So… I think we need to have stronger branding for the new hosting program when we roll it out in a couple of weeks. Internally, we’ve been calling the first two versions Hosting v1 and Managed Hosting, but I don’t think that CoPress Basic vs. CoPress Standard is much better. Basic and Standard don’t communicate the services very well. Unlike Basecamp, we need to have our names communicate the services, or at least be more distinct, because they aren’t necessarily different tiers of one product. They’re different tiers of multiple services tied together. Does that make sense? Any ideas?
Archive for the 'High Priority' Category
AreMySitesUp? hasn’t been all that reliable for us and I’m ready to start moving over to another service. The one I’m seriously considering is Pingdom which offers a nice set of services with their free, one site account. I think the way we’re going to go about this is to sign up a new account for each client because this will also allow us to give the client access, and ownership if they’d like, of the account. The question I have right now, however, is whether I should sign up with an email address that will email both us and them with downtime reports, or whether we should just be recipients of the data.
My reason for is one of transparency so that they can be clued into the process of how we respond to site issues, etc. but my reason against would be whether they actually want to know that information or not.
In the interest of trying to develop their capacity to do this on their own, however, I think it’s pretty important to be tuned into as much of the process as possible. Thoughts?
Who would you like to hear from on TWIC?? Please add on…
–Craig Kanalley (Breaking Tweets)
–Kim Sommers (EIC of the Whitman Pioneer)
–Michael Poppel (Breaking News Online)
–Alex Klein (Duke Chronicle)
–Adam Klawonn and Aleksandra Chojnacka (2009 Knight Foundation News Challenge Winners)
We are digging for new topics especially for this week’s show!
–HTML v. CMS
–Twitter/Breaking Tweets
I know we are trying to stay away from “This Week” and “CoPress” but Greg and I have been brainstorming and like the sound of :
“CoPress LIVE”… thoughts?
Publication (aside from CoPress.org):
Just an idea because I spent most of my morning snooping around this site. We could add ourselves to Techpodcasts for more exposure?
STRUCTURE:
AUDIENCE: I think a big part about determining the structure relies, as Daniel mentioned, on figuring out our audience.Are we appealing to:
–tech-savvy college journalism students and journalism professionals?
–the average college student with not much tech knowledge?
–anyone interested in the integration of tech and journalism?
Thoughts? If we nail this one and know our niche, we can solidify the show rundown.
—–SHOW RUNDOWN ROUGH DRAFT: Here’s a format we could follow—-
MUSIC BUMP with voice…This is XYZ the podcast about Episode #X, for Sept XYZ 2009…(title of show) brought to you by CoPress.
INTRO: Hello and welcome to CoPress’ XYZ I’m Greg Linch and I’m Vanessa Bezic.
TEASE THE SHOW’S CONTENT: The typical tease. Maybe insert a factoid. (ex. Did you know that X number of colleges have switched to XYZ this last year?) Ask a question. (What does a pound of butter, a monkey and a group of peruvian nuns have in common?) Ah! But stay tuned and you will…On the show today we’re gonna be talking about AWESOME XYZ. Remember you can chime into the discussion by calling 800-000-0000
QUICK UPDATE OF THE WEEK: Anything pertinent worth mentioning about tech news/trends off the bat in the past two weeks.
BACKGROUND EXPLANATION: This part is only really needed if we have to explain or define the topic or an element of the topic we’re touching upon in the show. Again this depends on our audience. For ex. if we are appealing to the average college journo with not much tech info, we might have to define something as basic as to what is a CMS?(Definition Play-off “What is that, Greg?” “Well, Vanessa XYZ is…”)
DISCUSSION: In today on the podcast we are gonna move toward and talk about XYZ…We’re joined by Moto Moto (introduce guests and give info on their website links)
REFECTION: So in relationship to XYZ, how does this relate to the bigger scheme of things
CLOSING: Thank the guests and say we’ll attach their links (name it) to our blog (name it). And keep sending comments and xyz to this link (name it). Like to join our conversation? Have suggestions for our next podcast? Let us know! Add comments to our blog (name it). Remember you can always call in at 800-000-0000 to chime into the discussion.
UPCOMING SHOW TEASE: Join us on Sept XYZ again at 2pm PST for ANOTHER REALLY COOL TOPIC
OUTRO: I’m Greg Linch and I’m Vanessa Bezic thank you for listening to this weeks XYZ podcast.
MUSIC BUMP
Goals for This Week’s SHOW:
–Tons of energy
–Better Production–will add to Google calendar (dividing up editing, show notes tasks)
–Better Preparation–guests, topics, name
Hey guys I wanted to share some ideas about revamping TWIC. Please feel free to comment and add on:
To Do’s:
- New Name
- Mix a new music bump
- New recorded opening? (ex. “This is CoPres the podcast about technology, the Web and the innovation as they relate to college media with your hosts Greg Linch and Vanessa Bezic”…something along those lines)
- Start Google calendar with guest list
- Start wish list for possible guests
Production Schedule:
- Audio editing (polishing up plus adding bumps) done by Sunday night
- Post to blog on Mondays by what time?
