• OakTree CMS build in Sitefinity showcase

  Posted By: Lawrence W. Gallick

  Telerik is featuring the website built by OakTree Digital for Mercedes-Benz of El Dorado on the Sitefinity CMS home page.  Scroll down to 'featured work' to see a screenshot.  Sitefinity is a ASP .NET based content management system (CMS).  View the Merceded-Benz of El Dorado website.
  

• Content - are we getting it?

  Posted By: Lawrence W. Gallick

  One of the notorious holdups in web development projects has historically been when clients are responsible for their own content. Its something we try to avoid, as we do offer copywriting services, but nonetheless, when it comes to content, clients are typically pretty possessive.  They are the subject matter experts, therefore they should write the copy....right?  However, they quickly realize what we warn them about starting with the kickoff meeting - it ain't so easy.  There are multiple issues:

  • Many internal stakeholders and subject matter experts = many opinions
  • Once you realize you've bitten off more than you can chew and delegate some of the work, you are left in the just-as-difficult position of managing many different content authors
  • These content authors actually have other jobs which inevitably are a higher priority than copywriting for the web, making deadlines next to impossible to meet
  • Once the content all comes back, you realize that it has inconsistent voicing and tone, not to mention format
  • Once the content all comes back, you realize that it needs to be linked together in key places, since this is the internet and not a series of unrelated articles
  • Inevitably you don't realize the need for some crucial pieces of content until late in the game.  People notoriously miss section landing pages, although these are crucial to a site's success

  The above issues occur despite our best intentions as an agency - we provide content matrices, content development templates, consultation on best practices for writing on the web, and many other services.  But content development still inevitably extends the project timeline in projects like these.

  As our static web site development (static = collection of flat html pages) dwindled and was replaced by ubiquitous and affordable content management systems, we were encouraged.  The clients who want to develop their own content are empowered to do so, and we can create the final infrastructure of the website without waiting for final copy from the clients.  However, things are not always as simple as they seem.

  • For some companies, it is hard to shake out of the standard editorial and review workflow process they are used to – in fact, for companies such as this, often times the editorial process is the only thing that will enable them to see the forest for the trees as it were and truly feel ok with the overall structure of the web site in development.
  • Other companies are decidedly not technical – even though most everyone reading this is used to web interfaces, many companies function in older paradigms, and the interfaces in some of the content management systems (CMS) can be a bit tricky – this is especially true of some of the open source based systems.  This trickiness tends to get better over time (for example Drupal 6 is much easier to use than Drupal 5), but is an unfortunate but understandable side effect of open source development where many different programmers are able to contribute to a product.

  So we’ve found ourselves, especially on the side of the OakTree house that used to do a lot of HTML development, transitioning over to much more technical implementations on the one side, and a lot of training on the other side – training both on the use of CMS systems and on good web focused content development workflows and processes.  It’s definitely a change for the positive and helps our clients get a head start towards the final goal, which is the creation of a site which is a living document – with content that is constantly added, modified, and removed to suit the needs of the user community.

• Are we still compatible, Internet Explorer 6?

  Posted By: David Martin

  Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 6 was released in August, 2001, yet there are still more people using it today than Firefox 3.0. As of February 2009, IE6 still holds greater than 18% of the total web browser market share.

   

  As for me, I am a part of that 18% constituency, not because I love IE6, but because I figure someone in our office should represent this dysfunctional (and sizable) view of the websites that we ourselves design. For the same reason, I also choose to browse the web using Firefox 2.0, versus the current 3.0 version. It's true that Firefox 2.0, released in October 2006, only commands a mere ~ 4% of browser market share, but that's still greater than Chrome, Safari and Opera, which each are less than 4% (but growing while Firefox 2 usage contracts). Choosing to personify that "LCD" (lowest common denominator) that we website designers speak of doesn't make me popular around the office, I admit. I tend to be the wet rag, the buzz-kill in the design process when some sweet, new design fails for me in either IE6 of FX2. And it's due to these compatibility issues that most website development processes begin to churn. Without retrofitting a tight CSS layout to accommodate outdated browsers, life would be much easier. Website development would cost less and take less time. There would be peace and harmony in the world.

