edustir

BYU goes independent

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:15:00 -0600

One of the first football games I went to at the University of Wyoming was against Brigham Young University. The taunts hurled in their direction from the student section are not quite fit for a family publication.

In any case, the Cougars of BYU are leaving the friendly confines of the Mountain West Conference after this season, choosing instead to strike it on their own as an independent, opting instead for the West Coast Conference for all sports besides football.

This move is huge for the fledging WCC, which is made up of private religious schools that are similar in size. Having recently opted not to expand as recently as June, the conference changed its tune quickly when the possibility of BYU joining fell into their lap after the collapse of the Western Athletic Conference.

Most of the fallout seems to be that it doesn’t make any competitive sense for BYU to do this. Except, none of the realignment moves that have happened this year have absolutely anything to do with competitiveness. They have everything to do with money. College sports fans desperately want to believe in the purity of the game, because it makes them feel better when contrasted against the backdrop of holdouts, lockouts and performance enhancing drugs of the pro ranks.

This move makes a ton of sense for BYU in the short term. It’s unlikely the BCS Board of Directors will give BYU much in the way of concessions related to access to BCS bowl games beyond the standard “finish in the Top 14” that they had while in the Mountain West. But the school can schedule whoever it wants. They’ll have help, partnering with ESPN to broadcast their BYU-TV games and that will help tons to create some marquee matchups. Still, the BYU name doesn’t have the same cache as Notre Dame (even if BYU has been a lot better over the past decade) and it’ll be difficult to convert eyeballs west of the Mississippi.

Still, the Mountain West’s horrible TV deal was the sticking point here. It was hampering BYU’s own goals with marketing itself. Worst case scenario, the two parties kiss and make up within a decade in some kind of new conference realignment. Best case? BYU has great success and manages to position itself beyond what it could’ve done as a member of fledging leagues.

I’ve been hypercritical of the Mountain West leadership for being conservative during the quiet period. Boise State should’ve been invited years ago and they would have been smart to position that league well before Utah had a chance to bolt. But their missteps are coming back to haunt them now. The league will be a 10-team league next year, which is still one team more than they’ll have this season. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they found a way to expand to 12 teams before the dust settles.

No matter what, the league they’re inheriting isn’t as good as the one they are leaving behind. Meanwhile, the WAC will need a hail mary to ensure it’s own survival. I suspect UT-San Antonio will join the league and at least one other Texas school to prevent the defection of Louisiana Tech, but if Hawai’i decides it’s easier to be an independent too, they might have a difficult time scrambling to convince half a dozen FCS schools to move up in a few years, since many of them will need to add sports to qualify at that classification.

To really illustrate BYU’s quibble, the MWC television network (The Mtn.) is only available on extended packages via cable and DirectTV sports package. Meanwhile, BYU-TV is available on the basic tier of DirectTV, meaning I could conceivable follow BYU football anywhere, whereas the Mtn. would be an added expense.

I think this move is smart, proactive and low-risk because people aren’t looking at it with the right lenses. It’s all about the dollars and cents and long-term, it makes a lot of sense and cents for BYU to make this move.

We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

What higher ed can learn from summer camps

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:39:00 -0600

Despite the obvious comparisons between the age groups, this summer has been transcendent because it’s the first summer I’ve been in a management position at camp rather than just in a leadership role managing an activity and kids in a cabin.

Camp has been a big deal for me; I’ve done it for every free summer I’ve had as an adult doing it. I also have a very difficult time explaining my camp life to people. To the uninitiated, summer camp is something you see in movies but have little context for, but for those who’ve experienced the peculiarities of sleep away camp, they understand that it’s one part quirk and one part culture. Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner was so affected by his camp years that he wrote a book about it.

Just like I have a hard time conveying to friends who’ve gone to college but never worked in higher ed the strangeness of things like hiring cycles, the way offices work and so forth. Well, camps have their own culture with strange songs and dining hall practices, wake up schedules and activities that may or may not be understood to an outsider showing on a regular day of camp.

