Doom & gloom? Maybe my job is kinda neat…

&I know that most of you are only familiar with my job in so much as it keeps me from talking to you as much as I once did. Dear readers, I admit this is chiefly what my job does. I have been far busier than I’ve ever been in my entire adult life to this point getting ready for this fall semester. Mostly I’ve been dealing with our Fall Training and Storytelling in the Digital Age – getting things ready and marketing the events. There is an upside to all of this madness, though: I’ve had the chance to meet some interesting people and see two enlightening events.

On the 6th, Noah Robischon, managing editor of Gawker Media, came to visit and gave a talk on the “End of the World as We Know It.” This was a really interesting lecture that gave us an overview of trends in the digital world, from Facebook to blogging to gaming. After the show, Noah came back to the Literary House for pizza and a discussion. It was nice to be on the “VIP” side of a gathering like this, sitting on the couch next to Noah and not in the audience. He’s a sharp guy and connected very well with all of us…certainly made me more excited to read Gawker’s blogs, anyway.

On Tuesday, SimpleTEXT came to campus. This was a really rad multimedia performance run by two Brooklyn-based nerds turned artists. The basic idea is that Noah and Tim (the fore-mentioned nerds/artists) collect text messages from the audiences’ mobile phones and computers. They turn these thoughts from words to pictures (gleaned from the internet, of course) and then turn the pictures into music. It was truly amazing, in a very avant garde, New York kind of way. The really neat part of the event was that it was only the second ever performance in the States…of a show that’s only been done 16 times! At this tiny, middle-of-nowhere school, it was quite the event!

So, while I’m completely exhausted, I am happy to report that very enjoyable things have come out of massive amounts of work.

My photos on Flickr.