TNT10: Pop Culture Communication: Microsites, Major Impact

[Intro Music]

Announcer: You’re listening to one in a series of podcasts from the 2009 HighEdWeb Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Kyle Bowen: Oh, did I mention my name is Kyle Bowen. I�m Director of Informatics at Purdue University. For those who don't know me very well, I am what you might call a warm and fuzzy guy. So as you have questions today, please fell free to let me know.

As a quick public service announcement to you while I present, I move around a lot and make big gestures with my hands so if you�re sitting on the isle or along the front. You may need to duck from time to time especially this guy here. So as you can tell, I�m very excited to be here today.

00:46

I absolutely love this conference because it's not really a conference, it's more like a 400 person group hug, right?� Feel free to reach out and hug that person next to you if you need to. By the way, I can tell janitors looking at the person if �am I really going to get a hug?�

Yeah, so I�m very excited to be here today to talk to you about something that is really exciting which is the 1996 summer blockbuster film, Independence Day.� Woohoo! Yes there are some woo girls in here, that's awesome. All right, now hold on folks that was a turn and a woo Bryan. Yes, thank you. Yeah, great.

Our next analog tweet right there. There you go, there you go. So well I completely lost my train of thought now. 1996 film right? Independence Day, this is a great movie. I love this one. We all have what you might call nostalgic feelings about a movie like this, right?

01:49

If you've not seen it, I�m guessing you don't own a television because it gets re-run on some channel about every other week, right? But its' a great story about a group of aliens, they come down to Earth looking to wipe out all the humans and take� over our planet for its natural resources.
Now that is a bit of a science fiction cliche but it stars Will Smith so it�s still a pretty good movie. Now as the story goes, the aliens they get rowdy and they start wiping out major cities, right?
And in retaliation we send in our very best fighter pilots and they we're just powerless against the superior technology the aliens had. at least with the big meet up at Area 51 although in 96 we don't call meet ups back then were Data.

I know all the Trekkies out there, you know who you are cause you got that joke. He tells us the aliens are not that different from us and leads Jeff Goldblum who plays Pavelin mathematician to say hey, it's going to take more than recycling to save the world and he comes up with the master plan.

02:50

And who remembers the master plan? The master plan to take down the aliens. Yes, we have to go on the back. So what's the master plan? So what we're going to do is we're going to take this ship that we captured and then we're going to use this thing right here. Oh my!

Which also has a remote control so it's very high tech. to get this wirelessly upload computer virus thing to the mother. Yes, how do you think this is going to go, right? So they fly in the fresh prince. They saddle up this old spaceship.

[Laughter]
�
They flied it up and they dock it with the mothership. And they make it a wireless connection and then they uploaded computer virus. This gets better and better. And as it builds to climax, it infects the mothership waiting for its ultimate destruction who didn't see that coming.

[Laughter]

And the earthlings win. Yes! Woo! Earthlings win! Yeah and everyone who said that Americans are behind in math and science have to eat their words because clearly we came up with that plan, right?

03:54

That was the American saved the world. Now as I mention before this movie came out in 1996. Put that in a little bit of context World Wide Web started to see popular usage 93 to 95 right. So this movie came out after the beginning of the internet age.
It is what you would have to define as a modern film� and let's suppose for a� moment that this movie just came out, this is last summer. So instead of the critically acclaimed transformers 2 we got Independence Day for the very first time.

Summer of 2009, right? What would the audiences think about the ending of this movie? Given the average person and the average person�s understanding the technology, right? Somebody like Scott here, right? Yeah. What would they think about the ending of this movie, right?

04:48

Would they have some serious questions they want answered. You have this advance energy weapons technology and you leave the wireless just hanging open in the mothership, right?

[Laughter]

I can fly away across the galaxy and they can get their Apple to connect to the wireless and i can't even get one to connect Kanera and somebody has not taught these aliens not to open email attachments from the earth links, right?

A real breakdown in training there. These are the questions they'd ask today. In 1996 when this movie came out that was strangely plausible, right? Today, it's entirely laughable. we look at these today and say Starbucks has more security on their wireless, right?

