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Sherwin McBride
August 16, 1934 - August 20, 2007
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Sadly, these are the only digital photos I have available of my dad. I'll have to do a more complete remembrance later.
Rest peacefully, Dad. Your family loves and misses you.
Update 9-9-07: Seven photos added to the end of the slideshow.
My buddy over at Pairadocs Design Lab got his customized Optimus Prime featured on Gizmodo, along with some other tech sites. Way cool and way to go, dude!
How do I know a guy who customizes action toys? Well, he's a web developer in his day job, and I worked with him at my last job, where he was a temp while I was an editor. He got an offer over at Priority Health a few years ago and he's been there ever since. I freelanced at PH quite a bit last year before taking my current job at Davenport University, but we've been somewhat out of touch over the past year.
In fact, last I knew, we were getting together for lunch sometime ... now that he's 'famous,' maybe I should make sure that happens. Whaddya say, Vince?
For your viewing enjoyment, a slideshow of the three cars we totaled this summer. Nobody was hurt in any of these mishaps. Enjoy. (My apologies for the cell phone unquality)
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Back in July sometime, my nephew and his wife left their jobs, put their furniture in storage and took off for Europe for awhile. They're keeping a blog:
What fun! Wish they'd post a few pictures.
Part one: No more Neon
A week ago Thursday I got a call at work just before 5. It was Clay.
"I'm on my way to Marne," he said.
"For?" I asked, puzzled, of course. It's not a place we go to, but we do drive through fairly often.
I can't quote exactly what he said. But the essence was this: Meagan was driving on I-96 toward Grand Haven, to the beach with three friends, and she'd rolled the car.
Rolled the car? That tinny little Neon? What happened?
As far as he knew, all the kids were OK. The police were there, and a tow truck. That was all he knew at the moment.
It was all he could tell me, so I hung up and let him continue driving.
I didn't know what else to do, so I packed up my stuff and left work. Meagan called as I was climbing into the truck. She told me the same story. They were all OK; paramedics had been there and checked them out. Police were there. Tow truck. She was waiting for Dad, who apparently was stuck in rush hour traffic.
I asked her what happened, and apparently, she was driving in the left lane and she reached for a chapstick being handed to her by one of her friends. She took her eyes off the road for a second, and the car veered a little. She over corrected, went off the shoulder and rolled into the median. The car landed on its roof. All four kids climbed out over the windshield. They had scratches on their hands and knees, but none was cut seriously. She was clearly upset, but not hysterical. She was mostly mad and embarrassed that she'd wrecked her car.
Not too long after I arrived home, Clay and Meagan returned. She was dirty, scratched and fighting tears. She took a shower and just "wanted to be alone for awhile."
Good lord. Susan had just had a close encounter not six weeks ago with their Subaru, which, incidently, we'd only recently had some auto salvager tow away from the front yard. The Neon had only been theirs since July 4. And now Meagan had a could-have-been-much-worse accident. There's been a run this summer of teens being killed in car crashes. We're so thankful our daughters have escaped theirs without injury.
But two totalled cars in one summer? Four people working five jobs -- one that's out of town -- demands that we have at least three cars at our disposal (as suburbians we have never been users of public transportation, for better or worse, and anyway, the bus doesn't come this far north anymore). Replacing the Subaru with the Neon was a bit of a strain (even with Grandpa's help). And I should also remind that the other two cars -- a minivan and small truck -- are none too reliable either, being vehicles of vintages '96 and '98 respectively. Now what?
Part two: Great balls of fi -re
So the next morning, Meagan had to take me to work, as Susan did after she wrecked a car, so that the girls would have transportation to and from their jobs. (They have to work out the details for themselves, since they work such odd and different hours.) The van had earlier had a gas leak somewhere (which Clay had had fixed) but recently I started to smell gas inside the car again. This morning the gasoline smell in the passenger compartment was strong during the entire drive downtown, and I'll be the first to admit we probably should not have driven the car. But there you go. We did.
I pulled into the parking lot, stopped alongside the building, and climbed out so Meg could take over the driver's seat. I went into the building and up the stairs to our offices. I had just got to my desk, and while co-workers were asking all about my daughter's accident from the night before, my cell phone rang. It was Meg.
"Mom, I'm not going anywhere," she said.
"Why not?"
"When I went to leave, there was a loud pop and smoke started coming out from under the hood," she said.
I remember my coworkers still chattering at me as I said something about, "... and now my car is on fire downstairs outside this building ..." And I rushed out.
Black smoke was indeed curling out from under the hood. Meg was standing far away from the car. I approached it, opened the door and popped the hood, but someone walking across the parking lot who could see beneath the car said, "You might not know it, but there are sparks and some flames under there ..." I decided I'd better get away from the car, too.
I went back into the building and by that time our PR director, whom I work with, was downstairs at the reception desk. While I was foggily wondering whether this was bad enough to call the fire department, she told the girl behind the desk to call 911. And University security, plus the reception desks at nearby buildings. And to warn those in this building that they might want to move their cars.
Now the smell of burning rubber was strong and the black smoke was starting to billow out of the engine compartment, along with some flames. People with fire extinguishers were trying to help, but there wasn't much they could do. A fire truck arrived and real fire extinguishing began. Those guys must have sprayed that van down five times before they were satisfied the danger was over.
It's hard to remember all what happened during the confusion: who did what, was where, said what. In the end, the van sat, smoking and dripping, the engine compartment a melted, stinking black mass that only said to me, "Another close call. Another totalled car..."
I do, however, remember one of the firefighters turning to me as he watched one of his comrades spraying water on the engine for the nth time and saying, "That your car?"