   

  On March 19th, Microsoft publicly releases its 8th version of Internet Explorer, and this time, we are told, IE8 will be the most standards-compliant browser of all. If history is any lesson here, we'll believe it when we see it. While release candidate 1 is available this month, it will be several months more before what we can consider a "stable" version will be available for download. But a bigger question is this: will the launch of IE8 finally compel all of the large corporations still running IE6 to finally take the plunge and upgrade??

   

  Website and web application developers have begun to force the issue, drawing a line in the sand and stating a timeline after which IE6 support will cease. In fact, we now see that none other than the Norweigians have taken a leadership role in this issue, starting a movement to force IE6 abandonment. As a company, we at OakTree Digital have discussed this topic as well, and in the coming months, we too will no longer include IE6 and Firefox 2 in our default list of browsers we ensure compatibility for. When that time comes, I, too, will upgrade...but not a moment before.

   

  In the scheme of things, the Internet (and the web browsers that allow us all to experience it) is still relatively new. We should hope and expect that in the near future, any competing web browsers will follow the same set of standards so that development doesn't require one part science and one part magic. That day is surely coming, and not a moment too soon.
  
  

   

   

   

   

  
  

• Recession? Online Giving is Great in Portland.

  Posted By: David Martin

  Now that 2009 is just underway, substantial doubts linger about the ongoing impacts of the U.S. recession, and what it will mean for businesses and nonprofits. Common sense dictates that shrinking assets in the world of affluence will eventually affect large and small businesses alike, as well as the nonprofit sector. But if all the recent gloom and doom has you down, we suggest you consider the Willamette Week’s 2008 Give!Guide as a glimmer of hope in an otherwise stormy outlook.
  
  The Give!Guide, the brainchild of Richard Meeker, Publisher of Willamette Week, has steadily grown in attention and dollars donated since its inception in 2004—and 2008 was no exception. The Give!Guide aggregates some of the most innovative and worthy nonprofits in the Portland area, particularly those with leadership and influence in the under 35-year old demographic. This year, the Give!Guide included 55 such nonprofits—across categories like Arts, Social Action and the Environment.
  
  Since 2006, OakTree Digital has joined Willamette Week and its other partner, Momentum Market Intelligence, to design and develop the online Give!Guide. OakTree’s contribution has resulted in a sleek and sophisticated charitable online giving engine that’s attractive, informative and easy to use. Since 2006, the Give!Guide has experienced the sort of annual growth that would make Wall Street salivate. Consider the last three years:
  

  • 2006 Give!Guide raised $228,000
  • 2007 Give!Guide raised $518,000
  • 2008 Give!Guide raised over $826,000

  This year, despite the worst recessionary period since the Great Depression and this being an election year, the 2008 Give!Guide raised more than +60% in donations compared to 2007. It’s a remarkable achievement for the Give!Guide partners, but it speaks volumes about the Portland community—and, we hope, the national community as a whole. Read Willamette Week's January 21 article reflecting on this year's Give!Guide successes.
  
  As we ring in the New Year, here’s to the 2008 Give!Guide, to all the good that it has done and will do. And here’s looking ahead to the 2009 Give!Guide; with the success of these last three years, what a year 2009 should be!

• "IM" is a verb

  Posted By: Lawrence W. Gallick

  I searched ["im" is a verb] in Google and didn't get anything substantial in terms of results, but I think it is time we all face it that "i.m." has become a verb.  It is actually a very commonly used word in techno-babble.

   

  Also, and I am not a lawyer so I don't know how this works but, I would also like to declare my intention to patent an eyetracking device that will sense when I look at an IM window and auto-magically make the window stop blinking.  I just have to actually invent it first.

  
  

• Recession? Been there, done that!

  Posted By: John Schmitt

  Being in business almost sixteen years gives one a perspective that hopefully can be used to guide us and our clients into the unknown ahead.

  I vividly remember the “tech recession” of 2001-2003 and how it affected our clients. So, assuming you are not in banking or real estate, what did we learn that may help us all get through to 2010?

  Back then, once a business had built their brochure site it was left to just exist on the “internet super-highway.” MARCOM folks cut or lost their budgets because they couldn’t quantitatively justify additional expenditures on the web.

