Web Content Users Group 2.23.12

2.23.2012 Meeting

Facilitator: Nina Modi

Presenting: Chris Walker, Jill Brazel, Betsy Gill, Kelli Conkey and Alison May

Note Takers: Jill Brazel

Attendees

Attendee Department
Regan Lindsay Dean of Students
Tony Kirchmeier Off Campus
Mark D'Arienzo Housing
Eric Budzynski Religious Life
Corey Sampsel Greek Life
Jim Neumeister Student Conduct
Kelli Conkey Career Services
Grace Kaufman Dean of Students Office
Josh McKenzie Orientation and Parent Programming
Virginia Koch Residential Life
Allison May Students With Disabilities
Betsy Gill University Career Services
Jeremy Hopkins University Career Services

Introduction of Attendees

Attendees were asked to:

  • Introduce themselves, including department and role
  • Provide expectations of the group meeting
Agenda Presenters
Introduction Nina Modi
Logistics Nina Modi
Status of DOSA websites Nina Modi
Our Expectations and Goals Nina Modi
Format of Meetings Nina Modi
UCS-Social Media Betsy Gill and Kelli Conkey
Image Content Jill Brazel, Chris Walker
Accessibility Allison May, Chris Walker

Introduction to Meeting

Welcome to the group and we appreciate the participation. Our goal for these monthly group meetings is to provide training, resources, information and guidance so that each department will have all the support to maintain and enhance their websites. Going forward, each meeting will start with a presentation regarding Social Media and end with a discussion on Accessibility.  Based on feedback order may change.

Logistics

  • Meetings will be held once a month.
  • Minutes will be recorded and posted on the SAIT website
  • Participation is important so that we can provide the appropriate support, training and resources
  • Group Members are driving the goals of future endeavors

Status of DOSA Websites

Expectations and goals for these meetings

  • We want all of you to become ambassadors to your departments
  • Brainstorming ideas and concepts
  • Determining whether there are gaps in training and resources
  • Participation and information sharing
  • Goal setting to assist the web team on future endeavors
  • We are here to help you and support you, but want you to take responsibility for the content of your sites.

Format of Meeting

  • Monthly meetings - Will be last Thursday of the month
  • Dates - Will be posted on the SAIT website and Outlook proposals will be emailed
  • Agenda Items - Will be posted on the SAIT website and within Outlook
  • Future Topics, Features and Training - SAIT web will determine but let us know if there is a particular topic that should be covered

UCS Presentation of Social Media Use in Their Deparmtent

  • In 2009, asked of the entire department to approve using social media as a tool starting with Facebook, then added LinkedIn and Twitter
  • 2 people primarily maintain the social media for UCS
  • Added Wordpress for blogs, YouTube and Pinterest
  • Challenges were time constraints, how to grow your following, attracting the right audience, keeping followers engaged
  • Facebook has been the leading platform for their use, over 1000 users
  • UCS posts 3-4 times a day (events, workshops, career tips and services, articles, links of interest, event photos
  • They showed how you can track how many people each post is reaching
  • LinkedIn connects employers and students
  • Twitter, 1400 followers, career consultants, difficult to focus audience, useful for short and quick, mention events
  • You can survey followers with 'Student Voice', cross post from other social media
  • Use #Northwestern with any NU event, #Norris, same thing
  • Use HootSuite to organize and schedule tweets
  • Word Press for a blog once a week
  • YouTube for screencasts, thank you to employers
  • Pinterest sharing favorite things
  • UCS is also training students how to use Social Media for reaching out to employers

Image Content

Jill explained the importance of the content of the images on cascade and gave a brief overview of cropping, quality and sizing before uploading to Cascade.

It is important that the images we place on our sites are consistent and look professional and high quality. You are welcome and encouraged to submit all photos to jill brazel for touch up and review before uploading to your site. She can take care of tone and red eye and cropping, etc. While we realize many of you will want to upload snapshots you have taken from events, here are some common sense guidelines to help keep your sites looking nice.

  • No red eye
  • Crop to the important part of the subject and crop out distracting things
  • Keep an eye out for food or trash in the foreground (this is common at a lot of meetings)

Make sure the image is light enough and has enough contrast so that it is easy to see. If you have an image you like but are worried about the quality, please send to jill brazel. 

Sizing

  • 450x300 standard large image
  • 350x233 medium image
  • 250x167 small image
  • headshots 162x230 vertical (meet the staff pages)

Other Important Information

  • all at 72 dpi saved for web as jpeg at 60-80%
  • generally align right in the screen
  • save all in image folder within media folder
  • always name original file all lower case, no spaces, hyphens

Chris added the importance of sizing your images prior to uploading as to not slow the system down for everyone.

Accessibility

Allison discussed the importance of accessibility of all of our websites. She concentrated her presentation to discussing images and alt tags.  She suggested we all check every page of our sites and look at each image, the alt tag associated with the image as well as the context of the image to the page it exists on to make sense to the disabled. Chris showed everyone his Accessibility check page available to all of us to see what alt tags associate each image. All of these accessibility efforts are also helpful to viewing on mobile devices.