Hey everyone!

Madame Director, here :) Your average student-videographer-editor-sound mixer-colorist-extraordinaire! I'm extremely proud of my latest project: "Day in the Life - The Gator Grind".

 

Day in the Life of a Student-Athlete's Concept

A few weeks ago, my classmate McKenzie approached me asking if I'd help her with her After Effects final - a project for UF's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. The concept is a glimpse into the lives of UF's student-athletes and what they do when they're not training or playing for keeps. The purpose of the video was to promote a new blog called The Gator Grind. As one of UF's star soccer players and an intern for TV20, McKenzie herself is a great example of a very involved and well-rounded student-athlete. She is both athletically and academically accomplished and has labored all semester to successfully launch The Gator Grind blog.

We shot the footage in two weeks and edited the video in one weekend. It premiered at the Florida Letterman Awards, an annual ceremony honoring exceptional student-athletes, and then we uploaded it to The Gator Grind's YouTube channel. Twenty-four hours later, the video had gone viral with its views totaling over 2,000. We couldn't believe it! All the Gator athletes were Tweeting the video and reposting the link on their Facebook profiles. Two days later, multiple sports blogs had reposted the link and The UF Alligator had run a story on the video.

Moral of the story, whoever thinks athletes are just their sport is quite mistaken! At RoomSync we have a dynamic team full of random skill sets, and we value the idea of bringing multifaceted people together to create value and success.

Don't forget to click here to check out "Day In The Life - The Gator Grind."

I have read many articles lately about the impending digital takeover. Amber Case, founder of Geoloqui.com and a keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Convention, recently compared people who use up-to-date technology, as cyborgs. Neither I nor she believes an IRobot-type doom is impending, however, reading “The Next Generation of Student Support Systems” article on Higher Ed Live led me to question just how fast are students becoming technology dependent?

 

Last week I chatted with a man who grew up around the time of the first electronic digital computer. I was in my elementary school computer class when I first used a computer. My point is that everyone can say some form of the phrase “I was born before the (insert technological device here) was invented,” but is there a point where we won’t be able to reverse our dependence on the technology we've grown up using? Has this point in time already passed?

 

In my freshmen year of high school my English teacher assigned us a project while reading 1984. We were to stop using technology for a week. Yes, an entire week. No phones. No television. No computer. For the first couple of days I did very well…then I gave up. I tried this again over this past week as it was Spring Break and did surprisingly well. Being aboard a cruise ship without service definitely helped, but I did realize what Amber Case pointed out in her speech: “the best technology is invisible and just gets out of your way to let you live your life.”

 

So my questions for you are: Are you busy fiddling around with your apps and social media websites while life is happening around you? Or can you put the smartphone down for an hour or two each week, go out with friends and enjoy it before the cyborgs takeover?

I didn’t formally introduce myself. My name is Niaz, and I’m the social media manager (or ninja) at RoomSync.

I want to talk about everyone’s new favorite website: Pinterest. In the past few months, Pinterest has been slowly taking over my Facebook newsfeed. No, I’m not an active user, but I do enjoy reading some of the funny pictures that my friends post.

When I first heard about companies using Pinterest as another media outlet, I thought it was a horrible idea. How are they going to reach their audience through “pinning” pictures? I couldn't make sense of it until I read a blog post from Higher Ed Live called “Best practices for Pinterest in higher education.”

I learned that Pinterest can be integrated with other social media sites from the article. For example, companies can share pictures they have on their Pinterest boards with Facebook instead of posting them on Facebook which will bring traffic to their pin boards. This sounds like a pretty fun and creative idea to me. I think the most important thing to remember is to maintain your brand’s image and Pinterest diversifies that brand by showing another side of the company.

The article puts this adversitement of brand diversity quite nicely by saying,"Pinterest may be the first and only social media platform where you should routinely promote messages like 'This desk lamp would look GREAT in a dorm room' and 'This Drake blue tie would add oomph to your next business presentation.' It works because you’re doing more than promoting a lamp or a tie: You’re giving your audiences inspiration for how they can fit into, and reflect, the brand culture.”

Maybe this will be my new project for RoomSync? We’ll see!

Until my next post,

Niaz

We are starting a new series of blog posts featuring our fantastic clients to learn more about them and how they use RoomSync. Thanks to Sean Killion, Assistant Director for Assignments & Billing and Temple University Housing and Residential Life, for being our very first interviewee! 

How did you get involved working in higher education, and specifically, Temple Housing?

I went to Philadelphia University for business. I spent 6 years in advertising and marketing then went back to school for long-term career opportunities. I earned my MBA while working in Business Services in the Housing Department at LaSalle University. It was during this time that I switched from the business world to the higher education world. In March 2007, I left LaSalle for Temple University.