  Planning for a recession is totally different today. Internet usage has not only exploded, it has become indispensable. Customer’s expectations for the kinds of instant information, “touch points” and ease of use are embedded in everyone’s buying process.

  Now is when you need to keep your internet presence active and responsive. Demonstrate how your products save time and money. Give prospects examples of successes they can model. Help them in their buying decisions.

  What OakTree Digital learned back then was to sharply focus our services to what our clients’ needed to keep their businesses thriving. And, we're still doing it.

  Look for my “Seven Ways to Recession Proof Your Business On-Line”, coming soon.

• President 2.0: Best Internet Strategy Wins

  Posted By: David Martin

  I'm fully aware that political punditry in America these days is about as overabundant as corn in Iowa, but from a web developer's perspective, this year's Presidential campaign has been remarkable. It's not a stretch to say that a key advantage to the Obama camp has been its superior Internet Strategy, which has included microblogging with Twitter, RSS feeds, wiki pages, video game advertising and of course, a Facebook page:

   

  
  

  

   

  Viewed as Internet Marketing--which, of course, this is--Obama's online strategy has rewarded him with approximately $1B online allowing him to steamroll his opponents along the way. Viewed as an organization, or even a corporation, the Obama campaign appears to be top to bottom one of the most successful marketing machines in US history.

   

  From a political perspective, the implications of this strategy are a game changer going forward. The superior online strategy wins elections, or more modestly, is a key factor in winning elections.

   

  For the rest of us, we can correctly extrapolate that  for a marketing program to be successful, its Internet Strategy must be core, if not the marketing program. Marketers have to consider not only the marketing message, but SEO, user-contributed content and implementing tools that allow for simple publishing to a wide network of motivated end users. Gone are the days where a one-dimensional campaign will do. We're about to put our first President 2.0 in office, and folks, you can bet that change won't be far behind.

• Direct Mail - doomed to fail?

  Posted By: Lawrence W. Gallick

  I don't know about you, but I rarely get a solicitation in the mail that I pay any attention to.  Especially if it seems too good to be true - because it is.  I find it interesting therefore how much money companies seem to pour into it.  I don't know the conversion rates that are deemed to be 'good' offhand, but they are extremely low.  I think this stems from the fact that folks are usually in a flustered mood when opening these things up - we are so flooded with them these days that the simple chore of disposing of all them in a safe and somewhat environmentally sound way is time consuming and ensures you focus on their absurdities.

   

  There's probably another component as well however:  we have become so efficient at using digital filters and textual cues to discard irrelevant or spam email.  We have also simultaneously become conditioned to the impermanence of digital bytes.  We can discard at will, understanding that the utter rapidity of the destruction process allows us to shed the intrusion like a minor distraction, rather than a physical and time consuming burden.

   

  Yes, I did finally go through the giant pile of mail on my desk.

  
  

• Business Process Integrated Training Courses

  Posted By: OakTree Digital

  From Brandon Hall Research eLearning conference in San Jose: Very interesting session on merging actual data intensive business processes with eLearning implementations. Idea is that most training courses are developed separately from the actual business process. You could say “divorced from”.

   

  What’s required is for the eLearning environment to have access to actual product, marketing or sales training information via database access or timely XML exports.

   

  BTW, most business’s data happens to reside in Excel spreadsheets.

   

  One example shown was of the how New Balance Shoes integrated new product data from normal development and marketing processes from database so it could be used by the product research teams, production, sliced for sales team training and consumer marketing messages.  “Chunks” of text descriptions are then fed into the training materials more or less dynamically.

   

  Since they come out with 50-80 new products a quarter it’s the only way to organize and execute on the volume of sales and marketing’s training needs. Thought provoking.

• OakTree Gets the Brandon Hall Hardware

  Posted By: John Schmitt

  Talk about "taking one for the team". Last night I had the pleasure of receiving a 2008 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award for Best Custom Content for the “Alcohol Server Education” course. As a recipient of an award at the Conference we got to demo the course during the day in the conference hall which generated a lot of interest and comments from the attendees.

  Cool side note: the online course is attracting more students every month AND the test scores are averaging higher than the in-person classes. This is a testament to the thoughtful instructional design elements and edgy user interface our team developed.

  Pictures to follow.

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