FAQ at Carolinahurricanes.com (revised)

Assignment: Create an interactive FAQ help page for your entity (publication, company or organization). This frequently asked question section should anticipate common problems and questions users might have. The page should have:
• Clear, comprehensible instructions
• Clear organization
• Thorough consideration and anticipation of user questions
• Informative, helpful answers to FAQ questions
• Design that promotes, rather than impedes, page usability

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAQ

1. How do I sign up for season tickets?

2. How do I get single-game tickets?

3. Do you have anything between single-game and season-tickets?

4. Where do the Canes play their home games?

5. How do I get to the arena?

6. Are there message boards and blogs for fans?

7. Who is on the team roster?

8. What are the players’ stats this year?

9. Do you offer any special benefits to season ticket holders?

1. Season tickets are still available for the 2006-2007 season, pro-rated for the remaining games this season. A detailed brochure is available. Email your ticket request, or call 1-800-NHL-CANES.

2. Single-game tickets are available through ticketmaster.com, through ticketmaster charge-by phone at 919-834-4000, or at the RBC center box office. Box office hours are M-F and Saturday 10-4. The box office is also open on Sunday game days. Tickets for December and January games are available now, tickets for February, March, and April games will be available January 2, 2007.

3. Yes, we offer 10-game and 24-game mini-plans. There are three different packages within the 10-game plan. Per game ticket prices within these plans are between the single-game price and season ticket discounted prices.

4. The Carolina Hurricanes play all home games at the RBC Center, 1400 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh. The state-of-the-art RBC Center opened in 1999. It was funded as a joint venture between the State of North Carolina, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the Wolfpack Club at North Carolina State University.

5. The RBC Center is located at 1400 Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh, NC. Maps and directions are available online and below:

From Greensboro, Durham, Chapel Hill
I-40 East into Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Fayetteville, Lumberton, South Carolina
I-95 North to I-40 West
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Goldsboro, Kinston
US 70 West to I-40 West
Exit I-440 Inner Beltline
Exit #4; left at top of ramp
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Rocky Mount
US 64 West to Raleigh
Exit I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilmington, Jacksonville
I-40 West to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilson, Greenville
US 264 West to 64 West to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Charlotte, Kannapolis, Salisbury
I-85 North to I-40 East to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Richmond, Petersburg, Virginia Area
I-95 South to I-85 South to US 1 South to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

6. There are numerous message boards and blogs for fans to interact and keep up with news from a fan perspective. The team’s official message border is “Caniac Corner“.

7. The team has a 25-man roster. This includes Cory Stillman and Frank Kaberle who are both on injured reserve.

8. Up-to-date player statistics in numerous categories are maintained by the team, by the NHL, and by ESPN.

9. Season ticket holders receive numerous special benefits, including the option to buy extra single-game seats at a discount before public on-sale, the ability to buy multi-game parking passes, priority in sale of playoff tickets, a discount at the team store, and the ability to e-mail tickets to friends. The team has a special FAQ on this subject.

I ran an ad for my Canes blog

As you know, I’ve been doing a blog on the side about the NHL all-star game, http://canesallstars.wordpress.com The game features online voting to choose the starting lineup for the game. A few weeks ago, a Buffalo Sabres fan started a website http://www.voteforrory.com encouraging people to write in Rory Fitzpatrick, a Vancouver Canucks player who played for Buffalo last year. Fitzpatrick is basically a back up player who has not even scored this season. Well, the effort snowballed, and the guy got 150,000 write ins already, and has been getting huge media coverage. His website is getting about 10,000 hits per day, and has been written up on dozens of sports websites in the last three or four days, including espn.com

 I found out about the Rory campaign on November 26, and made my first post about Rory on November 27th. (I’ve written three or four posts at my blog so far on Rory).

I saw the offer yesterday at voteforrory.com to run ads in return for donations to the Canucks foundation and emailed the site last night and negotiated my ad.  It went live around 11 pm ET, and as of 6 am ET today, I’ve already had 102 hits on my blog coming directly from http://www.voteforrory.com !!

I paid $40 to have the ad run for two weeks.

