Karlyn Morissette

I felt as though it was time for an update, partially by requests I’ve received from my friends in the community, on where I am with things and where I’m going. Here goes nothing!

On Fire Engine RED…

Most of you know that I was a fan of Fire Engine RED for years before they hired me, and since I started working for them, as a free lancer in June 2009, and then full time as of August, my admiration has only grown.

Yes, I have drunk the RED koolaid.

I love my job and the people I work with - they just never cease to amaze me. As a client, I knew they jumped through hoops for me. Now that I see it from the other side, I’m even more amazed. It’s completely the opposite of working for a college, all in a really good way. People are empowered to make things happen and the pace is unreal, but it was such a welcomed change. I also love that I get to work with multiple colleges from all over the world, instead of focusing specifically on one (don’t get me wrong, working for one has its benefits as well) but it really keeps things interesting and has helped me to see how much nuance goes on when selecting the right strategy for a school.

But most of all, I love that the focus is always doing right by the client. Believe it or not, the internal conversation is not “how can we make more money”….it’s “how can we make it better for the client.”  That’s the benefit of working for a privately-owned company - we don’t have investor to answer to about profits. If you’re thinking about making the jump from a college to a vendor, ownership is an incredibly important thing to consider. Make no mistake, there are evil vendors out there who will tell schools anything to get their money, and sell products and services they really don’t need…but I could never live with myself if I worked for one of them, particularly after being on the college side of things. I watch this team work so hard to make sure that our tools and services are as good as they can be…constantly developing and improving them.

And I love working from home in my sweat pants. The ferrets love it too

On the transition from working at a college to working for a vendor…

The thing that has been the hardest for me the past few months is the way people who work at colleges now view me that I’m on the other side. From my point of view, I wanted to do meaningful work in the higher education market and, ironically, wasn’t able to do that while working at a school because of personality conflicts and internal politics. I went to Fire Engine RED to do the type of work I wanted to do…and now I feel as though I can’t even talk about what I’m doing within the community because I will be viewed with an eye of suspicion. “She’s just trying to sell us a product/service” is the unstated reaction I get, even from people who have known me for a while. Those are the ones that hurt the most. I’ve never really been a self-promotional type of person…sure, I’ve done it but it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth…and now to constantly be looked at in that way…it hurts.

This has really affected my blogging….it’s why you don’t see me write much anymore. I kind of feel like I just don’t want to try to help people that are just viewing it as a sales tactic. It’s particularly frustrating for me since I really like helping schools get on the right track with their marketing efforts, and I like tossing around ideas in the public space. But now I feel like I can’t. And it really sucks because I’m really excited about the projects I’ve gotten a chance to work on and have shared that excitement privately with friends, but don’t feel as though I can’t share it publicly at all. Goodness knows, the last thing I want to be is a salesman.

The irony is that the minute I went to the other side, I instantly had so much more information available to me about topics that I had been writing and speaking about for years…and also instantly became one of the least credible sources of that information in the community.

On DoJo…

When I started my company, it was because I was bored at my job at Dartmouth and needed an outlet for the strategies I wanted to try. Beyond that, though, it was part of a 5 year plan I had going. When I started it, my plan was to stay at Dartmouth for about 3 more years, do the Master of Liberal Studies program, and then go get a Ph.D. somewhere. My thought was that it would be really nice to have a steady stream of income with my business built up for when I went back to school.

About six months after I started the business, everything changed in a way that I could not have predicted when I started the company. I left Dartmouth and went to a job that challenges me more than anything I thought was possible (believe me, I am no longer bored!) and I abandoned my plan to leave the workforce for a few years to get a Ph.D. Thus, the way that DoJo fits into my life changed too. I’ve gotten to work with some great schools, and have made a pretty nice chunk of change from it….but I really want to focus my energy on Fire Engine RED at this point and have decided to stop taking on new clients for the time being (Current clients, fear not! This does not apply to you).

