2008 Archives
Sometimes I think about what it would have been like to be born hundreds or thousands of years ago, when so much of our taken-for-granted world was yet-to-be-invented.
Would you have been able to grasp the concept of gravity? The number zero? Basic geometry? What would it have taken for such a br...
December 29, 2008 — 0 Comments
I hate calendars. They’re home to some of the worst software I’ve used. One of the worst things about them is the complete disregard for interface and usability.
The first, and most obvious, goal of a calendar is for people to find an event. Whether they know of the event or are just ...
December 16, 2008 — 1 Comment
A few years ago, I spent a week and a half on vacation for the winter holidays. I left my computer at home, having made the decision to disconnect and enjoy my time away. I felt nagging urge to check my email. There were withdrawal symptoms. After a few days, I found myself much more relaxed.
The...
December 09, 2008 — 0 Comments
Today, I fought a battle about why our websites look so good on Macs and bad on PCs. My short answer was that Macs make text look prettier. After a diatribe about why we have to start designing to make these look good on PCs, I pointed out that it’s nothing we can change – it’s ...
December 04, 2008 — 0 Comments
Most people hate cold calling. Even if you can turn your connections into a visit or a phone call, you’re still starting off with nothing: no reputation to precede you, no interest, no warm lead. Chances are, you’re walking into a cold brick wall—someone who knows they’re ...
November 30, 2008 — 0 Comments
What’s the difference between inventors Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison?
Da Vinci created. Thomas Edison innovated. Edison (and his team) methodically processed hundreds or thousands of options for filament materials until they arrived at the best result. They prototyped, tested, revisi...
November 28, 2008 — 0 Comments
In a conversation about web companies, we compare ourselves to Google.
If you’re talking branding, Nike is sure to come up.
For product development, it’s Apple we admire.
If you’re a marketing blogger, you want to be Seth Godin.
The list goes on and on.
They are outliers. They a...
November 23, 2008 — 2 Comments
Anyone who’s worked with me probably realizes I don’t mind offending people (and I barely consider graphic designers to be people) in hopes of improving the work. This post will certainly offend. Enjoy.
I’ve been meaning to share this gem from Seth Godin for a while, and apparen...
November 20, 2008 — 0 Comments
Nick Denardis, a top user on eduStyle and web influencer at Wayne State University, has launched what I consider a really brilliant idea. He’s doing video reviews of higher education websites. He’s basically pulling a couple of sites from the eduStyle feed and spending a few minutes c...
October 31, 2008 — 1 Comment
Budget
When referring to a budget range, the Client will only remember the low end of the range.
You will remember the high end of the range.
Fixed bid or flat rate projects always screw someone over.
It’s usually not the client.
Timing
A Client who is in a hurry will inexp...
October 28, 2008 — 5 Comments
Update: As Matt pointed out, InBev is Belgian, and not German. It’s like North and South Dakota to me.
Since InBev acquired Budweiser, I’ve been curious to see how the Germans Belgians would influence our American beer. The other day, I saw the first sign.
Bud Light’s latest ad ...
October 08, 2008 — 1 Comment
This is an excerpt from Seth Godin’s post, Is Effort a Myth?. I’m thinking about this a lot – that parts I already do and the parts I don’t.
With that forewarning, here’s a bootstrapper’s/marketer’s/entrepreneur’s/fast-rising executive’s effor...
October 08, 2008 — 0 Comments
Seth Godin writes about being irrationally committed
Entrepreneurs who are irrationally committed to their business are far more likely to get through the Dip.
Salespeople and service providers and marketers who are irrationally committed to customer service can completely transform an ordinary e...
September 25, 2008 — 0 Comments
An hour ago, I was watching a DVD from the first season of AMC’s Mad Men. As I finished the second episode, I posted to Twitter:
i think i like mad men… it’s going to take some time to get used to. it definitely makes me want to drink scotch.
Suddenly, I was followed on Twitter ...
September 14, 2008 — 0 Comments
The real question is not whether the fold exists, but how people scroll.
Click image for full view
Percentile
Vertical Height
Height of percentile
100%
0
146
90%
146
371
80%
517
47
70%
564
17
60%
581
15
50%
596
11
40%...
September 03, 2008 — 0 Comments
A University website isn’t really a single website. It’s actually made up of many sites: Human Resources. Office of the President. Department of Zebra Fish Studies.
So the question is this: how important is it for these websites to be look the same?
