Dr. Neil Hair

Updates!

Dr Neil Hair — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 02:13:56 +0000

So to say ‘it’s been a while’ is a bit of an understatement. Life has evolved considerably since the birth of my second child and in fantastic ways. I’m almost ready for a full year review. But in the meantime a few teaser updates. I was tapped by the Provost last year to lead a new movement at RIT – the Innovative Learning Institute – which looks to capitalize, energize and where necessary revitalize (how’s that for a few ‘izes) the student and faculty learning experience. I have taken a temporary leave of absence from the classroom in all forms save the online executive MBA program at Saunders (yes I miss it, yes I know its a shame, and yes I know I can have a greater impact in the classroom in this new role which is interim in nature). I now work with a team of over 50 faculty and staff in pursuit of this new endeavor and to say that I am enjoying the new challenge is a bit of an understatement. We are moving fast, with purpose, and with a shared sense of excitement for the cause (more on this in later posts though you can google our general progress to good effect). On the home front all is well, life moves fast with a 4 year old and a 6 monther. Thank goodness the spell of winter is broken! Looking forward to providing additional updates in due course.

Innovating Customer Experience at Highland Hospital

Dr Neil Hair — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:43:48 +0000

Having a baby is probably one of the most nerve wracking experiences around. It makes a PhD viva look like an entertainment special by comparison, and having had a few hours of quiet to think about the experience I came to realize that we as a family just went through one that was truly world class. Thank you Highland Hospital in Rochester! This was our second child at Highland – the first – Lillian, and now Eleanor. The staff have been amazing throughout, including the porters, nurses, doctors, servers – everyone seems to really believe in a culture of service. Putting my marketing hat on (I never get to take it off I’m afraid) I notice the little things, like the vision and mission statements repeated on walls within 100 yards of one another. I notice the staff sanitizing their hands when they enter and leave a room. I notice the cleanliness of the place, not just at 8am, but throughout the day and evening. I notice the fact that staff and doctors eat together, laugh together (in the delivery room too which helped settle both our nerves), that those cleaning the rooms feel equally as important to the birthing experience as those on the business end of a pair of latex gloves. You cant help but marvel at the fixtures and fittings as well – the rooms are hotel quality, the pull out bed actually comfortable (a nurse insisted on making it for me!) and the food pretty good! I also notice though the little things that show someone has attended to detail on the overall experience, ice chip machines, free juice vending, free wi-fi (with by the way RIDICULOUSLY fast upload speeds putting 500mb of obligatory gushing baby photos on flickr in less than ten seconds!) – even politically correct news casting options on the LCD tv’s in waiting areas (Fox on one, and its antidote MSNBC on another). Truly 10/10 Highland Hospital. And the fact that you are only ten minutes door to door from our home makes you even more remarkable. And they say Rochester is an awful city and an even more awful place to live. Pretty fine from where Im sitting (hospital hotel room, enjoying complementary wifi, free cranberry juice, overlooking a truly beautiful little girl that is my daughter – and another of course – slightly older which is my wife).

A year in review – 2011-2012

Dr Neil Hair — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:16:59 +0000

Rear View Mirror

As the academic year comes to a close, here’s a quick overview of key moments in 2011-2012. I’m lucky, I have great colleagues, great students and great support. For me the summer will involve research, several projects that need completing and hopefully plenty of down time to get the writing done before life 4.0 begins with a larger family in the Fall. Looking forward to 2012-2013.. and now for the highlights of a boring academic;

Marketing Concepts – Halloween

Started in office hours – one dude looking great in all black. Next thing I know – everyone – including the interpreters – all in black! Seeing a three wolfs crying at the moon shirt? Priceless. One of my favourite graduate Marketing Concepts classes EVER.

Internet Marketing – the 60 second YouTube Challenge

“It’s time to upload a youtube video promoting this class, recorded in class. Starting.. now. GO!” Despite best efforts of several ninja qualified teams the instructor held the record (he cheated – he acted as a team of one).

Angry Neil Alumni Series – New York, Boston, Buffalo

Three cities, many alums – more friends. The opportunity to see old faces and share some RIT spirit. Key takeaway – everyone is older. Well except for me, and that’s because I wear moisturizing sunscreen.