Starting DoJo and doing that for a year was pretty much one of the best moves I’ve made and I’m so glad I did it - it opened a lot of doors. But life changes and I’m at a point where I don’t want to work myself into the ground to maintain everything I’m doing. I want to be really clear that this was my decision to maintain my quality of life, and for no other reason. I’m going to be starting my Ph.D. program in a few months after all, and I’m training to run a marathon and I’m teaching Internet marketing and strategies classes through Champlain College, all on top of Fire Engine RED…and occasionally I actually like to have a life! Something has to give and I am completely at peace with it being my company.

/update

You didn’t think I’d stay away forever, right?

There have been so many twitter/speaking controversies lately, and I wanted to add my perspective.

Last week it was the two Chronicle stories (here and here) rehashing the #heweb09 keynote. This morning I read Danah Boyd’s rant in her blog about the debacle at Web 2.0 Expo.

I fail to see why anyone is surprised when a speaker gives a sub-par talk and this happens. Do I feel for what these speakers go through on a human level? Of course. No one is secure enough to be able to brush off what happened to #notjared and Danah Boyd. But am I surprised that it happened? Not remotely. And they shouldn’t be either, especially since they are speaking at technology conferences.

When you put yourself out there publicly, you have to expect that some people are not going to like what you have to say, or are going to say stupid things about you. You will never please everyone and it is useless to try. People are going to say stuff about you on Twitter. I’ve been called a bitch more times than I care to remember (though never to my face, of course). I’ve had snide/snarky remarks made about me and, yes, it stings. But savvy audiences have high expectations. The time has passed when the audience goes into a talk under the assumption that the speaker is more educated in a topic than they are. Oftentimes, the audience is just as knowledgeable so if you don’t get up there and know your stuff, you are going to be in trouble.

But it’s not all about knowing your stuff. It’s also about how you approach the talk.

I do disagree with Danah Boyd’s blog on a few key points, but specifically the one where she suggested a “pop-y” talk to engage the audience. It’s not necessarily about the subject matter you’re speaking about - it’s about how you approach the audience. A few weeks ago at the AMA Symposium, I gave one of the most boring talks on the planet - one on calculating ROI. There were lots of numbers and math, and yes I used bullet points in my slides. But the audience was engaged. They drove a lot of the talk. I had an exceptionally boring subject that resulted in a great audience experience (or so they told me) because I made sure to frame it for them. I practiced beforehand. I didn’t need to print out my notes and bring them with me. I didn’t have anything on stage to read off of. This allowed me to focus on the audience and respond to their needs during the talk.

Speaking is about helping the audience. It’s not about you as the speaker.

I would never reprimand the audience for what they say on Twitter during any talk that I give. If they aren’t getting what they need or expect from my talk, then I EXPECT them to react on Twitter. I’ve never been nailed to the wall like some people, but I don’t rule it out as a possibility. Instead, I plan my talks with that expectation - even if Twitter isn’t being shown on a screen behind me, I still know that people have phones and laptops.

My opinion on all of these situations is quite simple: If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen. The possibility of being nailed to the wall doesn’t scare me away. It motivates me.

And the things happening on Twitter are not going to go away, not matter how many articles and blog posts are written that reprimand the audience. Twitter will only exaggerate  things - you’ll get awesome feedback on it when you do well but you have to expect it to be bad when you do badly.

Like Danah Boyd, I get nervous before every talk (though not to the point of throwing up). Speaking is not something that I do well naturally, and I’ve put a lot of work into it. Some talks go better than others. I’m always my own worst critic, so after most talks, I think I sucked even if other people tell me its good (#heweb09 was a good example of that). Every once in a while I get into a zone while speaking, where I really feel like I nailed it. I have to get “geared up” before I get up in front of people, and I definitely crash afterwards. Being an introvert, it’s exceptionally draining for me. There’s typically a recovery period after a conference.

But I even with all this, I wouldn’t give it up. Speaking is awesome. It’s fun, it’s challenging and I think it’s one of the best skills someone can develop. If you go into it expect it to be all glory, however, you have got another thing coming. For one hour on stage, I typically spend about 20 hours preparing my slidedeck, and then another 5-10 practicing and refining it. but when it goes well, it’s all worth it.

