Ryan Boyle

If you are not already familiar with it, the Associated Collegiate Press hosts two conferences every year around the country. Colleges and media organizations flock to a nice hotel, attend panels, get bombarded by sponsors, and tweet excessively  – unless you were that girl who said, “Who Tweets?” Yes, where did you go to school again?

Since I spoke on the, “Online Editors Discuss Management” panel most of my ideas and thoughts are going to be on that topic. If anyone was at the panel it got off to a rough start, one over eager panelist decided to speak for a straight 30 minutes, and everything went down hill from there. I didn’t envision a lecture, since when I was in the audience for the same panel last year I enjoyed it so much.

At one point The Suffolk Journal website was in transition between CollegePublisher and WordPress, and that’s were I feel like a lot of other college newspapers are currently. You have a system, but it’s not perfect – nor are you completely satisfied with it. From the students I talked to at #acpla their colleges website is a one man band operation or the code monkey left and the website is a rusting piece of machinery sitting on the front lawn, and nobody knows how to move it. While I am happy with our newspaper website, it needs constant adjustment and tweaking. The news industry is required to constantly adapt, and as a result you’re colleges website should need to do the same. You ask how?

• WordPress, CollegePublisher, Drupal, Joomla, or DIY? You need to explore them all, find one you like, play with it extensively and see if your staff can use it. Look at the industry trends, what are the major players using? I’m biased towards WordPress, I wouldn’t touch CollegePublisher with a ten-foot pole. WordPress is easy to install, easy to update, it has extensive plugins and themes, and it’s gaining traction at an exponential rate.

• Engage your audience, engage your audience, engage your audience. You didn’t repeat it out loud, so go back and do that please. If your using Facebook Pages and Twitter, you must engage your audience. If someone tweets to you, @reply them back if its relevant. If someone posts on your Facebook wall, make sure you comment if it’s relevant. When you engage you’re audience, you are showing that you care, you boost the credibility of you’re brand, and you make a connection with that person. You are reaching out and saying, I am human too.

• Credible versus Tabloid. This all depends on your organization and which side you lean to, but generally avoid “tabloidisms”. The three issues you want to avoid are, retweeting irrelevant things, breaking rumors, and fire poking. Who care’s that Charlie Sheen tweets “#winning” you don’t need to retweet that from your organizations account. It’s not relevant. Rumor has it your president is involved in a top secret clandestine spy mission to sabotage the school down the street. You expose his plan via Twitter, did you talk to him, the other school, or confirm anything yet. It’s probably not April Fools Day either. Yeah, you’re screwed, and you have no credibility. Last those two guys on the SGA keep having Twitter fits at each other. You retweet and encourage their epic battle. You just promoted anti-Darwinism, plus who cares. Mind your own business, you just gained four tabloid points #fail.

• Hit by a bus theory. This is probably the most important point, but the farthest from reality, or right around the corner. If you were to get hit by a bus in 15 minutes, would someone know how to manage the site, add content, upgrade, and inform your audience of your funeral date? If you answered no to any of the above you need a staff manual, or “pass down book” as we call them in the security industry. This is the bible of your organization. It will contain the commenting policy, the important contact information for the domain, hosting, university, and web editor. A “what if” section for all those hypothetical situations that someone might encounter after your tragedy. It also will highlight your policy on social media, how the site is organized, who manages the site, what platform and services you use on the site, and how will it’s successor be chosen? If you don’t have one, create one. At the very least: contact phone numbers, who owns the domain, and where it’s registered, who controls the hosting and what provider do you use, emergency contact numbers and emails for tech support staff, and where the backups are stored or what backup service you use.

If you ignore everything else, you need to take into account what your staff have to say, and what your community says. Just because someone is a freshman or a senior who’s a vegetable with senioritis, doesn’t mean they don’t have good input. Most of the time people don’t say their opinions because they feel they don’t control it, it doesn’t matter what they think. Ask your staff what they think, ask your community what’s missing from the website. Train your staff to use the website, even if they just have a login with limited permissions so they are at least familiar with the platform. Don’t be afraid of change. Make improvements to your theme, try out new features, track your progress, address areas that need work. Following these simple steps you are setting yourself up for success.

Somehow I always end up giving advice, I most likely was a philosopher in another life. Today I’m going to give you all investment advice. I’m no Morgan Stanley, but don’t skimp on education and protection. Education can be considered a college degree, books, newspapers, magazines, teachers, anything that contributes to your knowledge. Protection is intertwined with knowledge, you need it in order to figure out how to defend yourself, or your laptop left unattended somewhere in a public space.

That laptop came out of left field, correct? Well if your friends with ThreeWords.ME founder Mark Bao, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve been a good friend of Marks since high school. Bently should be proud to call him one of their own. I’m sure Babson is pissed. Anyways Mark’s Facebook status informed me his laptop had been stolen – unfortunate. Very unfortunate considering it was a new Macbook Air.

So my advice to Mark, and you – Protected It! My recommendations:

Prey Project – $5/month Pro Version & Free Open Source version

Prey lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen. It’s lightweight, open source software, and free for anyone to use. And it just works.

Undercover for Mac – $39 Student Edition

Undercover aids in recovering a stolen Mac by transmitting its location, photos of the thief and screenshots revealing what he is up to.

Bottom line is you need to use something. I prefer the software trackers, instead of the lock and cable method, just because I am so mobile, I’d go nuts with the lock. Also keep your stuff secure, or in sight. Disclaimer: I run the student edition of Undercover, and the free version of Prey Project. I prefer Undercover for now.

What happened to the days where we all vented about how the IRS is “stealing” money from our paychecks and calls it taxes? Did everybody all of a sudden decide to lash out at the TSA because they put some fancy new machines in hundreds of airports that don’t have to touch us? And we reply with, “Hell no! They ain’t beaming me up!”

One would think a new machine that doesn’t require someone to get in your personal space is efficient. It’s a nuisance to walk back and forth through a detector because you forgot you had a nickel in your pocket, or to have a person who you don’t know touching you more than your significant other. I understand the concern that they can somewhat see your private areas, but it’s all blurred! It’s just an X-ray, and on top of it being just an X-ray, the person is locked away in a room somewhere with a computer and a desk. The poor TSA officer probably can’t even eat or drink in that room, let alone have the ability to look at computers in there. If anybody should be complaining about the new machines it’s the TSA agents who get stuck in a room staring at a screen for hours.

Let’s address those crazy theories of people leaking images, the TSA pedophile working the machine, the TSA agent getting off to the images on the machine. First off, if that crowd of coo-coo’s flew over the nest, the rest of us would be long through the security lines and sitting in our seats waiting for takeoff. Like basically all employers these days, TSA conducts background checks. And like basically all other jobs, you go through training and agree to abide by certain rules. So the whole idea that we have huge creeps behind the machine — sorry, I’m not buying it. And once again, they don’t see you; they just see the X-ray on the screen.

In all honesty, I don’t think the machines are that big of a deal. So when asked to step into one, I will gladly accept. Because seriously, who in their right mind wants to get touched all over by a stranger when you can stand there for a few seconds and that’s the end of it? If you have medical conditions, or are trying to transport drugs, sure it’s inconvenient, but such is life. Regardless of what technology or man power we use to screen our passengers, everyone sitting next to you is “safe.” All you have to worry about now is grabbing that extra bag of pretzels before the flight attendant disappears.

Originally published in The Suffolk Journal December 1, 2010