Guests:
- Call in through Skype (15 min before show time to get acquainted, warm up a bit to Greg and I, fix any tech probs)
Things to Consider:
- Perhaps changing the time? I mentioned this briefly to Greg and Lauren. 2pm PST is pretty early in the scheme of weekends and does cut Sunday in half but I don’t want to run into our CoPress Skype call at 4pm PST. Maybe pushing the show back til after our meeting? I know many of you are involved with college journ though…thoughts?
- Use Tiny Chat to see everyone via video. I think much of the DEADTIME and speaking over each other could be eliminated if we can see each others’ mouths moving. It may also make guests more comfortable to see who they are actually talking to and thus make the show more conversational. Of course, I’m biased to video.
I jotted down a few quick notes for TWiC after doing the show today that I thought I’d share. Sorry for coming off heavy-handed, I put my editor hat on for this one.
We need a brief written up well ahead of time. This can be a FreindFeed room, or a gDoc, but it should have topics, listed in order of priority. Sample questions wouldn’t be bad. Relevant links are a must!
DEADTIME DEADTIME DEADTIME. Brief Joey anecdote here. I used to work at a summer camp where we put on weekly campfires. (done laughing at the quaintness yet? Click that link. You’ll ROFL) Watch the first minute of this video.
Here’s the point: we were professional campfire-skit-doers. We were rockstars who are were just enfused with the zany power and …
…k, I’ll come clean: we practiced, a lot. Practice was tough because every moment that the stage is empty, where the audience doesn’t have something to look at, the guys in charge would shout “DEADTIME, DEADTIME, DEADTIME.”
Here’s how this gets back to TWiC: campfires have visuals and audio to work with, TWiC has just one. Deadtime is even more noticeable on a podcast. It just sounds bad to have anything more than a second of dead air. Talking in the text chat is not a good solution. You’re doing something but the audience here’s nothing.
Someone needs to be in charge. If conversation dies, that person must move on to the next topic, keep it lively, keep it engaged.
There’s lots of CoPress folk. Don’t get me wrong. I like doing TWiC, but 3 CoPress peeps to one or two guests doesn’t help our tendency to turn the podcast into an interview session. Perhaps we should cut back on the number of folks and try to encourage discussion.
Tech issues on our end is in-excusable. We need to have voice, from everyone, 10 min before a call. This also should mean having guests on the line 10 min before. Communication with the guest should be done well in advance, with a quick follow up the day of. They’re our guests, but they need to be on time.
Offer to post on copress as a reward. If we liked what the guest had to say, we should offer them the opportunity to write a post for CoPress. It’s actually PR for them – we’re doing them a favor.
This afternoon, the CoPress board unanimously voted to switch from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization. It’s a big deal and a new direction for CoPress.
So why did we do it? It opens up a lot of expansion opportunities we wouldn’t have had with a nonprofit status. The move allows us to share equity with the people who have worked so hard to build CoPress up, and it opens the doors for investment opportunities. Though we lose the tax benefits and the warm fuzziness of being a nonprofit, we think CoPress has the potential of being a self-sustaining business in its own right.
Members in attendance:
- Daniel Bachhuber
- Joey Baker
- Ryan Sholin
- Suzanne Yada
- Jackie Hai
- Andrew Dunn
- Bryan Murley
First off, credit must go where credit is due. Mad props to Miles, Joey, Lauren, and Andrew for working their hearts out on getting the redesign out last night (especially Lauren, who had a final this morning, and Joey, who had been running on zero sleep from the night before). The short story of it is that, although we did a significant amount of work in the past weeks, there was still a lot left to do before we could even think of moving the theme from the sandbox to the the main website. We started that process around midnight Pacific and took the site off maintenance mode around 2:30 am Pacific, after I laid down in bed, almost passed out, and then remembered that I had to remove the maintenance splash.
All in all, the homepage is looking really good. Lauren came through with a nice graphic for the top right lead slot, we put together images and copy for the featured projects, and the footer came together. The homepage might still need:
- Final copy edit for all of the text on the page. We might want to have Miles write something for the Managed Hosting slot in preparation for the announcement tomorrow, and then update the Network Spotlight and Edit Flow Project.
- The most recent blog posts. This was a suggestion Max made, and I was trying to think where they’d fit the best. I might try taking out one of the featured projects in favor of a list of most recent posts.
- Working links to projects and contact. Right now those links 404 but we do intend to launch pages for them soon.
Other than that, it’s looking really, really good. A remarkable improvement from what we have before.
Continue reading ‘Version three website relaunch: Things left to do’
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