I won the ICAA Newcomer award

Last week was a busy week. Amber and I took a trip to Ft. Wayne to visit some friends and had a great time. We even “won” their daughter in a bowling match! Shortly after that I went to Maumee Bay State Park for an ICAA conference where I was in charge of A/V for the conference with the help of some great people from Ohio Northern. The conference was great and I presented a session about Technology for traveling professionals. The session went well even if I did have to contend with some other great speakers during the time slot.

Thursday nite, ICAA, the Independent College Advancement Associates, had their 50th anniversary celebration and the annual awards ceremony. At the ceremony I won the ICAA Newcomer Award, which is presented to an individual who has made a significant contribution to their functional area. I was extremely excited to win the award for my work with our database at Bluffton University and my work with young alumni at our institution.

Well, I just wanted to brag a little, tommorow I have to go back to work and get a phonathon pull ready!

Bluffton EBA Young Alumni Event

Last nite Amber and myself joined some of our fellow Bluffton Alums for a get together at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Columbus and had a great time. We carpooled down from Findlay with a few other alumni and met up with Pete Suter, the host of the evening to add to multitude of door prizes for attendees. The Business department brought items from the bookstore and I was able to snag some goodies from the Alumni office which meant nobody went home empty handed.

It was really cool to catch up with both professors and alumni, especially seeing Sullivan and Schiebly. I also caught up with a few younger alums who live in the Columbus area doing some interesting things. Midway through the evening president Harder and Karen showed up to meet with the alumni. Shortly after this a group of us went on a tour of the brewery portion of the restaurant which was really cool. Our guide even tapped the 1259 gallon vat of Heifweizen for us and poured us drinks straight from the brewing container!

Overall a really good time even if Bill Lyons didn’t make an appearance. Hopefully the event will be on agian next year and we can see even more alumni there!

Graduation Day at Bluffton University!

I just got home from graduation today at Bluffton University! I received my Masters degree in business administration after 2 years of hard work with some great classmates. I can’t wait to have my Tuesday nites back! I am already looking forward to spending more time with Amber, more time blogging and enjoying some more video games.

I am also looking forward to teaching my first class this fall at Bluffton. I will be teaching a business course, Introduction to Information Systems, It is a 300 level course which meets two days a week. It is really great because the class content hooks into my daily job at Bluffton as well and it is highly applicable to the real world. I hope the students will enjoy it. I need to start soliciting for textbooks from the publishers so that I can find the right one to use. I don’t think I will be able to to make a major change in text books but I hope that by the next time I teach a course I can use something digital and or open source!

Josh Status Update

I hope at least someone enjoyed my April fools joke rickrolling you via a Trillian Astra download link.  In all seriousness I am looking forward to the release of Trillian Astra, and wish I could get in on the Alpha right now.  I’d pony up for Trillian Pro but I don’t feel like repaying when Astra is released and no upgrade path has been announced to my knowledge.  If you are with Trillian and want another tablet tester drop me a line!

Updates may be sparse or less lengthy as I pull into the homestretch of my MBA program at Bluffton University.  I will be wrapping up my final class on April 29th and cannot wait!  April 29th is also the same day that GTA 4 comes out so I’ll be taking the 30th off to get knee deep in Liberty City.

What are my plans after graduation you ask?  I am planning on staying on at Bluffton and I hope to get involved a  little more with Young Alumni cultivation and I also hope to use some of my new-found free time to blog more.

I’m Twittering Now

I joined Twitter last week and I am still experimenting to see how useful it is.  I was spurred to join by an article regarding the use of Twitter in Academia on academhack.  I am excited by the aspect of using this as a tool for either academia or for linking constituents back to a cause or institution.  I hope to explore using Twitter this fall when I teach a course at Bluffton University and I’d like to find a method of using Twitter to connect with donors.  Connecting with donors may be trickier but my initial thought is that a donor or supporter can follow an organization on Twitter without divulging their personal information and get the information how they want it using Twitter preferences.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter or look for updates on the left sidebar and be assured I will share my thoughts on using Twitter at a non profit here in the event of any breakthroughs.