A little bit about me

Per Matt’s request, I thought I would give you guys a little background into who I am. I will tell you that I have probably been working in higher ed for the least amount of time (7 months) out of all the people involved in BlogHighEd, but I am extremely passionate about what I do and therefore always wanting and willing to learn about the ever changing field of Higher Education.

I am officially the Marketing/Recruitment Specialist for the Office of Enrollment Management for the University of Illinois at Springfield. I work for the smallest of the three U of I campuses, but still get all the benefits. This position was created last year for UIS graduate and co-creator of BlogHighEd, Brad J Ward, but he moved on to a position at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN. I spend my time researching trends in the current and potential student market for recruitment and retention. I also implement ideas that I present to the directors on our websites. I also have some web experience, but desperately want to learn more! I also do campus and event photography.

I look forward to learning with and from everyone who contributes here and I am very thankful that I was chosen for bhe. And here’s a better photo of me and my wonderful girlfriend.

 

Weekend Re-Cap

Superbowl Weekend! Not gonna lie, I was really getting sick and tired of all the “perfect” talk accompanying the Patriots. I am a hardcore Patriots (and Jets) hater! And that can only mean one thing: I am a Dolphin’s fan. Flame me for their horrible season last year, but the Tuna’s in charge and has revamped practically the entire coaching staff. Anyway, something else the superbowl brings is usually awesome and memorable advertisements. While I have always enjoyed watching the commercials, I found myself not only viewing them, but really looking for the next big idea in any one of them. But more on that later! I’ve got to tell you about the events that led up to Sunday first.

Thursday night, we were predicted to get a TON of snow. I really don’t like snow that much. Sure it’s pretty, but it makes such a mess of things. Classes got canceled for the evening in preparation for the worst. Come 5:30 a.m. friday morning, word came down that the campus was closed! Woohoo, three day weekend! I look outside and this is what I saw.

That’s right…A TON of SNOW! 10 inches to be exact…19+ from drifting…

And here’s my poor car…Look at the snow on the mirror. I had to dig out the bottom of my door so that I could get it open.

My buddy T and I spent some time digging our own cars out as well as a couple of our friends, and even some people we didn’t even know. We even pushed one girl out of a snow pile she drove into, later admitting that she’d never seen snow like this before…crazy.

The next day, I came down with something awful…I mean, I have been out of commission for the last three days…I don’t usually get sick, but when I do, it’s bad news…I’m feeling better today, but I wouldn’t have minded another day off to relax.

On Superbowl Sunday, my friend Chad held a get together at his place so we could watch the game on his 52″ plasma (thanks to me and SD). Let me just revisit what I said earlier about me really not liking the Patriots. I just wanted to make sure that was fresh in your mind. The game was full of a bunch of great plays on both sides, but one play stands out above all…This scramble by Manning and ensuing catch by Tyree…INCREDIBLE!

I am sorry for jumping around so much, my mind is still recovering from the medicine…back to business. So of the commercials that were played, there were a couple that stuck out in my mind. Some in a good way, and others in a bad way. First: Winner for the night…The Tide talking stain commercial. Congrats to their marketing team for that video. They did it all right…entertaining, made me remember their product, and drew me back in with an interactive website at the end mytalkingstain.com

Other winners for the night included Budwiser/Bud Light, Bridgestone (maybe a surprise?), Coca-Cola, Diet Pepsi Max, and Sobe. You can view them all on MySpace’s Superbowl ad site.  Line of the year:  “Suck One.”  Wait for the T-Shirts!

 

What would we do?

While starting my day by reading my blog feeds and news feeds, I came across this article from the Middle East. And then I started thinking…If something as simple as a “cut phone line” essentially could destroy our internet connection, this is a very real deal. That is certainly one way to stop the economy in a major way. I know I use the internet A TON throughout the day. In fact, I helped my girlfriend work on a project where she had to find stuff in the library (more on that later) last night. It was 10 questions and we had to find answers to them using the library for at least 7 of them. It took us two hours to answer 5 or 6 (she completed a couple earlier). And what’s crazy is that I am a pretty good “searcher” most of the time. We definitely take the internet for granted a lot of the time. Try working without it for a little bit and you’ll begin to see how helpful it really is.

 

I am convinced that Springfield, IL has the craziest weather!

So this is officially my first blog from my iphone and it is coming to you from my car. I am currently stuck outside in my car due to a torrential downpour…I’m making a break for it. update later.

Ok, so I wrote that about 20 minutes ago…I’m back in my office now, so I’ll show you what I mean.

I left for lunch about an hour and a half ago, and I took a photo of the Accuweather on my Mac…High of 62, low of 9?!?

On my ride home listening to the radio, the announcer says it’s 65. I’m diggin’ this weather for January. Unfortunately, I know it’s not gonna last.

I could see that there was rain on the horizon as I left my house, but no rain yet. As soon as I got to campus though (4 minutes) this is what I’m encountered with.

And here’s me blogging and sitting in the parking lot…

Now, the weather looks like this…all within one hour.

That’s my justification for crazy weather in Springfield, IL! Prove to me that your city is crazier than mine!

 

New Blog Unveiling!

Hey everyone! I’ve moved my blog over to WordPress. Leave your feedback and let me know what you think.

For the time being, I’ll still be double-posting to my blogger blog, but after a month or so, that one will be archived. Update your RSS feeds to stay up to date!

 

Keywords search

This morning I have spent some time looking into what people search for when they view websites. I decided to review some hits my blog has received and how they got there. If you aren’t using Google Analytics, you really should be! It’s easy to set up and easy to use. The data you get is fantastic!

Anyway, I found some interesting things while reviewing the keywords and these are some that popped up:

“wow uis”
“‘my car bounces’”
“mobster art”
“real deal cheap broadway tickets”
“shuttle from spi to bmi”
“uis rims”

Those are just a few of the ones I found interesting. My friend Brad J Ward over at SquaredPeg posted a topic about Google Alerts this morning. As with just about everything that google does, I tried it out. Already got one alert from Nicholas’ Blog! Nice to see it works. I’ll review Google Alerts later after I play with it some more.