This recently became a topic on several fo...
September 02, 2008 — 2 Comments
Check out this feedback form from the TweetDeck website. It’s a modal pop-up box with a form and instant feature request form (using UserVoice).
How easy is it for your customers to give you feedback?
September 02, 2008 — 0 Comments
What good can come from capping bandwidth for legitimate use? As the Internet provides new reasons for consumers to be online, Comcast will benefit from increased demand. Streaming HD video, for instance, might be the reason my mom tries broadband again.
I’ve had a lot of problems with Com...
August 29, 2008 — 0 Comments
When you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Right? This is a classic mistake, one that leads to overworking and stress. After all, each time you take over on a task that you should delegate you’re just adding more work. At some point, that takes its toll and even even you ca...
August 26, 2008 — 0 Comments
An observation:
Getting a project 100% right is very hard and time consuming. But getting the project 95% there is pretty quick. The next 5% percent can take a long time, though. The question for you is whether the distance between 95% and perfection is worth the investment.
Sometimes it is…...
August 26, 2008 — 0 Comments
Someone on the University Web Developers community on Ning asked a question about having a “mission statement” for their website. Not about posting a mission statement for your organization, but the very mission of the website itself. That is, what the website’s purpose is.
This...
August 23, 2008 — 0 Comments
This is a response to the eduStyle question about design diversity in higher ed
I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years and here are some of the factors that swirl in my head.
Different is risky
Designers have to balance function with style. Making something drastically differ...
August 22, 2008 — 1 Comment
I talk a lot. My conversations with certain people (other talkers) tend to spin off into six hour summit meetings where we try to solve the problems of the world. Or, at least, our little slice of the world.
Lately, I’ve forced myself to listen more – not only to others but also to my...
August 05, 2008 — 2 Comments
I have always enjoyed thinking out loud, and I realized that you can’t think out loud so easily as dean because your thoughts are taken much more seriously than you intended them to be. It was one of my first shocks as dean…that people really listened to what you had to say. Mark Roch...
July 11, 2008 — 0 Comments
(or How to get your clients to do what you want)
Not long ago, lawlessness ruled the land. Clients did whatever they wanted and the customer was always right. Projects often missed deadlines and the team bemoaned the dreaded “scope creep.” This was a painful time, overtime was part of...
July 07, 2008 — 0 Comments
Courtesy of PhilanTopic:
The most important things a leader can bring to a changing organization are passion, conviction, and confidence in others. Too often executives announce a plan, launch a task force, and then simply hope that people find the answers — instead of offering a dream, str...
June 29, 2008 — 0 Comments
I’ve had a lot of analytics discussions lately, with clients and colleagues, and not only are people still struggling with the terminology they’re misunderstanding the entire point.
From Online Spin:
The basic gist was this: because marketers were demanding metrics (i.e. impressions, clicks) ...
June 22, 2008 — 0 Comments
When I was in high school, I listened to my dad and his friends talk about the cars they used to work on. Two brothers had worked together to rebuild an engine and had to drop it back in on their own – one on his back holding the engine in place with his legs, the other tightening the bolts to ...
June 21, 2008 — 0 Comments
In higher education, marketing is a dirty word.
Some faculty members believe that self-promotion is offensive to their intellectual, academic pursuits. What these purists don’t realize is that they’ve been marketing for their entire careers. They do this through the normal course of t...
June 21, 2008 — 0 Comments
I left this comment in response to HighEdWebTech’s post, Exterminating Form Spam and decided it was worth sharing here.
In my opinion, CAPTCHAs are a “rock and a hard place” kind of idea. They can be effective against spammers, but are increasingly frustrating for real users. Bu...
June 16, 2008 — 0 Comments
Now it’s time for another Tales from a Psychologist…
“The false consensus effect is the tendency for people to project their way of thinking onto other people.”
In other words, if you believe something you’ll assume that most people would agree with you.
This has dan...
June 15, 2008 — 0 Comments
Lately, there’s been a lot of talk in our office about working from home. On one hand, there’s the belief that our work can be done at any time and from any location. On the other hand, that has an effect on how easily we can manage our teams, schedule meetings, etc. I am a proponent of remot...
June 11, 2008 — 1 Comment
The customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is more often than not very wrong and has no clue what he’s doing.
This isn’t ego, it’s simple truth: you probably know your product better than your customer does. After all, you’re the expert, right?
