High Ed Hangout

It’s a special holiday episode of High Ed Hangout (we have holiday beverages!). We jump right in with our favorite note-taking apps and then transition to our yearly tech (and non-tech) Christmas lists. What note-taking apps do you use? iCoud Notes or Google Keep (quick notes or lists) Google Docs Textmate OneNote (handwriting recognition) Bear... Read more »

It’s been a while since we’ve met, so we spend some time talking pandemic and lock-down, and what the work environment will look like when this is all over. Then we move into tech and talk a bit about the new Apple M1 chips. Haircuts blah blah How has social isolation been for everyone? Social... Read more »

We still live in Covid-land so we talk about haircuts, Covid trackers that our schools are using or building, and what it will look like to come back to campus. We also sprinkle in a bit of Apple to try and add a positive spin. We all have haircuts except Dan (who is still very... Read more »

We’re still figuring out this quarantine thing. Many of us need a haircut! We go over reopening plans and talk through what other schools have announced before going into how we list areas of study and majors on our websites. The state of Arkansas is officially OPEN! WOOT! Lotsa weekend party barges! Anti-Mask League NPR... Read more »

Our various states are starting to open up and our schools are starting to discuss opening in the fall as well. What does that look like? Is it too soon? How do we make that happen? Arkansas is opening the state again! Yay? Iowa will be opening soon. The difference between virtual vs in person... Read more »

The global pandemic has just begun, and we’re all adjusting in different ways. We talk about how we’re handling things personally, and how our universities are handling things (via policy and technology). Waiting on Spillers… Talking about MacOS updates (that’s why Spillers is late) Arkansas has a curfew  Michigan is in 100% lockdown (nothing by... Read more »

It’s the first HEH of 2020! Grand Valley State is moving to PHP, so we chat with Daniel about the best way to make that move. We also chat about hidden nav menus and UX decisions for a university homepage. GVSU wanted to switch to PHP (away from CF) and chatted with UALR about how... Read more »

Happy holidays loyal HEH listeners. We have a holiday-themed episode for you. We ring in the holidays (all of them!) with festive beverages and the tech items on our own Christmas lists. HEHH to all! Holiday-themed drinks celebrating all the “holidays” Hanukkah Three Kings Day Winter Solstice St. Lucia Day St. Nicholas Day Christmas Kwanzaa... Read more »

It’s been 6 months since you’ve heard from us… we’re back! In this episode, we’ll catch you up on what’s happened the past 6 months and take a look at the new WT.social. Daniel had to move away when a tree blew into his house Scott went to AMA Higher Education Symposium Founders Beer lawsuit/issues... Read more »

We take a trip down memory lane to some old PBS shows and transition to GVSU’s choice to put ColdFusion out to pasture. We look at the positives and negatives to alternatives for them. Ken remembers the PBS Zoom intro song (1999 version) Zoom intro (1976) Daniel remembers PBS 3-2-1 Contact GVSU is changing away... Read more »

Daniel has a work emergency and joins us late. We take a look at our top podcast downloads and dig into details about Daniel’s plans for showing/hiding audience content on the UALR website. Admissions scandal The history of Founders Beer Company Our top downloads outside the US South Korea Google Home translation Mercator Map Projections... Read more »

We get into our experiences with working remotely and how we like it, GVSU’s new president, our beards, and the Ooopsie Poopsie podcast is finally coming soon! Remote working? Good? Bad? Who does it? GVSU got a new president Common App Chat (GVSU looking at it, Iowa moved to it this year) Oopsie Poopsie Podcast…... Read more »

The conversation starts with different (interesting… disgusting) ways to ingest alcohol. We chat a bit about new MacBooks before transitioning to conference that (Dave is speaking at a few. Daniel talks about his experience at WordCamp National, and we get into the recent WordPress controversy Different ways to ingest alcohol How old are your MacBooks?... Read more »

It’s been a while since we gathered to record, so we reminisce for a bit before talking about poop (in relation to Andre’s upcoming podcast “Oopsie Poopsie”). We hit on recent travels, and then before concluding quickly mention websites. Andrea’s podcast (Oopsie Poopsie) is coming soon… and so we talk about poop for a good... Read more »

Two of us have moved into a new house and one of us has returned from a vacation in Greece. We catch up a bit and chat about a WordPress conference and home networking equipment. It’s our 50th episode (gold is the gift to give us). Only one couple has ever made it to their... Read more »

Beer + Yogurt = yuck, a report from WPCampus (project Gutenberg), and a discussion on WWDC updates. Does yogurt plus beer work? Is there a git for audio editing? Daniel and Ken going to WPCampus (schedule) Excited about hearing about Project Gutenberg (the new WP editor) Try Gutenberg WWDC You can now facetime with 32... Read more »

