redesigning lclark.edu

January 2008

How do I get my event in the “On Campus” section of the home page(s)?

Before getting into the details, please note that this policy is simply a portion of a bigger picture regarding the storytelling we do about Lewis & Clark — that we express the themes of academic leadership, global and local engagement, and our being in and of Portland.

Getting on the List

Now that the On Campus section of the home page is starting to take root, it seems only fitting to explain the process of selection/ranking of material is performed. First of all, the content to be included must meet the following criteria:

  1. The event must be of public interest, must be open to the public, and must represent a distinction for Lewis & Clark that connects with one of our key messaging themes.
  2. There must be a web page or site to which we can link so that interested site users have a convenient way to click through for more information. For an event, a simple campus calendar entry alone is not sufficient. We are looking for a more robust page, including a basic prose description of the event and participants and, ideally, photos of the speakers or performers. With enough advance notice, the New Media team can assist you with creating this content.
  3. The event must “beat out the competition,” so to speak. We receive many requests for “On Campus” items; because of limited space and the large number of compelling events, we will not be able to accommodate every request and will have to weigh the external audience’s interest and the event’s relevance to institutional goals.

Decisions about “On Campus” content are usually a group effort involving myself, Public Relations Director Jodi Heintz, and PubCom AVP Tom Krattenmaker. If you would like your event considered for the “On Campus” section make sure you’ve submitted it to the calendar and provided a link to a web page with additional information.

Even if your event does not eventually appear in the On Campus section of the home page, getting the above information organized and into the web calendar at the earliest possible opportunity will greatly help PubCom help you get your event publicity. It may be that the best publicity to meet your goals would be best accomplished through other means, and the shorter the time interval between our hearing from you and the date of the event, the less we can do with you to help meet your goals.

Note: All events that are open to the public and have been posted to the web calendar are automatically included in the weekly events news release distributed to local media.

The Ranking Methodology

As to ranking items once they are added to the rotation, the following rules will be applied via an algorithm. These rules primarily apply when the schedule is full (i.e. more items than the available three spots). When this is not the case, future items may appear on the list earlier than noted below, ranked in order of proximity to start date.

  1. Notice-level “emergency” news, such as closures for weather, trumps everything and will always take precedence. The notices are always of limited time periods, and so will not impact the overall list unless ongoing notices are posted as part of keeping people informed. (Serious emergency news is handled differently.)
  2. Major institutional events (i.e. Commencement) will get higher billing than all other events because of their cross-school, intimate involvement with all facets of the institution and the public.
  3. On average, all items will appear no-earlier than one week before the start date of the item and would generally stay in the list until the start date. (The closer to the start date, the higher in the list the item appears.)
  4. For items that have extended multi-day periods, such as art exhibitions and the like, the item would also re-climb the list as the closing date draws nigh.
  5. If an item also has a spotlight covering the issue, event or news, the On Campus item may be reduced in rank to promote other items without such.

While we are currently performing all the above manually, we will be automating the process soon. Once that occurs, you will also be able to click a “see all” (or similar) link to see and search through all the past and present On Campus items. Further, you will be able to segment the list by various categories or tags, so that you might only see law-related events, arts events, etc.

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Web Metrics article

I saw this article this morning referenced in the uwebd listserv and thought it worth sharing. It is called, “The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007,” and it briefly covers some limitations about ways in which people judge websites.

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