And when it doesn’t go well, it’s worth it too. It’s a learning experience that will make me better at the next talk.

I’m taking a break from this blog….not sure when/if I’ll be back.

Catch you on the flip side.

I spent the last few days out in Milwaukee, for my first journey to HighEdWeb. Wow. Just wow. It was great to meet so many of you in person, and to see so many old friends in one place! I wish I had had more time to spend with all of you.

I’d heard it for years, but this is definitely the premiere web conference in higher ed (and now I’ve been to just about all of them and feel like I can make that judgement!).  From start to finish, this was a very well done event. Everything from the presentations to the more social aspects of it…it was everything I could ever expect from an event and has surpassed my previous “favorite conference ever” choice of An Event Apart. It’s not easy to outdo Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, but the conference committee did it in spades.

My favorite speakers of the conference were Tony Dunn, Kevin Prentiss, Mark Greenfield, Paul Gilzow and Michael Fienen.  Unbelievable job guys. But everyone else I saw were awesome too. This group is one the ball! But that makes me sad too, because I know that so many of them don’t get the respect they deserve from the schools they work at. That means there’s so many good ideas and enthusiasm and knowledge that is going to waste because of internal politics and egos. I may be a bit cynical, but I’m not sure that higher ed deserves this group. Having recently made the jump from working for a college to working for a vender full time, I’ll say emphatically that I feel much more professional fulfillment as a vendor, but I still get to do the type of work for colleges that I like. Maybe it’s something for you guys to consider?

One thing I’ll say is that I still feel like I’m starving for a conference that addresses more advanced web marketing issues. Maybe higher ed isn’t there yet? Any suggestions?

I’m sure by now, many of you will have heard about the great Twitter revolt of 2009. Yes, it got ugly, and as a speaker that stuff scares the crap out of me, but it was well-deserved commentary. I was eating lunch with my fellow .eduGuru writers, and we were planning to leave the keynote entirely to have a blog meeting, but then we saw the title slide. It had an awesome drop shadow, used a 1990s powerpoint design and was pale yellow on white. I commented “we can’t leave….this is going to be a train wreck.”

And so it was. People who weren’t at the conference, but followed it on Twitter, have given this group a bit of flack for going after him so harshly. But they weren’t there. This is a great group of people and they don’t go after someone like this without provocation. I don’t believe that it’s wrong to be on Twitter while you’re listening to a presentation. I also don’t believe that we, as an audience, should revere speakers like they are super-human. They are being paid to help us and if they take that money, and don’t do their job, there should be consequences. Twitter, and tools like it, give the power to the audience. Maybe it will encourage speakers to pay more attention to doing a solid job, and really meeting needs.

Finally, an extra special thanks to Paul Gilzow for pulling a Kanye in my presentation

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This Fall, I’m going to be teaching an online class in Internet Marketing through Champlain College. This is quite literally a crash course - it’s just seven weeks long but it will be packed full of information. This course will be a lot of fun, but will also be a lot of hard work. When you complete it, you will have a great base to build or improve online initiatives for your institution.

Who should take this course:

This is an introductory course that would be perfect for professionals that want to learn the basics about marketing on the web. It would be great for those who have a foundation in traditional marketing and communications techniques, and are looking to update their tactics.

What it will cover:

This is not a course to take if you want to learn how to build websites. This is a course that will teach you how to use your web presence, and other tools available online, to achieve institutional business goals.

• General marketing overview
• Web Analytics
• Online Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Social Networks
• Mobile Web
• Video
• SEO
• RSS

The course grading is heavily based on discussion and interaction. Though there will be some higher level theory (coming mostly from the required readings), the discussion components will really focus more on practical application.

Interested in signing up? The course is Internet Marketing, MKT 250-45. Visit Champlain’s website for more information »

Questions? Shoot me an email or leave a comment!

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