[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, April 2009

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from April 16, 2009*

One sign of a particularly fun meeting of this group: When one of my  
News Office colleagues has to gently close the doors of our conference  
room due to the laughing within. And, yes, that did indeed happen for  
this meeting. The topics we discussed were actually serious and  
related to communications, but somehow this group always manages to  
add a healthy dose of humor.

*Social Networking*

Sarah Rowley of the Office of Gift Planning started things off with an  
interesting example of the power of social media, in this case  
twitter. She told us about "amazonfail," a twitter feed that quickly  
went viral last weekend and has become a PR nightmare for Amazon.com.  
Read more about it here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/afterword/archive/2009/04/14/the-fallout-of-amazonfail-continues.aspx

That got us talking about social media in general. I am personally a  
novice at twitter, facebook, etc., so I asked the group if anyone knew  
of particularly good resources for learning more about these media.  
Several folks recalled that the Publishing Services Bureau will be  
hosting a workshop NEXT WEEK on this:

New Social Networking Uses
April 22, 2009
1-2:30 p.m.
Building 1-277
No registration required
http://web.mit.edu/commworkshops/

One excellent word of advice about social media from Julie Pryor,  
director of communications for the McGovern Institute for Brain  
Research: "I've found that total immersion really works." She noted  
that when she first signed up for twitter, she really didn't "get" it,  
but persevered, and now thinks it's great. "It's not until it grows  
and evolves that it really makes sense," she said. "Initially, it's  
not intuitive."

Recently I read an interesting thread on a listserv for university  
science writers about how universities are using twitter to get the  
word out to journalists, alumni, students, etc. Send me a note if  
you'd like me to forward that thread to you.

Final note with respect to twitter: check out the following story,  
which appeared April 1 (hint hint), announcing that The London  
Guardian will now only be publishing on twitter:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology

*MIT Video*

Julie, of the McGovern, brought up the topic of video---how to use it  
on our web sites, what length works best for a given audience, etc.  
She recommended contacting Clayton Hainsworth of MIT's Academic Media  
Production Services for more information about the services AMPS  
offers with respect to video. I would also recommend Craig Milanesi of  
AMPS as a good contact----both guys are great to work with and *very*  
knowledgeable about videos and their production.

*Next Meetings*

The next meetings of MIT Editors' Club are as follows. All meetings  
are from 12-1 in the News Office (11-400). Please feel free to bring a  
lunch.

Wednesday, MAY 13

Tuesday, JUNE 9


Cheers!

Elizabeth
================================
Elizabeth A. Thomson
Senior Media Relations Officer, Research News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
================================




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