In the beginning . . .

My name is Bob Griffin and I am a full-time faculty member in the Web Design and Interactive Media Department at The New England Institute of Art, in Brookline, MA. This is the beginning record of my sabbatical period and I hope to detail the major accomplishments as well as daily work completed regarding my web development project, training and research.

The first item I had to accomplish was giving this "blog" a name. I have learned in teaching a course in E-commerce and Marketing Communication that one of the most important things you can do for an online product is to name it wisely and accurately. There are actually eight key factors to consider for online naming, and they are:

1. The Name Should Be Short
2. The Name Should Be Simple
3. The Name Should Be Suggestive of the Category
4. The Name Should Be Unique
5. The Name Should Be Alliterative (Cocal Cola, Dunkin' Donuts, SabBOBical )
6. The Name Should Be Speakable
7. The Name Should Be Shocking
8. The Name Should Be Personalized
   

So, I gave all of MY suggestions to my friends, and those suggestions were greeted well. As my friend Stephanie said, "It has to be more Bobish." And those that did like what I suggested gave their support in a lackluster way. But a few of these creative geniuses followed the above criteria (without knowing about it ) and came up with a great moniker.

http://www.sabBOBical.blogspot.com

So, now when someone asks, "What's Bob(Rob) Griffin doing?" You can say he's on his sabBOBical.

OK, enough with the levity. Now, I'll tell you what I am really going to be doing over the next several months.

My sabbatical boils down to three main areas: web development, training and research.

Web Development

I am going to be working with a team to put up a website for free-lancing artists and developers. This is going to be a "how-to" site and its intent is to assist our student body when they go out to free-lance. I hear students talking all the time about these free-lance experiences, and I honestly think some of them are going about it all wrong.

The information that has been amassed for this site is about 150 pages long. It was originally put together by a group that I worked with back in the early 00's. It was updated again in 2004, and then shelved due to obsolescence. I am going to put the content through a "vetting" process, and then try to do additional research, specific to each industry that we grant degrees.

In the process of creating the website, I am going to learn a new content management software system, called Joomla! I will post progress here and those of you reading the blog will know what the site will be called to check it out. Maybe we'll have another "Name Game!"


Training

The life of a professor at The New England Institute of Art is very busy. More so than at other colleges because of the number of classes we have to teach in a given year. As the result of that, there is very little time for training and re-training, and when you are the one who is responsible for the training — well, it's not a good thing.
 
As I said, I will be learning Joomla! and also updating my Photoshop skills, increasing my DreamWeaver skills, and doing a thorough review of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (for both the Mac and PC). Additionally, I'd also like to learn InspireData and the Mac Office Suite: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. I am going to be a busy guy!

Original Research
After doing a comprehensive reading period (bibliography to come) — I am going to try to interview as many corporate decision-makers in the Boston area about web development, specifically in the area of content strategy.  I'd like to know how their future marketing and marketing communications will be affected by "Twitter," which I believe the marketplace has not fully embraced yet, but this is coming. I plan on writing a "white paper" summarizing this information.

That's it for the first blog, please keep the good thoughts and comments coming!