Alex Harries's diary

Apologies for the 50-in-1 update, but I've got loads of equally important (or, if you're a normal human being, equally boring) things to ramble on about...

Gamel - Pugwash mag editor and graphic designer extraordinaire - has finished the image which will adorn the back of the Pugwash hoodies this year:

I particularly love the dig at my Mac "obsession" - the monkey is typing away on a Banana laptop. In my defence, and as far as I'm concerned, I spend a lot of time on my laptop because I'm doing work - everyone else, however, has christened my laptop "Alex's girlfriend" (much to my better half's amusement) because of the amount of time I spend on it... Cheers... Gits the lot of you! ;o)

It's been a bit cold lately, and I grabbed a shot of the sunset over Biggin Hill while I was home visiting the 'rents. Apologies for the quality of the shot - I blame the camera - but the sky was like cut glass and I could see clearly right across London (about 40 miles) from the back window of the house...

Talking of photos, on my way back to Portsmouth, my carriage stopped next to this frankly ridiculous waste of a sign yesterday:

On the subject of bitching, I don't think I'll ever understand why some people feel the need to rip other people's work apart in a public forum just because they don't understand its purpose; it's like me accusing Aston Martin of selling overpriced rubbish just because their cars cost more than a Ford Fiesta... Meh... Sorry for the oblique rant, but it's frustrating when you pretty much live and breathe your media presence and sometimes the only feedback you receive is complaints!! Still, it could be worse... ;o)

In webgeekery, I've been tweaking our "news wizard" - a (very) basic wizard-style web tool we use to create news articles:

Where we used to be quite limited in terms of what we could do with the images in news articles - you got a 200x150 pixel image in your news article, with or without a caption, and that was it - you had to know a bit of HTML if you wanted to tweak it - now our online news editors have the ability to create news articles which have a widescreen image right across the article:

The main application for this will, I hope, be when we start putting more of Pugwash magazine's features online, as it will allow us to make a bigger feature of the article image, since the magazine is very much a visually-led medium. Unfortunately, with only two more issues of the mag left this year, I can't help feeling time's running out very quickly already!

A quick stop press: Digitially Imported 'net radio - I've been listening to...

Hello everyone! I'm currently bashing this out on one of the two massively popular open-access laptops provided at the NUSSL convention to allow delegates to check their Facebook catch up on important work ;o) As a result, this is going to be a bit hurried...

A quick bit of background: NUSSL is, to all intents and purposes, the trading side of the NUS, providing large-scale buying power to students' unions across the country for a wide variety of services. Each year, the NUSSL convention is held in some plush location, and is basically a big networking-and-freebie-grabbing opportunity - the antithesis of the NUS Conference, if you like.

While sitting in NUSSL's AGM this morning (notable for being possibly the shortest AGM in the history of mankind), I decided to start scratching out some thoughts on the strategy I'd like to see the Union's online media employing in the coming years. Much of it is already in operation in some form or other, and much of it is common sense, but we don't - as far as I know! - have a "ten commandments" listing of the key underpinnings which can and do make the Union's online media presence great.

So, here's my first, very rough draft of the things that I think might be vitally important to the Union if it is to make sure that what it is doing online continues to be relevant and effective for its students in the coming few years. If you can be bothered to read on (and, I'll be honest, these ramblings are usually enough to make even the most committed person stifle a yawn or two), then please bear in mind a) that this is a VERY rough draft, that b) there are more people involved in setting the overall direction of the Union that just myself, by a very long shot, and c) that nothing below is presented in any order of priority. At this stage this is just a simple listing of ideas.

As a result, the bullet points below will no doubt be reworded and rejigged, and may completely change, in the coming couple of months. That said, I hope some of the common-sense aspects will stay in some form or other!

Hokay, let's go: in the next couple of years, I would like the Union to focus on...

• Content digitisation: get *everything* online, delete nothing, and make it as easy and logical as possible for people to discover this information,
• Instilling a cultural shift in the Union's staff and student volunteers: it is important to seek to foster a sense of ownership and a desire to invest time, effort and - where appropriate - money into the development of the Union's web presence,
• Ensuring training is a cornerstone of everything we do online: it is important that any new aspect to the website, any new tools, and any new functionality, is both as easy to use as possible, and as well-documented as possible, so that it is as easy as possible for anyone to quickly pick up and use a new system,
• Investing in developing and documenting the current Content Management System (a Frankenstein-like version of Mambo): the only way to get the most out of UPSU.net is to make it as easy as possible for developers and owners alike to develop it*,
• Committing and maintaining its focus on the importance of accessible and usable design**,
• Avoiding the temptation to allow invasive advertising practises: too many good websites are let down by an overwhelming abundance of adverts which only serve to annoy visitors with very little effective gain. Sorry for the mini-rant!
• Investing in staff: I really do think that we can justify employing a member of staff to work full-time on the website. With the right commitment from the Union's myriad staff and student volunteers, the job of maintaining, updating, and develo...
  
