Haiti: Events at NYU

In light of the recent earthquake in Haiti, we want to bring everyone’s attention to events happening around campus to raise money to aid relief efforts, and also provide links to many relief organizations where you can help by donating money. It is important that we all do what we can to help those in need.

Here are some events on and around campus:

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010: Headshots for Haiti
12pm -8pm - Tisch School of the Arts - Riese Student Lounge
721 Broadway - Photo ID required upon entry. Walk-ins only.
Have your headshots taken by Photography & Imaging students. 100% of sales will benefit Haiti Relief Efforts
Visit Headshots for Haiti on Faceboook and Twitter.
Headshot prices:
NYU Students $60 color or black & white
NYU Student $80 color and black & white
NYU Alum $100 color and black & white
Outside NYU $150 color and black & white
Per Image, Touch Ups $40
Host: TSOA Department of Photography & Imaging and Student Affairs
For more information please contact Liz Andrews
at 212-998-1926 or liz.andrews@nyu.edu

Monday, January 25- Thursday, January 28: Hot Chocolate for Haiti
12:15pm-1:30pm - Tisch Hall Lobby of the Stern School
SternCares and Stern Student Council will be sponsoring "Hot Chocolate for Haiti" Cups of hot chocolate and snacks will be available for a donation in the lobby of Tisch Hall each day from 12:15-1:30. All proceeds will go to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
Host: SternCares and Stern Student Council
For more information please visit:
http://www.hotchocolateforhaiti.org or email stncares@stern.nyu.edu

Tuesday, January 26, 4:50pm: Vigil for Haiti
Gould Plaza - Front of Tisch Hall of the Stern School
West 4th Street at Greene Street
Please join us in marking the two-week anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. We will begin with a moment of silence, followed by candle-lighting and brief remarks from university leaders. The people of Haiti have suffered tremendously, so it is our hope to show our support as a student body and to remember the many victims of this disaster.
Host: Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life
For further information, please contact Rachel Slaff - rls421@nyu.edu

Tuesday, January 26 through Monday, February 1: Seven Days for Haiti
Join the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU in raising as much money and awareness as we can during a week-long campaign for Haiti. Initiatives will include fund-raising, political action on behalf of the people of Haiti, and support for the local Haitian community. Donate whatever you can - be it time or money - and help the people of Haiti in their time of need. As more details and co-sponsors become available additional updates will be released.
Host: Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life
To get involved, please contact Rachel Slaff at rls421@nyu.edu

January 19 through January 29, 2010: Clothing and First Aid Supply Donation Box
Kimmel Center, 7th floor Lounge
Drop off gently worn clothing and unopened first aid supplies to drop boxes.
Items will be transported to Haiti via the Bedford Haitian Community Center and Helping Hands Bring Sunshine.
Host: Delta Phi Epsilon
Student Contact; Rachel Freiman, VP of Programming, DPHIE

January 20 through February 15, 2010: On-Line Initiative
Gallatin Student Council On-Line Fundraising Appeal For UNICEF in Haiti
Goal: $5,000 by February 15, 2010.
Gallatin Student Council has created a fundraising page for United States Fund for UNICEF in Haiti. UNICEF was chosen because of their commitment to providing help directly to children who are one of the most vulnerable groups after a natural disaster. After the cameras have left, UNICEF will continue their work there building schools, medical clinics and fostering education.
To make a donate or for more info about UNICEF in Haiti go to:
http:gallatinstudent.com/give
Host: Gallatin Student Council
We thank you in advance for your support, and if you have any questions or
would like to get involved, feel free to contact me at jeongkilim@gmail.com, or
Rick Stern at rick.stern@nyu.edu.

