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'07</title></head><body>
<div>MIT EDITORS' CLUB<br>
</div>
<div>*Meeting Notes from May 21, 2007*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*Ch Ch Ch Changes*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Many people love writing about science or otherwise being
involved in communicating news about it. But over recent years it's
been getting harder and harder to land jobs in traditional media like
newspapers.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>My suggestion? Look around a university! This month's meeting of
MIT Editors' Club began with Michelle Gaseau excitedly telling us
about her upcoming move to the MIT-Portugal Program as communications
director there. That, of course, leaves open her current position as
communications manager for the<font face="Arial" color="#000000"> Lean
Aerospace Initiative out of the Center for Technology, Policy and
Industrial Development</font>:</div>
<div
>http://sh.webhire.com/servlet/av/jd?ai=631&ji=2018047&sn=I</div
>
<div><br></div>
<div>Michelle says she's happy to answer questions about her LAI
position.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>To find the URL for Michelle's (soon-to-be-old) job, I did a
search for "communications positions" from HR, and *10* jobs
were in that category! For example, the Materials Processing Center is
looking for a science writer/web site administrator, and the News
Office (yep, that'd be me) is also looking for a science writer.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*Popcorn Communications*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Congratulations to Editors' Club member Bill Smith, assistant
director for finance and sponsor relations of the Research Lab of
Electronics, for creating what I believe is the snazziest
communications packet/marketing tool I've ever seen out of MIT. The
subject? RLE's 60th anniversary carnival. The hook? Popcorn.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I am (fortunately) on Bill's mailing list for all things RLE.
Usually that means I receive the lab's annual report and other
potential goldmines for story ideas. A few weeks ago, however, I
opened up an 8 1/2 by 11 cellophane-wrapped package that included: an
invitation to RLE's carnival, a stand-up "exhibit" of a
popcorn machine (the sides of the "exhibit" were striped red
and white) a large (folded) container for popcorn (similarly striped
red and white), a MAGNET about the event featuring a 12-inch-tall
Uncle Sam on stilts, and of course, a bag of popcorn.....specially
printed in red-and-white stripes with RLE's carnival info on the
front.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I shared the whole thing as a show-and-tell at this
meeting.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>And that brought up another good example of popcorn
communications at MIT. Lauren Clark of communications/donor relations
mentioned that at last week's launch of TechTV (<font face="Arial"
size="-1" color="#000000">a YouTube-like video-sharing web site</font>
), attendees were served cones of popcorn, each one with a card
promoting TechTV. Go to
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/techtv-expo.html for more info on
TechTV and how all of us can volunteer MIT-related videos.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*A Groundbreaking and....More*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Sarah Foote, assistant director of Sloan Student Publications,
told us about the recent groundbreaking for a new building in Sloan
Land. Being a writer and communicator, Sarah is naturally quite
observant. She noticed, for example, that the actual ceremonial
"shoveling" featured....fake dirt. Shipped in for the
event, "It was a very nice light-brown dirt," she
reports.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*At the Rotch*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The Rotch Library in Architecture and Planning will be featuring
an exhibit to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Beijing Studio, an
urban-design studio where students address specific problems
associated with Beijing's phenomenal growth. According to Judy Daniels
of the department, Beijing Studio is MIT's oldest relationship with
China.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*Field Trips*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Toward the end of this meeting we chatted about especially cool
labs and other places around MIT that we'd like to visit. What about
doing so in lieu of an Editors' Club meeting? For example, Paul
Rivenberg, communications and outreach coordinator at the Plasma
Science and Fusion Center, told us about some of the visually
interesting experiments going on there. Send me ideas for other cool
sites you know about that we might want to tour as a group, and
perhaps I can set something up for this fall.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*Next Meeting*</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The final meeting of MIT Editors' Club for this semester will be
on Friday, June 22, in the News Office (11-400) from 12-1.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Elizabeth</div>
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</pre></x-sigsep>
<div><br>
================================<br>
Elizabeth A. Thomson<br>
Senior Science and Engineering Editor<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
News Office, Room 11-400<br>
77 Massachusetts Ave.<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307<br>
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)<br>
<thomson@mit.edu><br>
<br>
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www><br>
================================</div>
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