The mothership could be taken down by a 14 year old with a Pringle scan. Right that�s what we say today. this is the evolution of popular culture . This is how far we've evolved. Things that are once the private domain of the over geek are now component pieces of popular culture.

05:50

Things like wireless. Things like security. we extend that to include things like digital video and social media right? the moment that my mom got a Facebook account and posted my 4th grade picture was the moment that technology hit the main stream.

And become far less cruel than what it used to be. Okay, anybody else found their mom in Facebook? So I know Jason does. Yes. We got a few good people in the back.

Yeah, call your mom, tell her you love her. This uniquely positions people like us, people in our profession, and people with our jobs. We are no longer members of an outcast profession. we are now purveyors of the main stream. Somebody gave me an amen.
Amen. There it is. So what is a microsite? What is it?

06:46

Like any other term in our ever evolving vocabulary. How�s it everyone had different definition. We�ve adopted things like. I�m buzzing ok. Is that me? No, it�s on my pocket .it's my mom calling me. I heard your presentation we need to talk. Really mom, everybody is doing it.

Yeah so what is a microsite right? So we have lot of different definitions. And place like web 2.0 and Ajax. These weren�t new things they we're just cooler words tog I�ve the things that you are already doing. And microsites are very much the same way. Microsites as the name might imply, are what? Small websites. Thank you.

But they are very different than our commodity websites. Commodity websites like your .edu, your homepage, your departmental homepage that's what you call commodity website.

07:46

Because in those cases we invest a lot in developing navigational structure and content architecture right. Worrying about things like find-ability. These are the investments that we make in to our commodity website because we know that per every piece of content or website, there�s a consumer for that content.

Now there's a great book called The Long Tale, it came a few years ago. It talks a little bit about this concept. I thought this was a little heavy for my presentation today so I describe the Weekend at Bernie's principle. The Weekend at Bernie�s principle basically states that every movie is somebody's favorite movie.

[Laughter]

And we know this is true because Weekend at Bernie�s had a sequel. Actually, actually it's his sequel. Say what's your name?�

Logan: Logan.

Kyle Bowen: Logan who needs to call his mom knew that Weekend at Bernie�s had 2 sequels which is fantastic so somebody must have like this movie, right?

[Cross-talk]

08:42

Who doesn't love dead guys being popped up on stuff.� So another analog tweet, love it. So I�m completely out of rhythm going. So Weekend at Bernie�s, right? Okay, so this is what our commodity websites are like, right? On our website there�s content there for everyone, right? And there's a consumer for that content. Microsites are very different they're designed to target a very specific audience with a very specific content.

They are a lot like the little animated shorts at the beginning of Pixar movies. Everybody loves this movies right? But they're nobody's favorite movie. So why does Pixar do it? 2 reasons well I�m sure they have a lot of reasons but two of them.

One is it's a test bed for new technology. Right so all the things they want to try out. They can try out with little animated shorts. And two, it's a way for Pixar to extend its brand as a world-class story teller, right? And that's what microsites do for you.

09:44

That is the critical component which is the story. Now, the world leader in making microsites has to be the auto industry. Every car that comes out; there's a new microsite for that car. it doesn't matter what a piece of junk it is. They put it up here like it's the greatest thing since the gremlin, right? It�s the newest thing going.

Here�s one for the third-generation Prius. It�s a nice site you click around on and you learn a few things but what's interesting about this is where's the button to buy these car, where's that? It�s way down here. in the corner like it's hidden. the goal of the site is not to sell you this car.

The site is what makes you feel good about it cause the toyota.com may sell you this car but the goal of this site makes you feel good about it. it tells you the story of this car. You�ve got this innovative sunroof.

And we've got these really weird commercials that look like you're on an acid trip. You�ve all seen these commercials I�m sure. This is the story that the Prius tells.

10:52

Now that you have a good story to go into your microsite. You have to worry about who you're telling your story to. There�s 2 kinds of audiences who we start talking about sites like this. The first one is what we call our direct audience; these are the folks we're used to dealing with, right? They come to our website everyday.

