Nelson Croom's Blog

London 2012 is missing a social media trick

Anna Faherty, author of 5 Nelson Croom courses, explains why the London Olympic Games Organising Committee are missing out on the opportunity that Social Media presents.

by Anna Faherty

For most people, their social media strategy is either non-existent or based on strict rules about what their organisation says they can or can’t say. But if you’re organising one of the biggest sporting events in the world, you need to think more creatively than that. You also need a lot of people and a lot of time to make the most of social media around your event.

Almost a year before last weekend’s US Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, marketing company Raidious set-up a city-centre office to manage the event’s social-media strategy. Packed with 50 employees and student volunteers working around the clock, they then got blogging, tweeting and Facebooking.

Of course the social media command centre was sure to be sending out messages to market both the Super Bowl and the city in which it is taking place. But it also monitored the use of 300 keywords across different social media. If someone spotted a question or concern they could respond to, or a fun experience they could share, they got to work. Plus they also created new content – sourcing photos, videos and stories to share on their Highlights blog.

With our own major sporting event just around the corner, perhaps London 2012 can learn a thing or two from Super Bowl XLVI. So far, we’re not doing so well. Despite encouraging competitors to make this the ‘Twitter games’, the London Olympic Games Organising Committee (LOGOC) didn’t win itself any favours when it recently announced that anybody volunteering at the games would be banned from using social media – hardly the way to get people talking, sharing and promoting the games online.

LOGOC’s approach might not be so surprising if you take a look back at the 2010 Winter Olympics. In an article for Mashable, blogger and social media marketer Teresa Basich says most of the Twitter action for Vancouver 2010 was ‘pushing’ agreed messages out, rather than engaging with audiences in any real sense. Perhaps if LOGOC heeded Basich’s advice to listen to people, connect with them and foster links between people with shared passions things might be different. Because, as a recent article in Forbes magazine confirms, social media today isn’t about broadcasting, it’s about meeting like-minded individuals, participating in meaningful conversations and collaborating to make a difference. That’s true for LOGOC. And it’s true for you. Don’t miss the trick…

A big change for Imago

by Andrew Turner

 

Everything thing we do at Nelson Croom is based in our technology system Imago. Imago is constantly working to ensure every course is accessible, every report works and every learner can get the most from each course.

On the 13th of January Imago got a facelift and we have to say we are very happy with the results, she has never looked fresher or younger.

All in all we there are four great things to come out of this facelift, three which are immediately visible to all, and one, perhaps the most important, which is not:

1. A fresher more intuitive navigation panel– You will notice the menu on the left hand navigation panel has changed., In response to user feedback we’ve made the menu more intuitive and modern looking
2. A new Imago Manager – We have fundamentally redesigned Imago ManagerDon’t panic though, every report or tool  is still there, they are just presented in a different way. Instead of one long list down the page, the headings are attractive tabs across the top. When you click on them the list of headings appear in a left hand column. Select the appropriate heading and the reports and tools will appear. (See below)



3. A more attractive out of the box gateway page – So if clients don’t want to customise their gateway page we’ve made the out of the box version nicer to look at.
4. HTM5 – this is the change you won’t see but it is a major step to ensure continued compatibility with all browsers, the possibility of more exciting interactive design (without resorting to flash) and easier implementation of accessible features.

These are all important steps in keeping our technology current and up to date. If you have any questions or would like any more information, we’d love to hear from you.

SYP – An opportunity through social media

by Andrew Turner

 

A friend who I met whilst doing my Masters in Publishing at Kingston University recently contacted me about the opportunity to join the committee of the Society of Young Publishers (SYP). The SYP was established in 1949 and is open to anyone in publishing or a related trade – or who is hoping to be soon, catering especially for those with fewer than ten years experience.

The opening was to join this friend, Tina Mories, on the committee as an Events Coordinator. The SYP hold monthly events, for members and non members, which aim to focus on interesting topics from the world of publishing which can help those in, and looking to get in to, the industry.

I am extremely happy to be on the committee and with the opportunity it gives me to help those looking to get in to publishing and also expand my own network. This put me in mind of our recently launched course Social Media for Professionals which stresses the importance of social media as a way of maintaining your network as a whole. Not only is this new role a great way for me to network, I wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for the network I already had. This network is one which I maintain primarily through facebook and twitter. I did meet Tina through my Masters but we maintained our friendship online, speaking through facebook and twitter, as everyone from the course does. In fact even when we do meet for a drink and a catch up, we organise it through our facebook group.