Sunday, January 24th at 3pm: Benefit Concert for Haiti
17 Smith Street, Brooklyn NY 11201
Grammy Award Winning Brookyln Tabernacle Gospel Choir
Hosted by: Christian Fellowship, NYU School of Medicine
Student Contact: ! Michelle Rullan, michelle.rullan@nyumc.org

Sunday, January 24, 2010: Horns for Haiti (Night of Dancing)
7pm to midnight
The Living Theatre, 21 Clinton Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Join the Hungry March Band, Raya Brass Band + More for a night of dancing in support of Haiti. Special Guest Performances by Mikerline Afro Haitian Dance + Drum Troupe, Peniel Guerrier + More. Special moment with Rev. Billy + the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir
$20 (or more please) All money to benefit Doctors Without Borders and the Haitian performers with family Haiti. Space is limited, come early.
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=263520911372&ref=nf

Some of the many organizations collecting money:

Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org/

UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/

Doctors Without Borders
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

Partners in Health
http://www.pih.org/home.html

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
http://clintonbushhaitifund.org/

Islamic Relief USA
www.IslamicReliefUSA.org

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
http://www.jdc.org/help-jdc/donate.aspx

American Jewish World Service
http://ajws.org/

Catholic Relief Services
http://crs.org/

Christian Relief Services
http://www.christianrelief.org/


In order to keep students and others informed, NYU has created a special NYU web site for disseminating information regarding the NYU community response to the Haiti Earthquake:
http://www.nyu.edu/about/haiti.response.html

Please help any way you can.

Welcome Back Comm Club!

We hope you all had an excellent winter break and that you are looking forward to an even better Spring Semester! Comm Club has excellent events planned and we hope to see you all at our monthly meetings. Dates will be announced shortly! As always, make sure to keep an eye out for new blog posts and emails.

Also, if you are interested in getting more involved with Comm Club this semester, we are looking for two new E-Board members to be our USG Representatives at weekly Student Government meetings. If you are available on Tuesday’s from 12:30-1:45 and are interested in taking a more active role with the club, email nyucommclub@gmail.com for more information!

Here’s to a great semester!

Bi-Weekly Interview: Jim Ford

Written by Natan Edelsburg
Edited by Sara Saldi

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jim Ford, talented actor and Chief Web Designer for NYU Steinhardt. Jim has played an essential role in helping the Comm Club begin to re-brand themselves this semester by helping us design a new website. He's also been helping out Steinhardt's Undergraduate Student Government by working with their new social media guru, freshman Jeremiah Malina. More importantly though, Jim was behind Steinhardt's phenomenal new web design, which if you haven't noticed, rolled out this semester. Here's a condensed and edited version of my interview.

How did you start your career as a web developer?

I majored in acting in college. I got my first job as an "HTML Monkey" making travel sites for destinations in the Caribbean.

When did you start working on Steinhardt's Website?

In 2000 the web team consisted of one person. We spent two and a half years building a site for the school. I then left Steinhardt for a bit and went to work for a company called Fractured Atlas, a non-profit that helped provide affordable healthcare for emerging artists, where I served as Director of Member Services. I then ended up coming back to NYU when a new position opened up.

When was the last time the site was redesigned?

We redesigned the site in 2007 when Steinhardt re-branded itself, changing its name to the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The problem with the original website was that the site was based more on the design and less on the userability. Using a trackpad with the site was horrible. However, we did introduce a great CMS (Content Management System), which allows departments and student organizations to easily create a page with their content.

What are some of the cool features of the new redesign?

When designing the site we used the mega drop-downs with a limitless options-style designed by expert usability consultant Jakob Nielsen. It lets users click where they want to go as quickly as possible. We also have a great video portal with interviews and lectures. Lastly, we launched our News Portal that features new blogs and happenings around Steinhardt.

Many students prefer to use Gmail as supposed to NYU's Messenger and other intranet features. Do you have any insights why NYU hasn't gone Google?

I'm not positive but it probably has to do with FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) that protects academic records. NYU may not want to give Google access to student's private communication with professors and other students. Another concern may be that they don’t want to sell their student’s attention to Google. It’s true that Google is pretty good about ads with their academic suites, but it could still be a potential issue.

MadCupMenCakes

Hey Comm Club! We wanted to wish everyone good luck on finals and invite you to our final event of the semester: MadCupMenCakes! It is happening today, Thursday December 10th, in Room 803 of Kimmel at 8:30pm.

The event is very chill and will allow all of us to take a break from Bobst. We are going to watch the Emmy award winning show "MadMen" and eat cupcakes of various brands to take a break from the madness that is finals.

Hope to see you all there! As always, if you have any questions, please contact us at nyucommclub@gmail.com

Thanks!

