{"id":5362,"date":"2010-11-08T13:02:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T20:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=5362"},"modified":"2010-11-08T18:21:05","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T01:21:05","slug":"whenever-possible-partner-with-people-who-are-inspirational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=5362","title":{"rendered":"Whenever Possible, Partner with People who are Inspirational"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years ago I was working as often as I could with Kimberly Wiefling<\/a>.\u00a0 She was my instructor of choice fo\"\"<\/a>r teaching my on-site project management training classes.\u00a0\u00a0 I loved working with her and periodically we would plot about some project we could work on together that would take UCSC Extension to even higher levels and bring the university additional positive attention.<\/p>\n

UCSC Extension has many excellent programs but their Project Management courses and certificate program are the best in the region.\u00a0\u00a0 How could we help position Extension as not only the provider of the best PM education Northern California but also a center for thought leadership in project management?\u00a0 How could Extension become the center of discussions about project management?\u00a0 The university was not involved with any social media at the time and very nervous about any SM initiatives. Kimberly challenged me to set up a blog where multiple PM Gurus, including many of our instructors, could spread the word.<\/p>\n

Although one goal of the blog would be to promote Extension\u2019s PM courses, Kimberly never allows her friends or clients to stop at anything so mundane.\u00a0\u00a0 Our mission statement became to “establish UCSC Extension as a worldwide center of project management thought leadership, best practices, discussion and training.”<\/p>\n

There were many obstacles along the way.\u00a0\u00a0 The university’s IT department was completely overwhelmed with regular IT maintenance tasks and at that time had a very resistant-to-innovation director.\u00a0\u00a0 Management was most concerned about what people might blog or comment in a forum where anyone could participate. \u00a0What if they said something negative? Who was going to pay for this? \u00a0Although across the country university professors and students were beginning to blog, no university was hosting a blog for business, other than as a calendar or repository of meeting notes.\u00a0\u00a0 How were we going to provide content?\u00a0 Who was going to monitor it?\u00a0 Who had the time to do all of this?<\/p>\n

Kimberly would challenge me with her usual \u201cWhat would make it possible for this to happen?\u201d\u00a0 I found an outside vendor who would design, host and monitor the site content generally.\u00a0 \u00a0No University IT support would be required.\u00a0 I committed almost my entire marketing budget for the year to pay for this outside service. The most valuable marketing I could do for my onsite training department was in-person networking and I could just do more of that at no cost to grow my department\u2019s revenue and use my budget for something more important – i.e. the blog.<\/p>\n

I found wording on other sites that seemed appropriate for our terms and conditions and other legal language.\u00a0\u00a0 I sought permission from the Marketing Director at that time to explore the blog as a low risk \u201cpilot\u201d project.\u00a0\u00a0 Developing social media was one of the Director\u2019s \u201cnice to do\u2019s\u201d but there was no personnel or budget to move it forward.\u00a0\u00a0 Allowing me to take the initiative would mean credit to the marketing department for having developed this innovative new marketing tool \u2013 the \u201cfirst ever\u201d university extension blog at no cost to the general marketing budget and, most importantly, they could place the blame elsewhere (i.e. me) if there was a problem. \u00a0I was known for a deep commitment to the university and was regarded with a certain trust that I wouldn\u2019t do anything to allow harm to its reputation. \u00a0Kimberly committed to finding enough bloggers to write content.\u00a0\u00a0 I committed to monitoring the site content seven days a week to ensure that nothing inappropriate slipped through the filters.<\/p>\n

In September 2006 \u201cThe Art of Project Management\u201d blog launched.\u00a0\u00a0 The blog has been promoted almost exclusively by word of mouth and emails or links from Kimberly and me and our growing list of bloggers.\u00a0 Within 6 months the blog had several hundred readers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since that time, there have been 74 bloggers who contributed 881 posts and 1,100 readers visit the site weekly.\u00a0 The blog has moved up the ranks in Technorati\u2019s ratings and was once their featured project management site. There have been 105,000 visitors from 200 countries since inception and 3,200 click-throughs to the UCSC Extension site.\u00a0 \u00a0Thank you for being one of the blog\u2019s readers.<\/p>\n

I left the university earlier this year and I\u2019m already enjoying partnering and collaborating with inspirational people as I develop my own business.\u00a0 Kimberly\u2019s always nipping at my heels with \u201cWhat would make it possible for this to happen?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago I was working as often as I could with Kimberly Wiefling.\u00a0 She was my instructor of choice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27,1],"tags":[811,412,1370,873,875,876,874],"class_list":["post-5362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-training-certification","category-miscellaneous","tag-blog","tag-collaboration","tag-leadership","tag-officepolitics","tag-partnerships","tag-projectmanagement","tag-socialmedia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}