We all have on our commodity website a little graphs look something vaguely like that, very consistent traffic every time. This is like our IT website so nothing too exciting. Well, you're microsite looks something like this.

Sharp as it goes up, sharply falls off quickly. Here today, gone tomorrow. With your commodity website, you're looking to build a long-term relationship with somebody. The microsite is about a one-night stand with your audience. Show them a good time send them on their way. We don't expect them to come back.

[Laughter]

I see that and it's like a thousand buttons start clicking.

Audience 1: Somebody tweet it and we'll tweet it.

Kyle Bowen: Yeah, so coordinate every tweets in that one. Scott scored the analog you can do us. You want to do there. Michael over here, there you go. So that's about your micro site. It�s all about your direct audience. These are the people who actually come to the site to get your story. So if that's the direct audience, then what's the other kind?

Indirect. See it�s obvious, isn�t it?. The indirect audience, who is that? These are the people that don't even come to your website, yet they get your story. They have your story. but they never ever come to your website. How do they get it? Word of mouth? The media? The people that we love to hate, the mainstream media, the earn media, the free media. These folks, right?

12:54

These are the folks that you're courting with your microsite. Pop quiz, you can have 10000 people come to your microsite or 10000 people read about your microsite and how awesome it is on the wall street journal. Which would you rather have?� The journal, right?

What do they gave you that you cannot make? Third party credibility, right? You can't make that up. That�s what the mainstream media does for you. is that it gives you a way to promote your site, beyond the site itself.

Again, the point of my site is just to tell the story, like the car site. I�m not selling the car; I just want to make you feel good about the car. That�s why if somebody, if one of these folks can tell the story for me and you get the story and walk away with it. Great! I�ve won, right? The problem is we're conditioned to look at our traffic stats and let that be the measure.

When what we have to do is include additional measures that include media placement, right? Looking at your national media placements, and I'll show you some examples later on the presentation. So how do I court these people? And this is really the core of the most of the middle portion of our presentation is how do I score placements with these folks.

Now, I�m going to start this by saying I�m not a marketing person, I�m not a� PR person, I�m an IT guy. But don't let that fool you. I�m really okay. And I can't picture computers so don�t ask. But what we've found here is in promoting initiatives, IT initiatives; we have found ways of doing this.

And if you can promote IT, you promote anything. I promise you. So there are 3 media challenges that you have to face. If you tweet about anything, if you write about anything, you remember everything at the back of your head is these three things. This is the key to the whole deal, right? The whole presentation circles around these three things.

And I put one, two, three under the slide cause it needed something on it and I know what you, you know what� one, two, three look like so I�m going to move on.

14:51

So it all starts with Venn diagram. I absolutely love Venn diagrams because they exist somewhere between verifiable truth and completely making it up. So that's why I�m going to start with a Venn diagram today. I�m going to try and deliver my point that way. So this Venn diagram looks a little different.

On the one side this�s important to you, the important to your institution, what is strategic? What is core?� What are the things the reasons you exist, the things that you want to promote as that's what exist on this side. Things like alumni giving, student success, major research discoveries; these are the things that are important to you, right?
What�s on the other side? What�s important to everyone else?

This is popular culture; the average person doesn't really care about this stuff. They care about other things what do they care about. They care about Beyonce and they care about Britney and Barack and iPhones and that�s what popular culture cares about.

15:53

Okay, so the goal here is your microsite has to take what is important to you and marry it with what's important to everyone else. You have to find a hook. Something that is relatable to the average person that makes them say "hey, tell me your story", right?

So let's give a quick example, a very conceptual example. oh that's got your story. Oh jeez, I�m sorry, there you go. Everybody take pictures. Pick it up.�

[Laughter]�

Alright, you're good now? Thank you. Okay, alright so here's a conceptual example. Look at this machine. This is developed by researchers at Purdue University. Very innovative machine, pretty sexy isn't it? Looks like something Apple might design.

16:44

Audience 2: May I know what it does?

