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Blog Archives

Blogs - October 2011

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Below are the blog entries for October 2011

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InterLab 2011

By Kat Liendgens
Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 10:00am

The Hannon Hill team had an amazing time at both EDUCAUSE and HighEdWeb, but believe it or not, we have another conference coming up. Blaine Herman, our VP of Sales, and I are excited to be attending InterLab 2011 in beautiful Golden, Colorado, next week. InterLab, which is hosted by the National Renewal Energy Laboratory, is an annual workshop in which web professionals in the Department of Energy complex get together to network, collectively strategize, and learn. This will be Hannon Hill’s second time representing at InterLab, and we’re proud to be sponsors of the conference again.

On Tuesday afternoon, I will give a presentation on Content Strategy Considerations for Government Agencies. Having worked in the public sector for several years, this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. Some of the things that we will discuss include:

I look forward to catching up with our existing clients who will be at the conference (Brookhaven, Sandia and Los Alamos), getting to know other technology professionals, and visiting one of my favorites states. And for those of you who have been following our tweets, pics, and videos about our Mind Flex competition (check out the video), rest assured that we will bring the game to InterLab as well. We’re not afraid of a good challenge, and can’t wait to hear what some of the brightest minds in the country have to say about it.


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Get Grouped

By Holly Wright
Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 11:00am

Many of our clients are passionate about using our software in innovative ways to get the maximum benefit from Cascade Server content management system. In between User Conferences and beyond our weekly webinar series, a great way keep up with different uses and new ideas for Cascade is to be part of a User Group.

User Groups meet regularly, usually by phone, to encourage discussion about Cascade Server, collaborate on projects and exchange tips and best practices across different organizations. The goal is to be supportive of each other, build community and improve the way you use Cascade CMS at your organization. Although we, at Hannon Hill, are huge supporters of our user community, we have found that beyond helping with the initial organization of User Groups, it is most beneficial to you if we stay out of the way and let clients lead the the sessions. This allows you to set your own agenda and discuss whatever you wish in your meetings.

We're excited to announce the formation of a Canadian Cascade Server User Group designed to encourage regular conversation, collaboration and idea exchange across members of the Canadian user base of Cascade Server CMS. This group will be led by Canadian clients and will be an open forum for discussion. Their first official User Group conference call will take place today at 1:00 PM EST. We also have a very active User Group organized by the University of California System, which has been meeting regularly for over a year.

If you are interested in forming a User Group in your region or among other similar clients, please feel free to contact us. We are more than willing to help facilitate the formation of new groups. Simply fill out the form below or contact Chris Armistead directly at info@hannonhill.com.


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Why I Love Working at Hannon Hill

By Holly Wright
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 3:00pm

As you may know, we are currently recruiting for several open positions at Hannon Hill, so I thought I would take a little time to write about why I love working here so much.

Let me start with the most obvious perks: tons of free food and unlimited vacation time! On my very first day about six months ago, we had a live chef in the office making custom gourmet omelets for Monday breakfast. I had one stuffed with cheese, peppers and bacon. Not very healthy, but I can't think of a better way to get a new employee to immediately love their job! We have free catered breakfast every Monday morning to get the week started off right and free catered lunch every Friday to end it with a bang! The food is different every week to appeal to everyone's different tastes, but a recent lunch highlight for me was a few weeks ago when we had a food truck down at the bottom of the building serving up salads and sandwiches. We also have a break room stocked with all kinds of snack foods--from granola, nuts, fresh fruit and flavored water to soda, chips, cookies and candy--there's something for everyone!

Did I also mention the unlimited vacation time? My teammates (you might call them coworkers at your current job) are a diverse and talented bunch of people with a wide variety of interests outside of work. Hannon Hill understands this and allows its employees to use our discretion and take as much vacation time as we need. We call it a "no tracking" vacation policy because, as you might glean from the name, no one tracks the number of days each employee takes off as long as we are getting all of our work done.

The slightly-harder-to-describe benefits are far greater than the free food and unlimited time off for me, however. I don't want to go all academic on you here, but a few things I learned in my Organizational Behavior class can help explain why I love it here so much.

