VGDev.org Site Launched

VG Dev is now online! Meetings will be held every Friday - beginning Nov 5 - at 4:30 PM in Klaus 2456.

GenY and Social Media Panel

I am super excited to announce that SIG Social, the coolest new group to ever hit Georgia Tech campus, is hosting our first panel in partnership with Social Media Atlanta!

Our panel topic is GenY and Social Media, and the description is as follows:
Whether you work in a large corporation, small business, or are just interested in social media, you can’t argue that the space is dominated by GenY’ers. Come to our GenY panel to enter into the minds of a 20-something for a few hours, and hear about what makes them tick. We will address issues such as what GenY’ers do or don’t like to see on their SM feeds, school, work, and how it all relates to social media, and how SM has changed/affected their lives and communication. Anything is up for debate or conversation!

Come out to join the panel put on by a brand new organization at Georgia Tech, the Social Media Special Interest Group.

We will have some awesome panelists, and some awesome moderators, although we haven’t gotten that part QUITE figured out yet, but you won’t be disappointed!

Thurs, Nov. 11, 4:30-6:00. Be there and support us! To register, click here.

Social Media @ GT

Some fellow students and I recently got together to form a social media special interest group at Georgia Tech. This got me thinking—for a school like Georgia Institute of TECHNOLOGY, why aren’t there more resources for social media/social networking, and why aren’t teachers more receptive? Off the top of my head, I can only think of 1 class aimed (relatively) at social media-Emerging Technology. Even my Intro to I.T. class quoted the number of blog users from 2005. Clearly, we know that numbers from 2005 are just not relevant anymore. In my Intro to Marketing class, my teacher dismissed Twitter and Facebook as a means of marketing on the 2ndday, because she thought people wouldn’t be ‘interested’ in what she had to say. To say the least, I am extremely disappointed. I am not quite sure how the College of Computing fares in way of classes such as these, but I can’t imagine it being too much better.

Georgia Tech is ranked higher than UGA in nearly all of the pertinent colleges (including our business school), yet UGA has the New Media school, and Georgia Tech has nothing close to comparable. With a school that is so focused on technology and research, why is Georgia Tech, and our professors, not jumping head first into social networking? I’m not saying that there has to be an entire New Media school created, but something as more of a resource for those of us who really see the benefit to learning about social networking, or digital trends in general.

I just can’t help but think of all the implications of teachers harnessing the power of social networking in their classes, even if doesn’t necessarily apply to the class. Teachers have to face that we, students, probably spend two times more time on social networking sites (Facebook, Gmail, etc.) than we ever do studying, why not embrace this and use it to your advantage, professors?

There are so many great organizations right in our backyard (ATDC, AiMA, SMCATL, etc) that could offer great resources. I just don’t understand why GT, as a school, is not seeing the pattern towards digital and jumping on it.