Kyle Bowen: You may know what this does. It actually saw a lot of play on Dig. It made it to the homepage when it first came out, pretty exciting. What this machine does is you put garbage on it and it generates electricity. Now what is that? Mr. Fusion! What�s your name? Will. Mr. Fusion, right?

We all love the Back to the Future. It�s part of the popular culture. I can relate to it. You put in the back of the DeLorean and I�ve got it now. It makes complete sense to me, right? That�s what it means, alright. So that's what I mean.

You have to make it relatable to a person before it was a big, ugly machine. Now, it's Mr. Fusion. I know what you're talking about, right? It�s about finding that hook. Now the second thing that you have to do is it has to be timely.

This is number two. It has to timely. Answer this question, why is it news today? It�s that simple. If it was news yesterday, it's not news today.

17:46

If it's news tomorrow, it�s not news today. Why is it news today? And you have to be brutally honest with yourself about it, right? Cause a lot of people are in denial about this stuff. For example, you might doing a coffee presentation for example, that can be something that might lead to it's timely. Alright there's an event, right?
There�s something going on. There�s a major research discovery, right? We found the cure for cancer, right? It�s timely. But let's say you�re a hurricane researcher. When�s the best time to release hurricane research?� Hurricane season.

People are thinking about it. It�s in the popular culture causes and the reasons that deal with that, right? There�s interest. It�s a part of popular culture. It�s timely. Yes makes sense. And the last thing we need is video, right?

The media is competing with television. And the only way that they can do that is through video. So if you want to promote your site, have a video. Here�s the trick, it doesn't even have to be very good, right?

It could absolutely stink and it's still video right because video is still on that stage where any video is cool and you tube has help us out, right? It has lower the bar for video. it has lowered everyone's expectations for what good video is. So far to the point that a good video actually works against you because somebody looks at it and says �they�re paying somebody to do that".

I can pay somebody to make a video too. There�s no creativity in that, right? The media loves to reward that the DI Wire, right? The people who made their own catchy video, right? You need video to sell your story. So if you don't have video, don't worry about it.

You can still but needs a really compelling visual. Like a really slick looking picture of something, right? If you got that, then you can still make it work. But you've got to have something visual. Okay?

19:46

Now let�s talk about a couple of examples but before I do that, let me explain. i have mentioned that I�m an IT guy right and what we do I mean one of the things we do is we promote research computer. Anybody else who promote research computing in here? I didn't think so. We actually got one. Awesome! We�ve got a couple, this is cool. Hey goodie.

Research computing, I�m guessing the rest don't even know what I'm talking about. Alright, research computing think really big computers like the size of a school bus computer, this is research computer. Okay. Now, trust me when I say this is like over geekiest of the over geekiest, right?

The geeks geeks really do this stuff. Build these great big machines but it is strategic to a research university. If you're going to have big dollar research, you have to have big� iron computer right� or plastered computer.� I guess that's a technically inaccurate term but okay.

20:44

So for example, last year at Purdue just last year, research computer enabled 120 million dollars in research, 120 million dollars. You better believe for 120 million dollars is strategic to our university. So that's why we promote research computing but I�m here to tell you if we can promote research computing, you can promote anything.

I�m serious. These are the geeks of all computers. If you can promote it, you can promote anything. So those are the examples that I�m going to talk about. The first thing that I�m going to talk about is it goes back to our introduction is a spoof we developed and a thing that we call Installation Day, right?

So two years ago, we built a big thousand nodes that�s like a thousand servers, size of school bus. The thing's huge, right? It's big as the machine in the Big Tech, right? Top 100 in the world, right? But here's what we did that is different. We did it in a day, one day. Usually it takes a couple of months but we built it in a day.

We said "hey, let's why waste the time; we'll just bring in somebody. We�ll get 200 volunteers. We�ll put this thing up in a day. So we start courting this thing around to the media outlets. And hey we're going to build this computer in a day. Isn�t it exciting? Geeks build computer everyday. Why it�s that exciting, right?

21:53

So what we did is we build a microsite. it was a spoof on installation day to help people understand or try and relate to the enormity of what we're actually trying to do as part of that presentation. So let me show you the video real quick. I'm sorry I couldn't actually put it in my presentation today. And there's going to be weird noise in the background.