Commercializing Virtual Worlds – online first

Taking a team of terraformers through the motions of starting a truly virtual business (a business in a virtual world) – and doing so without ever having met half of them in person or they having met each other. Thank you Adobe Connect. Thank you more so the students that went on the journey with me.

Executive Level Marketing Strategy

Fine tuning a challenging course over three (yearly) consecutive iterations, a personal challenge at RIT like few others. I likened it to smacking a hornets nest and then dowsing yourself in honey for that little extra special kick! The ultimate test of short (six sessions), intensive, managerially relevant applied courses (and offering the same consistently in an online only environment for our EEMBA).

Advanced Internet Marketing – Saunders first

Eleven weeks, Ten students, 9 real world consulting projects (not including ten individual critiques of existing internet marketing plans, ten personal marketing plans and a deck of over 400 contemporary advanced internet marketing slides). And no one dies.. (including the instructor). Also all in black by the end of the quarter

Journal of Retailing

What takes four years, four rounds, and one kick ass research study on online customer experience? A published article in the Journal of Retailing. That’s what. Thanks to all the RIT alums that participated in the research! and thanks too for the extra 30 points on the blood pressure monitor JOR.

ICRM 2011

My first attempt at organizing an international conference. A positive event with great participants reminding me that ‘never again’ can sometimes mean, not for a while..

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising

My first editorial position, a special edition on social media and internet marketing and advertising.

Area Leadership

An impossible task – considering one’s mentor and predecessor. But one that needs to be tackled in order for the college to continue to grow in the field of exceptional marketing education, thanks Adriana, Joe, Laurie, Bob, John, Marty, Deb, Raj, Don and Clyde for your support! No doubt the best looking area out there!

Being awarded an Eisenhart

Emotional. Career altering. Thank you.. I love my job.

Being told I was to be a dad again

Better than all of the above thrice over. Thanks to my partner Rose. Another good year due largely to her support.

Executive style coaching for students at Saunders

Dr Neil Hair — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:05:25 +0000

A random picture of two goldfish

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about executive coaching and the role that external coaches play in bringing balance and foresight to the often murky world of the pre-meltdown exec. At Saunders we are pioneering an executive style coaching system for our current students through the traditional faculty / student advising system. As part of it’s charge, the Faculty Council of Areas as Saunders have been exploring means by which this traditional relationship has evolved and how it can be supported. Surprisingly a number of students go through the process of both undergraduate and graduate education not taking full advantage of this support structure. One of the tangible ways in which students can engage faculty is in advising of an ‘educational navigation’ – which classes and instructors offer a particular style of instruction (case, project, exam). I am often asked by my own advisees which classes offer real world client projects for instance (the benefits of which have been blogged on this site long and often before now). Another way in which students can take advantage of this executive style coaching is in the development of resumes. I have seen my fair share of these in various forms (most of which tend to be in the embryonic stage of listing classes, GPA and Microsoft Word proficiency) – and I work with these students to enhance their brand. Another feature of this coaching process is the development of an e-portfolio, work that has been developed over time whilst operating on our program. One might normally associate this sort of portfolio with the more creative arts (though please note – marketing is extremely creative in nature of course!) but it is equally applicable here in demonstrating progress over time (many students make the mistake of not including earlier work thereby demonstrating this journey they’ve taken). Executive style coaching for students at Saunders is therefore just another way in which we differentiate our process, and ultimately our output of highly trained practice oriented graduates, at all levels.

Double whammy for the Saunders college of business – Teaching with Technology and Eisenhart awards 2012

Dr Neil Hair — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:21:17 +0000

It is with much merriment I write this post this morning. The grass seems a little greener, the birds a lot louder, and the coffee a little stronger. The Provost announced formally two awards for teaching excellence. Vic Perotti, long term friend, innovator, educator par excellence, and squash player wannabe was awarded the Teaching with Technology Award for 2012, and yours truly was awarded an Eisenhart for Outstanding Teaching (ten days earlier). Vic’s award recognizes his innovations in the development of Dig Ent – our digital entrepreneurship community that has been growing strongly over the past few years – most notably with our alums who keep the community a vibrant incubator of knowledge and advice. Needless to say I am thrilled that we are in such good company at the college which now houses 4 residing Eisenharts (Vic Perotti, Stan Hoi, Bob Barbato and now myself), three retired emeritus professors (Phil Tyler – my mentor and coach, Gene Fram and Bud Kearns), two recipients of the Provost Award for Excellence in Teaching (Vic Perotti, and myself back in 2006), and one Exemplary Online Faculty Award (yours truly back in 2008). I think of the things Vic and I share in common, the passion for enhancing our craft of teaching has to be in at number one. It’s an honor to be recognized for it.

