It's time for some editor training!

With only 2 months until the new website launches we are starting to reach the point where we need to engage with and train our existing editors in Edit+. A potentially huge task when you initially look at it...

The starting point for this is to look at who currently has an account and their activity within the site. It turns out that getting a list is pretty easy but that finding out how engaged they are is far trickier. The current CMS's we use don't give you stats on editors so we have very little idea about who owns what page, login details, activity, etc. So I am essentially starting from scratch and trying to build a list that highlights who is still active, the area they edit and their level of activity.

The starting point is to email all 152 of them and see who replies! Then, those who reply are listed and asked to provide details on their area and level of activity. This then give me a list of 74 people, a 50% cull on old accounts.

Now that I have a more up-to-date list I can book people in for training slots. I've decided to use Doodle as the booking system as it was recommended to me by a colleague. I have to say, it's a great tool, really easy to use, flexible and not packed with functionality i'm not interested in! Having set-up the dates and times of the training sessions it's then just a case of emailing the list of editors and letting them select the slot that works for them.

As you can see from the screenshot the layout is very clear which has led to no questions coming back to me about how to book onto a course. So far, of the 74 active users 68 of them have signed up via Doodle, not a bad drop out rate.

So, if you're looking to run training courses, events or drop in sessions then Doodle could be a useful tool for you to use.

All I need to do now is create a training site, training materials, session content... nothing too major.

Internet World 2013 - Not that great...

Not sure if it was me or a sign of the times but Internet World felt far smaller this year than last year. As you would expect there were the usual suspects attending, Sage Pay, SiteCore, WebTrends, etc, but the place felt pretty empty and pretty slim on exhibitors.

However, as I was there specifically to pick up contacts for SEO it did serve a purpose and I did manage to find a few companies worth considering.

It wasn't all bad though, Sage Pay did appear to have a cloud generating machine (see pic) that was mildly amusing... and there was the expected buzz word bingo on 'Responsive'. Here's hoping that it picks up and the exhibition is better attended next year!

Responsive design is the most important thing a company can do when setting up a mobile optimised site #exploitingdigital #Google
— Internet World (@iw_expo) April 25, 2013

Training, training, training...

We're now at the point in the project where we are all getting our training on the system. Although this isn't new to me it is to the rest of the team and it's been interesting to see how easily everyone has picked up the new system.

This is partly to do with having a very good trainer (Hello Dave!) and also the fact that the system makes sense. Compared to our current systems, OpenText and Shado, Squiz Matrix is ridiculously easy to pick up and use and you can start creating pages very quickly. We had all created and published out a modest 6 page site within 10 minutes...

Dave also has an exam at the end of the training sessions designed to ensure that the attendee has understood all points covered during the day. Thankfully, the team all passed with 95% or more so we're in a rather strong position to now move on and start training our internal editors in how to use the system.

Lucky really as I currently have a list of 160 editors waiting to be trained!

Project update, it's been a while!

Well, it's been a very long time since I put a posting up which is probably a sign that things have been rather busy this end! So, a quick post to catch up on where we are with the project & thankfully everything is looking good:

• The concept designs have been signed off and we are now at the point of cutting these up.
• The responsive designs have landed with me for approval, so far everything looks great so it's now a case of running them past the various boards.
• We're due to start our Matrix training next week (Morning Dave) with a number of introduction and advanced courses to complete. Following our training i'll be mapping out an intensive training session for the 100+ editors currently working on the website.

A lot of the team and still working through the content refresh and with only 6 weeks to go we will have covered all 10,000 pages of content. An incredible task that has meant we have cut down the size of the website by around 15-20% and by using our SiteImprove tool, fixed over 600 broken links and corrected over 1,800 spelling mistakes.

As you can tell from the above we are ploughing through tasks at an amazing rate and are still on track for our launch date later this year. Exciting times ahead for us as the launch of the new website will really only be the start of the project!

The rise of the Chromebook?

Chrome as an operating system has been around for a while but has never seemingly taken off. This may be due to the fact that the cloud based nature of it has been too big of a jump for people moving away from Windows and the supposed 'safety' of Office.

However, now that the Chrome OS has had a little time to mature there appears to be far less barriers to jumping on board.

Firstly, the cost of the hardware makes it look very appealing, starting at just £199 for the lower spec model. Although their new flagship model, the Chromebook Pixel (video below) will set you back £1,049...

Secondly, the option for offline editing has improved vastly with Documents and Presentations being available to edit offline with them syncing when a connection becomes available again. Although there is still a way to go, Spreadsheets and Drawings aren't available for editing yet, this is far better than it was last year.

Lastly, it's easy to use. The Chrome OS is a 'light' version of an operating system that focuses specifically on browsing the web, document creation and portability. Ideal for taking to meetings and using as a laptop in front of the TV. If you're a diehard gamer then it's not for you but for the day-to-day browser this could prove to be a very useful machine.

The big question now is, do you feel brave enough to leave Windows behind?

"So i'm getting Scroogled?!" Er, probably not...

I think it's fair to say that i'm very happy using my Google products (Mail, Calendar, Docs, Blogger, etc) and they all work rather well. But, I also realise that Google specialise in paid for advertising and that the compromise for having free tools to use is that some may carry some ads, which are usually discrete and I always ignore. So, it was quite amusing to see that Microsoft has started a fairly low level smear campaign to bolster the take up of outlook.com... 

Only problem is, the below video really just looks like something a bored student has put together, or is that the point?

Negative marketing may be the new approach for Microsoft, but as Marketing Land point out this may not be having the effect they were hoping for:

"To date, the Microsoft-backed petition against Gmail’s practices has gained about over 6,000 signatures — equal to about 0.002% of Gmail’s user base."

 Could this be a case of Microsoft telling us what we already know? "Hey, Google does advertising..."

Concept Design Feedback, seems all good...

It's been a week and a half since I took delivery of the new concept designs for the website and there's been a flurry of activity around collecting feedback! Last week was a round of showcases for board members as well as a week of collecting comments from students at our De Havilland campus.

The good news is that we are running at 92% positive feedback on the new designs overall and when we filter out the staff feedback we are at 94% positive for our students. Not a bad number and we still have a week of feedback to collect as well...

Having a mixture of Yes/No questions with narrative follow ups has allowed us to pick up on recurrent themes within the comments and is highlighting what we should be addressing in order to get as close to 100% positive as possible. No shockers so far which is good and hopefully I can roll out a very small preview closer to us going live!

Interestingly, within the questions we started to tease out some feedback on mobile usage, currently we only have 49% of our students/staff accessing the University website on their mobile phone, mainly due to the awkwardness of navigation. However, when asked if they would use the site if it were responsive the number went up to 63%... highlights that mobile usage is more front of mind than some people may think!