October 22, 2008
To: Lynn Carlin, Interim Vice Provost for Information Technology Services
From: Kevin Champion, Betsy Edwards, Phyllis Epps, Rebecca Gould, Cathy Rodriguez, and Sarah Silva, iTAC
Re: Overview of the InfoTech Tuesday Process
Our goal with the Web 2.0 format for InfoTech Tuesday is to develop a newsletter that is innovative, engages the reader and develops a sense of community. Changes in the process allow authors to post articles directly into the blog as a draft. Authors, editors and administrators can then review and edit each article without knowledge of html. The new format has eliminated 18 steps in the production process. The authors and editors are striving to achieve, preserve and avoid the following:
Achieve
Demystify information technology
Create a social, collaborative IT environment
Empower users/readers to invest in the process and share information
Allow the users to help IT staff understand what is important (provides feedback loop)
Streamline and improve processes
Allows individuals to better find archived news and information
Preserve
Produce quality, timely information
Current communications with IT readership
Image of accurate, succinct news
Avoid
Disenfranchising the readership
Misinformation
Unproductive, unconstructive comments
Excessive processes/steps to produce the newsletters (includes e-mails, coding, editing, middle-person, redundancy of efforts, etc)
Dependence on Web 1.0 technologies
The types of articles will be determined by the readership and the authors (For example, position announcements can be posted by the authors, but will not be solicited by the editors). The editors and the Interim Vice Provost for Information Technology Services can pull an article at anytime.
The team proposes to turn the comments on by default. A moderator (Kevin Champion or Betsy Edwards) will be assigned to moderate all comments and deletes those with questionable or foul language. If the moderator is unsure about a comment, he/she will err on the side of deleting the comment.If the comment is question IT, it will be passed to appropriate staff member to provide a response. The answer will be published by the author who will respond in a professional capacity.
The revised format has been well-received by the readership. On September 25, 2008, a reader from Ohlone Community College wrote, “I was doing a search of IT newsletter samples and came across your site, which is outstanding. Per your own overview and mission, it's my opinion that you succeed on every bullet point. The posts are succinct and well written, and I admire the layout and organization. Best wishes to your entire team of professionals”.
From August 26 to October 13 there were 12,214 visits to the InfoTech Tuesday site with 25,533 page views and 7,308 unique visitors. The first article on Zimbra experienced between 1,807 and 2,407 page views depending on the tracking tool used. The Techbytes Zimbra article had 54 to 80 page views. There were 336 outbound links to http:// www.zimbra.com from InfoTech Tuesday articles. The table below provides information on the purpose, audience, format, process, etc. for InfoTech Tuesday prior to and after the implementation of the web 2.0 version of InfoTech Tuesday on August 26, 2008.
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2001-August 2008
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August 2008 – present
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Purpose
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Inform – IT Security training, IDT Roundtables/TechBytes/eTips, outages, etc
Educate – Facebook flyers, K-State Online Tip of the Week, Security Tip of the Week, Accessibility Tip
Celebrate – Champions of Learning Using Technology, award recipients
Vision – innovations and innovative uses of technology
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Inform the campus about IT News, events and IT-related happenings on campus (including job announcements)
Educate about effective use of technology, providing security tips, and keeping users abreast of information technology
Celebrate champions of learning who are using technology, and individuals who provide information technology for the campus
Develop a sense of community with the users and provide a forum for feedback, includes information sharing, interaction, participating in the communication process and asking questions
Envision innovations and innovative uses of information technology on campus and beyond
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Audience
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All K-State students, faculty, and staff (includes Salina campus)
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Users of information technology at K-State and beyond; potential to collaborate with students
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Format
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-Short articles preferred
-Longer articles posted on websites
-Avoid memo format
-Clear, concise technical writing format
-Use of MS and technical writing style guides
-Avoid gratuitous comments when possible
-Avoid overuse of you, we, our, they
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-Articles, events, additional features, feedback loops, comments, forms, polling, e-mail feedback
-Clear, succinct, concise articles (no memos, no gratuitous comments and no personal perspective)
-Use news and technical writing style guides
Note: exceptions exist
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IT Style Guide
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http://www.kstate.edu/infotech/news/styleguide.html
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications
University Publications’ style guide http://www.k-state.edu/univpub/style/
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http://www.k-state.edu/infotech/news/styleguide.html
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications
University Publications’ style guide http://www.k-state.edu/univpub/style/
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Process
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Pre-production
Wednesday/Thursday - lineup sent
Throughout the week - solicitation of articles occurs
Throughout the week - receipt of articles occurs
Canvas other news sources for articles
Regular features – Mac representative, Security Tip of the Week, K-State Online Tip of the Week, Feedback, Spotlight, Calendar
Production
Friday/Monday/Tuesday - articles uploaded and edited
Tuesday 5 p.m. - goal for publishing
Edit to almost every article received
Note sent to authors to review articles
Post-production
o e-mail to faculty/staff
o correct mistakes
o verify accessibility
o log changes
o archive previous issue
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Pre-production
Thursday - lineup posted
Throughout the week – solicitation and receipt of articles posted directly in the blog
Production
Monday (noon) - Deadline for author submissions
Monday (noon - 5 p.m.) - Managing editor reviews, edits and moves articles to “scheduled”
Monday (5 p.m.) - Executive edit
Tuesday (10 a.m.) Deadline for interim VP-ITS reviews for "scheduled posts"
Tuesday (noon) articles scheduled to be published
Post-production
Tuesday (noon) - Deadline for sending e-mail to faculty/staff
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We look forward to your thoughts on improving the InfoTech Tuesday.
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