Notable

Well one of its faculties, IME, does have it. Today a tweet from a colleague announced a new installation of WordPress MU.  Kudos to @kvisten. Great initiative, great product. 

I wish I had the inclination to install it myself, but for some reason I have been manually maintaining at least three stand-alone WP-installations, optimistically waiting for NTNU-IT to offer WP-MU service to the plethera of academic units and student organizations it serves.  The proffering would be effective, good service, and benefit the university in so many ways.  WordPress MU (multi user) allows for a self hosted installation of the flexible, open source, user-friendly system,  at a very low cost.  Free. 

• NRKbeta is using WordPress MU.
• The New York Times is using WordPress MU.
• Harvard is using WordPress MU.

That is pretty good company to be in.  (A list of more good company.)

Harvard currently offers a WordPress MU account to any member of the Harvard community, (Good idea!)  and has this to say about it:

WordPress MU is the best system we’ve found.
— Project info: Weblogs at Harvard Law School. (Users of WP MU since 2006)

So why don’t we have it at NTNU?  Well it seems our sentral IT department will only install what it already knows or what it wants to.  Translation: we will do nothing new unless we have to. Too harsh? Maybe so.  But I know this because that is the gist of the responses I got when I wrote the proposal e-mail in January (parts of which are included below) .   

Maybe I didn’t argue well enough or lobby the right people. (Who knows, its not a new story. And, I digress, but maybe Innsida 2.0 can change our organizational culture by flattening the structure a bit :)).  But the point was/is, kudos to IME.  Both for the installation, for their flexible and constant effort to do better, and not least, for hiring smart people.  And it is not lost on me that, once again, ”just do it” was/is most probably the right strategy.

An excerpt from my aforementioned, poor, e-mail argument, in Norwegian, follows.

5 grunner til å ta i bruk WordPress-MU ved NTNU, og snart: 

1.  Det er effektivt.

Man unngår dobbeltarbeid/trippeltarbeid som vil gjelder:
(1) Fremtidige oppdatering til nye versjoner
(2) Installasjon av eventuelle nye blogger blir lettere.  Nå kreves det at man må fikle fram og tilbake med server- og installasjons innstillinger.
(3) Godkjente malverk blir oppdater sentralt, og det blir ekstra lett å formidle malverk til nye installasjoner.

2.  Det er mindre risikofylt.

Sikkerhets tiltak påvirker alle brukere. Dette er en forbedring på en situasjon som vi har i dag hvor et tiltak som er gjennomført på en blogg, er ikke nødvendigvis gjort på den andre p.g.a. tidspress/glemmeboken.

3.  Det er billig.
Wordpress MU er også gratis. Det eneste kostnad du har nå er eventuelle regninger fra meg (som jeg har nesten ikke tid til å generere). Det er bare logisk at flere enkelt installasjoner vil kreve mer tid enn 1 sentraliserte installasjon som er skalerbar og påvist.  Om tiden viser at det er ønskelig, finnes det rimelig alternativer for støtte fra utviklere som ikke koster mer per år enn å kjøpe inn 2 kopi av Adobe Photoshop. (Basis pakke = ca 15,000 NOK).  Dette anbefales.  (Les mer om Support Network).

4.  Det er mer kundevennlig.
Når eventuelle drift er nødvendig, vil sluttbrukerne ikke merke det. Eventuelle problemer blir løst for alle brukerne samtidig. Vanskelige problemer kan lettere håndteres uten unødvendig forsinkelse forbundet med tilgang til kataloger, rettigheter, innsyn i serverens arkitektur, m.m.

5.  Det er smart.
Harvard bruker det.
New York Times bruker det.
NRK skal nå begynne å bruke det.

. . . og hvis man installer WordPress MU ved NTNU … kunne Universitetsavisa og Gemini bruker det. :)
(Noe som er faktisk nevnt så vidt av Ole Nordal i sin blogg post: En Ny IT-revolusjon? [når han skrev] ”En liten digresjon: Jeg merker meg at Rektor bruker WordPress som teknologiløsning. Mye smartere og bedre enn det som er tilgjengelig i NTNU-portalen sier nå jeg. NTNU.noer jo litt omfattende for wordpress, men dette burde i det minste Uni-avisa vurdert… ”

Read the whole thing? Cool, but surprising.  You might be interested in: a short list of blogs from other universities.

Cross browser incompatibility and security setting inconveniences are nothing new, so when a colleague told me she could not log into ItsLearning using Internet Explorer 7 and consequently resorted (her words not mine) to Firefox whenever she needed ItsLearning, I went looking for a post on the browser or cookies-setting that I could recommend she change. Not everyone at the university has this far-better-browser installed, so I was certain I would come across this question again soon.

