Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Our first meetup




Twelve NYU publishing alumni, ranging from 2003 graduates to 2008 graduates, met at the Croton Reservoir Tavern in midtown (see photos above). We talked, exchanged ideas and memories, drank, and ate Joanne's delicious cupcakes. Overall, a good time was had and everyone was very excited that a publishing-specific NYU Alumni Group now existed.

Some of the attendees had participated in a similar NYU-sponsored alumni group a few years' back and had some great ideas, and from speaking with them, the idea for this blog was born.

Instead of a newsletter, Joanne and I will keep this blog up-to-date with group event information, member news, job postings, and anything you send us that you'd like us to post here. Also, after a few attendees left, I posed a question (that I will repeat at the end of this post), that started an interesting conversation. Along those lines, I plan on having similar questions ready for the round-robin part of future meetups, and will then post it on the blog for non-attendees to be able to chime in.

Our next meetup is scheduled for 7/28. I've almost synched up all the LinkedIn and Facebook members and created one master distribution list, so that you won't be getting double e-mails, but I'm not quite there yet. But I will be sending an e-mail about the next meetup and creating an event for it on Facebook.

Until then, e-mail me or Joanne with anything you'd like posted, sign up for the blog e-mail or RSS feed so that you're kept posted...and I hope to see you at the next event.

And before I sign off, here's the promised question:

Of all the classes you took to graduate from the Master's program, which do you consider the most difficult and which the most useful?

Attendees considered Tom Woll's finance class, Tom Fox's production class, and the capstone class to be the most useful and the capstone class, Steve Cohen's management class, and the trade publishing class (as taught by one particular professor) to be the most difficult.

Let us know your opinion.

2 comments:

Sarah Adams said...

Hey Crew-

Last night we dove into a discussion of traditional vs. digital publishing.

To me, it is a very exciting time to be in Web publishing. All magazine and book publishers were slow to embrace the Web, and until just a year or so ago, many Web sites were bare-bones operations with limited audiences; but as readers continue to migrate to the Web, publisher's are realizing that a digital prominence is necessary.

But, just as we touched on last night, a background in traditional publishing is not in the least wasted talent when transiting to digital. The difference between digital and traditional is with distribution. The actual publishing process remains the same: information is written, copy edited, fact checked, put into layout, and produced. It is marketing/ad sale's job to sell and to find ways to have an audience not just recognize the brand but to continue to come back to that brand.

If you have the traditional experience and are wanting to move into digital understand and know that you do have the skill set needed to thrive in digital.


A few resources:
http://searchenginewatch.com/

http://www.cynopsis.com/
(sign up for the 'digital' newsletter)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

KaliAmanda said...

I'm sorry I missed the first meet but I am looking forward to the one in July!

I loved Steve Cohen's management class, in fact I still use some of those notes. The finance class was difficult but essential.