Finally, the very best thing about working at Hannon Hill is the people I get to see and work with each day. Every single team member at Hannon Hill is committed to producing high quality work, coming up with creative solutions for our clients, and providing top-notch customer service--both externally to customers and internally to other teammates.

If I haven't sold you yet, here are just a few of the other benefits of working at Hannon Hill:

If there's a position on our careers page that interests you, please take a few minutes to decide whether you'd be a good cultural fit at Hannon Hill and apply to the position.


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Join Us in Austin for HighEdWeb 2011

By Joel Dixon
Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 4:00pm

Hannon Hill is a proud sponsor of next week’s HighEdWeb 2011 conference October 23-26, 2011 in Austin, Texas. We are always excited to see our clients and interact with the community of higher education web professionals.
 
We look forward to showing off features of our latest release Cascade Server 6.10, the most supportive enterprise content management system in higher education, and our new centralized marketing tool, Spectate. This year, attendees will also be introduced to a fun new game where you can challenge us in a “battle of the mind” and enter to win the game! See the video below of two of our engineers performing some "quality assurance" on the game (AKA battling it out).  Stop by booth #15 to meet our team, grab some new swag, learn about our tools and try the game.
 
Of course, everyone knows HighEdWeb is all about the people and the quality of the workshops. Several of our clients have some great sessions for higher education, including
 
 
We will contribute our own quality content by leading a presentation titled Agile Marketing: Content Strategy & Effective Tools. Join us in the Padre Island Room on Monday, 11:45 AM - 12:30 PM to learn
  • What it means to employ an Agile Marketing approach in higher education,
  • Why having a Content Strategy is essential for effective web & social media marketing, and
  • How our Cascade Server CMS & Spectate centralized marketing platform help optimize marketing campaigns.

For those of you who will be following all the activity on Twitter, Mike Petroff (@mikepetroff) over at .eduGuru put together The Ultimate Twitter Guide to HighEdWeb 2011, which is a very useful compilation of all the hashtags and handles you'll need during the conference.
 
We look forward to seeing you at booth #15, so be sure to stop by and check us out!



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Greetings from EDUCAUSE

By Kat Liendgens
Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 11:00am

Greetings from Philadelphia, where we’re currently participating in the EDUCAUSE conference. As always, it’s a pleasure to meet up again with so many of our wonderful customers and to have the opportunity to discuss Cascade Server’s features and benefits with new prospects. For those of you who were not able to make it to this year’s User Conference, please stop our booth (#1357) if you haven’t already, so that we can fill you in on our product road map. EDUCAUSE is such an impressive conference - kudos to everybody involved for a job well done! Here are some of my take-aways thus far:

  • Great breadth of exhibitors. I’ve been really impressed with the variety of vendors representing at the conference. In addition to “the usual suspects”, such as CMS providers and online learning companies, you’ll find every major and every niche technology sector you can image. It’s also nice to see that all sizes of companies are represented, including start-ups. The networking opportunities have been fantastic thus far.
  • Focus on social channels and mobile sites. It’s clear that social and mobile technologies are taking higher education by storm. Whether it’s social media integrations, video sharing or conferencing - this year’s theme seems to be all about collaboration and allowing students, staff, and other stakeholders to access and share information on the go.
  • Much interest in Spectate. As you may know, we offer an all-in-one web marketing solution called Spectate, which allows organizations to improve their SEO, optimize website performance, manage and measure their social media campaigns, and create email campaigns and nurture programs, among other things. I am pleased to see that we made the right decision in developing this tool, as it alleviates a lot of pain points for higher education organizations. If you’re a Cascade customer, Spectate is free. If you’re not a Cascade customer, no problem. Just come see us and we’ll be happy to discuss the product and some of the attractive pricing options (Don’t worry, we won’t lock you into a long-term contract).
  • Everybody likes to play Mind Flex. Got what it takes to beat one of us at Mind Flex? Stop by our booth and play with us and against us to win cool prizes (maybe even the game itself!). Yes, the head gear may look a little geeky, but we’re not known to be vain. Chris Armistead and Blaine Herman are both incredibly competitive, so if you’ve got what it takes, please come on over and challenge them to a match.
 