The most notable thing that summer camps have to teach higher ed is pride in being who you are. Take a look at the web site of any summer camp and see how they present themselves. Few are apologetic and most have no interest in trying to convert those who don’t want to be converted. They know who they are and have a history they can chronicle for you.

Now I realize there are a variety of differences ranging from no faculty, only a summer to worry about rather than years and years. But with younger children spending what amounts to the entire childhoods in some cases away at camp, the influences and relationships they make in these venues can dwarf the college years.

This explains why so many campers end up as camp staff in the future and have such devoted loyalty to their summer homes years after they’ve left, send their children to their places for generation after generation. Of course, the hard work gets done on the recruiting trail during the year at conventions and conferences akin to higher ed. And imagine if you had to re-hire your entire faculty and staff each year from food services, to janitors, RAs, faculty and everyone else who ran your operation save for a few full-time staff?

This is a topic that I’ll probably write more extensive about after the summer ends, but it’s taken me an entire summer to really wrap my mind around how much goes into making these places work season after season.

Zilch

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:55:11 -0600

Currently reading.

Rework for Higher Ed

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:21:42 -0600

I read this book in a few hours because I really appreciated the way it was arranged and view it more as a reference book. The lessons it contains were instructive and while they’re applicable to a variety of settings, industries and institutions; the lessons contained for higher ed were plentiful.

Among them were:

Build an audience. So much of what we write is boilerplate. Rather than engage people or even challenge them, we take the easy way out writing institutional-ese that doesn’t seem to connect with the people taking the time to know our organization. What a shame.

Own your bad news. Transparency is not the strong suit of many organizations, because they just don’t know how to handle spreading their own bad news. There’s a way to ensure that people know what you’re trying to do, why and how you’re trying to do it. The bottom line is, if you’re honest with people they’re more likely to understand and if you break the story is deflates a lot of the air from it and gives you the opportunity to play offense rather than just defense.

Press releases are spam. Spreading the good news about things happening within your walls isn’t a nuisance. But finding the gems requires the sort of work that we’re often slow to do, because there’s never enough time, there aren’t enough people to find them and folks don’t want to talk. So we skim for the stuff at the top rather than digging deep for the oil that lies beneath. We can do better to tell our story and share our cultures and it begins with the stories we choose to share.

There were so many stories in the book that I found to be useful lessons worth keeping in mind. Things I’ve learned from my own experiences, messages I’ve preached on my own before reading the book; as well as things I otherwise have trouble with and need reminders of.

We can streamline how we go about our business and create a more nimble and effective workplace that achieves our goals even better than we set them out on paper but it has to start with those empowered to make those changes.

Knowing where you're going

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:21:26 -0600

I think I knew this summer would be mentally exhausting. But I underestimated to the extent this would happen. I expected to write more and read more, but those things take a lot of discipline from me…more the writing than the reading. I’ve blazed through books, but I’ve found it almost impossible to focus on writing anything substantive.

I have no idea what any of this means, but I think I’m probably annoyed by how much energy I’m putting into things that I can’t really see any long-term benefit to. Maybe the good news is, this summer has put on display my work ethic. I have a great deal of confidence in my abilities when the circumstances are tailored for me to succeed.

In other words, I get into a role where I can do great things and where I’m supported to this end. I’ve seen both sides of this, but I’ve never been able to articulate this before. Some roles are tailor made for you to succeed, but success is elusive when you’re not aware of your strengths or how to better improve on the areas where you’re not as strong.

I feel like going forward, there are lessons that will emerge that I’ve yet to make sense of at this very moment.

Amongst the crowd

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:48:39 -0600

Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot more teaching social web strategy and discussing web tools with people whose lives aren’t consumed with it than I ever did working in the field directly. Sometimes, you have to engage with your consumers and your audience and I’ve found this extremely helpful.

One of the things I remember talking about a lot last year from teaching my class to consulting to helping the SocialWyo folks plan their conference was the fact that you can have 50,000 foot discussions about this nebulous social media creature and go nowhere. Ordinary people with lives and work and jobs might use Facebook and maybe they’ve created a Twitter account. But no one in their everyday lives has made any of these tools really relevant to them in a manner that they can understand the real origins of web utility; as opposed to a telephone or radio or something like that.

