Michael Stone Moves On
I got an email yesterday from my friend Michael Stone announcing that he was retiring after more than 35 years at UCLA. It took me back, way back, to 1995 and my first big consulting gig.
In 1995, UCLA’s vice chancellor John Kobara liked my idea of a “communications audit” of UCLA.edu. He thought it would be a really good idea to think about how all the separate websites in the UCLA domain could link up and how University Relations could work with other units to be proactive in developing UCLA’s site. He hired me to lead the intake and charged staff member Michael Stone with leading the project. Imagine, if you will, the administrative assistant who was making calls and telling people-among them, faculty-that she was making an appointment for Michael Stone and Michael Stoner to talk with them about the university’s website. I’ve imagined the responses she received and chortled over them many times in the years since.
Michael and I spent days meeting with units all over campus from academic units to students. I’d worked at Lehigh and Princeton (and attended a liberal arts college, a state university, and the University of Pennsylvania), so I had some idea of what what higher ed was like. But I often felt as if I was back in a folklore or anthropology class, doing fieldwork for an ethnography of kinship systems and power dynamics in a feudal state.
Our work led to a report and an approach that helped University Relations structure a relationship with other units on campus and create a new approach to UCLA.edu. According to Michael,
Our early work together on the UCLA web site was instrumental in my building credibility for what was then called University Relations to take over the UCLA Gateway and to work effectively with colleagues across the campus.
As for me, I learned a great deal from that project. I didn’t know much about marketing then, certainly at the level that Michael had practiced it as head of marketing for the UCLA Extension, and I gained some great insights from questions he asked and observations he made. And the process we used for that project-including the necessity of involving many people in listening and feedback sessions-became a cornerstone of the process that mStoner still uses.
Michael and I haven’t kept up with each other much over the years, though I knew that he remained at UCLA and continued to contribute to marketing efforts there. In his email to me, he noted that, “Old marketing guys never die, they just start to transform themselves.” He’s already worked out a gig with a marketing company that works with the travel industry: I can see that there are going to be horizons a bit more interesting and scenic than the ones in Westwood in his future.
So, Michael: Thanks for that important early partnership and what you taught me. Have fun reinventing yourself. And best wishes.
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