Advanced Internet Marketing – first for RIT / Saunders College of Business

Dr Neil Hair — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:22:55 +0000

Advanced Internet Marketing

As part of a major repositioning of our New Media Marketing and Marketing programs the college launched its first offering of Advanced Internet Marketing this quarter. As some of my former tweets indicate – I am the rather proud instructor of this course having drawn advice in its construction from a collective of dynamic marketing faculty (Raj Murthy and Adriana Boveda-Lambie in particular). The course acts as a capstone for the New Media Marketing students, and as an elective for the remainder (per-requisites include Search Engine Marketing and our regular Internet Marketing courses). The key feature of the advanced course is experience. I have long been an advocate of experiential learning in the classroom – especially the use of real world pro-bono consultancy projects (under my tenure alone this represents over 200 marketing plans for local and national organizations with a market value of around $1.2 million). In this course students are exposed to no less than five projects. To mirror real world engagements where internet marketing plans of all genres (such as basic website repositioning, SEO, social media, micro sites, other online channels) are often built under short, intensive, time constraints – each plan is built within three weeks or less. Students work in areas where their former curriculum has not taken them – into the realms of Business-to-Business, Not-For-Profit, personal branding, as well as the familiar playground of Business-to-Consumer. Additional features of this course include;

A personal review of their regular resumes versus that of an experienced based resume built from the experiences of their four years with us on our programs
An e-portfolio charting their progress through the course and their preparation for the afterlife that is ‘graduation’
Experience building virtual delivery systems (online presentations and demonstrations of their plans)
A series of personal critiques that evaluate their team work and prior work of existing internet marketing plans (suitable in demonstrating self awareness)
A network of advanced level students that are seniors, about to graduate, facing the same issues in their career paths, and experience with working with each other under a rotating team structure
A master class set of client / consultant notes for managing the advanced internet marketing planning process across various domains (all bespoke for this course and this caliber of student I might add)

The results mid way through the quarter are extremely encouraging (at least from the instructors perspective!). I have been very pleased with the quality of output from my inaugural class, their dedication, and what they can achieve in less than ideal time constraints. A great deal can be achieved in less than three weeks it seems, especially when you have the knowledge gleaned from prior classes, even more though over the 11 weeks of the course.

We have much to be proud of at Saunders, not least the emphasis placed on innovating the curriculum. Only that way are our students near bullet proof with their experience at the point of graduation.

Mobile functionality added!

Dr Neil Hair — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:38:04 +0000

So increasingly, stats point towards greater numbers of mobile (cell for our American friends) viewers visiting my site. So – the solution? WPtouch plugin that prepares your site for mobile users. The results are pretty good! I like the option of being able to toggle between mobile and full blown site within your phones browser. Good if you’re interested in blog posts and not so much the other pages (content) on the site.

Updates to NEILHAIR.COM

Dr Neil Hair — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:39:33 +0000

It’s perhaps overdue but a major renovation to neilhair.com is finally ready for public viewing. Developments in plugins for wordpress and the link have finally given me sufficient warrant to make the change to a 4.0 major upgrade. 3.0 was a welcome enhancement from 2.0 back in the day and I look on 1.0 with rose tinted spectacles (but do not miss the html lessons, or use of ftp uploads). So with it comes new functionality and a new look. I am particularly fond of word clouds for tags and categories which you can now see 3D manifestations there of. I am also interested in the new functionality of wordpress stats that go with the new site. And I have to admit I’m learning as I go with it, but JetPack seems like a very good addition to the cant be bothered with html or css code head approaches to site design. But wait! I’m not done yet however, plans to integrate my youtube series of lectures and updates for alums, make better use of my twitter feeds and relationships, and continue to integrate across major social channels like LinkedIn and of course facebook. I’m still waiting on google+ to reach critical mass before investing large amounts of time in it, and playing with pinterest amongst other projects.

