1. Thoughts on EDUCAUSE 2011 - Wednesday

    If I had to sum up the excitement at EDUCAUSE this year, I’d use one word: Cloud. Almost every vendor in the exhibit hall is featuring a product that operates partly, or wholly, in the cloud.

    I attended a session outlining how an institution could develop a business case for using cloud services over developing in-house. The pros were clear:

    • Actually improve service levels, as SaaS is designed to scale
    • Predictable cost models, by avoiding periodic technology overhauls. Cloud software is a moving target that improves over time at the same ongoing cost.
    • Scalability is now a reality for smaller institutions trying to become bigger players.
    • No more requirement for in-house support staff, which can be cost prohibitive.
    • Communicating outside the institution is much easier.

    The main challenges raised could be easily addressed upfront in a legal agreement.

    • Undetermined backup scenario.
    • Overseeing policy compliance.
    • Privacy challenges.
    • “Consumerization” - i.e. not all technology decisions are made in IT anymore.

    Joe Weinman’s blog on the 10 Laws of Cloudonomics sheds more light on the overall cloud landscape and how it fits with all types of industries.

    My questions for you, the institution:

    Q: In the SaaS realm, how important is the ability to change the ‘packaged’ product? Do you change your workflow to adopt what the product deems appropriate, or do you insist on working with the vendor to change things?

    Q: We’ve heard that cloud software reduces costs, saves time, allows for a scalable infrastructure. It sounds like a no-brainer. if you’re not using any cloud software, what fundamental factors are still holding you back?

    Q: What key indicators do you look at for determining adoption from a training/marketing perspective? Meaning, a piece of software could be perfect for your institution, but the strategy for informing students/staff might be lacking. Do you track that?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts.

    - Myke Nahorniak

  2. Attending EDUCAUSE? We’ll be there!

    Come say hi! We’ll be roaming the halls chatting about software-as-a-service, cloud computing, social media and how it can all be leveraged at educational institutions.

    More information about EDUCAUSE.

  3. You know what we want to use Localist for better than we do. We’ve seen hundreds of technologies we’d like to integrate with and nobody does it like this. This is amazing.

    — Awesome quote from Weill Cornell Medical College, who we just partnered with!

  4. September Features, Functionality and Fixes

    This is the first of many monthly blog posts where we announce any major Localist Platform features, functionality and fixes that have been deployed over the past month.

    • Language localization on all buttons. For example, “I’m Going” can change to “Save” on your platform.
    • Nearby Public Transportation. Dynamically highlight the bus/subway stops nearest to events or places.
    • Upgraded to Facebook’s Graph API. This will allow us to do very cool things in the future!
    • Eventbrite RSVP sync. We now dynamically pull in events (and their attendee lists) from Eventbrite events.
    • Standardized mobile view across all platforms. We revisited the default mobile platform and “normalized” it, allowing for ingestor support and much easier modification at the customer level.
    • Added option to allow event submission to all groups from non-group-members.
    • Added support for custom fields into the CSV uploader.
    • Added additional tag for Google Analytics to track click events across the platform.
    • …and, as always, various bug fixes.

  5. Does Google Know About Your Calendar?

    A recent study compared the “crawlability” of Localist to other popular university calendaring systems, 25Live and Trumba — that is, how well search engines can index the pages being served. It consistently found that search caches of Localist content at institutions outnumbered those of other systems by thousands. Any calendars served by 25Live or Trumba were virtually invisible.

    Some examples of Google’s indexed pages:
    Cornell University - Localist:
    Results: 219,000.
    Individual events are cached discretely by Google, giving the calendar a rich presence on the Web. Since event calendars change frequently, Google will visit this site often, looking for new content.

    California State University San Marcos - Trumba:
    Results: 1.
    In this example, Google has found only the index page of the calendar. Google cannot see links to any individual events, or even RSS feeds. Therefore, none of the actual calendar content can be indexed by any search engine.

    Chemeketa Community College calendar - 25Live:
    Results: 2.
    Similar to the example above, only the index page was found by Google.

    Working with over thirty five institutions across the US has allowed us to consistently measure how much traffic search engines generate when it comes to finding calendar information. On average, 45% of the traffic to Localist calendars is from search engines. If your institution uses a Google Appliance to manage the indexing of all the content on your website, it will pick up Localist content as well.

    Even more importantly, most students are used to performing a search, not navigating through various menus on a school’s website, so having up-to-date calendar content available via search, not just on a website, is integral to getting a student more involved.

    Want to read the rest? Check out our White Papers section

  6. Williams College Launches its Calendar →

  7. The College of Notre Dame Renames and Rebrands →

    The College of Notre Dame has a new name: Notre Dame of Maryland University. Along with this name change comes an excellent site redesign. The school’s version of Localist was rebranded to follow suit.

  8. New Site

    We just launched a long-overdue homepage refresh. Check it out!

    Our intention was to better explain the benefits of Localist while simplifying the overall presentation. Be sure to check out the demo video if you’d like to learn more about what Localist can do at your institution.

  9. Localist Wins Sole Source Vendor Status in Four States

    Public organizations in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island have chosen Localist as their vendor for a social events calendar.

    What does this mean? Because no other company does what Localist can, we’re able to directly engage with state-run institutions without going through the RFP process. If you’re at a public institution in the states mentioned, you don’t need to deal with any red tape. Localist is pre-approved!

    Check out our full press release on this subject.

    Want to help grant Localist sole-source status in your state? Let us know by sending an email to info@localist.com.

  10. Eight Universities Select Localist To Engage Students, Unify Campus Life

    DePaul University - Chicago, Ill.
    Emmanuel College - Boston, Mass.
    Towson University - Towson, Md.
    University of Delaware - Newark, Del.
    University of Rhode Island - Kingston, RI..
    Virginia Military Institute - Lexington, Va.
    Williams College - Williamstown, Mass.

    That means we’re now serving over 105,000 students! Read the full press release.