So, to recap: Nick was born on 4/20. I took the following week off, secure in my recent promotion to Marketing Director nary three months before for the Northwest Region of University of Phoenix. By Friday of that week, I was about ready to get back to work. That afternoon, I got the call.

“Pete?”

“Yeah.”

My boss.

“Pete, I wanted you to get the news from me before you heard the rumor next week.”

“What is it?” Nervous now.

“The Northwest region has been reorganized. It’s been split. I’m now over the Mountain region, and Oregon is in the Western region. I’m not sure I know what to do with this, but we have until June 1 to figure it out.”

“So, if I’m hearing you, at this point, on June 1, my position for your region is no longer a foregone conclusion.”

“At this point, as of June 1, none of our jobs are foregone conclusions.”

The first call I made was to a dear friend in our corporate public affairs department. I told her the situation, and told her I needed to work for her. That I still had ideas to share and exercise, that it’d be too much of a shame for me to take off when I’m just not finished.

What is it that I’m not finished with, exactly? Well, I’m not finished blogging, frankly. I’m not finished exploring the demand our students have to explore these social networking tools and technologies. I’m not finished putting people together to see what these things look like on the other side of this monumental transition that Gen Y is foisting upon us this graduation year. There are exciting times ahead, and I want to be a part of them.

To her credit, she gets it. She gets that there’s a disconnect between our advertising and our enrollment. She gets that there is a problem when our students come to school to learn, and leave without daring to tell their peers where they are going. We’ve created a cult of embarrassment — a wall of internet advertising around us which is becoming increasingly difficult to cross. She gets that we desperately need a position designed to keep us ahead of these technologies and defining a strategy to align ourselves with them appropriately.

The best part is, she gets that I’m the guy to do it.

So, as of June 1, I’ll become the Director of New Media Communications for Apollo Group, Inc. I’ve written the job description and it’s been submitted to the job review committee for approval. And now it’s time to get to work.

I’m toying with starting another blog, maybe over on TypePad, to talk more about these things on a regular basis, particularly how they relate to our efforts to help enrollment and retention. I’ll post a link here when that’s complete. In the mean time, thanks to everyone I contacted to help get me to the other side of this change. Finding out about a potential job loss is a terrifying thing, while out on FMLA with a newborn. The prayers helped, and to those angles who coached me through this, I am forever grateful.

LinkedIn has been a sleeper tool in my bag of tricks. When I say sleeper, that’s to be read as “ignored”.

The premise is so simple: Join. Invite your peers. Meet their peers. That’s it — so simple. It’s something that the business breakfasts have been working on for years and years, networking clubs that strive to foster the face to face network to expand professional relationships. But what LinkedIn drives by leveraging some radically simple technology is volume.

I made a point to invite 15 people. Ten of them signed up quickly. Of those folks, four of them had existing networks. Of those four, two of them had been very active users, with 300+ networks each by themselves. The system did the math and determined that with my users my total network went from 1 (me) to over 20,000 in just a short week.

I jumped in and ran some searches on my second and third degree networks and found a number of folks that I already knew — acquaintances and friends — and added them to my direct contact list. Then, I searched for like minded people.

My major project was to find people who are in a similar position to mine, to start networking with them, learning about this whole new media thing, how to formalize something that has yet to be truly architected as a function of marketing and public relations. I found three people very willing to reciprocate and thus, my network is born. The payoff was quick, the experience universally positive, the scope vast.

I imagine the trick will be keeping it going. There’s a lot of energy around these new experiences and building a network like this is akin to a non-drug induced high. Once the buzz is gone, will the payoff stick?

And such is my primary puzzle; charged with building a virtual network of nearly a half of a million people, how do you create lasting buzz and value in a communication channel that is strong enough to last? At this point, I’m taking a page from Joe Trippi, that a virtual network is only as good as the inherent opportunities for real life meet-ups. As much as we say we’re a virtual society, as much as we like to think that the 80% of Americans on the net are actually using it to it’s potential, I think people want to touch one another at a very base level. We are the culture of the handshake.