Here’s my ad at http://www.voteforrory.com:

I’ve seen Rory play a number of times, as I attended Games 1, 2, 5, and 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in Raleigh last year and game 6 up in Buffalo.

I was glad to donate to the Canucks charity, and I’ll post here and let everyone know how much traffic my ad generates!

Fostering Communication: Interactivity as a two-way street; The Canes don’t get it yet

Assignment: Take one of the theories discussed during the course and apply it to writing for your organization or publication.

Theory: Communication can occur in three basic ways: interpersonal or face-to-face, mediated and mass mediated. Because our audience determines our success, we want feedback, interaction, dialogue, a conversation with our users or readers.

Hypothesis: A sports team official website needs to promote interactivity in order to drive readership and buy-in.

A sports team website such as CarolinaHurricanes.com should exist to provide opportunity for fans to:

1. find out game schedules
2. purchase tickets
3. find out about the team
4. purchase merchandise
5. find the arena
6. interact with team personnel and make suggestions
7. interact with each other

The first five items on the list do not require any two-way interactivity, but CarolinaHurricanes.com does provide a link to purchase tickets and to the NHL shop section for Hurricanes merchandise. The last two items on the list above require an effective means of two-way interactivity. Item six can be handled either through a one-way comment process, or through a message board or blog that accepts comments.  Item seven can best be handled best with a message board.

What I learned at school today …

Assignment: Write an end-of-semester blog post that catalogs, explores and details how your writing for and understanding of digital environments have changed. Specifically:

• Discuss how your writing has changed since the beginning of the course
• What you have learned in the course that you think will prove most useful going forward
• What unanswered questions remain for you
• How this course could be enhanced, improved, changed (be brutal!)
• What the instructor could perhaps do to better facilitate maximum learning

More than the sum of its parts

At the beginning of the course, I viewed the course title “Writing for Digital Media” as the three (actually four) words that made it up:

Writing 

–verb (used with object)

1.	to trace or form (characters, letters, words, etc.) on the surface of some material, as with a pen, pencil, or other instrument or means; inscribe: Write your name on the board.

2.	to express or communicate in writing; give a written account of.

3.	to fill in the blank spaces of (a printed form) with writing: to write a check.

4.	to execute or produce by setting down words, figures, etc.: to write two copies of a letter.

5.	to compose and produce in words or characters duly set down: to write a letter to a friend.

…..

Digital

–adjective

1.	of or pertaining to a digit or finger.

2.	resembling a digit or finger.

3.	manipulated with a finger or the fingertips: a digital switch.

4.	displaying a readout in digital form: a digital speedometer.

5.	having digits or digitlike parts.

6.	of, pertaining to, or using data in the form of numerical digits.

7.	Computers. involving or using numerical digits expressed in a scale of notation to represent discretely all variables occurring in a problem.

8.	of, pertaining to, or using numerical calculations.

9.	available in electronic form; readable and manipulable by computer.

…..

Media

–noun

1.	a pl. of medium.

2.

(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight. …..—Usage note Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them: The media is (or are) not antibusiness.

Integrating content 

This course has given me the opportunity to integrate those words and to understand that together they are both more than the sum of the parts and different.  I’ve learned to think of who the reader is, perhaps a:

1. coworker
2. fellow sports fan
3. classmate
4. newspaper reader
5. random web surfer

and tailor my writing accordingly. I’ve learned that the online reader will view the writing differently than the print reader, and things need to be organized to maximize what might be only a fleeting moment of the reader’s time, for example:

1. organize things in chunks,
2. use headlines and mini-headlines,
3. use bullet lists like this one,
4. break the post so that the interested reader will be able to expand and the casual reader will not be threatened by its length.

I’ve learned (what now seem to be simple) tricks in the WordPress software to embed links and graphics, to use headers and page breaks, and to keep up with who is using my blog. I’ve learned more HTML, most of which was a refresher of things I had long ago forgotten from days of coding pages on geocities.com in the late 90’s before they had a page editor that auomated things.

What will I do when I grow up?

