small initiatives

Another good use for mute button

Jay Small — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:43:33 +0000

If video killed the radio star, I may soon have to claim responsibility for killing Internet radio.

At 2 p.m. Monday, Mel Taylor, webcasting from the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference and Connections in Orlando, will interview me about the conference, the world of newspaper-based interactive media and who-knows-what-else.

I'm just one of a dozen or so people Taylor will interview over two days on BlogTalkRadio.com. Any one of the rest will likely provide more astute commentary than I.

If, however, someone throws me a guitar from off-set, Elvis-movie-style, I might just break into a tune. Ahhhwwwww, mama! (karate move)

Best to Bob, and an advisory

Jay Small — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:31:17 +0000

My boss, Bob Benz, announced last week he is leaving Scripps to join a new consulting and product development venture that includes a circle of mutual friends.

As I told him after he gave us the news, the team he is joining will almost certainly succeed because everyone on it is a proven leader in the interactive field. I wish Bob and his new partners at Maroon Ventures all the best, and guarantee if you work in interactive media, you'll be hearing great things from them.

Meanwhile, we have an Al Haig moment here at Scripps Newspapers Interactive Group. As general manager, while the company searches for a new VP/Interactive I've been asked to keep a lid on things, keep trains running on time, keep the treadmills spinning, keep our orbit from decaying ... insert your own "maintain, baby, maintain" metaphor here.

Oh, and in my long tradition of excellent timing, I started studies for my MBA earlier this month. So far, so good. I'll report more about how that's going as soon as I catch a deep breath.

Long story short: I'm busy. Posting here will be light, and I'm unlikely to accept new consulting or speaking gigs beyond current commitments for a few months, at least. I may not be as responsive to non-Scripps or non-MBA related e-mail as usual, but will do my best to stay in touch.

About the changes at Small Initiatives

Jay Small — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:06:36 +0000

The new design of this Web site means a lot more than just a visual dust-off. Small Initiatives, the company, no longer represents just me, my blog and my occasional Internet design consulting.

My wife, Ka, has reached a point in her executive career where she has amazing advice to offer her industry -- banks and credit unions -- as a business strategy consultant.
So SI becomes a consulting firm with two primary practices. Hers covers growth strategies, marketing and operations for financial institutions. Mine covers Internet user experience, including my longstanding design efforts, but adding site architecture and development projects atop the Drupal open-source content framework.

Ka's brand-new blog joins mine, which has posts dating to 2002. Her first post dispels some popular talking points in banking, refactoring a focus on "differentiation" to a focus on "relevance" -- both of and to customers. I think it's a useful read even for my regular non-banker crowd.

So that's why things look different here, and why the attention now splits between Ka's banking practice and my user experience efforts. If you really want to know the gory details, I've tried to provide them in this handy Q&A format:

Are you both consulting full-time? No. I still have my "day job" as general manager of the Newspapers Interactive Group at the E.W. Scripps Co. Meanwhile, Ka's still a banking professional, taking on consulting projects as she evaluates choices for her next great executive opportunity.
What does banking have to do with Internet user experience? Sometimes, nothing. Sometimes, everything -- such as the time I redesigned a credit union Web site. Our practices may overlap more than you'd imagine in the areas of interactive business strategy and overall customer experience.
You changed a lot about the way the SI site works. Why? As part of opening up my consulting efforts to include site development using Drupal, I thought it best to run this site in Drupal as a living proof of concept. That's nothing against WordPress, the excellent blogging software I used before, only an attempt to put my money where my mouth is.
What else are you changing? We're in the process of incorporating Small Initiatives. We also changed hosting providers as part of the relaunch of this site -- we're now happy SliceHost customers. And I replaced my old blogroll with the Drupal news aggregator, so you can see nearly live headlines from blogs and sites related to our two consulting practices.
How can I make my [site|blog|comments|tags|feeds] work more like yours? Sign me to a contract and I'll show you.
Are those rotating home page posters done in Flash? No, they're done as regular JPEG images that a Drupal module, Views Slideshow, rotates using a JavaScript library.
I'm an RSS subscriber to SI. Where can I find a list of all your available feeds? Use the site map. I'm also trying to make sure my old FeedBurner feed addresses work with minimal upheaval. Trying, I said.
I'm trying to find [insert name of old article here]. You moved stuff around. Where do I look? All the blog posts and most of the non-blog content from the old site should be here, though the directory paths are altered slightly. If you remember the headline or even a keyword or two, try entering them in the search box.
Don't you know changing directory paths will mess up your search engine rankings? Yes, but I had to do it sooner or later, and I'm taking steps advised in Google and Yahoo! Webmaster instructions to mitigate the effects. It shouldn't take long for the path changes to be reflected in search engines' caches of this site. I hope.
SI now has two newsletters. What's the deal? Ka and I wanted to develop separate e-mailing lists for our occasional alerts and longer-form newsletter essays. I had a list before, but it has been months since I sent out a letter to those subscribers. So I thought it best to let people choose subscriptions anew. You may subscribe to either newsletter with just an e-mail address, and unsubscribe anytime.
How do you say "Ka"? Just like you'd say "Kay," as in Diane Keaton's character in The Godfather. It's short for Karen. Around the house we all call her Katie. And yes, people do chuckle and ask, "Where's L?" when we introduce ourselves as "Jay and Ka."
You didn't kill Sid, did you? No. He wouldn't like that. You'll find Sid's sayings on the right side of all my blog pages.

Who is Sid?

Jay Small — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:34:55 +0000

So who is that little guy in the bottom right corner of Jay Small's blog? The guy who says any old thing on his mind?

Sid (he got his name from Jay's consulting theme, Sensible Internet Design) is our conscience and our muse. He doesn't have to be serious, and rarely wishes to be. He manifests our belief that Sensible Internet Design must be anything but grim work.

Sid pays attention to what the rest of us say on this site, and you may notice a comment or two from him that are particularly topical. Then again, he also has a fondness for trying to remember turns of phrase that would make great band names -- and you'll definitely get a good dose of those.

Sid's role model is Gus Bode.

By the way, that likeness of Sid is derived from a 1988 illustration by John E. Scott, now the lead designer and architect of IndyStar.com, and an occasional SI consulting associate. John drew it as part of a gag newspaper page; somehow we doubt it occurred to him that the drawing would take on its own persona. Sid is grateful to John for giving him life.

Enjoy Sid's company. We do.

Presentations: Jay Small

Jay Small — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:54:21 +0000

At Small Initiatives, we enjoy exchanging ideas at conferences, seminars and trade shows. Here are some of the presentations Jay Small has made through the years:

2007

Product Strategy and Development (4.6 mb PowerPoint): Inland Press Association, Chicago, June 2007.

Doing More with Less (2.3 mb PowerPoint) and The Eyes Have It: Online and Usability (3.2 mb PowerPoint): Online News Managers seminar, Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla., May 2007.

Ideas for Online (2 mb PowerPoint): Mid-America Press Institute, St. Louis, April 2007.

Multimedia Storytelling (1.1 mb PowerPoint): American Press Institute, Reston, Va., February 2007.

2006

Teaching Old Content New Tricks (5.3 mb PowerPoint) and Design, Usability and Your Site (2.3 mb PowerPoint), both for the Online News Managers seminar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla., May 2006.

Online Audience Strategy for Newspaper.coms (4.1 mb PowerPoint): America East newspaper operations conference, Hershey, Pa., March 2006.

2004

The Editors' Internet: APME NewsTrain, Dallas, October 2004. How front-line editors can use the Internet as a sourcing and sociological tool for better journalism.

The Big Picture - A Report Card on Technology: New Media World, Hershey, Pa., March 2004. Discussing the state of new media technology and applications for newspaper online strategies.