There is much afoot for me at University of Phoenix now. I find the timing funny. As it happens, I started five years ago, June 4. To celebrate, I received the following email from University administration:

Congratulations

Dear Peter Wright,

Congratulations on your 5 Year achievement with University of Phoenix! Thank you for your dedication and contributions to our company. We are pleased to honor you with an award in recognition of this accomplishment.

You can order from available award selections online using your personal access number XXXX XXXXX XXXXX.

This email was computer generated; please do not reply. If you have questions regarding this notification please contact the award administration team.

US and Canada

orders@XXXXX.com

Now, let me tell you: nothing says “We appreciate you” better than “do not reply to this email.”

That was actually a couple of months ago. I had a few good laughs at it and moved on. Shortly thereafter, we had our second child, Nicholas. That part is wholly irrelevant, or it would have been, had it not been for the fact that on the last day of my FMLA I got a call from my boss telling me that my region had been realigned — my job was no longer a foregone conclusion.

I was on the verge of being reorganized. It was humbling actually. For the past two years I’ve been involved in conversations dealing with restructuring, reorganizing operations, opening and closing learning centers: decisions that impact individuals’ lives. I’d never been reorganized. Until that moment, on the phone with my boss, I realized that I’d been lugging about this arrogance right on my shoulder. That those conversations I’d been involved in that caused the loss of jobs: those had been too easy for me.

Much happened after that. Much that is as yet unresolved. As soon as it is, I’ll be posting more detail. In the mean time, I can tell you that my future looks fairly bright with the organization. As of June 1, I’ll be moving to the corporate organization as the director of new media communications. That will allow me to be doubly committed to this blog and other projects in this sphere, starting with looking for the best bloggers that also happen to be students in our organizations. I’m excited about it, but trying not to get too excited. At least not until I wake up on June second and still have a job.

Here’s an interesting piece I stumbled on this morning by Angie Herrington at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Never too old for school

Apart from being a nice mention of my man Alan Yanda — new Associate Campus Director for our Chattanooga, TN campus — it brings up an interesting point. Here’s the quote that got me thinking, from Chattanooga State President Jim Catanzaro:

Creating more programs geared directly at preparing students for jobs, such as Chattanooga State’s new Building and Construction Institute of the Southeast, is one way to lure more older male adult students back to the college, he said.

“Now the specialization of the work force is such that we shouldn’t be turning out so many people with general degrees,” Dr. Catanzaro said.

For years, we’ve gone round and round with traditional education about the value of the practitioner degree. Particularly apparent in our doctoral programs, practitioner degrees have come under fire for — as far as I can tell — not being Ph.D., churned out of traditional academe.

But Catanzaro has a good point here. The gist of a practitioner education at all levels of higher eduction is preparation. Our own research tells us that people are changing careers three and four times in a lifetime. We’re not talking about job changes here — moving from selling widgets to selling gadgets, or trucks to tractors — we’re talking about wholesale life changes: you were a nurse, now you’re a plumber, next you might be an accountant.

With this change in our social economy, education has to play a new role. I’m a firm believer in traditional eduction, the traditional college environment, for those who can take advantage of it at the right point in their lives. I was 18, I went to college, I did the five-year plan and graduated with just shy of 200 credits. It was a wonderfully powerful experience for far more than the academic perspectives; College was my opportunity to develop socially, to learn how to interact with the world, to live with people that were not my parents and do develop the skills I’d later need to manage a productive life.

But that group, that selection of teens able to afford to take the time and money and put it to a dedicated educational experience for four or five years is shrinking. If you’re one of the growing cadre of adults who missed college for some reason, you have very different needs from your education provider. You need to know that what you’re getting out of the classroom is what you’ll need to function in the world, in your career, in your life. And since you’ll probably change careers a few more times for retirement, you also need to know that you can count on your institution to change with you.

