A quick Friday Five on the eve of Memorial Day weekend. While I’ve been tied up with sending out mass notification alerts and compiling after-action reports, many other higher ed bloggers have been cranking out some worthwhile stuff. Here are five that have caught my eye recently.
1. Patrick Powers on What higher ed could learn from Silicon Valley. “Imagine if higher education could operate with the same aggressive energy.”
2. Andy Shaindlin asks, How should a university build its “leadership brand”? Andy talks about SUNY’s “superbrand” (the term I use in my comment) and asks, “Does a large, decentralized public university system need to engage a ‘brand design agency’ to craft a ‘clear and unified vision and voice to inspire its students, faculty and region’?” It’s an important question, and not just for large, decentralized systems.
3. Karine Joly offers the chance to win 2 scholarships to a great higher ed web conference: Higher Ed Web Arkansas, or HeWebAr for short. If you’re looking for some good professional development this summer but don’t have the budget, you should take advantage of this opportunity. (Note: I’ll be attending this event. If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, consider the impressive lineup of other speakers, including keynoter Georgy Cohen.)
4. Meet Content on using infographics for clear communication. “Quality design can make information more meaningful by helping people understand it more easily, more quickly and perhaps more deeply. If you think about it, infographics are a kind of markup language for content.”
5. Higher Ed Live on summer travel plans. Everybody’s favorite video show isn’t going to be showing reruns this summer.
Bonus link: A little Memorial Day playlist to get you in the mood for summer. Enjoy.
Higher Ed Marketing 
Thanks for the MC link and the GC plug, Andy ;-)