 

What unique things have you done in the past 5 years at Temple?

Residential Management Systems (RMS)

At Temple we had a homegrown system but in past three years, we moved from our IBM Mainframe, implemented an ERP system called Banner, and now use Residential Management Systems. Using the RMS StudentWeb Self-Assign, we can give students more flexibility in choices and inform them about the resources available to them earlier.

Roommates

Three or four years ago we were looking to satisfy our need to inform students about resources and technology for roommate selection. We have been with RoomSync for two years now thanks to their RMS partnership.

Housing on Demand

At Temple University, we’ve created “Housing-On-Demand,” a homegrown internal web application that gives students a user-friendly format to more easily communicate with the Residential Life Department. It consists of about 20 different apps including those specially tailored for students staying over breaks or moving onto campus early.

What does Temple University's Housing and Residential Life's social media presence look like now?

We use RoomSync to ease roommate selection and we have a Facebook fan page. We are mainly a resource for students to provide information about their interests on the fan page, however, in the coming fall semester we are planning to engage more people by running our Annual Room-Decorating Contest through Facebook.

How did you hear about RoomSync?

We were using RMS but were looking for more roommate-matching solutions. RMS recommended RoomSync because you specialize in this area. In addition, your application is integrated into Facebook so students didn’t need to go through a whole new system just for housing. 

What have you found to be the most efficient and effective way to inform students about RoomSync and get them to use the application?

We combine promotional mix strategies to get the word out about RoomSync and the entire housing selection process. We issue publications to provide concise information to students and communicate electronically through links on our Facebook fan page and emails. Specifically at Temple, we have direct marketing opportunities like our open house program where students signing up on campus receive tutorials on our systems.

Would you say there is a time commitment?

From my understanding, the set-up process was very easy with sharing interfaces and it basically manages itself. RoomSync makes my job a lot easier because the students have been given that opportunity to feel good about whom they are matched up with.

 

Before RoomSync, did you experience a lot of Facebook related calls from students/parents about their roommate assignements?

Yes, we saw The Facebook Effect*!

After the implementation of RoomSync, did you see a change in the number of Facebook-related calls?

RoomSync definitely drastically reduced the amount of calls and complaints. With RoomSync, we provide more information for our students to make them more informed consumers. It also helps to deflect complaint problems. If a student chooses not to use the resource, they should be ok with getting a random roommate.

What percentages of your students currently use or have used RoomSync within the past year?

We only upload our system with people who have made the commitment to live on campus with their housing deposit to target eligible potential roommates. Temple had 806 freshmen users this past year with a total of 25,183 visits (Approximately 31 visits per user to the application).

What shifts have you seen in time spent on and frequency of roommate conflict, room changes, and complaints, etc.?

Roommate conflicts due to random matching at Temple have definitely decreased with the increased use of RoomSync as an information tool.

 

On a different note, what is your favorite movie? 

I love so many, but if you're going to make me narrow them down, you should at least say favorite per genre! Star Wars, The New Hope”

What is your favorite musical artist? 

Again, so many on my iPod. But I'll go with the Beatles and Eric Clapton.

 

 

Additional Resources:

Sean Killion Biography

Temple University Residential Life Fan Page

*The Facebook Effect: Receiving a number of calls from randomly matched roommates dissatisfied after looking at their future Roommate’s Facebook profile 

 

I love my job for a lot of reasons. For one, our clients are some of the most knowledgeable and passionate people that I have met. They are thought leaders not only in housing but also in higher education.

 

One example is Amy Jorgensen, Marketing Coordinator at the University of Florida's Department of Housing & Residence Education. Amy does an incredible job with the department’s marketing, branding and social media efforts. You can connect with her on Twitter here. The UF Housing & Residence Education Facebook page experienced phenomenal growth over the past year. Likes increased by over 4,500 and there were nearly 390,000 Facebook page views in just the month of September in 2011. To put that in perspective, that’s almost double the page views their primary website page receives all year!

 

She recently presented her social media strategies and tactics at the ACUHO-I Business Operations conference in Orlando, FL entitled “Rock out your page – Make the most of your Facebook presence”. 

 

The presentation was named a "Best Of" at the conference and is full of useful social media statistics and powerful strategies to create an engaging Facebook fan page presence. My favorite statistic, courtesy of Dr. Rey Junco, is that students check Facebook an average of 5.75 times per day.

 

Check out all the statistics and insights from Amy at the ACUHO-I Online Library, which is full of some other fantastic presentations as well.

A study by Rey Junco published in Computers in Human Behavior sheds some interesting insight on how using Facebook affects students’ GPA. 