[Background movie noise]

Audience 3: Here we go. Oh yeah.

[Background movie noise]

Kyle Bowen: It's supposed to be funny, right?

[Background movie noise]

So this is the case where we had a story and it's timely and at the end of that building this big machine but nobody cared. How do we make them care? We build a video. We build a website to send them things to say "hey we've got this thing. I hope you understand it."

Oh yeah good, the geeks build a computer and a funny website. But what would that net for us? The story that before nobody would touch, the next day ran in New York Times. It ran on the Chronicle Higher Education. The media made it a story. This is a situation where the microsite propelled another story. The microsite wasn't the story itself.

But it made it into something that is strategic to our university that we wanted to promote is all of the sudden palatable to the average person, right? That's what installation day did. That is just one example. Now, the second example I�m going to show you is this last year, just a few months ago.

Guess what, the geeks are doing it again for the second time. We�re going to build a great, big computer. And this time it's going to be bigger, thousands of machines before. This time we're going to be building 1200.

I�ll stake that one. And for that one, when you know we had so much fun doing the installation day. Let�s do another movie trailer parity to try and get people to energize and interested in this concept. So we developed another parity called Cores. Now, if you're not into tech cores. It�s like the processor, I�ll explain it to you but I need flip charts and needle.

24:47

Anyway, so this is Cores and let me say important what we actually did wrong before and so this one is a little bit different.

[Background movie noise]

Announcer: We can brag about having one of the world's fastest computer. Or even boast about being the fastest in the Big Ten. We might even boast that it was built in just one day. But we don't have to because we're doing it again. From the makers of Installation Day comes an all-new event, one day 1200 machines, 9000 cores.

Kyle Bowen: There you go. Okay so Parity of Cores obviously, right? And it tends to promote the exact same thing. How did it do? Not very well, why not?

25:48

We already did it. We told that up before. You can't tell the same group twice, right? It�s that simple. And the other thing, here it is, the video was too good. It was produced. This time "hey we did this and we work really hard to make a really great one. We got in voice talent, that guy announces it for.

So we bring this guy and we recorded voice in all and we're really building this thing out. It does not need some help. It is no longer that interesting, right? So the story big it plays a little bit here and there sometimes kind of really great. You don't have to. So that's an example, kind of an example of maybe what not to do. It�s still hot back.
It still generated about by volunteers as myself and a few more thousands so it's not a waste of out time but it didn�t really do the impact that it did last time. So from this, we were promoting these events and the next thing that you wanted to do is just.

26:51

Oh, pull it out. There you go. I�m actually finished with it anyway. So the next thing that we wanted to do is just promote research computing in general. We have these great, big supercomputers. We need people to know what it's about and why should they care about supercomputers, right?

And so we embark on a new trip and we're going to build a new microsite. Not to promote an event necessarily but to just promote research computing and what we're doing with it. And we release in conjunction with a coverage which is Supercomputing Conference. Who�s ever been to Sig-Graph or Consumer Electronic Show?

It's that big. It�s a huge pub. You�ve probably never been there before but it's just a massive pub. And we wanted to promote Purdue�s role as part of this conference. And one of the things that happens there is, they have this tournament, this contest where it's like the Geek Olympics. It�s like they build a computer and they race them against each other.

27:45

It�s like the geekiest thing that you've ever heard of. Anyway, so what we did to promote that is we developed a video game called Rack-A-Node, right? It was a game. and so essentially� what you do is you've got these racks and you put servers in on and the things start falling down and� things start happening and its how it's processing job and it's fun,� right?

It�s a microsite. It�s a video game. It�s all about research computing, right? And it kind of promotes research computing. But what it did was again, think about our 3 things. There has to be popular culture, you have to tell popular culture. It�s a game. Everybody loves a game.

When we launched this game, the hottest thing going on at the time is a little game called Desktop Tower Defense. Anybody played that? We�ve got a few travelers who played the tower defense. Yeah. This plays out the same way. It was very popular, these little flash games. So what we did is we developed our own called Rack-A-Node.

