Tax Time and Weekend SMUG Class Readings

One of the nice simplifying factors about running a tuition-free online university is that you don’t need to fill out a request for 501(c)(3) status or other federal tax-related forms. With no revenue, the Internal Revenue Service isn’t interested in us. We can focus on our non-profit educational mission.

Alas, the IRS has not shown the same disinterest in my personal life, so in addition to attending some of my daughter’s basketball and volleyball games this weekend, I’ll also be doing this:

So while I’m meeting my obligations to the U.S. Treasury and the State of Minnesota, it’s a good opportunity for you to catch up on some SMUG homework and extra-credit readings:

First, here are the most recent SMUG class offerings, in the Podcasting track

• Podcasting 101/Social Media 106: Introduction to Podcasting
• Podcasting 102: Becoming a Podcaster
• Podcasting 103: Creating Audio Files Takes Audacity
• You also may want to check out the first episode of Chancellor Conversations, which will be one of the official SMUG podcasts.

During the past week your Chancellor was continuing his education (and hopefully helped some others with theirs) at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2008 in San Francisco. Here are some of those highlights, and while they don’t involve direct homework assignments, you will find them helpful for your capstone project:

• A couple of posts I did using Utterz (Driving While Blogging and my story of attending the Giants game).
• Secrets of increasing web site traffic
• How to use blogs to directly engage your customers (a great panel with Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and Mike Moran from IBM) …and Mike’s keynote
• My presentation on Facebook in Media Relations (I didn’t get to live-blog my co-presenters because we were using my laptop to drive the presentations, but Chuck Hester had a good story about using LinkedIn.
• Robert Scoble’s keynote was an eye-opener for many members of the audience. (I’m still hoping to get some video clips uploaded after I have met my obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.)
• The Blogger Relations panel was good, and it was especially interesting meeting Craig Newmark from Craigslist, whose service and business model has contributed so significantly to the economic disruptions faced by newspapers. (By the way, here’s another post about CBS’ response to challenging times.)
• Sally Falkow and Brian Solis led a great discussion of Social Media Strategy, and Dr. Georg Kolb and Frank Shaw’s presentations on PR in Today’s New Marketing Milieu also were helpful.
• Katie Paine’s Social Media Measurement presentation was a whirlwind, and I want to go through her slides in more detail.
• Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks gave the second keynote, which gave a glimpse of how a big brand is using social media, and the opening keynote from Charlie Rose was presented in an unusual interview-style format.

I’ll also maybe let you know how long TurboTax took. Of course no self-respecting do-it-yourself on-line Chancellor would do anything but electronic filing. I’ve used TurboTax before (though usually not this close to the deadline), and I like how it carries forward my information from year to year. Hopefully its servers won’t be slammed by fellow procrastinators.

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