![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The weirdlight of my weekend
Oct. 31st, 2005 01:16 amSwarthmore Alumni Council met this weekend, and felt more productive than past meetings, but still tinged with oddnesses. The big one came this morning, when there was a discussion of whether and how to create a Swat alums online dating service. Happily, it was soon agreed that something broader in scope, that facilitated meeting new (and catching up with old) friends as well as dating, was a better goal -- I'm glad we consensed that helping a larger percentage of alumni was a better use of time & effort.
But then the real weird moment came, when one Alumni Office person gave a presentation to the group about existing software that might suffice instead of creating something new... and showed off Facebook. The people at the meeting ranged from class of around '97 to around '54, and none of them knew of facebook, or had ever heard of anything like it (except for me). It was more than amusing to watch, and to listen to: "gosh, it's that easy?" "you can tell people so much about yourself!" "looking for 'Random play'? '...Whatever I can get'??"
I've been on facebook for a year or so (though I don't use it very much); looking at the age distribution of people on it there seems to be a sharp dropoff when you get farther back than about class of '01, and I don't know of a single other person on it from near '88, my year. But it sure wowed the Alumni Council group that saw it, and I'm wondering how many of them will be joining soon... and whether there'll be a push to get all alumni to join. And whether facebook would be changed by the acquisition of hundreds or thousands of Swarthmore alumni from decades past.
But then the real weird moment came, when one Alumni Office person gave a presentation to the group about existing software that might suffice instead of creating something new... and showed off Facebook. The people at the meeting ranged from class of around '97 to around '54, and none of them knew of facebook, or had ever heard of anything like it (except for me). It was more than amusing to watch, and to listen to: "gosh, it's that easy?" "you can tell people so much about yourself!" "looking for 'Random play'? '...Whatever I can get'??"
I've been on facebook for a year or so (though I don't use it very much); looking at the age distribution of people on it there seems to be a sharp dropoff when you get farther back than about class of '01, and I don't know of a single other person on it from near '88, my year. But it sure wowed the Alumni Council group that saw it, and I'm wondering how many of them will be joining soon... and whether there'll be a push to get all alumni to join. And whether facebook would be changed by the acquisition of hundreds or thousands of Swarthmore alumni from decades past.