I’ve enjoy conversations that force me to tone down the jargon, avoid the cliches and spend more time talking about the meat and potatoes of the topic without powerpoint slides or a backchannel. I think I’ve thrived as a strategist over the years precisely because so much of my circle was comprised of savvy people who are digital outsiders; coupled with a professional circle through the web of smart people who have their thumbs on what’s going on and keep me on top of things.

The Degree in Three

Tue, 25 May 2010 20:19:00 -0600

The Degree in Three:

A New York Times Op-Ed arguing that the four-year degree is a wasteful relic that ought to be condensed to three years. Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog talked about it, too.

edustir being cutting-edge had this discussion back in September.

I still think this is a good idea on balance, but doing it citing the rising costs of higher education are a bad catalyst for this type of change. There’s no talk of the possibility of eroding educational quality or the fact that according to the National Center for Education Statistics 69% of college students earned their bachelor’s degree in less than five years. I guess I wonder how that number would change if we shortened the route to the degree? Would it automatically decrease over time? One would think, but I think it opens up more questions than it answers.

Broadcast rights, social media and the soul of college athletics

Fri, 21 May 2010 09:02:00 -0600

As recent as last fall, the Southeastern Conference announced it would ban social media from it’s stadiums. The conference reversed course after a backlash, but the thought process remains aimed at viewing social media as an adversary rather than a benefit to their bottom line.

The reason is simple. College sports leagues are making massive amounts of money selling broadcasting rights. The NCAA’s decision to expand the Division I Men’s Basketball tournament to 68 teams was driven solely by the potential of television dollars. So is all of this talk about expansion in the Big Ten and PAC-10 Conferences.

So why have college sports been so slow to adopt social media in a big way? Look no further than the web site of your favorite college or universities. Legions of institutions funnel millions into competing on the sports field, but when it comes to developing a web presence, schools largely outsource their sites to third-party vendors who provide easy cookie cutter solutions.

College web sites are not produced by third parties, so why should their athletic presence be any different? It’s a confusing situation that owes largely to a lack of coordination between institutional marketing efforts and how they diverge from athletic marketing. Better collaboration and understanding between the two audiences would be a good starting point, but it’s only the beginning.

Institutions will employ people to sell tickets and provide marketing support, but much of that marketing support still lacks a connection to follow trends on the web. Pro sports teams and leagues are figuring it out quickly. The Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League employ a social media coordinator, even the fledgling Women’s Pro Soccer League (WPS) have embraced the medium by creating a social media guide for it’s teams and streams games via iPhone. Going abroad, the Indian Premier League, the world’s largest cricket league broadcasts all of its games on YouTube, while still raking in major dollars on television revenues.

Major League Baseball is considered a fuddy duddy when it comes to sports innovation, as the league has taken ages to adapt in ways other leagues have. But when it came to social media, MLB was the first one to truly leverage the digital space in a way that generate massive revenues for its member clubs through MLB Advanced Media. As of 2007, this editorially independent arm of the league’s 30 clubs was generating over $400 million in revenues. While a drop in the bucket relative to the other revenue streams the teams generate, it proves it’s worth in ways beyond just the intangibles.

The only way college teams and their leagues will truly begin to appreciate the power of social media will be when they discover the money to be made. While smaller leagues and institutions might feel their strategies are confined only to their markets, broader thinking might compel them to start pooling their resources to create revenue opportunities where they don’t currently exist.

Very little is stopping smaller, regional and non-scholarship institutions from broadcasting their games online. Some conferences already do. The problem? Production quality is usually poor, it can be difficult to find someone experienced enough to shoot these games and the quality of competition indicates that only the most die-hard fans and parents are going to be interested in the content. So while there might not be a market for say, Division 3 regular season basketball games; the possibility exists to partner with an existing resource to reach the fans who’ve already assembled and create a repository for highlights and other content that might be of interest rather than being burdened with the task of creating and maintaining the content and then finding an audience for it.

Where the future takes us will be driven by something more than just good ideas or technology. It’s going to come down to money and the opportunities to generate it.

Twitter, What Is It Good For?

