Content Management Matters ™

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalism. They offer seminars geared towards print and online reporters, photojournalists, designers , educators and are dedicated to providing students with the necessary tools and ideas to handle the challenges of producing news, whether online or in print.

With seminars addressing issues of ethics & diversity, journalism education & training, leadership & management, online & multimedia, reporting, writing & editing, tv & radio, as well as visual journalism, students are bound to find many engaging classes from which to choose. Classes are available at their campus in St. Petersburg, Florida or through their e-learning site, News University.

Working in a creative industry, like design, is no guarantee that your work environment is a creative one. Ruts and lulls affect us all and it's often a challenge to take the extra steps necessary to revive our creative juices and reinvigorate our passion for innovation. At this year's HOW Design Conference, Making Creativity Work provided participants with solutions and insights into how companies and individuals can inspire and collaborate to develop exciting products.

For all the grief that we give those in the print industry, I appreciate it when special efforts are made to spread awareness to help them (and others) to learn new techniques that make their work on the Web more effective. Such efforts are in abundance at the HOW Design Conference.

Common Mistakes Print Designers Make on the Web was not only an advantageous session for print designers who have had the Web thrust upon them, but also helpful for Web designers, who had the opportunity to listen in and see things from a different perspective.

The session, presented by Stephanie Sullivan, founder of the web standards redesign company, W3Conversions, reviewed the top ten mistakes and provided insight about how to remedy these situations.

It's often necessary to validate most business decisions, but never has proof been as demanding as it is with design. Design is still construed as a very arbitrary, hippy-dippy discipline and nothing gets the goat of a designer more than having to explain time and again that there are indeed standards for design.

Enter the Designer's Guide to Research, courtesy of the HOW Design Conference presented by power couple, Jenn and Ken Visocky O'Grady, founders of Enspace, a creative think tank that works to enhance collaboration and communication among designers, writers and marketers, alike.

CMSWire is here reporting live from the How Design Conference in Boston. The conference, which caters to all kinds of creatives, from marketing managers to graphic designers to advertising executives to web designers and strategists alike, aims to teach us a thing or two about being more productive, creative, organized and most of all inspired.

Coming from all backgrounds, designing for firms with lots of clients or working as an in-house designer with a staff of five, we designers face a multitude of challenges. The art of communicating effectively, whether it be with other creatives or our business clients, is our most challenging task. Enter Kathy Burton of The Creative Group, a staffing agency for marketing and advertising professionals. In one of the first workshops of the conference, Can’t We All Just Get Along? How to Identify and Work with Different Types of Communicators, attendees came equipped with their DISC profiles, indicating the four primary behavioral styles, each with a very distinct and predictable pattern of observable behavior.

I have fond memories of Web Content 2007, for that is when CMSWire.com and I first met. And it's been history in the making ever since. But alas, another year has come and gone and Web Content 2008 is just around the corner.

Web Content 2008 promises to bring together nationally recognized technology, content, and marketing authorities involved with creating, organizing, maintaining and delivering web content all the while sharing best practices, new approaches, lessons learned and provide real-world examples.

From time to time I revisit the arsenal of old commentaries, tips and articles that I've come across from the random Google search about "mentors" or "morale at work" and other workday malaise-related keywords that I use.

I keep these things in case I ever have the opportunity to present my new "big idea" to The Powers That Be and need to throw together a memo of sources supporting my nutty new approach to keeping employees happy.

It's not that I'm not happy, mind you. Sometimes I'm just stifled. And like many of you, dear readers, I am a department of one, Jane-of-all-trades, over-tasked and overwhelmed with responsibilities. And when I think of all the possibilities that might once again invigorate my ability to create, innovate and inspire, the one outcome that seems most reasonable is the presence of a mentor. Someone who can shower me with wisdom and advice; ensure me that I am on the right track or help me steer clear of disaster.

Yet, where does one find such a sage adviser? In my quest to answer my own question, I provide you with some of what I've uncovered.

Starting Aug 4th Sun's Sang Shin is kicking-off a free 10-week online course for budding AJAX developers. The course is both for people just getting started with AJAX and for those looking to refine their AJAX dev skills. It should come as no surprise that the context will be strongly colored by Sun's penchant for Java technologies.

One of our favorite ASP.NET component vendors, Telerik, has recently launched an AJAX developer center portal. Its pretty light weight for the time being and is obviously geared towards Telerik's own ASP.NET rich callback component suite, but does offer some valuable resources for those just getting started with rich client AJAX dev.

Resources include: History of AJAX, Getting Started with AJAX, Problems and Challenges with AJAX (ASP.NET specific), etc. Telerik AJAX Developer Center