This is the seventh "CoSIDA Corner" penned by CoSIDA President Doherty (University of Wisconsin). It appears in the April issue of NACDA's
Athletics Administration Magazine. Each issue is sent to over 10,000 university and athletics administrators, with CoSIDA's voice, thoughts and expertise being shared with these key constituents.
Athletics Administration is published each October, November, December, February, March, April, June and August.
Download Doherty's
April CoSIDA Corner (pdf)
It is, of course, no secret that the Internet has spawned much of the amazing technological/
communications revolution taking place today.
Blogs, e-commerce, video — the uses are endless.
And who knows what will develop in 2010, or five years from now.
I do, however, believe there will always be an educational use for the Internet. That’s going to be a primary focus for CoSIDA as we re-design and launch a new Web site later this year. Our organization’s Web site has for years been mostly a place for our members to go to vote for Academic All-America teams or for folks to look up directory information.
Admittedly, it can be so much more.
Several months ago, CoSIDA added Barb Kowal to its staff as director of external affairs. It’s the first time CoSIDA has had such a position, so Barb’s role continues to develop and be defined, but one of her main initiatives is the re-design and renewed focus of cosida.com.
Barb is a longtime former athletics communications professional and knows, as we all do, that our world has changed from one in which we had news delivered to us from a relatively small number of sources to one in which every person and organization is a news source and we have an overwhelmingly large number of news sources from which to choose. Twitter is media. So is Facebook. So is LinkedIn. Anyone can blog and anyone can shoot and distribute video.
CoSIDA members are obviously in the middle of this communications revolution each day and are in prime position to help shape their institution’s message in ways they never could before. Our organization wants our Web site to be an educational resource to our members (and non-members).
Our new Web site is going to be a place where people can go to hear from experts across the sports and communications world about the latest trends. We’re already frequently posting stories relating to our profession and our members, but we believe the breadth of our content can be expanded. We would like cosida.com to assist our members as they work to shape messages.
Public relations issues arise daily in the world of college athletics.
We believe cosida.com can become a resource for not only athletics communications professionals, but also for anyone in college athletics as well as public relations practitioners outside the athletics arena. For example, if an institution has recently dealt with a major issue on its campus, cosida.com could be a site where others could read about how that institution handled things from a public relations perspective. Perhaps our site would host a webinar during which the athletics communications staff from that institution explained “what worked” and what didn’t as their department dealt with the issue. There are a number of possibilities.
We are all facing budget concerns and that, of course, may mean less travel. There is no substitute for the actual face-to-face interaction and networking that can go on at a convention, but the reality is that some folks will not be able to travel. A Web site like cosida.com could, in some cases, contain the only professional development and educational content available to a given individual. Case studies, webinars, links to other Web sites, blogs and many other materials could become available to members whose budgets prohibit travel.
The re-designed CoSIDA Web site will aim to be a place where people can go to find constantly changing and updated content. We all know there’s nothing more frustrating than a Web site with static or outdated content. CoSIDA.com will contain fresh information and links that will give our members a place to go on a daily basis if they so choose. And it can be a public relations/strategic communications portal and resource for anyone invested in college athletics.
The communications world is changing rapidly and our organization’s Web site intends to reflect those changes by becoming a comprehensive and more valuable product the CoSIDA membership can use.