I suspect that much of my use of the course will be in blogging (whether for personal whim, sports fans, or for coworkers, legislators, and lobbyists wanting to keep up with legislative news) but some of its use may be for memo writing where the recipient will be able to click on embedded links to go to more documentation, fact, or opinion. I had not realized until a few weeks ago that the version of Microsoft Word I use has the same icon to embed a link that WordPress and other blogging software has.

I still need to learn formatting, font size, placing and sizing images in more relevant places, and how to tweak page appearance to be more appealing. I also need to learn how to sift through information overload to find what is relevant without being drowned.

Annoyances 

I’ve been annoyed with the Blackboard message board format where it is impossible to keep up with subject headers as threads get longer.  I’ve been frustrated by the lack of synchronicity between the course book and the various places that the online syllabus appears. It was not until many weeks in that I realized that the course book predated the online syllabus.

Excellence 

I’ve found the course to be incredibly useful, my classmates to be uniformly helpful with nary a flame on the Blackboard discussion board. The questions posted each week by the pair of students leading the discussion have been great. I’ve found the instructor to be knowledgeable about the subject matter, willing to come to the rescue of threads that need help.

This course has been the best of the three I have taken, although I am sure that the other two courses laid a great foundation for this one, and those taking the classes in a different order will say the same things about their third or fourth class.

All I Really Know I Learned in Kindergarten 

I take to heart the words of Robert Fulgham in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten* as I planned each week how to get the work done “Live a balanced life, learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon.” (page 2), and when things bog down “…just lie down and shut up and wait…” (page 95)

 *text found using the “search inside” feature of Amazon.com

Fans Sound Off: Carolina Hurricanes Message Boards and Blogs (final revision)

New Assignment: Revise your online writing presentation based on feedback from the instructor and post to your blog. Solicit feedback also from your writing workshop partner(s) from modules 1 & 2. I’ve received comments from the instructor and writing partner, as well as from one of the bloggers I catalogued, and have incorporated all the comments. I’ve also updated the stats and information, as well as linked the board logos.

Original assignment: Original writing piece for an organization, the Carolina Hurricanes NHL hockey team (with which I have no affiliation). Site visitors may be those who regularly frequent message boards and are familiar with the written and unwritten rules, or they may be new to the genre and will welcome a FAQ on etiquette. Users might just come once or twice to the site, or may revisit to see updated resources and news about the fan message board universe.

You may be in the capacity crowd when 18,730 fans converge on the RBC Center for home dates for the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, a fan from afar, a former Raleigh area resident, or even a resident of another country, perhaps the native land of one of the Canes’ European-born players. With the internet, the fun doesn’t have to end when the game is over. This guide to online fan sites, such as message boards and blogs, can keep you involved.

MESSAGE BOARDS

Hundreds of Canes fans are using online message boards to share their experiences, commenting on the team and individual players. Tickets are traded, photos posted and shared, and stories told and retold. Here’s how to get in on the action.

Anyone with an internet connection can join the online Carolina Hurricanes world. Message board users can make up their own screen names and stay relatively anonymous, or post with their real names, and even upload avatars like that of Scoreboards message board moderator Jeffbear.

BLOGS

In addition to message boards, blogs allow individual fans to set up their own individualized weblogs and post commentary, with most allowing readers of the blog to chime in with their comments. A good blog will also have a blogroll, linking the reader to similar sites or resources.

AN ONLINE FAN COMMUNITY

Online fan communities have largely developed on their own, but both national media and the team itself have also hosted message boards or set up blogs. This article catalogues numerous message boards and blogs that focus on the Canes, as well as gives casual fans pointers on using those boards. Message boards are be of two varieties, moderated, and those with standards. Scoreboards moderator Jeffbear discusses differences:

“I think it’s important to deal with the stance regarding moderation and Standards up front. There’s a huge difference between an actively moderated board and a loosely moderated board in terms of what posters can get away with in terms of behavior, and it’s good to make people aware of the rules up front … and then enforce them. All message boards generate their own conventions in terms of slang terms, user handles, avatar pictures and the like. Those things need to be explained in a good FAQ”

GAME DAY THREAD
Fans seem to enjoy the message board game-day thread, where the moderator posts an introduction to the game a day or two in advance, fans make predictions and talk about injuries, and during the game fans listening on the radio or watching on TV post commentary. Fans returning from the game also chime in later. A regular season game might see 100+ postings, while a playoff game might have over 300.