The future of education is far more like “The Matrix” than it is “Animal House”. It’s a future in which you’ll come to school for appropriate and timely programming, to acquire the skills you’ll need to succeed at that moment. You’ll move on to master them through application and then come back, when you’re ready for more.

Ten years ago, I worked with a fellow who’d graduated with his MBA from Harvard in 1968. He was a powerful guy — high-dollar consultant — and I was is his pitchman. I used to think of him as the role model I’d always wanted to be, polished and professional and wearing that alumni status right out on his sleeve.

But the MBA has changed in the last 30 years and today his skills are stale, and a degree (even from a prestigious institution) has a shelf-life of applicability. Those who get it know that life long learning is less about the latest buzz-words than it is about survival. Those who don’t get it are living through the greying pages of a yearbook.

I wrote that last piece on Brian Mueller and, with all the good stuff I’ve been hearing about him as our new CEO, I can’t resist posting a link to this video of Steve Ballmer doing the “Dance Monkeyboy” thing, some of his own special breed of motivation. This has been the legacy of Microsoft for some time now, easily since 2000, and you have you ask yourself: is he like this … on a dare?

Technorati Tags: Brian Mueller, Leadership, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer

This isn’t a surprise to anyone by any stretch, but it’s an interesting reminder of just how dramatic the changes around this place are right about now.

PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)–March 29, 2006–Apollo Group Inc. (Nasdaq:APOL) announced that Brian Mueller has been appointed to its board of directors.

Mueller has been with the company for 19 years and is currently its president. In his career with Apollo Group and University of Phoenix he has held many positions, most recently as CEO of the University of Phoenix Online campus.

Dr. John Sperling, acting executive chairman of Apollo Group, said, “We are pleased to appoint Brian to our board of directors. He is an excellent complement to our board and we look forward to the contributions and guidance he will provide as we continue to grow and expand.”

Members of the company’s current board of directors are John Sperling, Peter Sperling, John Norton, John Blair, Hedy Govenar and Dino DeConcini.

The campus directors and regional vice presidents just got back from a meeting in Phoenix discussing the future of the organization with Brian and his team as we all move forward with this long-overdue integration between Online, the ground campuses, and Axia College (come April 1). These are shake-up meetings, designed to make people feel just uncomfortable enough to take action, to force change in the way we perceive the delivery of eduction. He — Brian — comes to the table with an interesting reputation. From people who’ve worked for him directly I’ve heard the following:

“If he wakes up with a brainstorm, it better be implemented by 1:00.”

“He’s a mercenary…. Very good, but very determined.”

“Tough love. Exhastive, tough love. If he doesn’t love you, tough.”

But the real response came from a campus director I trust and respect dearly, who hasn’t had much contact with Brian and was skeptical about his role in the organization, She came back from the meeting and said, “I don’t care what you say about this guy. I don’t care what people call him. This time around, people are following him. He’s a leader, and we’re following him. We’ll get through this.”

Makes me want to do that much more today. Nice feeling.

Technorati Tags: Apollo Group, Brian Mueller, Education, University of Phoenix

Here’s a wonderful Spike Jonze mini-doc on Al Gore and family. It’s only 13 minutes and worth watching in its entirety. It paints just the right picture of the Gores, albeit a few years too late.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-29385328971143264&q=al+gore

Having spent many years in New Jersey, I completely sympathize with the filmmakers of the following. These guys got together and obeyed the speed limit in Atlanta and brought a major highway to a standstill. Danger, potential loss of life and limb, damage to property, everything you look for in a sound traffic system. This is five minutes long and worth a watch!

“A Meditation on the Speed Limit”

The marketing world is abuzz with the notion of blogging and podcasting as tools for greater saturation, visibility, touch, whatnot. We’ve been hasing out some of those concepts around here and I thought I’d take a minute to outline them.

I started experimenting with podcasting last month for a public relations course I just wrapped up. It was a small class, a good one full of guinea pigs for my tech machinations. The course is offered as a hybrid — on ground one week, online three weeks, on ground one week — so I pitched to the students that it might be a fun experiement to try podcasting my online lectures for the three weeks we’re not together.

