Tufts' YouTube Admission Essay

Briefly, I thought this was so neat. Not so much the idea which you can read about in the article by the New York Times but because of how original the entries were!

Not to mention that these 17 year olds seriously know how to utilize technology.

My favorites: the engineering expert with making videos, the lip synch singer, and WOW, this one is just cool!

Hits close to home - Delgado Community College

If you have read about New Orleans college comebacks post-Katrina and haven't read this article from the Chronicle on Delgado, you need to. How that school is serving its community and could be serving even more is fascinating.

Check this out --

Enrollment Changes After Hurricane Katrina

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, universities in New Orleans are still struggling to gain back their pre-storm enrollment numbers. Three of the colleges listed below have recovered better than the others, experiencing significant increases in their undergraduate enrollments since 2006, the year after the hurricane. But not one of the six has matched its pre-Katrina level.

	2006	2009	% change
Southern University at New Orleans	1,709	2,740	+60.3%
Xavier University of Louisiana	2,272	2,666	+17.3%
Tulane University	6,533	7,210	+10.4%
Loyola University New Orleans	3,034	2,913	–4.0%
University of New Orleans	9,156	8,746	–4.5%
Dillard University	1,124	1,011	–10.1%
SOURCE: Brookings Institution; Chronicle reporting

Oh and did I mention who I'm rooting for on Sunday? WHO DAT!

Print's not dead yet!

Happy 2010! We celebrated the new year in New York City with our most cosmopolitan friends. We dined together on our last night in the city and during the obligatory conversations about work, we went in to the print vs. digital communication discussion. Around the table were experts in magazine advertising/publishing digital advertising/web analytics, branding/customer engagement, a small business owner whose newfound passion is marketing and lead generation and myself. In each of our industries there are roles that print plays that digital cannot (at least not so far.)

We talked about the appeal of a weighty, glossy fashion magazine and the way the ads almost dominate the content. Contrasted to a website where we all admit to having very little recall of any of the online ads. In my husband's business, mailers don't bring in as many new patients as his SEO efforts, but printed pieces work better to keep current patients coming in. The context of this conversation eventually turned to the fact that we all can leverage our "age advantage" to learn these trends faster and more thoroughly than our superiors, prove our contributions in the context of each of our industries and secure our jobs.

For me, this has extra meaning because the parent company I work for is a printing company at its core and is learning to build other capabilities. Stein is far ahead of this curve, and has proved to be the source of much digital know how. So when I saw this article from the Boulder County Business Report titled "There's still a role for print in digital world," it made me think of the stance many of us have taken with clients. We still encourage them to invest in viewbooks, brochures for parents, and direct mail campaigns. Often this is for the tactile appeal, and we even recommend thicker paper to further capitalize on the feel of the books. Print can convey substance in a way that digital cannot.

The article notes the other advantage of print, that it allows for a sense of discovery. In print, we "run across articles" we weren't expecting, but online, we only really search what we KNOW we want to look for. Again, in the case of search, we're soliciting students who might not have any knowledge of an institution. They may not have ever considered a school that they had not heard of beforehand, and so let's impart some real information to them, enough to get them to keep looking.

Finally this author comes to the conclusion that we all have: craft an integrated strategy, utilizing the medium that can have the most impact. Market leaders are not the ones with only an innovative online presence, but the ones leveraging equally sophisticated print materials as well. Does this hold true for our clients in education? Or are they scaling back the print side too much? Are a few postcards going to work as well as more in-depth materials? Is it just as easy for our audience to click delete as tossing a viewbook in the trash?

the greenest conference materials I've ever seen

I'm at a conference where the organizers handed out name badges and lanyards made from recycled materials. The handouts with schedules and notes are in a binder made of corrugated cardboard.

And check out this pen!

I have to say that I'm a bit wary about this post because even if the pen has a paper barrel and a bamboo clip, the top part still seems to be plastic and it might still be produced by children in south Asia. While I was impressed that the centerpieces used for all the banquet tables will be donated to a local Atlanta Habitat for Humanity project, I flinched when the speaker mentioned the conference's carbon footprint. I wanted to ask how many people flew or drove to attend? What about all the leftover food on the continental breakfast spread? I saw a paper recycling can but glass bottles and aluminum cans going into the regular trash. There are so many aspects to consider if you want to be truly sustainable!

At the same time it is respectable to take one or a few places where a motivated someone can reduce their impact and do just that. That's what I tell myself when I pour myself a glass of water from the cooler (same glass all day) and resist the iced down Dasani bottles.

Atlanta Opera Targets Young Professionals

My husband is a season ticket holder at the Opera. He admits this interest stems from the joy of feeling elitist and well, sequined ball gowns at the Cobb Performing Arts Centre will do that for you! For me, I love any time I can hear an orchestra perform and though we are younger than about 80% of other patrons, the important part is being exposed to new things and appreciating the arts.

That's certainly the goal of Atlanta Opera's outreach to young people through facebook, twitter, and a membership program for "young professional arts enthusiasts." You get access to discounted tickets and a free drink at each performance. (They really know what's at the heart of arts enthusiasts!) I learned all of this from the special Aria that was handed to me as we walked to our seats (crummy cell phone picture below). It's shorter and much more fun than the regular program that everyone else gets from the ushers. And I suppose we should be flattered for being singled out for looking the part of the young professional.

The 4 page booklet gives a synopsis of the performance, a Down and Dirty Opera History with the witty subtitle 'Or at least enough to sound impressive at a cocktail party,' and a section on etiquette warning first-timers not to text during the show.

Although I found the dumbed down language to be a bit condescending: Use the restroom before the performance. Otherwise, hold it. I appreciated the effort they are making to make Opera accessible and appealing. The Opera is not unlike many other businesses and non-profit organizations whose audiences are aging and who realizes traditional avenues of marketing just don't cut it anymore.

I have told several friends already that Orfeo and Euridice was my favorite opera yet, although we still have Magic Flute and Aida to go this season. I guess the real test is if I become a fan on facebook? follow on twitter? join the Comprimarios? For now, we're just the young folks at the Opera who knew better than to text...