The site includes a blog where NJ School Biz Buzz bloggers will write articles.  There is a forum where school officials can offer advice or ask questions.  The site will also include a listing of vendors.  And a section where school officials can post RFPs.  The idea is that school officials and vendors can have one central location to get the information they need to obtain and sell their services.

NJSchoolBizBuzz also has a Resource section which will contain important links to other sites, as well as, documents and templates that school officials can use.  The Articles section is a news feed of articles related to the topic of education in New Jersey from news agencies and associations.

The site is in the early stages.  Since it is an online community it will take time for the site to grow and develop.  The seeds have been planted.

• SXSW March 11 - 15, 2011 in Austin, TX
• Web 2.0 Expo March 28 - 31, 2011 in San Francisco, CA
• MIX (Microsoft)  April 12 -14 , 2011 Las Vegas, NV
• Microsoft SharePoint Conference October 3 - 11, 2011 in Anaheim, CA

• An Event Apart September 16 - 18, 2010 in Washington, DC
• Web Directions USA September 21 - 25, 2010 in Atlanta, GA
• Design for Mobile September 20 - 24, 2010 in Chicago, IL
• Web Design World October 18 - 20, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV
• Web 2.0 Expo September 27 - 30, 2010 in New York, NY
• Adobe Max September 9 - 10, 2010 in
• An Event Apart November 1 - 2, 2010 San Diego, CA
• WordCamp Philly, October 30, 2010, Philadelphia, PA
• Future of Web Design November 15 - 17, 2010 in New York, NY
• Web 2.0 Summit November 15 -17, 2010 in San Francisco, CA

Below is a list of conferences that have already taken place in 2010.  Have to wait until 2011….

• Front-End Design Conference July 23, 2010 in St. Petersburg, FL
• Voices That Matter Web Design Conference June3 28 - 30, 2010 in San Francisco, CA
• Web Visions May 19 - 21, 2010, Portland, OR
• DrupalCon, April 17 - 22, 2010, San Francisco, CA
• Chirp, The Official Twitter Conference April 14 - 15, 2010 in San Francisco, CA

The video covers 5 main topics:

1. Vector Graphics
2. Video
3. Geolocation
4. App cache and database
5. Web workers

Overall, HTML 5 has improved on previous versions of HTML in the areas of graphics, location, storage and speed.  It is more powerful.  And there is a tremendous improvement in Javascript performance.

Vector Graphics

Prior to HTML 5, you could not draw or have any interactive content unless you used applications such as Flash or Silverlight.  In HTML 5, SVG and the Canvas API are  now embedded into the DOM.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics):  You now have tags for drawing graphics.

Canvas API:  This is the javascript API.

Video

HTML 5 now gives you a video tag for embedding video.

Geolocation

Geolocation is now built into the browsers.  For determining the location of the user you can use GPS, IP, Cell ID or WIFI information.

App Cache and Database

If you are going to build a web app, it needs to work anywhere and at anytime.  This new feature helps provide off-line web access.

App Cache is basically super browser cache.  It brings all of the information locally.  You can now create a user interface that can be brought offline.  This will require the user to grant permission to save the data to a local database.  In addition, since the browser can crash or disconnect at any given time, everything needs to be a transaction.

Web works

This lets you to run javascript in the background. Currently, if you start running javascript that is very computationally intensive, it can hose the browser.  Web works allow you to run this javascript in the background and allow the user to continue to interact with the web app.

HTML 5 is currently supported to some extent by the open source browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Opera, as well as Safari.  It is not supported fully in IE 8.  You will have to wait until it is supported in IE9 before taking full advantage of it.

• Use Social Networking Tools:  Great for showing off successes and ideas, upload photos to Flickr and Facebook showcasing your work
• Write a (Micro) Blog:  stay up to date, and update often and regularly.   You will get a crowd of followers
• Attend un-conferences such as Barcamp, good place to practice public speaking
• Attend conferences, become a speaker
• Partner and Build Alliances
• Comment on other People’s Work
• Build on the work of Others
• Release Free Code

According to Christian, making your mark on the web is easier than you think. We’ll see…

First make sure that you are capturing and reviewing your web site analytics. These would include number of visits, unique visitors, where your visitors are located, how they are being referred to your site, etc. One excellent source is Google Analytics. It is a free powerful tool. And it is easy to set up. You sign up for the service, copy and paste a small block of code on each page of your site, submit some basic information about your site, and the next day you can begin tracking your site’s analytics.

Keep that in place for a period of time to get a baseline on how your site is currently performing without making any changes to your site to improve traffic. Because that is what your are trying to achieve. Higher rankings are great, but you want people to actually click on the link and visit your site.

Second, consider using pay-per-click advertising with Google Adwords. This is a quick fix to improve traffic while you are working on the other aspects of improving search rankings. You can place a cap on how much you are willing to pay-per-click, and how much you are willing to pay-per-day. So you can choose 10 cents per click for a maximum of $5 per day. And if you service a small geographic area, you can limit this search to the geographic area you service, thus targeting your marketing.

Third, create inbound and outbound links. Most likely you are listed on some professional directories. In addition to the usual information, such as name, address and phone number, make sure you have your web site listed also. This will help search engines find and understand what your site is about. Be picky though. Search engines also take into consideration the quality of the inbound link.

Also, add outbound links to your site. This will help search engines get a better understanding for what your site is about.

Fourth, add your business as a local business center on google maps. It is a free service. And the whole process will take about four weeks. When you sign up for this service, you will enter the name of your business, address, email and web site information. To verify your listing, you can either have them send you a postcard or have google call you by telephone. The telephone process is very easy. If you decide to do a phone verification, you will receive a phone call immediately and asked to verify that the listing is correct by typing in a pin number. Within four weeks your listing will start appearing on the google maps for searches on your business type in your area. That’s it.