"Yes," I replied.
"I don't think the heater is going to work anymore," he said.
Huh. It took me a second ... then I laughed.
What else you gonna do?
eduWeb Conference 2007
Baltimore, Maryland
July 22-24
Closing keynote
Jeff Kallay, The Experience Evangelist
This is an experience economy. Great example: Starbucks. They're not selling coffee. They're selling the experience at a premium price. No print ads, TV, etc. Entirely word of mouth. The experience is the marketing.
Read: Markets of One Pine & Gilmore
Other examples: Disney, American Girl Place
It's about selling memories.
The seller has become a stager. You're selling memories to guests.
Experience marketing is about
For a website, it's about
Does your website have the 4 Es:
Integrate all 4 of the above for absorption of your experience.
The art and science of staging experiences
84% use the web most heavily in researching colleges
71% say campus visit is most trusted source of info.
Q: Does your site support campus visit and vice versa?
See the video Drinkin' Time (Seriously -- it's a prank that Dartmouth students pulled on an actual campus visit group. It's hilarious.)
Experiences are the norm for millenials and their parents. They want what they want, when they want it. You need to stage online and offline experience and the two must work together. Good examples of experience marketing:
American Girl Place - birthday parties, afternoon tea
Raceline motorworks - design, build, race your own car; birthday parties
The Gap - in-store social shopping experiences
Cereality - cereal bar and cafe sells cereal at a premium price. website also
Hotel indigo - create your own haiku; send it to a friend
Joie de Vivre Hotels. -- largest boutique hotel in Calif. no advertising.. You create a profile to match up with your hotel personality. 5 magazine-themed hotels. It's an intimate product choice, like a college. Also built their own social networking site, Your California.
The online medium should be used for the full spectrum of awareness, consideration, preference and purchase.
Turn your website into a place where customers can play, learn, enjoy, build communities and exchange information.
Their experience should be so fulfilling that they are passionately interested in knowing more about your college and seek to belong to that brand.
************
Jeff Kallay's job is consulting with colleges and universities to make their campus visit an experience that will attract students and their parents and of course, entice them to enroll. His Experience Evangelist blog is another that I read regularly, so it was a treat to hear him speak. As I commented to him afterwards, I appreciated how he translated experience marketing to the website experience in this closing keynote address.
eduWeb Conference 2007
Baltimore, Maryland
July 22-24
Daniel Creasy
Johns Hopkins University
First tried Chat > Message Boards > Blogs. Then saw the need for creation of a fully defined e-recruitment strategy.
First: Created Hopkins Interactive, a satellite site to admissions site
Relaunched: Hopkins Interactive version 2, still a statellite site- Goal to offer more content, be more interactive, update frequently
Washington Post story increased traffic over 300% overnight and it's stayed up there.
Why blog/be interactive? (does not replace other communications)
Approach
The best blogs are personal, well written, honest, interactive and have an authentic and distinct voice
It has worked
Pitfalls
The student bloggers speak
*********************
My thoughts: It's helpful to hear from a school with a highly interactive outreach. Listening to Daniel and the students gives hope that we could do something with interactive, even if on a smaller scale. Hearing from student bloggers themselves was a real plus here.
eduWeb Conference 2007
Baltimore, Maryland
July 22-24
Alberto Fernandez, Lynn University
shifthappens.wikispaces.com join the conversation (This is awesome -- go look at it in one of its many iterations.)
A strategic plan is
Planning steps (a cycle process -- no more than 3 years ahead.)
1. Where are we today?
2. Where do we want to be in the future?
3. What do we have to do in order to get where we want to be?
Result (for Lynn University)
This presentation confirmed for me that we're pretty smart as far as what we've done: Public site vs portals, centralized control, good relationship between marketing and IT.
eduWeb Conference 2007
Baltimore, Maryland
July 22-24
I spoke to Darren Wacker totally by accident when the conference was over. He was waiting for the elevator and I was headed in or out from the patio, and he spoke to me.
"Did you like the conference?" I answered with my usual "How do I know you again?" just so there's no pretense on my part (I recognize you but I can't remember how and I'm not going to pretend I know who you are until I do or do not figure it out.) And he said, "Did you go to a session late yesterday on blogging and then I remembered: Yes -- this guy had some good tips on getting a blogging program started, and I told him so. I already know the value of blogging, I said "I've been blogging almost 5 years. I'm a believer," I said, probably a little too rah- rah-ish, at which point he laughed. Not a scornful "well-I-got-to-be-going-now' sort of laugh, no, it was a "yes-I-understand-exactly-what-you're-saying-but-I-try-not-to-get-too-
giddy-about-it-in-
public-spaces" sort. At which time his elevator arrived and I ducked out onto the patio. One other thing comes back to me about Darren's presentation: Although he was one of the vendors who presented, he made a point of saying he wasn't trying to sell anything. We appreciated that. And so.
Darren's presentation is on his blog. It just might be more useful for you to download it and read it at your leisure, rather than continue reading my sketchy notes. But if you're so inclined, here's my take:
Blogs are a way to quickly, easily, authentically communicate with prospects.
Who is blogging - some good examples
Current students: Ball State
Admissions counselors: Oregon State
Financial Aid: MIT/daniel
Faculty: University of Chicago (They also host a wiki with a Q & A on blogging at the university)
Parents: Oklahoma Christian University
Why blog?
Process for blogging
What's a good post?
Blog Management: Policy
Blog management: Reviewing posts
Blog Management: Comments
Blog management: Compensation (examples)
Success criteria
Syndicate content
Promote the blogs
