New year, new media goals

A new year gives me the opportunity at work to create new resolutions goals that are tied to my duties as online manager (MBO). There are the obvious ones

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug

like finally launching a mobile version of Union-Bulletin.com without spending much money and without hiring a mobile developer. I’ve got some ideas on how to do that using WordPress but I’ll leave that to another post.

Another obvious one is a slight redesign of our website and registration/log in forms. Which leads me to my not so obvious goals. I’ve decided to read some tech books and/or take a number of NewsU online courses/webinars. As part of my goals I will then write a short proposal on how to integrate what I learn into our online products.

First up, I’ve enrolled for Friday’s NewsU webinar Programming for Non-Geeks: Easy Interactivity which hopes to teach:

• How to get started: which software you need and where to get it
• Some basic techniques to enhance your content, even as a non-programmer
• What plugins are and which one plugins to consider when creating news-oriented content
• About tools to make your jQuery development easier
• About top resources to know and bookmark

And I’ve got a small library of books I plan to read, including:

• Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
• Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton
• The Yahoo Style Guide
• Mediactive by Dan Gillmor
• Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson

I’ve started reading all of them and I am most excited about Don’t Make Me Think since it will a great resource for our planned redesign of our forms. I will blog over the next several months about my “takeaways” and implementation plans based on what I learn.

Oh, and I also plan on blogging regularly again. That may be the most daunting goal!