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Planga Keeps Students Abreast of Campus Events

Social media is more popular than ever. It seems like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest are so much a part of our lives, leaving us to wonder what the next big thing will be. Because social media is so accessible and popular among the Generation Y-ers, it only makes sense to introduce it in a collegiate settingmeet Planga, a virtual calendar that gives a birds-eye view map of the College and current events. It was initially brought to Chestnut Hills attention last semester after a series of Student Government Association [SGA] meetings. Krista Bailey Murphy, dean of student life, and Emily Schademan, director of student activities, approached SGA with the idea of a virtual calendar and Planga was one of the options. We had a couple of meetings where we had tutorials of each calendar system, said Anna St. Hilaire, 12, executive vice president of SGA. We contacted the CEO of Planga, Alex [Kates and] had him on speakerphone [...]. He was sharing with us how Planga works and the pros and cons of it. After talking about it we [SGA] decided that given how small our school is and how it operates Planga is the best-fitting [option] for our school. When a student signs up for it theyre auto-enrolled in three groups: the academic calendar, student activities, student government, said St. Hilaire, Each student can choose to become a fan or member of any club theyre in on campus: sports teams, poetry club, drama club, history. Every club has their own calendar which they can add their events to. Its social media; students love social media, said Emily Schademan, director of student activities. She hopes that Planga will have a positive effect on event attendance. St. Hilaire said, We have about 200 students signed up for Planga, which is great because we only started it two weeks ago. She hopes it will only increase in popularity as word spreads and people get the hang of it. You have the option of syncing those groups to your own personal calendars. One of those 200 students who have already signed up is Nicole Heigl, 14. Its an easy way to go to one place and see what is going on, she said. I love using it to organize all of my extracurricular activities and not forget what to do or where to go every day. Jessica Veazey 13 has also taken a liking to the new calendar platform. Veazey said, I like how you can go on Planga and see whats going on day-to-day on campus and which one of my friends are going. Alex Kates, a 2009 graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., got the idea for Planga during his time as an undergrad. We had 13,000 undergraduates and almost a thousand registered organizations at the school, he said. There was just a lot happening every single day, usually over

one hundred events every day on campus that ranged from club meetings to sporting events to philanthropy things to arts and music. This predictably created a lot of difficulty and confusion for students. Willard Straight Hall [Student Union] was the go-to place to find out what events were happening, but it wasnt done very effectively. The halls of this entire building would be lined with flyers and everything thats happening that week, Kates recounted. It was just so incredibly disorganized. Like Chestnut Hill, Cornell would send out emails about events, but students would delete them if they werent relevant to them. Kates was the president of the Cornell Economics Society and used flyers and social media, like Facebook, to publicize their events, which typically had great attendance. Following a particularly scarring panel discussion sponsored by the Cornell Economics Society with high-ranking managing directors and vice presidents from Morgan Stanley (only two people showed up), Kates saw the importance of a system where students could see everything happening on campus and easily keep in touch with their groups. The naming process, according to Kates, is really nerdy. Because Planga exists on the Web we had to come up with something that had an available domain, he said. We ended up picking Planga because it had the root plan, which has to do with making plans and such, and I think thats why Planga was the one that really stuck for us. As for the -ga, Kates said it sounds cool. Kates and his team of three started working on the beginnings of Planga in early 2010 and went live at four schools for beta-testing this past fall. Plangas staff has since doubled, all of who are graduates of Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College. A few MIT students also helped out, one of those students being Katess brother. He felt that at MIT the problem [with event organization] was just as big as it was at Cornell, Kates said. Thats why MIT was one of the beta test schools, because the need was so high there. When we first launched at our first few schools, we didnt actually go through the schools. After letting Planga run free, Kates and his team realized that launching with the schools approval made it much easier and faster for students and administration to adopt the online calendar system. Working with Alex [Kates] has been great, St. Hilaire said. Hes been such an awesome person to work with. He always wants to find out if we have problems. There were problems with our IT department and Planga, so a lot of people were trouble signing up, but Alex and his employees worked really hard to make it work as fast as possible. Being able to give my feedback is awesome. St. Hilaire noted. Planga has already made changes to the site based on recommendations from the students here. They want to make sure they can better Planga. To sign up, go to www.chc.planga.com.

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