And what happened, the result of that was we got major placement, right? We got one at the times. We got one at CNET were they've got a really great line about the geeks best pick-up line. Come over those with computer with me.

28:53

All those in favor of are with me. Ladies, anybody that does work for them? No. Okay, so we�ve got our placements out. But we we're able to tell our story. We we're able to tell our story in a meaningful way. We we're able to get people to relate to building a supercomputer.

That�s why I said if you can promote this, you can promote anything. Seriously, but what work in our favor. What�s our trump card that worked for us? What�s that? It was a game. But the other thing, what was the second thing that you have to do the second challenge? it was timely. We launched this thing in November 2008. What video game came out November 2008, anyone?

[Laughter]

29:58

Let's just chalk it up to an analog tweet then. Yeah, what's that? November 2008, geeks all over the world climb out of their mother's basements and stayed in line at Wal-Mart at midnight.

The World of Warcraft, Return of the Lich King. It was huge. People are saying it everywhere. We launched right before it. People were thinking video game. This is cool! So I�ve got the coolest video game of the year is coming out and we're staying in line. I need something to do, Rack-A-Node, right?

I need something to do. And all of these media groups that placed a Rack-A-Node story. We�ve learned it right before. Their story comes in next. But guess what, when you looked at that chronology of stories about video games. You�ve got world of Warcraft. We�ve got Rack-A-Node, right? Timely work out for us there.

I�ll say that it was strategic choice that we planned it out years in advance but really it was an accident. We figured it out after the facts and hey look at that. It actually does matter when you bring the stuff out.

30:53

And that's the World of Warcraft. But that's not what i�m going to talk about today is the site needforfree.com. Anyone ever go out and look at this site, show your hands real quick. if you've not been there, you should go . It�s a lot of fun.

Alright, so this was Kyle�s attempt to say alright, let's put my money where my mouth is. Let�s see if I can actually make this happen so for this event, for today's presentation we developed needforfree.com and we release it. We release it to the community and see okay can we get this thing in place.
Can we promote an actual event? So yesterday around noon, we issued a press release on needforfee.com. Okay so we put out, our university put out a press release and we actually did okay so the last 24 hours, we had 4 media placements. They come in moderate size.

We got in places; we got one in the drawing courier. We had one from east school news, we got one from a French technology magazine and one from fizzle.com, we also got one from supercomputing online. So we got some media placements out of it, right?

31:51

And it may tear me to placements and it's not New York Times but it's still fun. What is more placements that I would have gone otherwise and that was the goal today wasn't it.

[Cross-talk]

The goal today is to say "here's an illustration of how it could work right? We can promote anything. I promoted this presentation with a microsite. It�s fun for the community. We tied it into popular culture. What�s a popular culture tie? Tweeter? Everyone loves tweeter, right?

It�s timely. There�s a presentation right? We got all the pieces and well there's no video in this case but we have compelling screen shots, right? I� was talking to Mike this morning about it because he happen to tweet when he took a screen shot and he sent it out partially so now he's on every where the need for free is advertise on there.

As our few other people so you just got what. Alright, so with that in mind let me lead up to what you need to prepare on the things that we learned.

Okay, John Wooden, greatest basketball coach of all time. 9 NCAA championships, also a Purdue alumnus. Good guy. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. This could not be more true with your microsite. First thing you need to do is keep your site a secret.

It�s not news if people already know about it, right? Nobody will cover a site that's already out in the wild okay? And the other thing that happens is if you're going after the big fish. if you're going say after let's say the New York Times. And you want them to place it. if you let somebody else to place it first, they're not going to run anymore cause it's no� longer news.

Somebody else had it, right? Or somebody called an exclusive, right? And I am not a PR person but as a PR person explained it to me. But actually it's were I agree that you're the only person who's going to run that story right and until you run it on. I�m not going to give to anybody else right that's the idea of the exclusive. With Rack-A-Node, when we came out with Rack-A-Node, we had Wired and the New York Times going to run it.