CanesAllStars blog to Assist NHL All-Star Game voting (revised)

Original Assignment for Module 12: Draft a press release on behalf of your organization or publication. You choose the topic or purpose. Post to your blog.

Module 15 assignment: Complete final revisions on your  press release (Module 12) and post to your blog.

For More Information Contact:

Gerry F. Cohen

(919)247-xxxx

CanesAllStars@gmail.com

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAN BLOG

TO HELP COORDINATE NHL ALL-STAR GAME VOTING

CanesAllStars helps fans vote for Ward, Brind’Amour, Cole and Staal

in online balloting beginning November 15; hanging chads gone

Raleigh, NC, November 12 – Fans Sound Off, a website that helps Carolina Hurricanes hockey fans to connect with each other on message boards and blogs has announced plans to launch a “CanesAllStars” blog devoted to Canes fan online balloting for the 2007 National Hockey League All-Star game to be held January 24 in Dallas. The blog will link the online ballot for Canes hockey fans, and have sections for fans to comment on the Canes nominees and encourage others to get involved. According to the NHL, fan balloting begins November 15 and ends January 2, 2007.

The NHL released the official 100-player ballot list on Friday, which includes Carolina Hurricanes forwards Rod Brind’Amour, Erik Cole, and Eric Staal, as well as goalie Cam Ward. For the first time, all fan voting will be online. For Ward and Staal, this is their first time on the All-Star ballot. Brind’Amour played in the 1992 All-Star game while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Cole has been on the All-Star ballot.

FAQ at Carolinahurricanes.com

Assignment:  Create an interactive FAQ help page for your entity (publication, company or organization). This frequently asked question section should anticipate common problems and questions users might have. The page should have:
•  Clear, comprehensible instructions
•  Clear organization
•  Thorough consideration and anticipation of user questions
•  Informative, helpful answers to FAQ questions
•  Design that promotes, rather than impedes, page usability

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAQ

1. How do I sign-up for season tickets?

2. How do I get single-game tickets?

3. Do you have anything between single-game and season-tickets?

4. Where do the Canes play their home games?

5. How do I get to the arena?

6. Are there message boards and blogs for fans?

7. Who is on the team roster?

8. What are the players stats this year?

9. Do you offer any special benefits to season ticket holders?

1. Season tickets are still available for the 2006-2007 season, prorated for the remaining games this season. A detailed brochure is available. Email your ticket request, or call 1-800-NHL-CANES.   

  2. Single game tickets are available through ticketmaster.com, through ticketmaster charge-by phone at 919-834-4000, or at the RBC center box office.  Box office hours are M-F and Saturday 10-4. The box office is also open on Sunday game days. Tickets for December and January games are available now, tickets for February, March, and April games will be available January 2, 2007.

 3. Yes, we offer 10-game and 24-game mini-plans.  There are three different packages within the 10-game plan. Per game ticket prices within these plans are between the single-game price and season ticket discounted prices.
 
 4. The Carolina Hurricanes play all  home games at the RBC Center, 1400 Edwards Mill Road, Raleigh.  The state-of-the-art RBC Center opened in 1999. It was funded as a joint venture between the State of North Carolina, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the Wolfpack Club at North Carolina State University.

 5. The RBC Center is located at 1400 Edwards Mill Road in Raleigh, NC. Maps and directions are available online and below: 

From Greensboro, Durham, Chapel Hill
I-40 East into Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue,  Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Fayetteville, Lumberton, South Carolina
I-95 North to I-40 West
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Goldsboro, Kinston
US 70 West to I-40 West
Exit I-440 Inner Beltline
Exit #4; left at top of ramp
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Rocky Mount
US 64 West to Raleigh
Exit I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilmington, Jacksonville
I-40 West to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Wilson, Greenville
US 264 West to 64 West to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Charlotte, Kannapolis, Salisbury
I-85 North to I-40 East to Raleigh
Exit Wade Avenue, Exit #289
First Exit Edwards Mill Road

From Richmond, Petersburgh, Virginia Area
I-95 South to I-85 South to US 1 South to Raleigh
I-440 Outer Beltline
Exit #4-B
Second Exit Edwards Mill Road

6. There are numerous message boards and blogs for fans to interact  and keep up with news from a fan perspective. The team’s official message border is “Caniac Corner“.

