Mostly work and little play makes Johnny a dull, dull boy…

~Tuesday~  I “pulled one over on the man” today, by taking one of the new parking spots along Hillsborough Street that are usable, but for which there haven’t yet been parking meters installed. I felt at once a little bit guilty, and a lot a bit giddy, about walking across the street to my building and having access to my car all day if I wanted it.

My officemate was on vacation yesterday, and again today, so our weekly 9:00-10:00 staff meeting wasn’t really necessary this morning. My boss dropped in for about five minutes at 9:20 and we just shared what we were each working on.

My entire day was pretty much spent editing that 50-page NexGen E-mail report that’s going to be released to campus later this week. In fact, I was at the office until about 8:00 finishing it. Before leaving, I did a quick review of a proposal my friend and colleague, Jen, wrote up for us outlining a session we’d like to give at an upcoming conference in November.

I sent it back to her for a final edit, and once I got home, I submitted it. The deadline isn’t for another week, 99 proposals for presentations/workshops/sessions have been submitted and it’ll probably end up in the 105-110 range. The estimated number of sessions to be scheduled for the conference is around 50. Here’s our submission:

Name: Social Media Goes to College: Building Your Campus Community
Presenters: John and Jen
Theme: Social Media and Emerging Tech
Type: Lecture
Description:
Social media tools are becoming ever more popular, powerful and prevalent, and no one loves them more than our students. Those of us in IT have the opportunity to use these tools to communicate with students and help to improve the campus community. But when is social media too much social and not enough useful? What are the goals of using social media in the campus business model and how do we make sure we’re achieving those goals?
Join us while we consider what constitutes a “social medium” and consider the channels IT organizations should be using. We’ll be taking a look at all the trendy tools of technology: Twitter, Facebook, blogs and wikis, location-based applications and more. We’ll chat about the day-to-day use of these tools: how to unleash the power of hash tags, provide consistent value in 140 characters, and aggregate all of your “official” university feeds on Twitter. We’ll also be discussing the importance of personal vs. professional identities, the implications of Facebook’s privacy settings and how to educate students (and faculty and staff!) on using discretion.
Time: 45 minutes
Suggested Audience: Managers, communications staff, outreach and training staff, etc.

I dropped by Flex, where it was Idol Night, and they had only three contestants. One of them was a guy named Michael, who I hadn’t seen in a while and who had just this morning been laid off totally unexpectedly, “I did close to a million dollars in sales last year!” he said. Things had happened quickly, though, and by the end of the day, he’d had a phone, and then an in-person, interview for another job. He didn’t say what he sells, and I didn’t ask.

Gene was there and he introduced me to this little young thing named Trey, whose main job seemed to be flirting with Gene, who’s main reaction I would characterize as uninterested.

Michael ended up winning the Idol competition for which he was handed a dead presidentBenjamin Franklin, to be precise.

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