We were thinking and talking (simultaneously) the other day about what it takes to build a meaningful web presence. What I heard then and have consistently heard for many years is this: good content. Said one friend with 11 years of site-building experience, “The content, especially the copy, is always the problem… always holding things up.” Kind of like, “the dinner wasn’t very good until the food was served.” Sounds obvious enough, until you witness what must really be happening in the site development process. The functional, designed shell of a web site is in the control of the designer and his/her many guides and helpers, including clients, strategic thinkers and just about anyone else. How the site looks and links and engages and interacts with the visitor is the designer/programmer’s responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »
Mar 8
Dec 1
There is much talk of the value of “engagement” in communications, particularly online, where marketers are finding they can influence their prime audiences — interactively, communally, in real time — in ways other media can’t. My son’s participation in the Cincinnati Regional Science Olympiad, a science project competition among Greater Cincinnati high schools, showed me a form of engagement — interactively, communally, in real time — which I hadn’t seen before. It was interesting to me because most, if not all, enthusiastic gatherings of high school students are centered on athletic competition. But this was science…the proverbial slide-rule and pocket-protector crowd.
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