Wed, 12 May 2010 15:27:00 -0600

I ran across a Twitter policy page today that made me begin to think about my own use of the site and precisely what I use it for.

If you’ve been reading for a while (thanks!) you know that I have a complicated history with Twitter. I went from a Twitter skeptic to a person who recognized it’s value, though the latter post was mostly tongue-in-cheek because of the older one.

Lately, I’ve found it’s still useful but not in the same ways it once was. I never enjoyed Twitter solely as a means for communication, because it comes attached with a lot of the things that plague instant messenger (IM) conversations for me. Namely that the start can often be abrupt and the ending may be worse. I tend to like starts and finishes. I don’t really need definition, but I do like context. With both Twitter and IM, it can be short and pithy. Which works to some degree, but only sometimes.

Social networks have their place, but I eventually get fatigued of them and have to take a break. For all of the talk of the Zuckerberg internet hegemon in recent months, Facebook is the only one that handles this well. You need a break, you can deactivate and come back with everything intact. It’s handy for people who just decide to step away. When I finally canned my LinkedIn profile a few years back, they do send you an email saying that they have to delete your profile if you’re over a certain number of contacts; but in the email they don’t ask if you’re sure you want to delete. They just let you know when it’s deleted. I came back once more and then ditched it again, though I didn’t have that many connections and I’m back again now though I’m not actively adding people. If I get requests, I add them and if not, I don’t.

Anyway, on this Twitter thing. These days, I’m just not using it as much. If I had to summarize what I’ve viewed Twitter as from the start, it’d go something like this:

Interacting with interesting professional people who I don’t have a lot of contact with in my everyday life.
Staying connected to news on a different frequency.
Maintaining a presence as proxy for communicate with people who might share my interests, but who I may never meet in person.

The overwhelming majority of my friends don’t use it, I’ve taken to mandating each student in the community college class I teach create an account (but don’t ask them to use their real names if they don’t to) because I want to demystify what seems to be one of the most misunderstood social web tools; despite the fever pitch Twitter still seems to have lots of people in stitches about how best to use it.

Personally, I find I’ve used Twitter a lot less now than I did when I worked full-time in higher ed. I feel like I have less to say and what I do have to say, might not be as relevant to the majority of my followers, but this owes to the fact that the majority of my followers are higher ed folks and I haven’t gone out of my way to diversify my follower base beyond that.

Twitter has proven to be the most useful social network for me in my professional life and those who follow trends understand it’s value extends well beyond just the professional and the personal. It’s noisier than it once was and I find it’s ubiquity a bit frustrating, but it’s value seems longer lasting. I’ll continue to use it and suspect my usage will adapt further based on what I choose to do and where I choose to do it.

What about you?

How to spin integrity in a social media world

Thu, 06 May 2010 13:46:54 -0600

We often think of intercollegiate athletics as a domain of wins and losses, as a locale of choices that relate only to the actions within the lines. But every once in a while, the humanity of these activities rears its head.

Grant Whybark, a golfer at St. Francis University in Illinois recently ignited a national conversation about a sporting event that few will ever care about again after it dies down off the main page of ESPN. Last week, Whybark double-bogeyed the first playoff hole in a conference tournament, enabling the other competitor, Seth Doran, to advance to the NAIA national tournament that he’d already qualified for.

There are a lot of ways to look at this story. To the sports pursuits, it’s an act of treason. They believe the only way that someone should compete at the “highest level” is to “earn their spot.” To others, it’s simply an act of sportsmanship. By enabling Seth Doran, the golfer from Olivet Nazarene to qualify for the national tournament hurt no one else. It was either miss and allow Doran to advance or play it through and if Whybark won, no one else would’ve advanced to the national tournament beyond himself.

If you’re the institution where it happened, how does this spark an institutional conversation? This is perhaps a once in a blue moon opportunity to highlight not just to highlight the integrity of your student-athletes, but a bigger platform to talk about what intercollegiate athletics are really about. You have to take that opportunity, because they don’t come along often, even if it’s inconvenient.