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That's the end of elections for another year, and the last year I'll be involved in the Union. It's been a helluva fortnight, with a larger UPSU Media presence than ever before.

For the first year ever, we've had photographers and videographers (is that the right term?) running around at pretty much every elections-related event, a massive amount of visual media, a great deal of coverage in Pugwash News, not to mention Pure FM's involvement in interviewing the candidates live on air and broadcasting the hustings candidates' question time events in the evenings last week.

I'm amazingly proud and grateful to all of our student volunteers for all their work in the last few weeks - we have, for the first time, a lot of video footage (and there's more to come, which will be used as teaser-material for next year I hope), and there's been an almost constant stream of photos and updates going online from elections-related events.

(You can check out the elections photos, videos, and Pure FM podcasts, and our elections minisite - the largest ever at 75 pages - here).

This year, we've seen roughly a 15% rise in voter turnout despite the poor weather and the end of term (who doesn't know at least one friend who went home half way through this week suffering from parental withdrawal symptoms? ;o) and, although candidate numbers were the same as last year (fourteen candidates), the distribution among positions has been almost diametrically opposed, with last year's least-contested positions seeing the largest numbers of candidates this year.

A couple of people have observed that this year's line-up has been a very marked "pitched battle" between sports clubs and societies and, while I can't comment on how accurate that statement is - it is, after all, a pretty narrow-focused assessment of a candidate to say that they're a "sporto" or "society person" (or "soco"?) - the figures do seem to show that the candidates who received the most votes in each position are all well-known fac...

The Union Council report of a Media & Publifications Numpty, aged 19 and 36/4...

This month, UPSU’s media bods have mainly been focusing their attention on…

Pure FM

• The 24-hour broadcast is looming - as February’s Union Council happens, the broadcast will be underway, with charity fund-raising eBay auctions taking place every hour throughout the day. Tune in! www.purefm.com
• The Pure FM Masterclass - with radio professionals including Radio 1’s BB Aled - is pretty much booked up now, and everyone’s getting ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing Real Live Celebridees talking radio… ;o) Well done, Pure!

Pugwash magazine

• Issue 3 is out - well done to the team for working so hard on this issue, especially as the end-of-semester period is horribly packed with exams and coursework deadlines, so huuuuge thanks go to everyone who worked so hard. You can pick up a copy around campus now, visit www.pugwashmag.com to download it, or drop into the Union to get yours!
• Distribution of the magazine has been good again, although I think there is a general awareness that we can be more proactive in getting the magazine to a wider audience - watch this space!
• Thanks go to the Pugwash team for their extra hard work in re-jigging the magazine to take into account the change in space availability due to advertising.

Pugwash News & PWs newspaper

• Issues 9 and 10 came out on deadline (although issue 10 then went back in, had a think about it, took off its front cover and came out again…) and both issues received widespread distribution.
• Issue 9 was also a first as we had advertising for the first time - woohoo!
• Sadly, issue 9 fell victim to a very unfortunately-worded article, which resulted in us having to print a full apology and retraction to the University. Here’s what I had to say about this matter in my editorial in issue 10 of the newspaper:“You may have spotted that the front covers from the last issue were conspicuously absent. As you may also have spotted, this issue carries a sincere apology to the University from the Union, relating to the article printed in the last issue which we had to cut out. The last two weeks have been very stressful for a number of the newspaper team and Union staff, as we worked hard to put new systems in place to try to prevent any reoccurrences of the problems which beset that issue.

• “As Media & Publications Officer I want to extend my thanks to all the staff and students involved with the Union, and the staff at the University, who have shown a great deal of patience and understanding while we worked to fix our mistakes, and I am happy that we can now move on with a lot more confidence problems like this one should be avoidable in the future.
  “Once again, many thanks to everyone involved for working so hard this issue, and I hope you as our readership haven't lost any faith in the Union's youngest publication just yet.”

• As a result, a new system for tracking content submissions has been put in place for both publications, and is mentioned below...

Contributor teams - features, news and reviews

• Pugwash and Pugwash News are both supplied by the same three teams of news, features and reviews bods. Due to the newspaper’s issue 9 problems, we have a funky new paper-based tracking system which has - understandably - caused a lot of headaches for the editorial teams as we work together to put theory into practice. However, despite having only three days’ warning and a lunatic sleep-deprived MAPO to guide them, everyone involved in issue 10 of Pugwash News managed to put out a great issue, and one which I intend to be one o...
  
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As we gear up for a video-tastic Elections 2008, I've been polishing our YouTube homepage, which currently has a few videos on including the BBC coverage of the recent anti-fees lobby in Bitterne, and some breakdancing...

The design might get a little more tweaking as we get some feedback - hey, I'm no graphic designer by a long shot - but it's supposed to be all about the videos anyway ;o)

Check us out online at youtube.com/upsuportsmouth!

/al