What I found was a well written post from a student entitled: it’s:learning™ is crap! The post’s author, clearly an informed thoughtful user is both thorough and structured in their critique. But that is not all. This engaged user shares a bit about their attempt to help the developers, only to be rebuffed:

I was contacted 2005-12-15 by it:solutions support personnel, and mailed back and forth a number of times. I lobbied for a separate interface that’s designed for efficient use, but they did not appear to grasp concepts such as usability vs usefulness, and had no distinction between presentation and business logic.

Needless to say, the post’s author is now a passionate detractor.

That this should be the case would surprise me, if I hadn’t experienced it myself, and often. Constructive criticism is increasingly lumped with general whining, treated with halfhearted “thanks for your suggestion” platitudes, even condescending arrogance. The host of new media interactivity options (blogs, forums, social networking, etc.) has raised the noise level for developers, and it isn’t surprising that they should want to listen only to compliments and conciliatory suggestions, while dismissing instances of emphatic criticism.

Of course, there is better way to look at it. It’s far better to have critics that not, and way better for business. Kathy Sierra, co-creator of the Head First book series cleverly called it the Kool-Aid point.

The Kool-Aid Point: “You don’t really have passionate users until someone starts accusing them of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ If you create passionate users, you have to expect passionate detractors. You should welcome their appearance in blogs, forums, and user groups. It means you’ve arrived. (Posted on headrush.typepad.com)

If you are a smart developer, a smart inventor, or a smart start-up, you will use this feedback and recognize it for what it is: a potential road map to success or an opportunity to create customer loyalty. (Did you just hear: blah, blah, blah? Well, maybe you just need a cup of coffee. ) Focus groups are useful. But I contend that they are not nearly as valuable as engaged user feedback. Questionnaires are limiting. Yes-men are useless.

If you haven’t already, check out Get Satisfaction and the products and services that participate there. The site provides an effective forum for customers to communicating directly with the companies behind the products and services they use, a mechanism for prioritizing feedback, and customers communicating and supporting each other.

… Oh yeah, and I dare say, ItsSolutions is not very smart. (And, if you are interested in my opinion, when it comes to ItsLearning I agree with the passionate detractor mentioned earlier.)

An “enabler” of the Rector’s recent forray into the world of blogs, I was curious and pleased that the debut sparked a bit of discussion.

Arne Krokan, a Professor of “Technology, communication, organization and society” writes in his post “My rector blogs as well” that:

(Translated from the original Norwegian) Rector at NTNU, Torbjørn Digernes, is following in the footsteps of several of his Danish colleagues, and starting to blog. I consider these “corporate blogs” important, because they play a role in making visible what leaders are concerned with, and they contribute to contemplation of important, organizational and political issues. In this manner more and more academic and political issues come to light, prior to our hearing about them or being “exposed to them” through (channels) the line organization. (Min rektor blogger også – Nov. 4 2008)

Historian and researcher (IDI, SVT), Ola Nordal writes in his post a “A new IT revolution? “:

(Translated from the original Norwegian) Two observances from today: NTNU´s Rector has got himself his own blog, and FAST Search & Transfer´s John M. Lervik has blind faith in the future of the search engine company (it is still streaming from the IT-ovation conference where he presented earlier today). I conclude, first: Something is happening in regards to how people use the Internet. The tools have been there a long time, but it seems that it is only now that their potential is beginning to be utilized. The first key word is “contact interface”… [ ... ] How Digernes is going to use his blog will be exciting to follow; personally I hope it will be somewhat fresher than the “Rector´s column” in the university paper (Universitetsavisa).

A little digression: I notice that the rector is using WordPress as a technology solution. Much smarter and better that what is available for NTNU´s web portal, I would say. NTNU.no is far too large and complex for WordPress, but it should at least be considered by the university newspaper (Universitetsavisa). WordPress for an online newspaper sounds perhaps a little hazardous, but it would be better than the solution they have now. Not least because the Rector´s blog is already in my RSS-reader, while Universitetsavisa is still not. RSS has been available for a while now, and it is soon quite overdue that the news organization at Norway´s technology university acquires it? (En ny IT-revolusjon, – Oct 22, 2008).

An IT-revolution it isn’t, but progress it is indeed, given that the focus remains on content. As a technology enthusiast the form and the trend is interesting to me of course. The larger point however — not lost on these two social commentators — is the impact that direct and unfiltered communication can have on an organization.

• Interested in trends of this nature?
  Blog usage examples from other universities (US/UK).
• Interested in some tips about this form of communication?
  Blogging writing guide
• Bloggers at/from NTNU
  An incomplete list