Sincerely,
The Comm Club EBoard

November Monthly Meeting Update

Written by Sara Saldi
Edited by Felicia Shulman

At our last Comm Club meeting on Wednesday November 18th, we had the pleasure of hosting Isaac Josephson, the director of product development at ABC News.

Before delving into the field of journalism, Mr. Josephson ran the music division of The NPD Group, where he helped global music companies, retailers, and internet companies develop digital music business strategies. Prior to that, he served as product manager at Listen.com for the launch of the Rhapsody digital music subscription service, and senior producer at Tunes.com where he managed the online presence of websites like Rollingstone.com and Downbeat.com.

In 1994, Isaac co-founded Centerstage Chicago, the first online guide to local entertainment. It was subsequently acquired by the Chicago Sun Times. Isaac began his career with the Tribune Company where he was responsible for developing the corporate online presence and participated in the launch of Chicagotribune.com.

Isaac received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is presently enrolled in NYU Steinhardt’s Master’s program in Media, Culture and Communications.

At our meeting, he spoke a lot about the evolution of the media industries. He began in the music business, a field that since the invention of the internet has undergone a 180 degree flip due to sites such as Napster.com. Now he is in the field of journalism, which is changing dramatically due to the internet as well. He shared with us how drastically the news business is changing as sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to become more popular destinations for news consumption.

His biggest piece of advice for students looking for jobs in the communications fields is to make connections through networking, and make sure that your resume is perfect before you send it out!

Other club business discussed at the meeting included the MadCupMenCakes Event, where we will be watching the hit TV show Mad Men and eating delicious cupcakes. MadCupMenCakes is on December 10th at 8:30pm in Kimmel Room 803. It will be a very relaxed event where we can all unwind and take a break from finals studying!

Social Media Society’s Twitter 101 Session

The Social Media Society's first Twitter 101 course took place on Thursday, November 19th, and presented a wealth of information about Twitter, the ever-popular social microblogging platform. The course’s attendees ranged from small business owners to Newsweek employees. The workshop included the basics of Twitter, but focused mainly on the how Twitter can help businesses to connect with their customers and advertise their products. Below are a few case studies that were analyzed during the session:

• In March of 2009, Skittles changed its homepage into a live Twitter feed of tweets containing the word “Skittles.” This brave experiment created a lot of publicity for Skittles. However, after two days the site became flooded with negative tweets and had to be taken down. What Skittles lacked, however, was an effort to reach out and engage their customers. You can still see a modified Skittles Twitter feed here

• The Ford Fiesta Brand Ambassador Program is another example of Twitter being used by a business. Instead of using cliché auto commercials, Ford has chosen 100 Brand Ambassadors to promote their new car, the Fiesta, through Twitter. The Brand Ambassador’s job is to highlight their experiences with the Fiesta by posting pictures and videos on Twitter and adding in their own perspective as they complete “missions” given by the website. It’s a neat idea where you aren’t being sold a product through traditional advertising. Instead you’re engaging with it socially.

• Best Buy is utilizing Twitter as a customer service outlet. Their main twitter page @bestbuy tweets about news while @twelpforce displays many different employees directly addressing customers who are seeking help in real time. This is definitely an effective way to demonstrate a company’s commitment to customer service.

The important thing to keep in mind here is that there is no proven way to use Twitter to market a brand. Twitter is still in a growth stage and brands are experimenting with Twitter to find what works best for them. With that said, the workshop provided us with a lot of tools to measure the traffic of your Twitter. Here’s a few:

Search.twitter.com offers a standard search API to allow you to search key words, also with advanced options.
Tweetbeep.com will search and notify you whenever anyone tweets a specific keyword
Twitalyzer.com is a tool that measures and analyzes your brand’s impact on twitter

Special thanks to Persia Tatar, Founder, Social Media Society and Benjamin Weisman, Vice President, Creative Director, MRM Worldwide – Princeton for leading the course and inviting us.