In contrast to other studies on similar topics, this study takes into consideration: gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic stature, along with actual overall GPA collected from the university’s registrar. The findings confirm that some Facebook activities are positively related and others are negatively related to a student’s overall GPA in college.

Essentially, the study finds the following conclusions:

• Time spent on Facebook has a strong negative correlation with overall GPA
• The frequency of Facebook chatting and posting status updates has a weak negative correlation with overall GPA
• The frequency of checking to see what friends are doing and sharing links with others  is positively related to overall GPA

While these results should not be surprising since the more time surfing through Facebook means the less time studying, an alternative idea to consider is that what students are doing with their time on Facebook makes the difference. By sharing information with friends and familiarizing themselves with the latest happenings on campus and in the world around them through social media, students will be more inclined to gain more knowledge and maybe even achieve a higher GPA.

 

Thanks for your time and keep syncing,

-Nadav

Hey there readers!

 

My name is Michelle, and I'm here with RoomSync! I am a University of Florida graduate student and RoomSync intern, and I have spent 4 ½ glorious years in sunny Gainesville, FL. In my time here I have learned the benefits of expanding your social network through varying media. I’ve always easily connected with people, made friends easily, and had the social tools to develop relationships with new people. However, I never leveraged those tools, and constantly, unintentionally surrounded myself with the same types of people (crazy as it seems, it took me a long time to realize). In doing so, I quickly became bored with the city I was living in.

This year I am finally finding new groups of friends that have landed me in new places that I never knew existed, in environments outside of what I had grown accustomed to. Through my internship and my masters program, I’ve been introduced to cool social apps like Four Square that let me discover the places around me. Alas, Gainesville has finally become new and exciting again and only because I made the decision to change!

Changes don’t need to be drastic, but just enough for you to realize the other gems that are waiting to be discovered. The best way for me to make these discoveries was opening myself up to areas atypical to “my norm.” For me, getting involved entailed working with RoomSync, going to Salsa lessons, trying out new restaurants and bars, and talking to those I cross paths with to learn what they are about. By trying new things and catering to my newly peaked curiosity, I have found myself in new places, surrounded by new ideas and new faces. It's the people I have met that have helped me change my prerogative and perspective. (Oh and you can bet we’re all Facebook friends now.)

For those who are finding themselves in the same conundrum - whether you're students or long past your college days - I strongly urge you to get out there and GET INVOLVED! It doesn’t matter what it is, just do it. For me it was RoomSync; for you, it can be anything!

                        Go and discover something new about yourself,

 

                        Michelle Finizio

New Layout for Client Network Pages

We’re excited to announce our new layout for RoomSync network pages! Our team has designed the layout to enhance the app and create a more streamlined and richer user experience. This new optimized layout seamlessly walks users through the RoomSync process and incorporates graphic elements to highlight features & important info, as well as gives users immediate access to features and their community.

Left-side Navigation Menu

 

Instead of reading information off one congested static network page, users can now easily navigate through multiple pages using our quick-access side navigation tab. This menu gives users easy access to relevant information on specific pages, with options of “Getting Started,” “Network Pages,” “Wall,” and “Find Roommates.”

 

GETTING STARTED

The ‘Getting Started’ tab helps jump-start the roommate matching process on RoomSync by immediately prompting users to take action, starting with “Get Familiar with Network Info.” The process is clearly presented and users are walked through key steps they should take to find their ideal roommate.

 

NETWORK INFO

The “Network Info” page, which is 100% customizable by clients, gives users access to important client/network information, including how matches work, that requests must be made to the network administrator, and the active network dates. This section ensures that users are given all the information they need to complete the process, so they can provide the housing department with the correct information in time.

 

WALL

The interactive wall gives members a place to introduce themselves and interact with the community in order to start building connections, both as roommates and as friends.

 

FIND ROOMMATES

The “Find Roommates” tab has “Browse” and “Search” options that make it easy and exciting for users to find potential roommates. The “Browse” option takes users to the roommates browse page where they can view a list of all their potential roommates, filtered by lifestyle preferences. The “Search” option lets users search for potential roommates with specific interests listed in their Facebook profile (e.g. “Soccer”). Users can also search by academic major and/or preferred residence hall.

Final Roommate Request Date and Members

Below the new side navigation tabs on the left hand column, users will find our newly added “Final Roommate Request Date.” This section graphically highlights the network close date and constantly reminds users of the last day they can turn in their roommate request.

Finally, users can easily view other members in the network through the “Members” section, which is the last section in the left hand column.

User Experience and Satisfaction

We believe our new streamlined menu and other features will increase user success in finding a great roommate, but we are always looking to improve the application. Please let us know what you think about the new network page layout by commenting below or post additional feature ideas!