The TCC Board of Trustees has begun the search process for a new chancellor, the chief executive officer of the College. Later this month, board members will conduct a workshop to draw up and approve a job description, and they would very much like your input.
What qualifications, experience, characteristics, and attributes do you think the next TCC chancellor should have? Please give us your comments, and/or react to the comments of others.
Why this works
I can tell you from experience that sometimes it's difficult to get feedback from your community if you work for a public educational institution (unless you've angered them in some way) on important matters. Just look at voter turn-out and you can see how (dis)engaged people are when they get distracted.
What TCC has done here for their community is provided another channel for voices to be heard. They could still hold public meetings in addition to the board meetings as ways to get thoughts, but using the blog post is a smart and efficient way for TCC to collect the thoughts on the "qualifications, experience, characteristics, and attributes" for a new chancellor. Here's hoping their community steps up to the plate and delivers views that will help shape a profile to fit their leadership needs.
*As an added bonus for education PR folks, TCC provides a link to their social media regulations in the post.
The fact that I am not a hairy man makes me (and my wife) happy. My inability to grow facial hair into a full beard or goatee leaves me to wonder where my genes came from since there are beard and moustache-wearing guys among my male relatives. It usually doesn't bug me too much accept during the month of Movember because I know my mo won't be as robust as most of the others. But then, that's not the point.
Movember
Movember is a moustache growing charity event held during the month of November every year that raises funds and awareness for men's health - specifically prostate and testicular cancer. The month-long campaign this year will benefit The Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
The Movember campaign is one worth checking out even if you don't want to participate because it has integrated some social media outposts like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter profiles in addition to a sites for the foundation and launch. The fun has an edge and seriousness to it.
Here's the Intro video for 2009:
The cause is worthy. The rules are easy. The campaign is cool. The benefits are noble. Change the face of men's health.Grow a Mo.
Besides, what else do you have going this month? And so goes day #1 of Movember.
Taking a slight detour from my typical posts for something on arguably my favorite holiday.
I really dig how this educator has a little fun, a good personality, an engaged audience, and uses a bit of a performance mentality and techniques all while being a math teacher.
The observational geometry quiz at 2:24 is pretty cool too. (The audio in the clip is a little low, so you may want to turn up your volume a bit.)
A couple of weeks ago while preparing for a speaking engagement, a few thoughts crossed my mind to share about social media integration.
I was preparing to participate on a panel entitled Creating Sustainable Conversations Online during the Dallas PRSA's Communications Summit. (Fellow panelists included Christi Day and Chad Sour and was moderated by Lauren Benson.)
Thankfully, we were provided with a few lead-in questions prior to coming to the panel to get the conversation going and topics flowing.
Three questions stood out for me as being particularly useful to ask yourself when thinking about how to effectively integrating social media strategies within a broader communication effort.
What do you hope to achieve through Social Media?
Clarity of message - Understanding that control of the message is a bit of an illusion, but since we are in the social web, we can provide clarity to it to bring it closer in line with our communication objectives.
Consistency in information - Make sure your organization's voice is one that can be replicated across communication channels.
Listen to (and for) issues - Be available for conversations. It may not always be comfortable, but is important for your community to 1.) know you are listening and 2.) understand that you care.
Provide assistance when and where possible.
Why were you there in the first place?
You must be present to win - We believed in the concept early on that conversations were occurring online with or without us.
We wanted to be available for those conversations or miss out on opportunities.
How do you keep conversations going and keep them coming back for more?
These rules were posted earlier today on the District's Facebook Fan Page as a 'Note' to help set the rules and community expectations for the fan page usage.
(It probably would have been better to have these posted before we acquired over 600 fans, but better late than never.)
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The Mansfield ISD Facebook Fan Page is provided for the district community by the Mansfield ISD Department of Media & Communication Development. We will update this page as often as possible to share as much as we can about Mansfield ISD and the achievements of the students and staff as well as other relevant district community information.