It’s the end of the school year in many places, finals are happening or are already over. People are busy and it’s not always easy to find ways to coalesce around rapid topics might not be on the radar. But I submit a few possibilities of how you could spin this for your own benefit:

Your student athlete was highlighted on a national radio show for his integrity. Why not post a link to the interview? If he’s coached before, great. But this is an opportunity to show what integrity yields. A follow-up story on your web site about the act, quotes from a few key people and a larger point about how it’s a reflection of the types of students who attend your institutions and what your core values are.
Find a way to partner with the other institution and share the small window. The real question for many, is how does the other student feel? I mean, does he feel like he backed into a national tournament appearance? Maybe an interview of both together, snap a photo and put it on both institution’s web sites. The short Q&A could just encompass shared values, the camaraderie of competition and understanding the bigger picture. Both of these schools are religious schools, a key selling point for parents who want their children to get more than just a liberal education, but also a set of values that will serve them for life.

The fifteen seconds of fame won’t last long. But it’s likely to boost traffic and send people wondering exactly what your school is about, why it’s there and what sort of people are there. It’s just part of a bigger point of making sure that your web presence speaks to the culture, climate and character of your students, alumni, faculty and staff. You can’t predict when your Hollywood minute will come, but when it does, you need to make sure you’ve put your best face on.

What’s your take? Am I overstating the value of this spontaneous media opportunity? What suggestions would you have for handling something like this or stories that you can share about similar situations?

The human factor

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:59:10 -0600

What’s the one unifying theme behind why we do most of what we do? Other people. The past year has been an interesting one, because I’ve spent a lot more time dealing with ordinary people who don’t deal with marketing as a regular part of their lives, rather than the previous five or so that I spent dealing with matters of marketing, web strategy and so forth to the schools, business or whoever else was paying for it.

The thing I’ve picked up more and more from people is how disconnected they are from everything that’s going on. They might use Facebook and a few are even tweeting. But many of them don’t understand what the purpose is. They might be searching for meaning in the midst of doing it, a few will adopt blogs and spew whatever sort of content that comes to mind. Yet, it all seems not to make any sense.

My first impulse is to blame the legions of social media experts spreading their knowledge to the masses, for failing to reach the critical masses in any real way. More and more, it just seems like a lot of this stuff is just people preaching to the converted and leaving everyone else to sink or swim (or pay a hefty fee) to discover what’s really going on and how it applies to their everyday lives.

I have a friend who’s traveled the world and has taken amazing pictures. We have this conversation a lot about how her diverse interests would be great on some sort of public forum like Flickr where other people could see them, rather than just Facebook where her friends can only gawk and comment. I explain that by doing this, she has no idea who she’ll meet as a result and what sorts of opportunities it’ll yield and if nothing else, it would feel good to expose more people to work you’re happy to expose anyway.

Among other things, her reply was to recall a conversation with an older professional who confided that he knew he needed to do “all of this social media stuff” but didn’t understand why necessarily and “there’s no real evidence that any of it works.” I bristled until she repeated it, but chose not to cite case studies galore or even riff off a few books I knew off-hand that would change that perspective.

Why? I realized the failure to communicate was within the medium that I operate in, not in other people’s inability to understand it’s usefulness. Web professionals seem to bask in the glory of the details and make money from being the smartest people in the room. The vestiges of the IT legacy where this all started haven’t fallen too far from the tree in that way. Some people do amazing work to convert the masses, but their advice doesn’t quite work.

I teach a college class of people who in many cases are returning to school after fifteen or twenty years away. Many of them have been laid off from jobs they held for a decade and return to a marketplace they barely resemble because it’s so different than the one they started in. Telling these people to merely create a Twitter account, a blog or a LinkedIn account and wait to reap the benefits ignores the complexities of what their lives have evolved into over the years. It’s just not realistic and is tone deaf to what they’re dealing with.

So while exposure to social media is important — and it’s a major component of what I communicate — it’s not the entire story. Many people do great work and create great tools like Tumblr or Wordpress and others. It’s easier today to break through than it was at other times, yet it’s more difficult at the same time.