2003

Framing Online Strategy for City/Regional Magazines: CRMA Publishers Roundtable, Providence, R.I., September 2003. Discussing how city and regional magazines can analyze and pursue a range of business models online.

New Tactics for New Technology: API Leadership in Advertising Seminar, Reston, Va., September 2003. Discussing how community newspapers can gain new Web sales traction thanks to new products and metrics capabilities on the Internet.

Customer-Centered Internet Design: New Media World, Hershey, Pa., March 2003. Discussing how to determine whether you need a redesign, how to use standards-compliant formatting, and how to "adjust the volume" of Web content indexes.

2002

Finding Value in E-mail: Newspaper Association Managers (NAM) Conference, Harrisburg, Pa., April 2002. Also includes a discussion of the Hottest Web Designs of 2002.

Growing Today's Internet into Tomorrow's Digital Media Landscape: Success Seminar at FullSail, Orlando, Fla., March 2002.

2000

Electronic Media
Marketing Tools: American Press Institute, Marketing Integration for Newspapers, Reston, Va., June 2000.

Technology
Strategies for Content Management: Editor & Publisher Interactive
Newspapers Conference, New Orleans, January 2000.

1999

How the Internet killed newspapers - or did it? Keynote address delivered at the School of Journalism, Eastern Illinois University, November 1999.

"Online Strategy" is Not an Oxymoron: Strategic planning for newspapers, presented to several audiences, fall 1999.

StarNews.com Redesign and P.M. Update Strategies: Communicating substantial Web site changes internally at The Indianapolis Star, fall 1999.

E-commerce Approaches for Newspaper Companies: Inland Press Foundation, summer 1999.

Web Design 1999: America East/New Media World conference, spring 1999.

1998

The New News: A Primer for the Information Revolution: A seminar for journalism faculty and graduate students at Indiana University-Bloomington, 1998.

Better Data Wins Online: American Press Institute seminar for newspaper classified advertising executives, 1998.

The Online Recruitment Mix: HRACI regional conference, Indianapolis, 1998.

Challenges from New Media: American Press Institute, Sports Editors seminar, April 1998.

Elements of Online Design: American Press Institute, New Media Managers seminar, March 1998

Web Design for Accessibility and Compatibility: Society for News Design, New Media Workshop, March 1998.

1997

Managing Perpetual Change at Star/News Online: Poynter Institute, New Media Managers seminar, fall 1997.

Other events

Small has also delivered presentations at these events:

Society for News Design: Annual Workshops, 1994, 1996; Management Camp, 1993; Quick Courses, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998; Selling By Design Workshops, 1994, 1995, 1997; New Media Workshops, 1997, 1998.
Newspaper Association of America: Connections, 1997.
Editor & Publisher Magazine: Editorial Issues on the Web, 1997.
Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications: New Media Seminar, 1997.
Investigative Reporters and Editors, 1994.
Mid-America Press Institute: 1995, 1996, 1999.
Inland Press Foundation: 1994, 1995, 1999.
Hoosier State Press Association: 1994, 1995.

About Small Initiatives

SI Administrator — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:25:51 +0000

Small Initiatives provides executive consulting services in two industries:

Banks, credit unions and other financial institutions: Focus areas include growth strategies, operations and marketing. This practice is led by Ka Small, a veteran executive with more than 20 years experience in banking.
Internet design, content and commerce: Focus areas include online user experience, usability, organic search optimization, graphic design, XHTML/CSS, and holistic site development using the Drupal framework. This practice is led by Jay Small, a respected leader and longtime executive in the interactive media industry.

SI began as a graphic design and creative services consultancy in 1993. Since then, its principals have expanded and enhanced SI's practice specialties through years of professional hands-on and management experience.

Essays, presentations by Jay Small

SI tips and extras

CSS Text Style Sampler, by Jay Small
Well-mannered Javascript and Flash examples, by Jay Small
Tabbed Web interface with all content in-page, by Jay Small