The final step is a bit more painful. Consider a web site face lift. You got that blinking new button, that airplane flying around gif thing, your site uses frames, etc. The web is relatively new. Times are a changing. And how search engines spider the web have changed also. So you need to keep your image and coding practices up-to-date.

Your site needs to use Semantic HTML and Web Standards. Semantic html means that the html tags describe the content between those tags. This is a title, this is a main header, this is a sub-header, this is a paragraph, and this is a bullet point. This helps search engines understand the content and importance of each piece of content. Also, Web Standards means that you separate the content from the appearance of the site. Basically it strips out all of the unnecessary information about how to present the site to the web browsers, and just leaves the content in the html. Search engines can spider that content more efficiently as a result.

Keep in mind that this is an iterative process. By reviewing your web analytics you can gauge how your changes and improvements are affecting your site’s traffic. You can tweak your pay-per-click advertising, such as keywords used and geographic area. You can add inbound links and outbound links. And you can add new content to your site.

Content is key for search engines. They are spidering your site for key words. Don’t just put them in the meta-tags, key words need to be in the text of your site. Keep your content up-to-date and relevant. This will ultimately help your rankings.

• Buzz marketing (the use of high profile entertainment or news to generate conversations)
• Viral marketing (entertaining and informative messages designed to be passed along electronically)
• Community marketing (user groups, fan clubs, discussion forums)
• Grass roots marketing (organizing and motivating volunteers)
• Brand blogging (sharing information on a blog that the community may be interested in)

Examples of word of mouth marketing campaigns would include:

• Creating communities
• Developing web sites or web applications where people can share opinions
• Using advertising and publicity to create buzz
• Researching and tracking online conversations

Word of Mouth Marketing is a very powerful channel for marketing a brand or a cause.  In 2005, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) was formed and has about 400 members today. The two main social media channels for Word of Mouth marketing are Facebook and Twitter.

There are a number of conversational monitoring tools and services.  Examples of self-service tools include Radian6 and ScoutLabs.  And examples of full-service vendors are JD Power Web Intelligence (Umbria), Nielsen BuzzMetrics and MotiveQuest.  There are also a number of WOM partners and vendors, especially in the digital marketing space.   Examples of these include Federated Media, Glam, Bazaarvoice, BlogHer, and The Social Medica Business Council.

The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that it is typically smaller in size. A single entry could consist of a single sentence, an image or a brief, ten second video. Its purpose is the same as a traditional blog. Users micro-blog about particular topics such as what they are doing at the moment, areas of interest, such as sports or film, or business topics and products.

Twitter is currently the most popular microblog.  Microbloggers can post entries up to 140 characters in length.  Users can read these messages online  or have them sent directly as a text message to any mobile device.   Even social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn give their users the ability to microblog with their status update feature.

Microblogging can be a conversation.  For example, on Twitter, you can reply to a post by typing the @ symbol followed immediately by the user name, a space, and then the message.

You can also guide readers to specific content by using hashtags.  Putting a hastag in front of a word or string of characters allows users to easily find information about a specific topic.  Meeting planners and event coordinators frequently recommend “microblog funnels”  so that entries related to the event can be easily found.

Microblogging can serve a variety of purposes.  Users can “follow” other microbloggers to see an up–to–date list of recent posts. The people you follow can serve as a filter for the vast amount of online information.  They can give you links to look at, share ideas, or answer questions.

Businesses and individuals can use microblogging as a way to share announcements, news, information about new products, reminder messages, or instructions.  Microblogging can be very useful for issuing directions or warnings during emergencies. Some universities encourage students to follow an official school Twitter account so they can quickly broadcast a message to all students in the event of an emergency.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement advertising. Search engine optimization (SEO) seeks to improve the amount and quality of traffic to a website from its natural  or organic search results. The earlier a site appears in the search results, the more likely visitors will go to that website.

SEO considers how search engines work and what people are searching for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance for specific keywords and improve its indexing  for search engines.   Web standard HTML coding and site design are important for improving search results, and therefore  SEO tactics need to be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” is used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that allow for search engines to efficiently crawl and index a site.

Web 2.0 Marketing Strategies include blogging, podcasting, social Networks (such as Facebook), microblogging (Twitter), and user generaged content (YouTube and Flickr).

The two most popular social networks in North America are Facebook and Linkedin.  Facebook is a social network that is mainly used for personal reasons, where people can stay in touch with each other.  Linkedin is used for business networking.  If you have been in the business communty for a while, the two tend to blur.   You tend to link in first with the people you interact with on a daily basis, which are the people you are currently working with.    But as you meet new acquantances, and find old ones, your network expands.   And as your current network links in with new links, you can tag along and link in with them also.

It is too early to say if either of these sites have helped with forging any business relationships.  But personally, I am able to keep in touch with family and friends scattered across the country.  I have received emails from high school and college friends that I have not talked to in years.  It is amazing how many are in the technology industry.  I am able to keep up with their own social networks and see what they are up to.  I have learned an immense about what friends and family are doing personally and professionally.

Professionally, I am optimistic about the benefits of these networking sites.  I don’t expect job offers coming in, but ideas are being generated constantly as a result of what others in my network are doing.    I am currently reading a book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds“.  And one of the premises of the book, is that a group of individuals is wiser than one individual alone.  They do not have to be working together to come up with a solution, but the group as a whole will come up with the best solution when taking all of the inputs.   As I listen, watch  and learn from others, and I can see myself growing professional and personally.  And I am sure that I am not alone.

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.  Based on what I am reading, I am in good company.