All of this stuff is about people. These conversations, these debates and all of the tactics and strategy we spend time cultivating is about finding ways to reach people. I think this gets lost in all of the data collecting, creation of personas and ways we seek to encapsulate populations into neat packets that we can digest better. It doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes, you have to turn off the screen and reach out the real people. Not just the folks in the office across the hall or even people in your own family. But folks a world away from where you exist, whose lives may be dramatically different and who consider issues that not be on your radar. They’re using the same tools we are to get ahead in the same place inhabit, but their issues and concerns are often lost.

It’s about time we fixed that.

Seth Godin to Higher Ed: Adapt or Die

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:01:22 -0600

Seth Godin to Higher Ed: Adapt or Die:

Why do colleges send millions (!) of undifferentiated pieces of junk mail to high school students now? We will waive the admission fee! We have a one page application! Apply! This is some of the most amateur and bland direct mail I’ve ever seen. Why do it?

Because everyone else does it? Because innovation and doing things differently is scary? If we don’t make our own solutions, someone will make them for us. Believe that.

Some things worth reading

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:12:00 -0600

Here are some blog posts or articles your might find interesting from other people:

User Experience Engagement Metrics (52 Weeks of UX)

When (and Where) Winning Is Every Really Everything (Eric Fletcher)

Northern Arizona University wants to be when students are in class. (Arizona Republic via @andrewcaraega)

Debt, Time and the Job Market for Humanities PhDs (Sociological Images)

My parents’ blog or four years sitting at the virtual kitchen (Dave’s Whiteboard)

Rutgers awaits a “Big” branding decision (Joe Favorito)

Undrafted college football player decides not to pursuit the “undrafted free agent” route, heads to graduate school (Yahoo Sports)

The composition of a match point

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:34:56 -0600

Yesterday marked the last match of the JV tennis season here.

The match was comprised of two diametrically opposed lessons within the span of an hour. First, the match was rough because it was the first time we’d suffered a match loss in well over a month. The other team was very talented from top to bottom.

One of my doubles teams faced off against a foe that had them down early 5-2. The first team to eight wins. During the changeover, I talked to them and the strategy portion comprised of one question, “what’s really the score?” While it was evident that it was 5-2, I witnessed what seemed to be a change in their posture after the last game. Their momentum shifted and it was clear my two players weren’t leaving the court without the victory. What’s more important is they realized they weren’t leaving the court without the win.

Saying you’re going to do something doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that the other team might have had something to say about this. Nonetheless, they went over to their side and when we talked again, it was 7-7 and headed to a tiebreaker. They left the court as winners and couldn’t stop talking about how they willed themselves, down by a lot, to pull through and win.

The thing about sports at the non-varsity level is that the games really only matter to the parents, the people playing and maybe the coach. That’s it. Those memories don’t make it in any print newspaper and the results are quickly forgotten in favor of more significant memories. But it’s those moments which can change everything.

On the flip side, one of my best players found herself in a rare JV singles match against a young woman who was at her level. The two of them battled, but it wasn’t close at first. My player led 5-0 and then eventually 6-1. I was sure she had it firmly in hand, but it turned out those last two games were the hardest to get. She eventually lost in a tiebreaker.

The more significant of these examples in my mind, was the latter one. Having something in your clutches and then losing it, can sear an imprint in your mind that you don’t easily get rid of. It can shape your approach going forward and for the great ones, make you work harder in practice because you understand that every moment you spend preparing will make those types of experiences better.

So while it would have been nice to end the year with a win, it felt good to end with a loss in a strange way. In a competitive environment where there are no championships and no real closure, all you have is the desire and will to get better. To reflect on the experiences as they happened and determine what you’re going to do about them, which is a lesson that extends well beyond the tennis court.

Unveiling a brand new camel

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:16:00 -0600

My favorite brand identity blog Brand New tipped me off to the unveiling of Connecticut College’s upgrade of their athletic brand.

Out goes the camel of old

and in comes a new, fiercer angrier camel.

You should read Brand New’s critique of this new mark, because it’s not often enough that small college athletic marks get the sort of critique (or frankly, design attention) that large ones do, despite the immense value these small colleges and universities could gain from their brands if they were more brand conscious.

