Have you decorated your bike tree and cookies yet? Sung your bike carols? Anxiously waited for the Bike Month peloton to land on your rooftop? I hope so.

With gas prices climbing and environmental concerns increasing, this is a particularly good year to celebrate National Bicycle Month. Started in 1956, National Bike Month is still going strong and growing.

To celebrate, take a minute (well, two) to watch this great little video about one man’s bike commute.

Mat’s Commute from Mat Barlow on Vimeo.

NEW NATIONAL LEGISLATION
Complete Streets Bill Now in House and Senate
(05.05.08) Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) took an important step on Thursday, May 1 for safer, better designed streets yesterday by introducing the Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2008 (HR 5951) into the U.S. House. Click here to read more.

UPCOMING EVENTS
May 16: Bike to Work Day
Not a centralized national event, so you might want to Google “Bike To Work Day 2008″ for more events in your area.

May 21: Ride of Silence
Ride of Silence will begin in North America and roll across the globe. Cyclists will take to the roads in a silent procession to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roadways. Although cyclists have a legal right to share the road with motorists, the motoring public often isn’t aware of these rights, and sometimes not aware of the cyclists themselves.

FOR MORE BICYCLE AND CYCLING ADVOCACY INFO
Bikes Belong Coalition
(very nice design, excellent up-to-date content)

League of American Bicyclists
(great advocacy info and contact forms to talk to politicians about cycling rights/issues)

Bicycling Magazine’s This Just In blog

Please feel free to share links and resources that you find helpful. Happy National Bike Month!

Last month fellow HD blogger, Gretchen, broached the topic of “What is the best CMS?” which stirred up some good debate in the comments. The question of CMS selection and approach comes up all the time. Everyone has their two cents on whether your project requires you to buy, build or go the Open Source route. To add to the discussion I wanted to reference an article in the latest edition of Adobe’s Edge newsletter that reviews some of the popular Open Source content management systems.

The article’s list of CMS solutions is, by no means, exhaustive or comprehensive — it only focuses on systems that run on Apache, MySQL and PHP architecture including: CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla!, Wordpress and XOOPS. That being said, it is helpful and a nice quick way to compare and contrast some popular Open Source solutions. Enjoy!

A nice overview of some of the higher education work we’ve done here at Hanson Dodge Creative.

In the last 15 years or so, web content management systems (CMS) have essentially become the only way to build web sites. It makes perfect sense — from large corporate sites to one-page personal web sites, nobody wants to touch code every time they need to change an image or copy.

And the question I hear all the time is simply this: which one is the best one? I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that by now, one system has risen to the top. Sort of like Microsoft Word for word processing. But the truth is, there are literally hundreds of CMS packages out there, and they all do the same thing: update web content outside the site’s source code.

The real question you should be asking is “Which CMS is best for what I need?” Of course, that takes more planning work. Here are the top six things you should consider when selecting a CMS for your site:

1. How much do you want to spend? You can spend nothing, or you can spend millions on a CMS solution. of course, if you take the nothing route, as in open source, you will spend much more time on in-house development. You will also have more control over what features you have, instead of working around somebody else’s code. At the other extreme: spend lots of money, and you’ll get lots of built-in features, good post-launch support and reliable feature upgrades.

2. Who will be updating your site?If you’ve got lots of people in multiple locations needing to update content, you’ll need to consider workflow tools. Some CMS packages have good ones, some don’t. You’re going to need multiple user roles (contributor, editor, administrator, etc.) and specific approval steps content must go through before appearing on the site. On the other hand, if it’s just one person running the whole thing, you’re in luck. Don’t worry about workflow.

3. Do you need to publish in other languages?Some CMS packages have translation tools built in. If you need to publish your content in a number of different languages, make sure you select a CMS that will assist in that process. The tools will not be perfect, and you will still need to have a human translator check for accuracy, but at least you won’t have to translate every word manually.

4. What does your CMS need to work with?Do you sell product online? Are you using an e-commerce, payment gateway or a product information management system? Make sure you identify and consider outside systems before making any CMS decisions.

5. Consider your platform. This one’s deceptively simple. If you have 25 .NET developers on staff, don’t select a CMS that only uses Python. If your developers will be learning a new language, try to do it outside a new web site deployment. You’ll be busy enough without having to worry about training.6. Think about the future.Don’t just select a CMS to replace your current site; think about what you might want to do in the next five years. Will you be hiring more content contributors? Reducing your development staff? Assigning more web administrators? Adding an online store? You will need to think all of these things through, or you might be going through the same selection process in a year.

Of course there are plenty of other things to consider when selecting a CMS: can your company support ongoing administration? How much training will you need to do? What are other members of your industry using?

