablet, and mobile version.Great mobile web tutorials for adaptive device support: Adapt.js, HTML5 Boilerplate
Share your thoughts, what other trends are you encountering?
I admit it - it has taken quite some time for us to release footage from the two shows, but finally some leakage. Check out the video below featuring footage from the Macklemore and Big Sean show. A big shout out goes to Zardon on the filming, Live Weekend crew, and Lindberg who helped both events be a major success. Full recaps of the events should be released within the month.
How is everyone doing!? It's been quite some time since I last had a post on this blog! Things have been extremely crazy in my neighborhood but I wanted to take some time to get you up to speed on things. Next week Live Weekend will be hosting two shows in Iowa City featuring two up and coming acts making waves in their respective genre - Big Sean (3/24) and Macklemore (3/25). Next Thursday, G.O.O.D. Music, and Def Jam Recording artist Big Sean will rock the stage at The Union Bar at 7PM; this is why you should be excited for this show.
In 2005 Big Sean connected with Kanye West after performing a freestyle on the local radio station in Detroit. West liked what he heard from the young rapper and signed him to G.O.O.D. Music. West, John Legend, Common, Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Consequence, Mos Def, Mr. Hudson are a few of the artists that are currently on the label.
Big Sean was featured in 2010 edition of XXL Magazine's Freshman 10. That roster included J. Cole, gangsta rap up-and-comer Nipsey Hu$$le, newly-minted Asylum lyricist Pill, 1017 Brick Squad member OJ Da Juiceman, Wiz Khalifa, underground favorite Fashawn, Gary, Indiana rep Freddie Gibbs, West Coast phenom Jay Rock and the latest addition to the Atlantic roster, Donnis.
Lately we have had a knack for getting artists into to town right before they blow (Mike Posner, Wiz Khalifa) - the same can be said for Big Sean. Big Sean released his last mixtape, Finally Famous: Volume 3 on October 20, 2010 ft the likes of Mike Posner, Bun B, Drake, Tyga, Chiddy Bang and others. Production credits from his mixtape also came from Don Cannon, Nick Kage, DJ Spinz, The Olympicks, No I.D., Elised of Treal, Chuck Inglish, Key Wane, Xaphoon Jones, Wrightrax, Clinton Sparks. Sounds like an album right? Wrong.
Big Sean is slated to release his debut album entitled "Finally Famous: The Album" on May 3, 2011. With that being said a ton of momentum is swinging in his direction with a number of releases and features on mixtapes including "My Last" ft. Chris Brown and respective features on Wiz Khalifa's "Cabin Fever" mixtape.
If you are a new artist and can master the realm of distributing content online, you set the best foundation in terms of getting your music out. I have a high regard for Big Sean in the realm of marketing his music and staying current with his fans.
On top of releasing three mixtapes since 2007, he has released high quality video productions featuring tracks on his mixtapes. From FFv3, Sean has released videos for Final Hour, What U Doin?, Too Fake, Supa Dupa Lemonade, High Rise, and Hometown which have garnered over 5 million views and counting. Let's hope his next video production is from his single featuring Chris Brown. It was recently profiled on MTV News. Sean says,
"This is some of the scenes I've been waiting my whole life to shoot, it embodies what I always dreamed of doing"
Maybe Big Sean is finally famous.
The show will open with local acts Calliko (Quad Cities) and Zeaphy - he is sure to put on a show following his performance at Panama City Beach. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and download his latest mixtape.
Tickets are $20 and available for purchase at RAYGUN Iowa City located on 103 E. College St. and online at http://www.livewknd.com/big-sean/. This show is all ages. I hope to see you there!
Live Weekend has announced a new show featuring Seatlle rapper Macklemore. The event will take place on Friday, March 25, 2011 at Gabe's. Tickets will be $10. If you like hip-hop, this will be the show for you, it will include three very talented emcee's.
With a great 2010 under his belt, 2011 is already shaping up to be a tremendous year for Mack. His recently announced headline show at Seattle's Showbox (1,200 capacity) sold out immediately. A second show was added; it sold out within 48 hours. A 3rd show was just added and goes on-sale today. That's an amazing feat for anyone these days, let alone an artist who remains as independent as anyone. He'll hit the road starting February 25th, headlining his first full US tour, which will include a week-long stop in Austin, TX for a busy SXSW schedule. Stay tuned.
An quick update...his third show sold out as well.
Blueprint Blueprint is known for his distinctive teeth and story-telling ability. His albums usually focus upon a range of subjects and include many different styles of music, rather than focusing on one level throughout. He is also a skilled freestyler and came in second place in the Scribble Jam 2000 freestyle competition. Blueprint is very appreciative of fans; a 2004 Fort Collins show had a very low turnout because the promoter had the wrong date on the flyers. Blueprint chose to get down from the stage, and perform the entire concert with all 50 or so fans encircling him on the floor.
See you all at the show, it should be something you don't want to miss! Ticket's can be purchased online at http://livewknd.com/macklemore.
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