That’s not just a critique from me, sports marketing guru Joe Favorito said so when I interviewed him for this blog a few weeks back.

Since it’s Friday and in the spirit of camels — especially since this new one was released on April 5th, my birthday — here’s a picture of me at the Kuwait Camel Racing Club in early 2000 when I was in the Air Force…on a camel.

They smell terrible, of course. But after our camel pictures and watching a race (where children, not grown men ride the camels) we had dates (you know, the fruit) and drank tea.

Unlike llamas though, you don’t have to worry about them spitting at you whenever they feel like it. I have llamas pictures from the good ol’ US of A, but…that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Speaking of new looks, if you just read the RSS feed or tumblr feed of edustir, you’ll want to check out the new look of the actual blog. I’m pretty happy with it.

Happy weekend, folks.

Social web forces BCS to change

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:18:00 -0600

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the cartel that controls college football’s national championship (in lieu of the NCAA like other sports) has gradually worked to reach skeptical audiences who believe it’s methods are less than fair to all of the teams in college football’s highest division.

One of the ways the BCS tried to stem the tide was to create a Twitter account last year. This (somewhat noble) effort largely failed and the BCS has scrambled in other ways to stem the public opinion away from questioning the system that chooses college football’s national champion.

Thursday, the group announced it would publicly reveal the formula needed for conferences that are not “automatic qualifiers” to the most lucrative bowl games to receive automatic qualifier status.

“By putting out the data, we’re hoping we can uncomplicate it,” BCS executive director Bill Hancock said.

As recently as December, the conference commissioners agreed not to release the formula publicly but less than six months later have reversed course. What gives? Who knows precisely, but it’s a safe bet to believe that the vociferous masses railing against the system — many of them fans, the others sports journalists — using the web as their vehicle certainly couldn’t have helped the organization’s massive PR campaign. Perhaps the recent success of March Madness also helped fuel the decision, as the ESPN article cites:

BCS officials have been criticized by not giving details of how the formula is put together and what exactly needs to be done to qualify. Hancock said the BCS released the formula to try to become more transparent.

At the end of the day, whether this move is damage control or an attempt to make the process more transparent, you can credit the BCS officials for at least listening to the criticism that their process was opaque. To people who have less exposure to the new order of social interactions — from companies and their brands, institutions and their students — it might be difficult for a large organization to understand why it would have a need to pay attention to people who are ultimately going to keep paying for their product anyway.

Perhaps they’ve started to embrace the idea that you can’t control the message anymore, you have to cultivate it.

Who knows, maybe fans can influence the NCAA’s choice of what teams will play in the new play-in games added to the basketball tournament too?

Impossible, yes, so let’s get to work.

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:32:35 -0600

I watched the documentary Man On Wire, the 2009 Oscar winner about Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center buildings in 1974.

I took a lot away from the film, but the most notable thing to me was how much preparation went into planning it. It took six years from the time Petit got the original idea in his head to the time he actually attempted it. Included in that time were at least four visits to New York City.

His team was comprised of an inner circle of friends from France who’d been working with him for years including his girlfriend at the time and his childhood friend; coupled with people they picked up in the US before they tried the feat.

You get the idea by watching it that so many things would, could and did go wrong that any false move in one other direction could’ve caused the whole thing to go bust. Yet, not only did they figure it out, they managed to pull the whole thing off.

So much of the conversation these days — especially amongst the social web — is centered around pursuing your dreams and believing in yourself. That might be one component of it, but another component is staring down failure in the face and challenging it. Petit and his crew knew that the best case scenario in their escapade of a lifetime was being arrested.

Given the alternative was the loss of a friend and the failure of a feat that would never be attempted again, they were all complicit in something that ended up being much, much bigger than themselves. There is no way Petit could’ve performed this task had he not confronted failure, because it was a very real possibility. (One he admits a lot in the film, incidentally.)

“The merest attempt at estimating, the slightest unconscious recording is shrugged off as an absurd association with some never-to-be-realized dream…as an exercise in futility…

I manage to whisper my first thought: “I know it’s impossible. But I know I’ll do it.”

