Thank you to everyone who came to our Spring Welcome Meeting on Wednesday. As always, there’s never enough time in the introductory meetings and we’re always being chased out of the conference room by the 6:30 class.
Here’s a summary for everyone, including all of you who couldn’t make it. If you want to be included on future emails, just let us know through the contact page.
Regards,
Andy Steinitz, Chair
Ngozi Okoro, Vice Chair
Elizabeth Willse, Social Media
World Information Architecture Day NYC
As those of you subscribed to the Listserv have seen, February 9 is World Information Architecture Day and the NYC event has asked Pratt ASIST to recruit student volunteers to help out. Information and schedule are available here: http://2013.worldiaday.org/locations/new-york
They’re also looking for some people to help with the sketch noting workshop on Friday night. Let me know if you want to help out with either/both. (Apparently registration is already full so this would be the only way that you can attend if you’re interested.)
Symposium
Houda is helping us set up our spring symposium and it’s looking like our topic is going to explore the realm of competitive intelligence: “an ethical process for obtaining information on the competitive environment for use in organizational decision making”. ASIS&T has a few resources on competitive intelligence but here’s a good rundown from the Bulletin if you want to take a look:
And of course we need your help putting this together! Let us know if you want to participate so that we can include you in the planning meetings.
Other Events
We’re looking into possible tours and workshops for the semester. At the meeting, program-specific workshops still seem popular. Though so do digital preservation or human-computer interaction. Let us know if you have a preference or another idea for a half-day event.
We’re also looking into whether we can get a tour of a NYC UX office, hopefully at the illustrious Google, but we have a few other possible places that we’re going to reach out to as well. But again, let us know if you have a good idea for a tour. It doesn’t have to be a usability office.
FREE ProQuest Databases
Did you know that you can get free access to 40 ProQuest databases, including Library and Information Science Abstracts? Plus, you can get a free training session on how to use them with our program’s very own Brandi Copher. Brandi gave a quick rundown at our meeting but if you’d like to know more, we can send her your contact info.
Open Officer Position
We didn’t get to this at the meeting but the Treasurer position is now open since Tricia Bradshaw has graduated. The Treasurer is pretty important so please let us know if you’re interested. Basically, the treasurer will fill out and submit the annual budget request to Student Life by mid-May and work with Alex Ullman in their office to distribute/reimburse the funds. It takes attention but it’s not time consuming. Both Tricia and I did it in the past, and neither of us will be able to submit next year’s request so… if you appreciate the events we provide, why not give a little love back!
Getting Involved in ASIST
There are always ways that you can get involved in ASIST Pratt. And if your afraid that you can’t commit enough time, rest assured that we all have full schedules and just help out however we can. Working on one task for a couple hours on a weekend or spending a couple minutes every few weeks can make an immense difference. If you’d like to help with event planning, updating the website, contributing to our online presence… or if you’ve simply found an interesting info sci topic that none of your friends can comprehend and you want to discuss it, let us know!
ASIS&T Events
At the meeting, I was asked about a regional ASIST conference. Sadly, there is not one in the works. You can find upcoming ASIS&T events, including both the Information Architecture and RDAP summits, on their website: http://www.asis.org/conferences.html
