Updates from committees and board members:
Professional Groups Liaisons
Have a list of 100+ orgs. Will break down to top 50ish, looking at which are accessible/have members in NYC.
Film/Doc Coordinators
Goals for the year:
– Collaboration with other groups
– Student work
– Getting some film/doc content onto SPJ website.
Events:
– Hispanic film for Hispanic Heritage month.
– Rocky Horror Picture Show at the end of October.
- People can dress up if they want.
– Plan to hold screenings every other Friday, alternating between film and doc.
– Oscar and Superbowl parties will obviously be on Sunday
– Film festival with student films with doc students or working with film school and piggybacking on other film festival
Events
– Halloween Party
- Wknd of 25th or 1st
- Last year: $10 tickets, some cheap drinks, costume contest, at a venue near 34th and Madison
– Can’t all pass off events to Kimberly and have her work on everything. She should also lean on her committee.
Student Life
– Backrubs
– Open mic night – J School comedians, musicians, poetry…
- Could do before Lucille’s Ball, could sell tickets, could sell food
- Could do it as a preview to Lucille’s Ball, sell tickets to the Ball there
Community service
Ideas for events:
– Blood drive around Halloween
– Do a Guinness World Record, 24 hours of community service event playing off everyone’s talents
– Work with organization that pairs students up with young kids to read to them during lunch hours
– Teach about journalism at local schools
– Should also think about getting J School team to tag onto bigger Columbia events (like dance marathon in January or the big community service day in April)
– Should think about doing community service that doesn’t necessarily require people’s time (like a food drive)
- Possibly around Christmas: toy drive, practical things, donations, spirited giving
Secretary (and Webmasters and Member Affairs)
Website:
– Really get website up and running in really cool way with blog posts from students and alums
- Weekly post from student
- 300-500 words each week blog post – what I learned, what I’m working on, etc
- Create idea list for students, try to time to certain events
- 10 rep students – meet 10 jschoolers, profiles
- Monthly or bi-monthly post from alum
- Jason was at alum board meeting, seem interested
- Topic ideas – send out and give deadline and store them up for alums
– Stav and Marika work together on monthly summaries that will get turned into annual report
– Collect material for a handbook-type thing about how we did each event, to help next year’s SPJ have an idea and get started on their own events
Webmasters
Have login info. Discussing what will be the workflow.
Ideas for website:
– Linking websites and blogs and Twitter feeds to website?
- Beatrice gathered Twitter feeds on Facebook group, could link to website
– Put up work from August bootcamp
- Or put on bulletin boards downstairs
- Gallery to show photo work? Or coffeeshop?
- Could talk to whoever is in charge of official student gallery on third floor (is this Nina Berman?)
– Website in past years: 24 hours student life, tied to storify, posting every hour
Speakers Director
Past events:
– 50-60 came on Thursday
Coming up in the next month:
– Jason Dundas
- Australian TV personality, now co-host on vh1
- Probably in Stabile
Possible speakers:
– Sarah Fitzpatrick
- Investigative news at CBS bureau, Columbia grad
Keep in mind that we can also do brown bag lunches for small groups in seminar rooms
Swag/treasurer
Sweatshirts:
– Need to get system up for getting sweatshirts
– Design needs to be ready October 30
- As long as have orders before Thanksgiving we’ll have them before holidays
- Set deadline to submit designs by 3rd week of October
- Identify design to go with by last week of October
– For swag – usually tie to PayPal on website, and set up table for cash
– Incentive for person who submits winning design (maybe free sweatshirt?)
Lucille’s Ball t-shirts?
Senator
– Represents J School to university
– First official meeting October 25th
Member affairs
– Recruitment
- Publicize what SPJ national is and what the benefits are
- Encourage people to sign up
- Will sit at various SPJ events with info and signup
– Big awards program in January only for members
Miscellaneous notes:
– Alumni weekend
- Invited back as alum each year, but every 5th year do something really special
- This year: April 12th
– Alumni mentorship program – matches are being made!
– Should we do a yearbook?
- Takes a lot of time
- Past classes have done Tumblr
- YouTube video collage instead?
– For SPJ Board:
- Headshots – everyone look pretty next week!
– Jason’s letter to the wider student body will include an opportunity for students to sign up for committees by giving contact info for committee chairs.
