10 Tips for Belonging to an Alumni Group on LinkedIn

Over the past few years, my college alumni department of Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA) has utilized my expertise as a social media and networking expert to build a local club in Charlotte, NC and to begin to bring strategies to connect our alumni via the web using social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. In 2006, we went through approval with the college to set up an alumni group for LinkedIn (The leading social networks for professionals). The challenge was that at the time was that social media was new including LinkedIn, so that many or our alums where not aware of it or its power to connect. Within the last few months LinkedIn has made changes to its environment including newsfeeds and a searchable directory of groups. These two changes have now made it easy for colleges and universities to create groups on LinkedIn and grow them quickly.

Here are a few tips on how and why creating and/or joining an alumni group on LinkedIn is powerful.

1. Connect with Classmates

2. Connect with Alums in your geographic area

3. Connect with Alums in your industry

4. Collective intelligence of your alums

5. Recruit alums to work on your venture/business

6. Daily Newsfeed allows them to see what you are doing

7. Connect to their netwoks

8. Resource for College Career Center and Recent Grads

9. Public relations as an expert for articles for alumni magazine or other media'

10 Promotes recognition of the college or university

We will be expanding upon these topics in future articles, podcasts and teleclasses. If you are interested in participating please contact ewarriorbizdev@gmail.com ..If you have examples of how LinkedIn or other social networks have helped you we would love to have your success stories.

Dickinson College Alumni Weekend 2007

Well, for the second year in a row, I was awarded an alumni award from my college and was not able to attend to receive the awards due to other personal celebrations. Last year, I was awarded the alumni volunteer of the year award in June 2006. This year, the alumni club of Charlotte which I chair was awarded the most improved alumni club in just our second year.

Although I could not make the ceremony our college has a "virtual reunion" on its website with photographers posting pictures in chronological order of todays events.
Here is the snapshots in order: http://www.dickinson.edu/alumni/vr07/vr.cfm

Here is are a few photos shots from today's ceremonies. Brian Kamoie, President of the alumni council introducing the alumni awards and Julie Wise McClure of the Baltimore Club receiving her alumni volunteer of the year award. Photos our our beautiful campus in front of "Old West"

Dickinson College under the leadership of President Bill Durden is on its way to becoming one of the more prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country.

Leatherheads - Day 7 - It's a Small World and the final shots of the Game

Today is the last day of shooting in Charlotte and I am again standing on the sidelines of the visiting team..(not sure if I can divulge the name). The Coach of the team is Wayne Duvall. a larger than life character. I had been near him all week but did not want to bother him as he was one of the "actors". I finally just reach out my hand to him and said "My name is Andy Kaplan" nice to meet you. We then got into a discussion which I guess happens often on film sets..."Where did you grow up", I asked. He replied "Silver Spring, MD". I told him my sister now lives near there and I asked where he went to High School (it was a leading question). When he told me he went to high school there as well. I asked him if he knew Dickinson College. He then smiled and said, "Yes". All my brothers children went there and I am going there for my nieces graduation in May". I told him I founded and was chair of the Dickinson Club of Charlotte and was the 2006 Dickinson Alumni Volunteer of the Year. Well, it is a small world.

All morning they were filming the final scene of the game and perfecting some of the shots so the editors will have more interesting shots to work with. Camera's are set up in the far stands to get a distant shot of one of the important plays of the game. This time I am running down the sideline (as directed by John, Assistant Director) and just by luck end up at the end of a crowd about a foot from George Clooney who is playing a football player. Knowing this may be my last minutes as an extra, I have now learned to find the camera and make sure I can be seen clearly. I am not sure if this will be a far shot or they zoom in.

One interesting shot of the day were 3 football players laying on the ground together and the cameramen were up on stepladders shooting down at the players as they rolled around. Another shot of interest was when a single camera was pointing up to the sky (it laying on the ground) and George Clooney and one of the crew were tossing the football like a "hot potato" over the camera dozens of times.

At the end of the day, we did a scene where the game is ended and we walk off the field. We did about 6 takes of this walking in all different directions and at different paces. In each take about 50 of us walked from different places and did about 3 different walks. I walked from the side of the stadium to the middle of the field to the director in what I call a "New York Walking pace" and then we turned around and walked reguarly back to another part of the sideline, then I decided that as a "sideline photographer" it would be authentic to be running so the two of us ran back into the field. At that point the director named John, directed us to walk very very slowly toward the corner of the endzone continuing until we hit the wall. This I guess will look like we are exiting the stadium Our educated non-professional guess is that this may be the last scene in the movie where the credits are rolling. Again, only the editors will know. Maybe it will be me and my buddy walking into the sunset instead of George Clooney.

There are still three more weeks of shooting in Winston Salem and Statesville, NC. I live about 40 minutes from Statesville and 90 minutes from Winston Salem. I am hoping for a part in Statesville, so I can restup...I had about 45 hours of sleep in the last 9 days.