This group does more than just enable us to organise a drunken catch up. We tell each other about job opportunities ask advice on things in our work life and discuss books, films and the publishing world in general. Not once did we sit down and plan this group, or plan to communicate so frequently through social media, rather it was just the natural way to maintain contact with a like minded group of individuals. Without it I do wonder how many of us would have stayed in contact with each other, and how I would have maintained my knowledge of the broader publishing world rather than just having a focus on my interests and my job. In fact, I wonder how these relationships were maintained before Social Media.

You may shout out - through phone calls, emails and ACTUALLY meeting people. I still do these things but, for me, they do not offer the same constant access to my network, and potential network, as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do. And it isn’t just the young workforce either; recent Nielson figures reveal that the 50+ demographic are driving the growth of Facebook and Twitter.

For me this is a realisation that whilst networking is possible without an online presence, your network isn’t complete until you have one.

10 years on: How things have changed

by Alan Nelson

As part of Nelson Croom’s 10th anniversary celebrations, we have been looking back at how things have changed.

The Office for National Statistics recently announced changes to the basket of consumer goods which form the basis of two main inflation trackers, the consumer prices index and the retail prices index. This isn’t in itself noteworthy: changes are made fairly regularly to reflect changing consumer habits. Over time though, the changes reflect pretty major shifts in behaviours and attitudes. Indeed, only three items have remained constant throughout the basket’s history: sliced bread, sausages and flour.

This time round I was struck by a number of changes. Hairdryers have been removed in favour of hair straighteners and tongs. I don’t have much hair any longer so I’m not ashamed to say that that one had largely passed me by. There are no more bars of soap – only liquid soap dispensers. We have both in our house but I see the point. Also deleted are disposable cameras – who needs one when they have a camera on their phone? Most worrying, just as we have caught up at home with flat screen TVs, digital radios and DVD players, is the inclusion of Blue-ray disc players – I feel myself getting poorer again!

All this got me thinking about how attitudes have changed to online learning over the ten years that we have been in business. Ten years ago the people we worked with were pioneers and were fairly thin on the ground. Nowadays almost everyone we meet understands the rationale for what we do. The debate is more around the migration path from where they are now to where they would like to be.

There seem to me to be three main aspects to the change:

• The massive increase in personal use of the internet
• The perceived value of online resources
• The internet as a social tool

 

The internet for personal use

Ten years ago, most of the professional communities we engaged with were used to working with technology. They had PCs on their desks at work and in more or less sophisticated ways, they used them. The big change has come from the growth of home PCs. Back then, few people had a PC at home and those that did accessed the Internet via a dial up connection. Now the vast majority have a PC at home and a broadband connection.

It is the arrival of a PC and bandwidth at home, and frequently its use by children for school work, that has made decision makers in the professional bodies we work with decide that they must migrate their professional development services online. From study materials for professional qualifications, through general educational services, to structured and formalised CPD, the change has been dramatic and rapid.

 

Perceived value

Although the pace of change hasn’t always seemed as fast as we would have liked, there has been a rapid growth in the use of online services, most importantly at home. Online banking, comparison services for insurance quotes, Amazon (not only for books, but now for all our Christmas shopping!), BBC iPlayer – ordinary people using the internet every day to get stuff done and enjoy themselves. About five years ago my wife took the micky out of me because I moaned that she had thrown away the Yellow Pages. Now I wonder who keeps one at home: It just gets in the way and gives you out-of-date information.

How does this affect us? I remember one early conversation with an organisation that produced distance learning materials - ring binders to support students studying for their qualification. Printing the binders was expensive enough, but storing them in a warehouse and then sending them out to people who signed up was prohibitive. It was easy to demonstrate that they could do something better online and save money. But we couldn’t get over the loss of perceived value. If you signed up and paid your fee for study materials you expected a big box to arrive with stuff in it. Spin forwards ten years and the issue is no more.

Imagine you are a 23 year graduate living in London and taking a post graduate professional qualification. All you can afford as accommodation is a room in a shared house. The last thing you want is some big fat ring binders around the place. You see far more value in a good website where you can access the materials you need, complete learning activities and assignments, ask questions of a tutor and communicate with other students.

 

The internet as a social tool

All of which brings me onto the third and perhaps most significant factor – certainly the most exciting. Ten years ago the discussion was all about how we could provide content to people. We spent much of our time trying to persuade people to stop thinking of trying to teach remotely and to think instead of facilitating their learning. This was an important distinction even back then, but there were limits to how far you could go in offering a personalised experience.

The advent of Web 2.0 technologies has enabled us to move way beyond the idea of teaching online and instead create professional development resources that facilitate the community of learners building their awareness and understanding together.

And this is going to change ever more rapidly. As the current generation of teenagers grow up into the next generation of professional students they will expect a different kind of service. This is exciting and scary in roughly equal measure but it certainly keeps me interested!