In fact, if you’re in higher education, you’re in luck: UC-Davis did a really interesting survey on which CMS tools colleges are using. The comments alone are an interesting read.

So, if you’re in the market for a new CMS, be thoughtful about it. It might take a little longer up front, but you’ll be glad you did.

I was doing some online searching the other day about passion and inspiration – key concepts of both innovation and communication – and I went to www.ted.com, a site dedicated to spreading ideas, to see what was new.

Each year, some of the world’s greatest thinkers and doers share their insights on general themes at the TED conference in Monterey, California. Each year, these speakers share both their passion and their knowledge on fascinating topics, and you can find them online.

TED stands for Technology, Education and Design and has an interesting history. The first TED conference was organized by Richard Saul Wurman in 1984, and after a six-year hiatus, it became an annual event in 1990. Wurman had already made a name for himself by developing the popular ACCESS travel guidebooks. The concept for these books was to present information the way we seek it — in this case, by location. Wurman coined the phrase “information architecture” and demonstrated the concept with this series.

The TED conference grew from Wurman’s observations of a convergence trend among three disciplines: technology, education and design. He saw potential in bringing together the greatest minds in each, to share ideas and explore new concepts. At the time, he was also an ongoing host and participant of the International Design Conference in Aspen, which was the leading multi-disciplinary business and design conference. TED took the concept further, as an invitation-only event. Additionally, each speaker is challenged to “give the talk of their lives” in 18 minutes.

Now, you can watch and listen to these presentations online. The content is presented in video and audio formats. You can search the content by theme, speaker, popularity or volume of online discussion. Once you discover TED, It won’t take long to find your favorite presentations or speakers. Here are a few of mine: Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto; William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle; and Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Best of all, the videos are released under a Creative Commons license, which means you can redistribute them freely and legally. To me, this proves that the TED people are truly more interested in spreading ideas than trying to sell something or promote a hidden agenda.

The convergence concept couldn’t be more relevant today. Branding, like everything else, is increasingly social and technological. TED is a valuable resource for our work, but it’s also a source of inspiration and information about the increasingly complex and connected world-at-large. And for many of us, those small moments of inspiration and connection are what make us passionate about our work, and our lives.

This caught my eye over the weekend – first, because I think it’s a great idea. Second, because it involves Trek, our very own client.

David C. Joyce, president of Ripon College [WI], wants to make a deal with new students this fall: Leave the car at home for the first year and get a free Trek mountain bike. To keep.

The college has purchased 200 Trek bikes to give to a portion of the roughly 300 first-year students that will arrive in the fall. After students sign a honor code, saying that they will not bring a car to campus that year, they get a bike, a helmet, and a bike lock, altogether worth about $400. The program is supported by college donors, trustees, and alumni, and the college got discounts on the equipment from Master Lock and the Trek Bicycle Corporation, which is based 60 miles south of Ripon.

Read the full story here.

If you answered yes, and your list only includes the brands which are in your immediate competitive space (the ones you see year after year at that Vegas trade show) – this is your wakeup call. It’s true, you ultimately will be competing for a sale against like brands, but what happens before a consumer decides to purchase a specific item; let’s say a fishing pole for example. Prior to that decision, a consumer is likely shopping for a form of recreation or entertainment, rather than a brand or product. This effectively increases your brands competitive landscape. You’re now fighting other forms of recreation/entertainment AND their respective brands.

With that said, it’s crucial that you begin looking inside and outside your industries to gain knowledge and insight when establishing your benchmarks. Whether they’re brand, product or service related – the perspective to be gained is invaluable. This will help in developing smarter products/services and ultimately a more compelling brand experience. Unless of course you’re content being the “smart follower” in your industry.

If the notion of more competition is making your stomach turn, rest easy. Here are some tips to help you navigate an ever-evolving brand landscape:

• Look around you and learn from others
• Treat “emotion” as a benchmark
• Know your competition (inside/outside your industry)
• Benchmark all facets of your business (product, brand, service, etc)
• Create great products as well as great brand experiences
• Identify key consumer trends/habits/preferences

You’ll be competing with anyone and everyone, which means you need to keep an eye on anyone and everyone…

We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist . . .
in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

This incredible video is a crash course in understanding how technology affects young people’s lives and development today. Originally a PowerPoint presentation for a 2006 Arapahoe High School faculty meeting in Centennial, Colorado, it went viral last year, getting over 5 million views in 5 months. The number has grown to 10 million+ since then.

This new version is eight minutes of sheer information design genius, bringing to life what would otherwise be a very dry lecture on technology, education and economics.

It’s engaging, frightening and surprising all at once. Well worth the eight minutes.