Using GarageBand, a new condenser microphone, a PreSonus breakout box, and my previously typed lectures as my scripts, I jumped in. The feedback was wonderful. I had students telling me that the whole concept changed the way they interact with the content. That they gather around their computer with their families and listen together — a la some sort of post-modern “Fireside Chat”.

Hyperbole aside, it helped me, too. Being able to provide the tone of the lecture along with the slides allowed me to connect with the material in a new way, to connect in a way I hadn’t experienced with the traditional on ground lectures to boot. They’re focused. They’re tangible. They’re tactile, in a strange way, knowing that the students are out there warehousing my material on their iPods makes the whole process brilliantly fused with distance education.

When I finally took the lid off my little experiment for University administration, the response was guarded, but positive. While the technology was dazzling — certainly dazzling to those who have no experience with this sort of wizardry day-to-day — the cynics and technical folks rallied against the concept for every reason you can probably already imagine: too expensive to host, too expensive to serve, can’t put University intellectual property on a publicly accessible site, etc, etc, etc.,

But it sparked dialog, and gave me a soapbox to talk about this technology from a PR perspective. Here are my points:

1. This technology frees organizations from the whims of professional media.
2. This technology allows organizations to develop the elusive “Transparent Relationship” with their publics.
3. Organizations who ignore this technology risk alienating a large new market segment that expects otherwise.

The Whims of Professional Media

The PR role is a tricky one. Aligning an organization’s message with the needs of the media public is not an easy job. To do it well, it requires a mind-numbingly detailed awareness of media outlets in the markets and within that understanding, a grasp of the timeliness of news as it passes through the public filter. When hard news is heavy, when trends fall out of favor, getting your pitches acknowledged can be chronically difficult.

Our contract and in-house PR pros are wonderful. They get it. They understand our message and they drive to spread the word by defining and crafting messages and delivering stories to media outlets with whom they have a sound history — a relationship. But if the news cycle drives our segment out of the spotlight, our story is canned no matter how strong the reporter relationship is.

What this technology delivers organizations is opportunity. Opportunity to define and craft your messaging, define your core audience, and deliver your message yourself in a cost effective medium. Organizational PR pros can now control the distribution of their messages and take advantage of timeliness and targeting that compliments the news cycle, not combats it.

Transparent Relationships

I’m a subscriber to the idea that markets are conversations. The brains that have lead the charge on that front are certainly greater pros than I at this stuff. So, what I have to say here really serves to amplify a point that I’m not satisfied is trumpeted loudly enough.

Publics expect the conversation.

Marketers do their level best to figure out how to start the conversation because it feels like value-added to let our customers in on our little secrets. Value-added is no longer of value, it’s assumed. If we stand on our walls and open doors for minions to enter and behold our inner-workings, we’re shuttering the rest of the world — we’re inviting the masses to go elsewhere, to find the conversation.

We’re not doing our customers any favors by building transparency into our operations. We’re doing just what they have expected all along.

Ignorance is Alienation

The time to start the dialog is yesterday. The technology is far too easy to adopt, to build upon, to produce passable content. With another day that goes by, so goes another of our peers leveraging these tools against us. The generation we’re marketing with, the Echo Boomers, Millenials, Flip-Floppers, Thumbers, they are already the MySpace generation. They’re raised on distance education. They’ve studied their online games, they’ve IM’d across fanboards and now they’re Skyping all around us while we’re just getting used to DSL.

Content

But it’s more than just the technology. Right now, blogs are read if they’re pertinent. Podcasts are devoured because they’re cool. If that timeline persists, blogs should be completely outmoded in three years and podcasting will be a vast new advertising sponsored audiovisual black hole. Popularity will be defined by utility: the level at which we’re able to deliver use beyond cool.

Here are a few things I’m working on right now.