We spend a lot of time going down the wormhole of old Tweets this episode, which leads us to all of our old internet posts (and some embarrassment). Dave teaches us about birding (cuz he’s and old man). Dave’s Twitter cover  photo is famous. Ken’s Twitter handle (now publicly accessible) We dig up our first... Read more »

We share some of our favorite web tools again before tornado sirens go off in Iowa HighedWeb vs. Wp Campus Conference (Ken and maybe Daniel going) Google IO Extended local conferences Don’t say dub-dub-dub for “WWW” The semester is almost over. When does your school start? What’s your favorite new tool when it comes to... Read more »

What’s the structure of our university systems? What are our favorite university websites? Academic logos vs athletic logos. Dave’s dog joins in on the conversation. How are your state universities structured? Iowa is in a Regent system (but 3 different independent universities) GVSU is totally independent, but funded by the state of MI UALR is... Read more »

Dan has had a bit to drink tonight so we get to hear a few funny stories from him. Dave tells us about his trip to Austin for SXSW Edu. Ken has a New Mac Smell candle Dave went to SXSW Edu A lot about equality and movements First gen students or millennial and teachers... Read more »

Tonight we talk about how far back we support certain browsers, whether iOS will someday merge with MacOS, and list our favorite note-taking and weather apps. Audio Drive in Zencastr Dave will be at SXSW Edu next week (Dan will be in Jamaica) What’s new in Chrome? How far back do you support old browsers... Read more »

Dan is drinking the best wine ever, Dave is moving, Daniel is going to Greece. Everything is going great… until GDPR hits. What is it? What are we doing about it? We end on a lighter note and talk about the shows we are watching. The best wine ever (from S. Africa) Diemersfontein Dave is... Read more »

We talk about beers, dumplings, things-a-changin’ and bring back the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day. Beer (like usual) Dumplings (not like usual) How often do things change? The web changes quickly and regularly? What else changes? What keeps you coming back? University vs. corporate and the ability to explore Comes down to company culture... Read more »

The HEH dudes talk about what they got for the holidays, any new conference attendances and then dig in on a new site search tool for GVSU, who needs to move away from the Google Appliance. Google Home tricks and games Akinator What did we get for Christmas? Dan got a Nest Thermostat and a... Read more »

Dan got a new phone (cheap!), Dave got rid of Facebook, Daniel updated WordPress, Scott likes Reply All Podcast, Ken is scared of browser fingerprinting… and MORE! Dave deleted his FB account. There’s a place where FB shows you what it knows about you. Your Information > Your Categories Daniel just barely missed out on... Read more »

This week’s chat is about security. Dave went to a conference and wants to disconnect and move to the woods. We mess with Ken’s new Google Home. Dan is just sort of with us this week due to some technical issues. Ken got a Google Home… so we played with that a bit. Dave went... Read more »

Should Daniel get an iPhone X? We all weigh in on his tech purchase. We also chat about the Digital Summit Conference, how the new GVSU Admissions app is going and password vaults – is the cloud safe for your passwords? Thoughts on the iPhone X VERY expensive for what? Daniel is going to get... Read more »

Where does almond milk come from? We have a (maybe too in-depth) conversation to try to figure it out. We also chat about a bunch of other randomness including google tracking, home assistants (Google Home and Echo), and Dan’s upcoming Magic the Gathering event. A discussion on Almond (and various other) milks Dave got a... Read more »

We took an episode to talk about our tools a little while back. This time we take some time to talk about our favorite apps for our mobile devices (outside of the normal preinstalled ones). What are your favorite iOS or Android apps? What are you favorite smartphone apps? Kindle For (pleasure) reading Kindle Book... Read more »

Ken tells us all about his trip to WordCamp Minneapolis. We dig into cloud hosting (mainly for CMS), and get a bit into using Docker. Ken has Apple AirPods (and likes them) Wordcamp Minneapolis (~200 people) Keynote was about technology industry and mental health The community behind WP is very involved Rest API PODS (for... Read more »

It’s a random conversation this time, folks. We chat Zime (it’s back!), Dan getting stopped by the TSA, some future conferences, new podcasts we enjoy and Dave’s classes starting this fall. ZIMA IS BACK, BABY! The US asking for passwords to your phone at the border. TSA always asks to touch Dan’s belly. Dan accidently... Read more »

Russian hacking (they’re after Daniel), Admissions Apps, Google Search Appliance, Analytics, Icon Libraries, and more… brought to you today by the letter H (as in HEH, as in High Ed Hangout). Enjoy! Daniel gets hacked (likely Russians) and keeps dropping out of the podcast. He changed all his passwords. They will be listed in the... Read more »

Scott had a son, and is adjusting to life as a new parent (and the time he took off work). The GVSU guys jump back into accessibility training with a new consultant…. and then somehow the conversation transitions to quilts. Scott had a son, and talks about paternity leave and FMLA and paternity/maternity leave at... Read more »

