Suus Non Ut Difficile • Home of the SMUGgles
I’ve gotten something of a reputation as a Flip video camera booster (you might even say it’s the official video blogging camera of SMUG), and today a friend copied me on an e-mail about an offer for a free Flip that included a question for me and led to some others. In keeping with our Recently Asked Questions feature, I’m sharing both the link to the free Flip offer and the subsequent dialogue.
Continue reading “RAQ – Photos from a Flip Camera?”
Even though we don’t have our own sports teams (which helps us keep tuition down!), Social Media University Global still needs a nickname for our student body. Referring to the whole bunch as “SMUG students” has an unfortunate connotation, but until a few weeks ago it was the best I could do.
Then, in a comment on this post, Jim Streed suggested “SMUGgles” as the collective shorthand designation. For those who haven’t read the Harry Potter books, it’s a take-off on J.K. Rowling’s name for ordinary mortals, Muggles: those who lack magical powers.
And while “muggles” is sometimes used pejoratively by Harry’s peers, SMUGgles is a label we should all wear proudly. It reinforces one of the founding principles of our institution:
Everything you see here is accomplished through free or ridiculously inexpensive services like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and WordPress.com, and with no professional IT support. And with SMUG you can work through the learning process step by step, until you feel confident using these tools in your organization.
But having chosen SMUGgle as our “team name,” that still left us with one problem. We all can picture a Cardinal, or a Blue Jay, or a Viking, but what does a SMUGgle look like? What could be our school mascot?
For now, we’re going with something that bears an eerie resemblance to the “I just joined Facebook” avatar that represents all of us on that social networking platform until we upload a picture. Somehow that seems appropriate, because it shows that SMUG is not only open to newbs, it’s intended for beginners.
But with that, I also want to renew the call for those, newb or not, who have artistic abilities and would like to design a new masthead and logo for SMUG. It would be great to have an official seal that incorporates our Latin motto, Suus Non Ut Diffucile, and if we could get an original drawing for the SMUGgle mascot, that would be fantastic, too.
If the Obama campaign can have an official seal complete with a Latin motto, why not SMUG? To borrow a phrase, “Yes, we can!”
I promise that once we select a SMUG seal, we’ll use it a lot longer than Obama did.
This post falls in the personal category, but just illustrates some of the fun you can have with social media.
On Thursday night my daughter Rebekah’s volleyball team (she’s a senior co-captain) started their season with a non-conference loss. Two years ago they were something like 5-20, and last year they improved to 15-14, the first winning record in a long time. This year, with lots of returning seniors, expectations are high.
Naturally, I’ve started a Facebook “booster” group to upload video and photos (and to link to local newspapers’ on-line stories), just as I did for last year’s state tournament team in basketball. Here’s a video from Thursday’s match which I uploaded to YouTube; it shows some of the team’s strengths:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81fZngdOIuA]
Unfortunately there weren’t quite enough points like that on Thursday, but tomorrow they get a chance to even their record.
Meanwhile, last night was the third annual Doggy Dip at our Austin, Minn. municipal swimming pool. The day before they drain the pool and close for the season, the city opens the pool to the dogs for $2 each. It’s quite an event. Our dog, Gideon, who is a direct descendent of Shadow from the Homeward Bound movies, was much less dignified than his great-grandpa.
Gideon spent the first few minutes running around and barking. The guy next to me said, “Oh yeah, now I remember him.” He (Gideon, not the guy) also was pretty timid about jumping into the water until I shoved him (again, Gideon, not the guy) into the pool. Here’s the action:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TP6aQPuuU]
As you’ll see in the video response I uploaded, after a while Gideon got very comfortable jumping into the pool. I was bummed that the batteries on my Flip ran out long before Gideon lost the energy to chase his toy and bring it back barking for another run.
The Austin Daily Herald also ran a story about Doggy Dip.
All part of the interesting life in Norman Rockwell’s America.
Let’s play the “Who’s farthest away from Austin?” game.
Here’s where you’ll find Austin on the map:
I’m inviting the first commenter to indicate the city from where you are reading this (e.g. Chicago, Ill.)
As others read it, if you are farther away than the previous commenter (or think you might be about the same distance), leave a comment with the name of your city.
The goal is to show just how far away people are seeing this video.
Yeah, we know that theoretically the reach is world-wide. But just for fun, let’s prove it.
This is the start of a new occasional feature at SMUG, in which we’ll answer publicly some of the questions that are sent via e-mail. I thought about calling these FAQs, but a question doesn’t need to be asked frequently to be worth sharing the answer publicly. It could be that others just haven’t thought to inquire. So we’re creating a category for them called Recently Asked Questions (Chancellor RAQs).
This first question actually does fit the the frequency criterion, too, since I’ve had it a couple of times in the last week:
Q. How do I create a “fan page” for my organization in Facebook? Do I first need to create a group? I can’t find anywhere on the Facebook site where it gives any instructions and apparently I’m not quite cool or hip enough (yet!) to figure it out intuitively!!
A. You’re right: not about your lack of coolness or hipness, but about the relative obscurity of the method for creating a new Fan page for your brand. If you look at the bottom of any Facebook page, you’ll see an “Advertisers” link. When you click that, you will learn not only about Facebook’s advertising options, but also will see, on the right side, a description of Facebook Pages (along with a button you can click to create a new page.) Or if you want to take a shortcut, just click here.
This assumes you already have set up your own personal profile in Facebook. Someone has to be the administrator for the Fan page, so you can’t create a page until you have an individual profile.
This leads to a follow-up:
Q. I want to set up a page for my volunteer organization. Shouldn’t I just set up a separate profile for the organization (instead of a Page), so that when I rotate off the board someone else can take over? I don’t want to be forever connected to this Page through my Facebook account.
A. No. Individual profiles are for real people. Pages are for brands and organizations. Once you have created your organization’s Fan page, you can add others as administrators; for example, we have two administrators for the Mayo Clinic page. Be careful when adding administrators, though, because anyone who has admin rights can do everything with a page that you can, up to and including deleting the page. But when you leave the organization, you can just have yourself removed as an administrator for the page.
In a future post, I will go through the steps of creating a Facebook page as part of the Facebook curriculum. For now, hopefully the answers to these RAQs can help SMUGgles get started.
It’s been rewarding over the last several months to see the number of “students” at Social Media University, Global climb to more than 150, and to have so many countries represented, literally putting the “Global” in SMUG.
Another goal has been to get more “faculty” members, and to have “associate professors” with experience in different areas contributing their expertise. That’s why I’m so excited to have Jan Husdal providing the Blogging 107: Typepad Pros and Cons course. An added bonus is that he’s from Norway, so now we also have two continents represented among the faculty.
I have appreciated learning from Jan through his Typepad vs. WordPress blog; he’s responsible for helping me find out how to add the social sharing buttons you see on some of the newer posts here.
If you see any of the courses in the proposed curriculum that you would like to write, or if you have ideas for class offerings that you think would be helpful and interesting to others, please get in touch with me through the e-mail you see in the Contact the Chancellor sidebar.