We’re really enjoying ourselves here in Philadelphia, and are looking forward to our final day. Next week, we’ll be at HighEdWeb in Austin - hope to see you there!

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Cascade Server Group Training - It's Back!

By Penny Harding
Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 1:00pm

In speaking with some organizations lately, I have found that there is a need to bring back the online cross-client group training. We have done this in the past with very great success. This training option has been designed as a cheaper alternative for organizations that only have one or two people at their organization who need to be trained and, therefore, don’t need our standard dedicated training. We've planned our next group training session for November 7th and 8th. Seats have filled quickly in the past, and we’ve received nothing but positive feedback from those in attendance, so sign up quickly if you are interested. 
 

Date and Time

The 12-hour group training will be held over the course of two days on 11/7/2011 and 11/8/2011. In order to accommodate clients in each time zone, the sessions will take place from 10 AM to 1 PM EST and 2 PM to 5 PM EST, with a one hour break on each day. 

Format

The training will be held online via a screen-sharing session, and a conference number will be provided for audio. Since we are restricting the maximum number of participants to ten, you will have plenty of opportunity to interact directly with the trainer. You will also be given access to our training instance in case you would like to follow along with the examples. Of course, feel free to work on your own instance if you prefer. 
 

Topics Covered

Most of the topics covered in our standard two-day session will also be covered in the group training, including the following:
  • Cascade Server Technical Basics,
  • Creating Sites,
  • Configuration Sets and Content Types,
  • Metadata and Structured Data,
  • Formats,
  • Advanced Velocity, and
  • Publishing. 
Check out the schedule from our last group training for a more detailed version of what will be covered.

Class Size

In order to ensure the best possible interaction with the trainer, the number of participants is limited to ten.
 

Pricing

The price is $800 per seat and includes both days of the training. The deadline to sign up is November 4th and spots are limited, so make sure to sign up via our training request form or by contacting me at 678-904-6900 x255.


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EDUCAUSE 2011

By Blaine Herman
Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 8:00am

Hannon Hill is excited to be in Philadelphia this week for our 6th straight EDUCAUSE conference. We will be proudly showing off new features of Cascade Server, the most supportive enterprise content management software in higher education, and our new centralized marketing tool, Spectate. We'd love to see you if you are attending, so stop by booth #1357 to... 

We look forward to seeing you at booth #1357, and we'd love take you out for a philly cheese steak sandwhich (or two)! 


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Meeting Social Media Challenges For Higher Education

By Kat Liendgens
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 4:00pm

As I mentioned in our road map presentation last month, it is virtually impossible to find a college or university that has not in some way engaged in social media. The reasons are obvious. Facebook has become one of the largest countries in the world, and its main demographic consists of college-age individuals. YouTube has become the second largest search engine in the world. Between January and September of this year, the number of unique monthly visitors on twitter.com increased from 250 million to 400 million. It only makes sense to incorporate social media into your communication and marketing strategy. Some of the challenges for higher education organizations are based on the sheer number of staff members engaging in social media, as well as the decentralization of social media campaigns, which can make it difficult to ensure a consistent tone and message and to measure your outcomes.