Imago 3.0 is born: what's in a name?

by Tony Short

Roughly coinciding with Nelson Croom’s tenth birthday, we recently sent Imago 3.0 out into the world. Depending on how you look at it, Imago 3.0 could be considered as either a major leap forward, or as a further tiny step in a programme of ongoing improvement.
 
We usually release upgrades to Imago every few weeks – in stark contrast to software giants (like Microsoft), who tend to release new functionality once every year or two.
We can do this because the code for Imago is held on our server, and not on hundreds of thousands of PCs scattered throughout the world.

Imago is hosted centrally, using an ASP (Application Service Provider) model – now often called a SaaS model (Software-as-a-Service). This means that none of our users have to worry about rolling out upgrades on their PCs or servers. We make a change in one place and it becomes available to everyone!

That leaves us with a dilemma: at what point do we change the version name from “version 1.X” to “version 2.0” – or, in this case, from “version 2.X” to “version 3.0”?
Development of the Imago system continually moves forward by small steps - week in, week out. Each step may not, on its own, be much to write home about, but after a few months, we find we’ve come a long way since the last review.
The  new features added to Imago since we launched “version 2.0.0” runs into hundreds. So after releasing Imago “version 2.9.14”, we decided that the next release should be version 3.0.0.
The rationale for this was that we’d moved to the point where every aspect of course building could be done online. In reality, we were 98% of the way towards this goal a year or two back.

Since releasing version 3.0.0, we’ve moved on to version 3.0.3, At some point during the coming year, we’ll get to the point where we move to version 3.1.0.
The three-part version number system we use comprises:

• Major version (currently 3)
• Point version (current 0)
• Build version (currently 3)

Internally, we have a more detailed version identification system, because – in reality – we make minor changes to Imago on an almost nightly basis (we also separately identify the version numbering for the Imago Learning Environment module, and the Imago Gateway/Manager module).

In case you’re wondering what changes we take into consideration when we change Imago’s version number, here’s a rundown of a few:

• New modules or optional features added to Imago;
• Enhancements added to any of the Imago modules;
• New reports added to Imago Manager
• Changes made to support new browsers, or new browser versions (including browser security updates);
• Improvements made which utilise new browser features, or to take advantage of new release of CSS or HTML);
• Fixes to glitches or bugs;
• Improvements made to the look-and-feel and user interface;
• Improvements made to allow greater customisation of Imago programmes/courses and gateways;
• Enhancements made to improve system security (e.g. improved anti-hacker defences or tracking);
• Enhancements made to improve performance, so that pages load more quickly, or reports compile more swiftly;
• Significant changes made to the online documentation;
• Consolidation work (platform changes to support future plans, which don’t initially add functionality)

Even very minor upgrades usually include enhancements to a dozen or more different parts of the Imago system, so every time we roll out a new version of Imago, there’s always an opportunity to thrash out the case for making the new release either a point version increment or a build version increment. If we ever find ourselves devoting any significant mental energy to such questions, I’ll know it’s time to remind myself to “get a life”!
 
Tony (Technical director version 3.0)

10 years on: Design

by Hamish Long

You can have any colour you like as long as it's #000000*

How has the design of our courses changed over the last 10 years? It hasn't! Well, when I say that, I mean the core elements behind the design haven't changed - they are sometimes referred to as the three pillars of good web design: HTML, javascript, and CSS (cascading style sheets). This latter pillar has become more prominent in my workflow over the last three years or so, as developments in our Imago system have enabled us to really utilise the power of CSS, providing flexible tailoring without the need to hand code.

In terms of graphics, the volume of designed objects within a course has dramatically increased over the years. Seven or eight years ago you would only see graphics in the knowledge pages. Interactive graphics might appear in every two or three knowledge pages. Today we have interactive graphics in almost every knowledge and activity page. Experience and increased efficiency are probably the two main reasons behind these improvements. But not only that, we now create customised gateways and splashpages - these splashpages are often developed further into fully functioning websites with guest areas, and members' areas providing access to the courses.

But how has the actual design of the web graphics changed? When I started in web design twelve years ago it was all about rounded corners and bevelled edges, and the general graphical look and feel tended to err on the illustrative side. Later there was say a five year period when graphics became flatter and squarer, and photographs were increasingly used. Although some of our clients have specific requirements, generally, over the past few years, we've been combining both illustrative and photographic elements along with subtely bevelled buttons and drop shadow icons.

 

I suppose that's how progress is made in many industries - you keep the best bits from the past, develop, and move forward. Take fashion for example - imagine if people today were wearing clothes that were only really acceptable in the Eighties...

* #000000 is the web (hexadecimal) colour for black.