7. The team has a 25-man roster. This includes Cory Stillman and Frank Kaberle who are on injured reserve.

8. Up-to-date player statistics in numerous categories are maintained by the team, by the NHL, and by ESPN.

9. Season ticket holders receive numerous special benefits, including the option to buy extra single-game seats at a discount before public on-sale, the ability to buy multi-game parking passes, priority in sale of playoff tickets, a discount at the team store, and the ability to e-mail tickets to friends. The team has a special FAQ on this subject.

My Canes all-star game voting blog: marketing

I’ve got a blog covering online voting for the NHL All-Star game, focusing on the Carolina Hurricanes nominees. Voting goes through January 2. I’ve been posting every day. I’ve been trying to incorporate ideas from this class.

I’m running a guerilla marketing campaign, using some of the tools suggested by the marketing component of this course. The assigned press release announced the campaign. I used the list of message boards and blogs in my original writing and posted voting information and links to my blog on all the message boards and blogs I found in the research for my original writing.  I next decided to embark on a viral marketing campaign. I went to Myspace and found two different Carolina Hurricanes groups with several hundred members each, and posted info on voting on the discussion thread for each group, and used my member’s privilege to send a bulletin to all the members of one of the groups. I used my unc facebook.com account and found a dozen Canes fan clubs there as well, varying from 50 to 500 members. I posted info on voting and a link to my blog on the wall on each of those groups. Yesterday, I wrote to the admins of each of those groups, asking them to message all of the members with the information.  One admin has already messaged her 250 members, I hope others will follow along when they return from Thanksgiving break.  I’ve also written to the Canes marketing department and talked stragegy with them.

 I’ve linked a graphic from the Canes website to the ballot itself:

 

My N&O Op-Ed on redistricting

I have an op-ed on redistricting in the Sunday 11/26/2006 N&O (page 27A in the print edition). Interestingly, after they accepted my writing, I had to FAX separate releases to two different people at the N&O, one for the print version, one for the online. (Don’t the two divisions speak to each other? The releases were identical) My initial writing was 1,700 words, I cut it to 890 before submitting it, they edited it to 872. Interestingly, they edited down the next to the last paragraph, leaving it beginning with the word “And” (my version did NOT start with “And”)

 I’ll post a version here later this week that has links to my sources.

CanesAllStars blog to Assist All-Star Game Voting

Assignment: Draft a press release on behalf of your organization or publication. You choose the topic or purpose. Post to your blog.

For More Information Contact:

Gerry F. Cohen

(919)247-xxxx

CanesAllStars@gmail.com

CAROLINA HURRICANES FAN BLOG

TO HELP COORDINATE NHL ALL-STAR GAME VOTING

Will help fans vote for Canes players Ward, Brind’Amour, Cole and Staal

in online balloting beginning November 15; hanging chads gone

Raleigh, NC, November 12 – A website that helps Carolina Hurricanes hockey fans to connect with each other on message board and blogs has announced plans to launch the “CanesAllStars” blog, devoted to Canes fan online balloting for the 2007 NHL All-Star game to be held January 24 in Dallas. The blog, http://canesallstars.wordpress.com will link the online ballot for Canes hockey fans, and have sections for fans to comment on the Canes nominees and encourage others to get involved. According to the National Hockey League, fan balloting begins November 15 and ends January 2, 2007.

The National Hockey League released the official 100-player ballot list on Friday, which includes Carolina Hurricanes forwards Rod Brind’Amour, Erik Cole, and Eric Staal, as well as goalie Cam Ward. For the first time, all fan voting will be online.  For Ward and Staal, this is their first time on the All-Star ballot. Brind’Amour played in the 1992 All-Star game while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. Cole has been on the All-Star ballot.