CESCA Newsletter : January 2011

In today’s day and age, cyber space provides us with a platform for almost real-time, communication and dissemination of information. Since the last newsletter was published, CESCA has created a Facebook group to create a social network among CESCA faculty, students, and alumni and friends of CESCA. We also created a LinkedIn group for the upkeep of the professional contact information of alumni and friends of CESCA. CESCA website is also going through a revamp under the guidance of Prof. Dong Ha. These three avenues, we believe, would keep us and our supporters and sponsors adequately informed on a regular basis. Like any other print media, all of us who are creating publicity materials, are facing this dilemma about how to balance between the print media, and the cyber based media. Thus the decision by the CESCA faculty was to not do away with the printed newsletter but to reduce the frequency to twice a year, while making CESCA website, Facebook and LinkedIn forums more active. As we are seeing a mass protest and related changes in the political landscapes in the North Africa and Middle East, which are being said to be at least in part helped by the social media, we believe that the social media does bring about a change in the information dissemination arena. From a top down dissemination as is done by a newsletter, we can allow all participants to update news, upload interesting video, link interesting technology news, etc., in these newly formed cyber social groups for CESCA. I invite any interested reader of this newsletter to look us up on face book, and linked in, and join these groups – and use them as relevant information sharing venues, recruiting portal, and networking opportunities.