Written by Jeremiah Malina

Edited by Sara Saldi

Bi-Weekly Interview: Professor Jay Rubin

Paper after paper, college teaches us how to write. But out in the real world, how you deliver your pitch is almost more important than how you write it. Here with some expert advice on giving a successful presentation is one of my Stern communications professors, Professor Jay Rubin. Professor Rubin currently teaches Organizational Communication, an undergraduate management communications course at the Stern School of Business, and Public Relations Writing, a graduate course at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He splits his time between the NYU classroom and his consulting firm, Jay Rubin & Associates. Over the years, his clients have been in the media and communication business, such as ABC, CNBC and Scholastic.

What are some basic techniques everyone should master when presenting?

The first thing is to realize that very few people are "natural" presenters, and you have to practice -- and keep practicing -- your content and delivery skills. If you're disciplined enough to put in the time, you'll usually be fine. Most often, the individual or the team making the presentation is far more critical about the performance than the audience. When developing your strategy and content, always apply the watchwords that go all the way back to Aristotle and remain timely as ever: ethos (credibility), logos (logic) and pathos (emotional appeal).

What makes an effective introduction?

You have to grab the audience's attention, preview what's ahead, and make sure your audience knows WIIFM (what's in it for me).

What are some misconceptions about visual aids? How do we create effective visuals?

Visual aids are intended to help the presenter do his or her job, not take it over. That's why simpler is usually better. Unless you're intentionally giving a highly technical or numbers-heavy presentation, a visual should be able to tell its story in a couple of quick seconds so focus can immediately return to the presenter.

What to do when you draw a blank?

Always keep smiling (unless you're dealing with an especially somber event, which isn't often the case). The audience generally takes its cues from the presenter. If you appear confident enough as a presenter to accept a momentary lapse, the audience will usually be forgiving. However, if you show you're squirming, the audience is more likely to remember those unfortunate moments because you've made them uncomfortable watching you.

Who is the best presenter out there today?

There's a lot of great presenters out there. But the one who comes quickest to mind is Steve Jobs. He has natural charisma and is a master at blending both WIIFM features (e.g. here's the latest innovation) and benefits (e.g. here's why it's so cool).

What was your most memorable presentation? What did you learn from it?

Years ago, when I was fresh out of college and starting my career, I attended a journalism seminar sponsored by The Washington Post. Some of the country's most respected reporters were there. The journalists were asked tough questions, and their answers were sometimes surprising and controversial. But no one doubted their credibility. It was a great lesson about how the impact of any message depends on who's delivering it.

What’s the best advice you've received on how to give a presentation?

Practice and be your best self. Don't just try to mimic someone else's style; find your own.


Written by Jessica Ye

Edited by Sara Saldi

My Experience at Bernaise Source’s PR Camp – Go Red Team!

Written by Natan Edelsburg, Communications Club Vice President

Thanks to Danielle Culmone, a former supervisor from Quinn & Co. Public Relations I was invited by Bernaise Source’s principal, Dan Greenfield to be a “Gen-Yer” for PR Camp’s “Talking About the ‘Y’ Generation,” session. When I first read about PR Camp and how it was going to be an “unconference” fueled by a camp-like, marshmallows and bonfire atmosphere I had a social media wet dream. My fondest memories are from my ten consecutive summers being a camper and then counselor at Camp Young Judaea in New Hampshire. Click here for one of my favorite social media blog posts, by David Berkowitz (from MediaPost’s Social Media Insider) describing how being a camp counselor prepares you for social marketing.

I had the pleasure of meeting some extremely impressive professionals throughout the day. Separating into teams (go red team!) really gave us the chance to get to know each other as we discussed, ROI, Gen-Y and new versus old agencies relating to PR and social media. During each session (especially Howard Greenstein’s “Delivering Strategies for Effective ROI”), different ways of using metrics to show results from social media campaigns were brought up. After I got home from PR Camp I was extremely excited to study the conversations that took place during the day. I typed in the official hashtag, “#prcamp,” and copy and pasted the ten-plus pages of tweets just from Friday, into Wordle, the word cloud creator. After removing most of the clutter from my “copy and paste” here is what Wordle designed:

For those unfamiliar with word/tag clouds and Wordle, you can simply copy and paste text into their form and it will show you what words/terms were most prevalent by designing a “beautiful” and customized cloud of words. This word cloud taught me some cool facts about PR Camp – some obvious, some not at all. Here are my top-5:

1. PR Camp, Social Media and Twitter were the biggest most prevalent words, which makes sense since each tweet I copy and pasted contained PR Camp. Also, it’s no surprise that the topics that were most discussed were Social Media and Twitter (plus I probably should have deleted Twitter from the word cloud but couldn’t bring myself to).

