Monday, January 12, 2009

LinkedIn Group for New Media Alum

OK, I am officially a moron. For years, I have been preaching the power of social networking. There is even a portion of my “Jobs Lecture” – many of you remember that – that deals with LinkedIn. But I missed the point. My bad.

For years, I have been trying to devise a way to keep up with all my former new media students. Since I started teaching the web back in 1994, there are a lot of you guys out there. And I miss you! But it was an impossible task. I tried listservs (you must be on one now to be reading this) but I always had the old emails – the one from two jobs ago. And Facebook was a free-for-all. The pictures students sent me in their “friend requests” made me want to call their parents. It seemed hopeless.

And then I remembered that some of you had been harping at me to create a Linkedin group. During some downtime this holiday break, I looked into it. Snap! It is exactly what we need.
LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com) is a professional networking site. No “relationship status,” photo albums, or apps. Just a way to keep up with who you know. And, more importantly, who they know.

If you are a new media alum (that means someone that I taught new media to in any our locales – Megalab, Dowden Center, or NMI), create a Linkedin profile (quick, easy, free) and request to join the “New Media Institute Alumni – UGA” group (http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1658507). I will clear you to join. This group is only for alum so if you have been gone a long time, jumpstart my fading memory by giving me something to remember – like the project you worked on.

I started the group last Sunday and we are already up to 58 members. But I am greedy! I want 100 by next Monday.

Special thanks to Jennifer Maldonado and Eddie Garrett for keeping on me about this. See it takes a while, but I catch on.

1 Comments:

Blogger BSUSmith said...

Two things for thought.

First, it is the history of entertainment/content development, first comes a need. Next the amateur answers that need and other amateurs join in the celebration. As the tipping point of maker and product approaches, the quality of contributions increase and people begin to drift toward the better products. Now, demand increases and money becomes available to get the "best" of the new. When this happens the professional emerges.

I think this is true of the phenom you are observing. The delivery platform is important, but content is what is consumed. So, for instance while the film industry is caught with the tail wagging the dog; A condition wherin theatre owners who have (1) mutli-year contracts with studios, (2) film rather than high def digital projectors that prevent the adaptation of new technologies and (3)as studios (and television) with cost models that can't be changed as long as theatre owners (DVD, Cable, etc.) are in charge hold sway they suffer what appears to be a lack of progress. In the meantime the amateurs have had time to develop a quality product and new cost models have emerged as the desire has increased for those products. However, the standards of content production observed in the film industry and which were adapted by television during that time of change, are still professional production standards that smart content and technological developers follow in digital form.

Large film studios and the television industry have not died away. There are fusions and developments that await as contracts expire and new media becomes new distribution models and schemes. There is big money buying up advancement and just as studios found their way to TV and TV is finding its way to the net, we ain't seen nut'n yet.

For me, it is to early to declare winners and losers, but not to early to say the pie has been expanded, making room for more winners. Ahh, to be 21 and understand all of this. It is like being in NY during the late 40's and early 50's as this thing called TV developed.

So, whether it is theatre, film, TV, cable or emerging media... as my advisor used to say,"thus it has always been."

Is new media, or emerging media, the technology or the content? Or is it new forms and ways to use any technology (old or new) and/or content in combination with any other technolgy and/or content (old or new or all the above)?

Good thoughts, Scott. Hope they didn't totaly occupy your holiday. :)

January 12, 2009 at 11:12 AM  

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