1. Remedial Skills Development It’s not really fair to call them “remedial skills”. Many students who hit our classes don’t have the basic formatting, computing, and critical thinking skills to feel comfortable in our program. To help out, we’re launching a podcast show, talk radio style, interviewing our best faculty across disciplines giving students tips and tricks on basic academic performance. Not sure how to format and APA paper? We can talk about that. How about PowerPoint? We can get you started there as well. Need to know what is and is not considered plagiarism? We’ve got you covered. These will be hosted centrally and offered as an enrollment tool for academic counselors and faculty with students not quite ready to for prime time academia.
2. Trends and Issues This is a roundtable discussion show taking on the issues of concern to our students. Where will the jobs be in tech five years from now? What’s it like to leave school and join a union as a teacher? I’m 23 and my older classmates don’t understand me — what’s with that? We’ll bring in faculty experts and toss around and issue for an hour, hoping to build a resource for our students to sink their teeth into; something that will help them feel more safe and confident in clas
   s. They’re not alone, and we understand.

They’re weather balloons, but we’re doing our best to get on board now. Does the organization understand it? No. Is it our charge to push, and keep pushing until they do? Absolutely. Our customers expect it.

A new feature to the iTunes Music Store is users’ ability to purchase an iPod completely through iTunes. Why is this important? Several internet critics have speculated that the iTMS browser is the future of the internet: easy-to-use, simple, and graphically pleasing. This is one more step towards making iTMS a web browser.

Agreed. I’ve been thinking about this for some time. We need an iTunes Software Store, iTunes Amazon Store, iTunes eBay Store, and so on, and so on. This interface works because of the trick of the eye — you don’t believe you’re online when you’re in it. The metaphore of your iTunes library allows you to be in the sale without knowing it — just click on an artist in your library and POOF, you can buy more just like that.

read more

This is one of those wonderful ads that cuts to the core of what it means to be a dad for me. Of course, this is coming from a guy whose primary purpose in breeding is to develop smaller versions of myself for movie buddies. As it is, many thanks to the Ad Council for this kind of positive reflection and cinematic genius!

Ad Council on Being a Dad

Technorati Tags: Fatherhood

Hat’s off to Lewey Geselowitz. I never played Quake 2 — believe it or not, I was a Deep Space 9 guy — but this is the coolest mod I’ve seen for a game yet. Crazy, crazy — I actually expect a dragon to pop out, or an American eagle, or Pamela Anderson.

“Quake II AbSIRD is a modification of the standard Quake II rendering engine so that it can create SIRDS instead of normal 3D environments. This means that you can play Quake II just as you normally would (single player, network play, most mods, etc) except all the 3d objects and characters will jump out at you with the full 3D power of SIRDS.”

Jump out, yeah. I still can’t quite figure out how your visual acuity is affected by mutants with chainsaws. I know my reaction time ain’t that great.

Quake 2 AbSIRD at Lewey’s World

Apparently, real researchers have finally found the rosetta stone of public speaking, and it’s intercourse. That’s right, all your visions of fright and peril are awash in a warm glow with only a quick brush of love in the back seat.

Volunteers who’d had PVI [penile-vaginal intercourse – ed.] but none of the other kinds of sex were least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who’d only masturbated or had non-coital sex. Those who abstained had the highest blood-pressure response to stress.

Check out the new truth here. Then get busy.

For those who don’t know much about University of Phoenix marketing, if you haven’t run across a banner or pop-up, let me bring you up to speed. Organization’s like UOP are cost per lead shops; advertising has only as much value to the company as can be assigned each individual new prospect on a volume basis. For example, if we do 20,000 blow-in inserts in a market that costs us $10,000 and see a return on that of 50 new leads, our cost per lead is $200. If we do a direct mail drop to 75,000 that costs us $30,000 and we see 200 leads, our cost per lead is $150. Internet? I’ll spare you the volume, but shooting for a cost per lead between $45 and $80 is pretty darned good. These are all just broad strokes examples.