2. Ishkahbibel (Donald Schwartz, Imagelink Productions), @Journalistics (a blog about journalism and PR), @MattHurst (Communications Professional and Social Media Savant), and @TonyBerkman (Serial Entreprenuer) appeared to have tweeted the most, simply because their names were most prevalent.

3. UberTwitter has a big shout-out in the cloud leading me to assume that most people (including myself) were tweeting from Uber.

4.Not surprisingly, the word “porn” is pretty noticeable. For everyone who was at PR Camp or watching the conversation we all know it is in reference to JetBlue’s Morgan Johnston’s comment that when he showed TweetDeck to an exec at JetBlue, he exclaimed that it was like “marketing porn.”

5. Smaller, but still noticeable – the word “mobile” dictates the importance of how technology is moving more to our fingertips and less to our desktops – this subject was brought up several times during the Red Team’s discussions.

While my word cloud is far from perfect, it gave me a fun and pretty way to put into context the #prcamp conversations and everything I had taken in from a very fun day at camp. I’ve been waiting for a good excuse to create my first list on Twitter. I created one for the red team in the hope that we could all stay connected and continue to converse. I added everyone I could think of but am obviously still missing people. Here’s a link to the list on Listiorious.com where you can recommend anyone to the list that I left off.

Edited by Sara Saldi

Dean’s Roundtable with Adina Pitt

Thanks to the Dean’s Roundtable I had the chance to hear Adina Pitt, a Steinhardt alumna, speak about her career in television and her position as a VP at Cartoon Network and Boomerang (and, as an extra bonus, they had some great cookies there, too). Ms. Pitt is the VP of Content Acquisitions & Co-Productions and Cartoon Network & Boomerang. She spoke with a diverse group of undergrad and post-grad students who wanted to hear all about the television industry and what steps she took in her career path to get to where she was. I walked away from the roundtable with a lot more knowledge about children’s cable television and how concepts and ideas are now traded globally. Here are the top-five things I took away:

1. The most valuable lesson I learned from Ms. Pitt was how she moved her career forward by essentially creating her own job. When she was an assistant and contracts would pass through her desk she made sure to read and study each one. When her superiors would get ready to go on business trips in markets around the world she would prepare spec sheets of projects to check out.
2. Ms. Pitt was describing to us how the simplest of pitches are the ones that Cartoon Network decides to invest in. The funniest one she mentioned was “a babysitter who happens to be a vampire.” Right after she heard those words, she was sold. The comeback of the vampire continues!
3. She reminded us that “kids are really simple,” they “feel like adults,” but don’t think like them. They want “mindless fun,” which is what you need to think about when you are developing programming for children.
4. “Kids love commercials” – This was a cool and really interesting point she made. She told us that when she offers to fast-forward commercials with her own children they usually tell her not to because they love the commercials. I wonder if this will change as kids start using computers at younger ages.
5. If you are trying to create a concept for a children’s show make sure you’re thinking about your story in 52, 11 minute parts. Cartoon Network mostly needs 26, 22-minute episodes with two 11-minute stories in each (I think we can all vaguely remember that format from our Rugrats days).

Written by Natan Edelsburg

Edited by Sara Saldi

Our New Layout!

Hey everyone, hope you like our new blog layout. Our old layout was a standard Blogger template that was a bit too bland for our taste – we wanted something more readable and aesthetically pleasing. We’re hoping to switch to WordPress for the spring semester, but for now we are still here. Special thanks to Jeremiah Malina who helped us with the new blog design. If you have any comments about how it looks let us know at nyucommclub@gmail.com

Jeremiah Malina is a freshman Media, Culture, & Communication major. He is also the Social Media Chairperson for Steinhardt’s Undergraduate Student Government. Feel free to tweet your comments @JJmalina and check out the Steinhardt USG blog at www.nyusteinhardtusg.blogspot.com


Written by Jeremiah Malina

Edited by Sara Saldi