One of the "Team Wordjunky" members sent this example of a podcast put together by one of our competitors to the folks in Zolly World.
His Comment:
"Again - another example of where we are not up to speed with where our undergrad members are! "The response from HQ was swift and, sadly, predictable...
"Thanks for sharing. Hats off to Lambda Chi for being very up front with its membership regarding its decline.
...I don't think having great pod casts are going to make us a better organization."
Our Comments on this way of thinking:
If he doesn't understand the point then maybe there isn't one to be made with him. Thinking like that is what kept buggy whip manufacturers saying that the horseless carriages were a fad that would blow over. Anyone who lives online as much as we do will see quickly that there is a whole universe of communication between individuals that is being missed by people who cannot conceive of anything other than 'dead trees' as a networking media.
Cases in point:
That doesn't even count the Facebooks, and that is just the simple stuff. There is much, much more. Sophisticated? Not really. Communicated? Definitely.
To belabor the obvious, it is not that having podcasts - or any other "gimmick" will make us a "greater" fraternity. But NOT keeping up with the ways that the target demographic (17-22 male) is communicating will leave us wondering where we got lost when the other fraternities - and all the competing organizations out there - figure it out.
It's not like we can't do this. Remember the BM Scholarship? That bit of innovation is a killer rush tool that other fraternities are scrambling to copy. How much cooler is it, though, when you can apply online at a chapter website? (Yes, many chapters already offer this.) You think a parent won't notice? And if there was a downloadable audio file (aka "podcast") of really good quality campus information would that not add value?
When S&P started in August of '04 we were getting less than 30 visits a day. In March of '06 S&P had over 5500 visits. We have had consistent growth in every 3 month period of the roughly 1 1/2 year we have been up.S&P is currently running at between 1200 and 1400 hits a week.That is more than the entire subscription list of SET. Every week! If that doesn't show an acceptance of new communication methods then what does it mean?
Dave Winer is one of the pioneers of blogging. He has been creating tools and content for a number of years now. This is his response to the question "What does Amazon.com need with a blog?" It would apply to Sig Ep too.
Wait. Do you suppose the HQ guy actually thought we were gloating over the LXA membership decline? Hoo-boy, we have more work to do than we thought.