A customer walk...
June 08, 2008 — 0 Comments
TechCrunch has launched a service where CEOs and founders can deliver their elevator pitch to TechCrunch visitors. They get 60 seconds. TechCrunch elevator pitches…
I just went through a bunch of these, and I have to say – most of these are terrible. Not necessarily the companies or i...
June 06, 2008 — 0 Comments
David Heinemeier Hansson misses the mark when he claims that designers should code their own XHTML/CSS templates.
I’ve worked with many web designers in the past who only did abstractions and then handed over pictures to be chopped and implemented by “HTML monkeysâ€. It never really gelled w...
June 05, 2008 — 1 Comment
After sitting through two days’ worth of sessions here at RailsConf 08 I’ve learned a very important lesson: the value of information increases with comprehensibility. In other words, if your audience doesn’t understand you then the information you provide is far less valuable.
This is obvi...
May 31, 2008 — 0 Comments
The developers in our office were more interested in the job postings that focused on culture and opportunities, while caring very little about requirements or even benefits.
A hiring manager thinks about what he needs: a programmer skilled in [x, y, z] languages, n years experience, and [arbitra...
May 08, 2008 — 0 Comments
I tell clients the most important thing they can put on their homepage is their elevator pitch. As most of my clients are academics with little or no business background, they usually don’t know what this means.
You’ve stepped onto an elevator and you realize there’s a potential...
April 24, 2008 — 0 Comments
I caught the Hesburgh Library elevator this afternoon, and just as the doors opened Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C. joined us. For ten floors, I got to listen to him chat to others in the elevator about various subjects, including an undergraduate who is majoring in PLS – Program of Libera...
April 18, 2008 — 0 Comments
The deadline isn’t moving, but you’re not getting the work done. The mass stays the same, but the volume is decreasing. Density (and therefore pressure) increases.
The only way to alleviate the pressure is to change one of the two variables: the amount of work or the deadline.
When th...
April 15, 2008 — 0 Comments
When should you charge your customers?
Answer: When they are happiest with you. A happy customer recognizes value and will gladly pay for it.
How do you get customers to pay an initial deposit?
Answer: By asking for it. Refuse to do any work until you’ve both signed an agreement and are sat...
April 14, 2008 — 0 Comments
I consume hundreds of articles a day for hundreds of different websites through my feed reader of choice. Today, I saw two posts that irked me. They both went something like this:
“We’re moving so please make sure you update your bookmarks and feed subscriptions!”
And these site...
April 07, 2008 — 1 Comment
Grundyhome.com readers typically get more done on Mondays than readers of other blogs.
The stereotype threat is a psychological theory where a person’s performance can be influenced by hearing about a stereotype.
A classic example involves a group of black women on the SAT. Before the test,...
April 07, 2008 — 0 Comments
I’ve launched a new website at nonprofitchas.com where I’ll share my experiences and theories on non-profit marketing, fundraising, and management. I will have some guest authors soon and, hopefully, a custom design (as opposed to the big “G” that is grundyhome.com).
I...
March 09, 2008 — 0 Comments
Most people love food and I’m no exception. I cook a lot and I take pictures of my meals. I have lists of restaurants I want to go to and try, and I’m enough of a regular at a few of our area restaurants that they know what I’m most likely to order. My fondest memories usually c...
March 08, 2008 — 0 Comments
Fundraising always sounded like a cushy job to me. I had this notion that it consists calling some wealthy donor up, wining and dining him, and collecting a huge check.
Of course, that’s not how it works. It’s not about doing business over drinks or dinner. It’s about building a...
February 28, 2008 — 0 Comments
That’s right, we haven’t been fundraising. I cringe when I read articles about how to keep fundraising during a recession because we weren’t even doing this when the economy was strong! We used to get our funding from one major agency, but that has dried up and left us wondering...
February 24, 2008 — 0 Comments
I believe that fundraising and marketing are really about the same things: telling a story and building a relationship.
Having worked in a marketing world for my relatively short career, I volunteered to chair our new marketing committee at our Camp Fire council. This makes sense, as I’m f...
February 24, 2008 — 0 Comments
2008 is the year of……being proactive. Most of the work emergencies I face are simply a lack of planning and preparation. In 2007, one of our developers had to work crazy hours to put together a series of pages for Holy Week, right before Easter. Why did this take us by surprise? As I&...
January 10, 2008 — 0 Comments