All posting of comments on this page are at the discretion of the page administrators. The intent of this policy is not to keep any negative or critical information from being posted, but to protect the privacy and rights of Mansfield ISD staff and students. Naming specific employees or students in a negative way will not be allowed (and is just generally rude.) The page administrators will review all postings to make sure they do not run afoul of the rules nor of the district’s Acceptable Use Guidelines regarding Internet access and practices.
We welcome your thoughts and comments and look forward to what you have to say. However, we will not leave postings that:
Break the law or encourage others to do so. This includes respecting copyright and fair use laws. If you are talking about somebody else’s work, reference this or the person, and where possible include a link.
Contain abusive or inappropriate language or statements. This includes remarks that are racist, homophobic and sexist as well as those that contain obscenities or are sexually explicit.
Easily identify students and/or staff in defamatory, abusive, or generally negative terms.
Do not show proper consideration for others’ privacy or are considered likely to offend or provoke others – i.e. don’t pick fights or goad others into inflammatory debates. Nobody likes a bully.
Are spam – i.e. repeatedly posting the same comment or comments that are simply advertising/promoting a service or product. If you wouldn’t want to receive it yourself, don’t post it.
The page administrators reserve the right to not post or remove any comments at any time, for any reason…but we hope that won’t ever be necessary.
If you have a comment or would like to report an inappropriate comment for us to review, send an email to blog@mansfieldisd.org. (Yes, it’s the same e-mail as our district blog.)
Please note, you can also receive e-mail and phone text messages of our updates as they are posted through the settings of your personal Facebook account.
Thank you for stopping by and/or being a fan of Mansfield ISD.
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What do you think? Are these a decent set of fan page rules for a public school district? I'd appreciate any thoughts on these rules.
On Wednesday, October 14, the Greater Ft. Worth PRSA chapter held a program entitled The PR Impact of Being Environmentally Proactive, and had the following speakers:
Most people understand that being environmentally conscious is good for the environment, but the question remains is it good your company or client? Each panelist provided green and sustainability perspectives from their organizations and what it can mean for progress.
If not now, when?
One of the most interesting things about the program was just how much this theme seemed to resonate with attendees. From a public relations standpoint, we should always pay attention to how our organizations are perceived. The environmental impact view is just one more lens through which we need to monitor and help counsel leadership. Does this mean we need to be experts in environmental policy? Not necessarily, but it does mean we need to determine what our stakeholders expect from us in the areas of being green and sustainable meaning we look to meet business needs in ways that minimize environmental impacts.
The lessons went a bit beyond public relations since the speakers provided insight from global, national and city perspectives. The topic was also perfectly timed for the Blog Action Day 2009 theme of Climate Change. (hence the #BAD09 in the post's title)
I appreciated what Chris Smith provided from the Environmental Defense Fund. Her organization seems to be taking the smart approach in targeting practical solutions based on science, business, and communities to find environmental ideas that work. She presented a short clip from a video of Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund that is worth a watch.
I found a related video on the EDF channel on Climate Change. (I loved the call to action at the 2:22 mark.)
Tom Burke, APR mentioned the Pecan Street Project (of which IBM and EDF are among the partnering organizations)
The project has a goal of ensuring "Austin’s leadership in the creation of the next generation electrical system, including utility and community infrastructure, consumer systems, State and local policy and regulation, economic development opportunities, new venture creation, and community engagement." Think of it as Energy 2.0.
While I'm impressed with Austin, I am especially proud of Ft. Worth because according to Brian Boerner...
The water reuse program saved 3,667,137,480 gallons of water for the year.
They converted three city soccer/rugby fields to artificial turf and is saving 11.5 million gallons of water annually.
Over 22% (62,000 tons) of the residential waste stream was recycled and diverted from area landfills.
We have six USDA approved Farmers Markets in Ft. Worth.
Communication Carry-out:Start small, start where you can. Sustainability is a process not a product. Look at the bigger picture beyond your organization. Change is required. How can we balance customer expectations as they relate to environmental issues with customer service? Yes, we need to be paying attention.
A school communications and public relations guy in Texas; I'm a husband, father, friend and an occasional speaker and social media strategist when needed.
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