Daniel kicks things off by trying to enjoy some fried chicken, but is foiled by his cats. From there we chat about our design process and making sure it fits the larger university brand. Then we try to figure out the definition of a landing page. Design process paper sketch Photoshop Omnigraffle for wireframing How... Read more »

It starts with the weather, moves on to politics, and then to religion (or at least a TV show slightly about religion) before the conversation moves on to discussions about college applications and how to improve their usability. It’s storming in Iowa and Daniel lives in tornado alley. (small talk about the weather) Presidential Politics... Read more »

The conversation tonight includes things learned via penetration testing at GVSU, what we know about retention policies at our schools (Internet Archive?) and content update policies. We also learn that GVSU Library has puppets you can check out… like a lot of puppets! Penetration testing at GVSU Very fixable things were found (one thing was... Read more »

Daniel is in Iowa City visiting Ken and Scott, so they are podcasting from the same location at the University of Iowa Libraries. Dan and Dave join remotely to discuss personal sites and hosting on campus and focus groups and how the kids use the internets these days. Ken, Daniel and Scott are in the... Read more »

The lost episode. Scott lost his internet connection, so the episode got called off. No internet = no podcast.

How do we handle user tracking and privacy policies for our university? What do we do for retargeting and advertising? What do we all use personally to keep our internet usage private? He got a new one https://www.crabbygear.com/ Privacy policies on our sites User tracking is somewhat new in higher edu, but commercial sites have... Read more »

Dan and Dave bring an enlightening report back from the CSUN Accessibility Conference in lovely San Diego, CA. Dan and Dave just got back from CSUN Accessibility Conference “Everyone will have a disability at some point in their life” Accessibility is just a branch of usability The UN has a ratification to make all their... Read more »

People keep uploading HUGE images, so we chat about the best ways to handle automatically optimizing them via the various CMS tools. We also dip into usability and card sorting exercises. Ken has an issue with people uploading non-optimized LARGE images. What’s the best way to deal with that? Img tag can use “srcset” which... Read more »

Tonight the topics center around outside vendors and products for various tasks at our universities. We cover digital marketing, scholarship searches, chat and events calendars. We also touch on strategic planning. What outside vendors do you use? GVSU: Siteimprove GVSU: google and FB ads consultant provide a report for digital advertising UALR: digital marketing buyer... Read more »

Tonight the High Ed Hangout gents talk about security and what they’re doing to make their sites more secure. They also chat about rolling out new features and updating their CMS. Possible SQL injection attack on GVSU reported by a student Security offices in all of our separate universities who look for this. UALR has... Read more »

The gents chat about current books they are reading and then talk about what (non-computer) hardware they use for home, media, health and more. What books are we currently reading? What hardware do you use? Amazon Echo Smartthings Home Control Ken built an echo with a Raspberry Pi Nest Thermostat Automatic bluetooth connector for car... Read more »

This episode is the podcast podcast (how meta!). The gang shares their favorite podcasts that span the gamut on topics. Tune in, and you might just find something new to listen to. Our Favorite Podcasts Serial Season was waaaaay better than season 2 Reply All Random topics about the internet Startup Podcast The startup of... Read more »

A site gets destroyed (temporarily), and how we all test our sites and prepare for the worst. We also talk about our favorite childhood games. Ken destroys his Iowa Library site Testing with the new google tester Used a plugin for compression (w3 total cache plugin) Got all 100’s (because an error 500 page loads... Read more »

The gang talks about the what new strategies and goals they have for their schools/sites. It covers speed, new applications, and updates to the CMS. They also look into web boot camps for new hires. What’s 2017 going to be in your area? Strategies? Goals? GVSU Upgrade to the CMS to reflect the new design... Read more »

For some reason throw-up is a common thread to kick this one off. Dan’s cat throws up, and Dave and Dan take a trip which involves a (rather humorous) throw-up story as well involving an airplane barf bag. We also chat about web infrastructure in other parts of the world, and how much we hate... Read more »

Ken goes to an island and gets married. GVSU looks at taking over web representation of grad programs, We talk about staff training opportunities and communities that our individual universities provide. Leroyyyy Jenkins! GVSU, after looking at analytics has taken over grad programs centrally because there is very little (or poor) data available. Does the... Read more »

We delve a bit deeper into Daniel’s trip to the HighEdWeb conference in Memphis. He shares the take-aways, and we chat about how all of us can implement some of the things talked about (centralized web support across campus – pay vs. no-pay). Daniel sums up HighEdWeb in Memphis http://wso2.com/ WordPress API being developed (very... Read more »

This episode is all about conferences. How do we get funding? How often do we get to go? How do we select a conference? We also reminisce (again) about how great SXSW used to be. Daniel at HighEdWeb in Memphis Fienen’s Totally Topical, Terrific Tutorial to Tag Manager Double-ken What makes a good conference? SXSW... Read more »