33:54

On the same time on a Monday, we were excited. Guess what, New York Times jump the gun. They release it on Friday. Did Wire run the story? No, killed it, right? It was no longer news. It was news on Friday. It�s not news on Monday, right?
So were it comes into play. Keep your site in a secret until it's time to roll. Prepare your site for traffic. Alright, this is a great story. This is a real one too. Researcher, right?

Won a Nobel Prize, no joke won a Nobel Prize. His research was published in Wired magazine. it was the hottest thing going and the traffic through the roof. The biggest day in this guy's career, what happened to his website? You�re with there right? He got a ph peer why?

He thought he could save a few bucks and have his student build it for him. And they wrote this little cheesy, little page counter that updated the database table and the database locks and all these kinds of stuff.

34:58

Let's just say nothing good came out alright out of these things because it wasn't prepared and this is an infrastructure question. This is just the thing if it's going to be big, be ready for it to be big. Don�t be surprised by it okay? This is a cautionary tale for cause this is a big day.

It wasn't and unfortunately the editor of Wired actually commented on the performance of the website and how poor it was as part of the story. It was very unfortunate. Alright create a media page. This is actually a picture of our Rack-A-Node media page. There is absolutely nothing to this all it is, is a webpage that has all the assets that the media can go and get about your website. It has screen shots.

It has video. it has your link to your press release. On it has a link to you tube. If you have video put it on you tube because almost any media outlet is set to accept video from you tube, right?

35:51

It�s where they want it to be. We just put it on a webpage and we just put it at flash media and we send that out to the outlet and say hey you can get it, it's there. Yeah, that one doesn't. We can but there's no rhyme or reason to it. It�s just these are all the assets that support the story. Any ideas to make it easy for the media? You don't want them to have to ask you for something. Just say here you got everything you need right here. I�ll make it easy for you. if you want to write a story here's all the stuff.

That�s creating a media page. Setup a Google and set it up right away right before you launched the site, right? It�s free service. Go to Google. Get your Google setup for keywords dealing with your story cause as the thing proliferates you'll want to know how it's proliferating. You want to know how much it's growing.

So you can kind of see what's popping out and what places. And on the last side of them is have quotable quotes. This is the last point that I�m going to make for you today. Have quotable quotes.

36:48

One day in the not too distant future. You'll develop a microsite and this is going to be amazing. The media outlets all over the world are going to be calling you for interview and it never fails. And that thing that you didn't even mean to say is the thing that you put in a story. You put in a story and so the greatest thing that you can do is prepare a quotable quote.

And the media from my experience, they love to hear 3 things out of quotes. They love to hear a great alliteration, they love to hear great play on words. and they love really colorful analogies, really colorful analogies. We had our chief security officer has a saying "opening an email attachment is like finding a sandwich on a sidewalk and deciding to eat it." that's a really colorful analogy.

Does that work for you? Yeah, yeah so like I said and the other one is I miss before is alliteration. So if you know alliterations for every word that same letter starts with it.

37:53

So with that, let me say �it�s been my profound privilege for providing this presentation.�� So thank you very much for your time today everyone.

[Applause]

I still have. Oh, I�ve got a watch too. 5 minutes 18 seconds. yes sir,

Audience 4: One of the first things that I wanted to know is...

Kyle Bowen: Exactly and that's so what really this conference was, is in order to test out something like this. You have to have live feed.

38:55

What�s bigger than this, right? So let's plunked that in and make that the first real test and that�s what we're doing here. it was actually testing we're taking some telemetry out if it. Trying to figure out just if the popularity feed actually work.

Does it get too much credit to Scott cause he's number one and two on... sorry about that. But anyway yeah, that's what we're exactly heading with this and we�re also looking in were the research applications lives as for boring applications of it.

So we're looking at those things but yeah exactly this is exactly he kind of things we�re looking for. But thank you very much for the feedback. What are the kinds of questions do we have? On which one?

39:45

Rack-A-Node was an item that we developed over a long period of time because we didn't. it wasn't like one of those things when we spooled up a big development team to work on it so we kind of pieced it out over a long period of time so it was actually, I'm sorry the question is how long did it take to develop Rack-A-Node and need for free and so in that case with Rack-A-Node, it was a year-long process.

