A teach Entrepreneurship part time - I love it - it keeps me connected. I've taught both here n Minnesota and in Germany last year to the MBA students at WHU near Koblenz. The experience taught me more than the students.

This spring I went to Eden Campus in South Africa, and helped get the students up and running with blogs. I often challenge my students to start blogging - it seems to me that they are all going to get "Googled" soon by prospective employers, dates and prospective in-laws. They might as well have a say it what people find.

People ask why I blog - is it a selfish, "I just want to be heard" syndrome? Probably a bit of that. but there is more. My wife blogs also, and though she has journal for years, she finds the art of posting a bit terrifying - that sharing your ideas with the rest of the world makes you think a bit more. The processes of sharing your ideas defines you to the world.

A full time professor at the local University and I were talking the other day, and we posed a question - what if every assignment, from every student in the entire university was blogged on the campus website?

Imagine if every paper and assignment was out there for the world to see on a blog. It was a sub domain of the University until you graduate, then you could post a copy on your own blog after that.

Of course, lots of negatives come up - plagiarisms,privacy issues, etc.

But think of the body of knowledge - imagine if each college had 10,000 papers a week being published to its site - that students had to live with these permanently on the web.

I know I would work harder as a student.

From an SEO standpoint, it would do wonders for the University website.

Picture two potential employees, both fresh out of college, both with similar resumes. One has an online example of 4-5 years of thoughts, ideas and scholarly work - the other doesn't - who do you hire?

Just a thought....

As many of you know, I've been helping a friend with a wonderful line of cancer awareness jewelry at www.butterflyoflife.com. If you have a second, please give it a look.

Here's the update:

With a simple redesign that focused on the customer experience, the site improved it's conversion rates dramatically. Our focus was increasing our inbound links: we went from just a handful of inbound links to over 2,000 as of today. We use Hubspots free website grader (and great seminars) to keep an eye on our progress.

I think this is a great example of what can go right when designing a website. Consider this:

1. Focus on strategy, not design. Websites are integral parts of your customer communication strategy. Spend resources thinking out where it fits into your total value proposition, and what the customer needs from your website.

2. Measure, measure, measure. Before you start the redesign, figure out how you will define and track success.

3. Spend 80% of resources (time and money) on content, 20% on design. As Seth Godin says "There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one that you can start with." Really, is your website so ground breaking you need a fresh design? Will it annoy your customers less than a well tested, Wordpress powered template?

4. BLOG. BLOG. BLOG. If you have nothing to say to your customers, someone else will.

5. Other channels - EBay, Google Base, Yahoo Products, MSN, etc. A must.

If you are considering a site redesign, drop me a note.