At that instant, the towers become “my towers.”

Once on the street, a new thought: Impossible, yes, so let’s get to work.”

Taking your own shots

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:34:00 -0600

Lately, I’ve had this recurring image from middle school playing out. It goes something like this: My intramural team makes the championship game. Since it’s gym class, there are no subs, teams are broken down into five players each or and so, I have to actually start and couldn’t be relegated to the bench. Our entire gym period is watching the game, save for the ten of us on the court.

I take my role somewhat seriously, despite being at the beginning of a fledgling tennis career. Fast forward to the game. The other players don’t take me all that seriously on the court, because they don’t have a reason to. Because of this, I end up with about five steals. (Maybe more, I don’t recall.)

Despite all of my tenacious defense, I only took one or two shots in the whole game. Why? Because I passed the ball at every opportunity. I kept thinking there was no way I should the ball in my hands unless it was to pass to someone else. I’d have open fast break opportunities on most of those steals, but I was so nervous to shoot and miss figuring my teammates would hate me that I’d pass the ball to the “more reliable players” instead. Except in this game, those mainstays always came up cold and missed all but one of the scoring opportunities I provided.

I don’t know where this vision came from, since I hadn’t thought about that random game probably since it happened. (I don’t even remember if it was 7th or 8th grade.) I mean, I kept thinking “I should’ve taken more shots.” Even if I missed like I did on the one three pointer I attempted, I just should’ve dribbled, exhibited more confidence and just taken more shots. We couldn’t have done any worse had I done that, since we lost the game anyway.

I never knew it’d be a life lesson, but it seems that’s exactly what it is. I’ve spent the last year doing what I did in the game in varying degrees. Even when I’ve realized it, I’ve failed to really understand what was happening.

This revelation is freeing, but it’s also terrifying, because part of me is really afraid that I don’t know how to shoot. Or that I’ll miss and the team will lose. What that lesson proved is that I’m certain to lose if I don’t do something about it and there’s no shame in going down shooting, even if you don’t always make it.

Resources v. Results

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:12:25 -0600

The reason many people cheer for Cinderella during March Madness is
understanding what they’re up against. The rules don’t provide these
financially overmatched teams with help to defeat the leading teams
and their limitless resources.

So they have to get creative and work at their craft. It’s often the
scrappy underdogs that pioneer systems that keep them competitive.
Those systems work and others mimic them (ever heard of the Princeton
offense?) because it doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from, it
just matters if it works.

Imagine if small teams tried to beat the big dogs at their game? How
successful would they be? How often do you hear these student-athletes
talk about “our system” and “teamwork.”

No, they don’t always win the ultimate prize, but there’s only one of
those each year anyway. It’s not an accident the players who feel they
have nothing to lose, seem to be having the most fun game in and game
out.

The real takeaway in my mind is about having a philosophy, believing
in it and working just as hard in all facets of the game as the
so-called virtuosos do. Your outcomes might not be heralded on a large
scale, but it doesn’t make your work any less significant or
meaningful.

What winning is about

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:35:56 -0600

The reason I think we find sports in society so compelling is because it looks nothing like real life. The rules are defined, there are boundaries and if you don’t outperform the people you’re competing against, you will lose.

When you’re competing on an even playing field under the same rules; it doesn’t always mean that people around you won’t cut corners. But you can stick your own philosophy and when you find success, find that others around you start to watch what you’re doing.

Often, a philosophy is attributed to a brave soul who comes in with youthful enthusiasm, a monk-like devotion to duty and a desire to make things a bit better and find people who buy into the vision.

What’s the point? Success isn’t always measured in metrics or dollars and cents. It’s sometimes about cultivating a philosophy and a way of doing business that reflects the ideals of the people working in that group, institution or company. While it might be articulated fully, it’s not always best expressed by the CEO, but the line employee who’s worked there for a year or three. It’s not just demonstrated in the way they do work during business hours, but when the shop doors close.

Winning is often the only thing anyone ever thinks about, but it’s not surprising that their success gets capped somewhere before their own personal grail. It usually takes more than will, more than a desire or a passion alone to find the combination which results in big wins.