We knew well in advance when we're really going to launch it. But it wasn't like we had a development team working on it non-stop for a year. Actual development time I�d say was what? 6,8,10, 12 weeks something like that. Need for free, we started developing in July again kind working off and on launched it a few weeks ago.

Audience 5: I've got a question for you.

Kyle Bowen: Yeah, sure.

Audience 5: How many microsites can you do in one year?

40:38

Kyle Bowen: Yeah sure, so the great thing about. Thank you very much. The question was how many microsites can you do in a year? Yes. And so the thing the great part about a microsite is it's all about the idea, right? That thing that ties you to popular culture, it doesn�t have to be complicated. In installation day the video that we develop to promote that event was in a couple of days. It was nothing.

Based on that math, you could generate you know 50 of them in a year so it's kind of hard to say and a lot of it is based on your resources. In terms of what you want to do but the truth with the microsite is the target. What is strategic to you?

Strategic initiatives not to tackle something big like student recruitment in general or something like that but it's about targeting a very specific audience with that piece because remember you're going to hit that quick hit and then it's going to die off really fast cause you see you're making an investment to� get that thing.

Yeah, how did you use social networking?� Yes, so the question was is how did we use social networking to tie this into? And one of the challenges with social networking and i love this question by the way is that it's unpredictable. Too short of a fat kid with a really great star wars routine. you'll never going to know� when it's going to take off right?

41:57

You just cannot predict it. With the main stream media, you can predict it somewhat, right? We got 3 steps. we have some what of a methodology that says" yeah okay, this is how it work."

But that�s not to say that you shouldn't use it to me so I would need from few what we do. We figure it out within inside the community. Try to get it to proliferate that way.� We have some of the things that we're developing now. We�re building Facebook applications for so you can actually view them natively within inside your social network so it's a component piece of it but it's not the entire answer.

That part where you perform with marking group a microsite and do you provide links?
We do provide. We have branding our lines that we provide appropriate I�m sorry. Thank you.

42:50

The question was for those of you listening at home, does the marking group require links and branding. The answer is yes. And we do provide them but they're not terribly owner�s of how those things are going to apply and the idea that their microsite may or may not drive traffic back to your main page.

Worst, maybe it doesn't work. Remember the goal of the microsite, is to do what? Tell your story. It�s about telling that story, right? And that's really what you're trying to do. But yeah that stuff is in there and like with Rack-A Node, we embedded it actually into the game itself so we have the pretty branding in there but he actually works for our favorite cause the game is bootleg .it�� was great and it was hot in Poland of all places.

[Laughter]

But yeah and so but it was great cause we embedded our branding actually in to the game itself so that when somebody rip it off, our brand is still there. Sure, run it somewhere else. We�re still telling our story. It�s just on our polish website, right? Yes.

43:46

[Laughter]�

I like this guy. So the question is my marketing group sucks and how do I make this happen, right? Okay. Did I get the question right by the way? Yeah okay.

[Cross-talk]

I will forge you in on the video for this one. So the answer to your question is that you don't who needs top down direction on this, right? Everybody has these great ideas. Do those, right? Do them on your own.

44:48

First rule to getting things done is to stop asking information, right? If you get in The Times. You don't have to ask for forgiveness, trust me. When the Times call your vice-president at home it's a career changing event either way, right?

[Laughter]

Yes. So the answer to your question is what do I have available, right? so my team what we do is when fully staffed, we're 13 people. And what we do is we provide strategic projects for the university. We do this kind of stuff.

We developed intellectual property. it is our jobs to be innovative. and to think about these kinds of things. and so we go out and we do these things and if it happens to be in an area of marketing IT, research or computing then that's what we do because guess what, the talents that it takes to do that, the talents that it takes to build websites, the talents that it takes to build really great web applications.

45:45

They�re the same. They mesh actually really well together. And so when you have a group of really talented people and I got to meet a few around here today. That�s what you can do. You can accomplish anything. It�s just the matter of having the idea. Thank you very much.

[Applause]