So let me know what you like and how it might be enhanced. I am particularly interested in any MUST HAVE plugins for wordpress you’re aware of as well as ideas on content you’d like my opinions on.

Enjoy..

Commercializing Virtual Worlds ONLINE First at RIT

Dr Neil Hair — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:25:35 +0000

This quarter I was lucky enough to lead a virtual expedition to a number of virtual worlds including those of Lego Universe, World of Warcraft, SecondLife, eharmony, Salesforce.com, and one of the Furry communities. As part of a Provost’s Learning and Innovation Grant from 2011 I put together the worlds first course on Commercializing Virtual Worlds in an online only format. 20 of us set about identifying virtual worlds that were ripe for commercial enterprise. And unlike the USS Enterprise, armed with marketing strategy versus fazers we set off to build business plans. The course was structured around two live interactive lecture sessions a week (thank you Adobe Connect), a healthy dose of weekly discussion posts aimed at applying the theory from the lectures towards our plans progress, and a number of highly relevant (student words not mine) personal and team based assignments – one of which was a personal branding strategy for Virtual Worlds, and the other the marketing plan for the said virtual business. As part of the course students also;

Engaged in a twitter fest promoting their exploration using several hashtags (#cvwrit the main, and my personal favourite – #iloveneilhair one of the others). The results were coverage on several large networks including those local to the institution and wider across a number of popular marketing daily news feeds
Defended their business models against very aggressive questioning (by yours truly)
Identified and justified strategies and tactics for building their businesses
Explored skills necessary in navigating the many moral and ethical dilemmas faced by entrepreneurs in this area
Identified common metrics for measuring the success of virtual business across the various stages of growth
Developed several high impact viral videos for the promotion of their business concepts (the majority of which returned over 400 hits in less than 72 hours)
Engaged with the materials of the course entirely online
Engaged with each other and the instructor – ENTIRELY ONLINE
Delivered a set of cracking final live presentations on their business ideas / marketing plans using their Adobe Connect rooms
Finalized their reflections of the entire process through weekly blogs culminating in an e-portfolio charting their exploration experience
On process it is also important to note that we had two students who were hearing impaired – and thanks to RIT’s equipment and resource capabilities (such as the use of live captioning within Adobe Connect rooms) this did not pose as a barrier towards learning – or overall experience of the course for any of our students.

Needless to say I am extremely proud of these Terraformers, they are a credit to RIT’s student population, without doubt social media evangelists, and capable of performing at an exceptional level in the absence of face to face contact. Imagine having these experiences on your resume upon graduation! My thanks to the Provost’s office for supporting this endeavor, Saunders College of Business for its usual stalwart support of innovation, and of course the captionist from San Fran that typed out my lectures at the speed of light!

Education Futures, Facuty showcase at RIT: Innovating the provision of experiential learning in online executive education

Dr Neil Hair — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:18:23 +0000

RIT’s Saunders College of Business launched it’s online EMBA program about three years ago with the express intention of innovating the provision of online education for executives. Top among those innovations are the use of highly immersive, interactive experiential approaches. Unlike our regular MBA and undergraduate business programs, executives bring with them a set of unique challenges that alter the usual approaches of instruction. One example is in the use of pro-bono real world client projects. Contractual obligations towards current employers and time constraints are two of these challenges. Add to the mix the geographic dispersion of many of our executive students (some serving overseas in the military for instance) and we find ourselves limited in what we can do to create great learning experiences. Undeterred and fully supportive of ‘experience’ based approaches the program arrived at a potential solution. In my Marketing Strategy course I make use of something as seemingly simple as a fictitious ‘client’. Each week the client reveals additional issues surrounding it’s ability to compete effectively in the market – and the job of the EMBA team is to reflect on the ways in which the theoretically rich nature of the materials can be applied to solving this problem. The results are in – executives love it and so too the judges of innovative teaching practices at institute level at RIT. Students get the benefit of application (something critical to the success of executive training where more often than not students need to be able to apply their learning to their jobs on Monday morning), the immersion of team interaction (thanks Adobe Connect), and the delivery of a real world marketing plan at the end of the intensive process (our EMBA courses last a short 6 weeks). It is with great pleasure therefore that Ive been awarded the task of representing the approach of my course specifically at the Educational Futures Faculty Showcase in the Spring. For more information on our online EMBA and the benefits of the program look here.