Here are some things to consider to overcome these challenges:
  • Define why you are engaging in social media. What do you want to accomplish by interacting on social media? Perhaps your reasons include driving traffic to your main website, providing real-time customer service, or fostering your university community. Make sure that each social media contributor is aware of the main purpose in order to be most effective in their approach.
  • Set your goals and objectives. Once you’ve established your main purpose, set specific goals and objectives for your social media engagement. For instance, “Promote our new website” may not be a very measurable goal, but “Increase new visitors by 20%” is. Define objectives supporting your goals. Those objectives could be “Respond to 20 social posts per day” or “Publish 3 tweets and 2 Facebook updates per day”, to name a few. Of course, those benchmarks don’t have to be set in stone. Assess on a regular basis how obtainable those goals and objectives are and if they really support your mission. If the answer is no, redefine.
  • Establish your key messages and keep them top of mind. Write down the most important messages that you want your audience to take away from your website and your social media presence. Consider creating a top 10 list in order to ensure that the key messages are always top of mind - it will affect the way you engage in social media.
  • Educate your contributors on the overall tone. While it’s vital to infuse personality into your social media presence (after all, who wants to interact with a logo?), it’s also important to be consistent in your overall tone, your message, and your core values. This becomes particularly paramount when responding to negative comments. Make sure that all of your social media contributors know how to react to negativity and how to most effectively handle reputation management.
  • Don’t try to do everything at once. With the plethora of social media channels and tools available, it’s easy to either get lost or go overboard and spend time on things that may not optimally support your goals. I recommend that instead of a shotgun approach, you focus on a few channels first and measure your success. What are the devices that your target audience uses the most? What are the social media outlets on which they interact most frequently? By concentrating on only three to five channels, you’ll get a much better idea of what works best before branching out.
  • Don’t be afraid to try something new. Social media is a fast-moving beast. Instead of planning multi-year strategies, more and more marketers are adopting an agile approach, which means smaller campaigns, more measurement, and the willingness to try new things. Once you’ve established yourself in some of the main channels, explore other avenues.
  • Track and measure as much as you can. In order to get the most out of your social media campaigns, tracking and measuring as much as you can is key. For instance, you want to know how many visitors came to your site or landing page from a link you posted on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. What type of content rendered the best results? What is the distribution of positive versus negative sentiment on Twitter? Identify key performance indicators and measure your results, so that you can continue to optimize your social media efforts.

I’d love to hear from you. What are some of the social media challenges you’ve encountered, and how did you overcome those challenges?

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Designing Your Navigation

By Kat Liendgens
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 3:30pm

One of the key components of every website is the navigation, which is why it is important to dedicate sufficient time to designing it in a way that makes your site user-friendly. While it does not seem very difficult to create a snazzy-looking navigation, there are many things that require additional consideration. In this blog, I will focus on some of the factors to keep in mind when designing a navigation for your site that are of particular importance when leveraging the power of a content management system.

Primary Navigation Considerations

One of the more obvious design considerations is that if you intend to make your navigation dynamic, which means having the content management system automatically update the menus when folders and files are added, renamed, or deleted, it has to be text-based instead of Flash- or image-based. You can certainly use JavaScript for fly-outs or drop-down menus, though.

Another decision you have to make is which navigation items you want to be dynamic. For instance, if your navigation is horizontal across your page, having this first level be dynamic may not be the best idea. Depending on how your HTML and CSS are coded, you will run the risk of your navigation expanding to the point of necessitating horizontal scrolling or quite often falling to a second line. Either way will generally cause your site to look broken. In this situation, it would be best to identify what your top level navigation items are and make those static, while allowing for dynamic second-level navigation to either drop down vertically from the horizontal navigation or position it vertically elsewhere on the page.

Form Follows Function

I cannot stress enough how crucial it is to map out the structure of your website prior to designing the navigation, especially if you are implementing one of the most powerful capabilities of a content management system, namely content reuse in the form of dynamic navigation. Since the navigation will be page- and folder-driven, it is paramount to plan your information architecture carefully. For instance, you need to know how many levels deep your navigation needs to be. This is of particular importance when you hand the templates over to your Cascade developers, as they will need to have the JavaScript that handles all of the navigation levels before they start writing the formats that automatically generate your navigation menus and items. If you only provide designs that handle two levels of navigation, you need to communicate to the developer how you would like to see a scenario handled in which the user creates a new sub-folder with pages. Should the navigation “start over”? If so, should the top level folder be included? What would this particular scenario look like? How would you handle a situation in which the user creates ten nested folders? How much of a drill-down effect do you want to allow?

It is crucial to ensure that the Cascade developer knows how to handle those types of scenarios. In addition, make sure that you discuss how to handle folders that do not have an index page. We recommend excluding them from the navigation, so that the user does not get a "page not found" error when clicking on the name of the folder in the navigation. Finally, do you foresee a need to have your developer add a metadata field that enables the user to exclude certain pages or even folders from the navigation? When it comes to these details, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In other words, plan ahead.

By planning your information architecture prior to your integration, you can ensure that the directory structure in your content management system matches your navigation structure. Furthermore, it will facilitate the QA process, since you would simply have to follow the outlined folder and file organization when creating assets in your content management system to see if the navigation works as designed.


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