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WANNA DJ?
Faculty and staffcomprise a quarter ofthe volunteer disc jockey staff at WXDU,Duke’s radio station.
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SUSTAINABLE DUKE
The new addition toDuke Forest includesa stretch of New HopeCreek, a source ofdrinking water forTriangle residents.
This paper consists of 30% recycledpost-consumer fiber. Please recycle after reading.2009, 2008, 2007 Gold Medal, Internal Periodical Staff Writing2009, 2007 Bronze Medal, Print Internal Audience Tabloids/Newsletters
FOOTBALL KICKOFF
As part of DukeAppreciation, facultyand staff are invitedto attend the Sept. 5season opener. Completefootball trivia now forprizes.
T
hink of her as Duke’s official tweeter. With more than 8,200 Facebook fans and 400 Twitter followers, Andrea Fereshteh is the face behind Duke’s growing presence on twosocial networks that are changing how staff and faculty work, interact andshare information.Fereshteh, who administers theuniversity’s Facebook fan page and DukeNews Twitter account with colleagues inDuke’s Office of News and Communications,sends status updates and 140-character“tweets” about the university’s latest news. When she covered Duke’s 2009commencement, one follower tweeted fromChina to thank her.“Thanks for the commencement tweets,”the message read. “Loved reading them andOprah quotes from train en route to Beijing.CONGRATS new Duke alumni.”“There’s someone on the other side of the world, and she felt like she was part of Duke,” Fereshteh said. “That’s the wholepoint of why we’re doing this.”Like Fereshteh, staff and faculty indepartments across Duke – from the Nasher Museum and Center forInstructional Technology to the Alumni Association and Fuqua School of Business – are using social networks to connect and converse in new ways,sharing information nuggets about everything from printer outages to thelatest research on citizen journalism.Dozens of departments have joined online conversations on Facebook and Twitter, and activity is on the rise, said Michael J. Schoenfeld, theuniversity’s vice president for public affairs and government relations.“There is a huge value to being an active participant in social media:to connect with professional networks, to find out quickly what’shappening at other places, to put together ad-hoc groups or meetings,”Schoenfeld said. “The more we exchange and share information, thebetter off we’ll be, as an institution and as individuals. At the same time, we have to remember that all of this is taking place in the open. A littlebit of caution goes a long way.”Users 35 and older now comprise more than half the user populationfor both Facebook and Twitter, leading to an explosion of social networkingin the workplace. Usage is especially prevalent amonghigher-ed employees, as universities scramble to keepup with tech-savvy prospective recruits and youngalumni.Once seen as an idle pastime, social networks canalso enhance productivity and teambuilding in the workplace, experts say. Still, there’s a learning curve tomanaging the intermeshing of personal andprofessional lives online.“Communicating and sharing personalinformation online has gone mainstream,” said FredStutzman, a researcher who studies social media in theSchool of Information and Library Science at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Socialnetworks are opening up a whole new world of information that wasn’t available before because people weren’t participating. That may lead to informationoverload, but it also may lead to smart connections.”Duke employees are making those connections.Library and IT staff began using Twitter about two years ago as a virtual “in/out” board to cut down on e-mail but still keep colleaguesposted. With shrinking travel budgets in tough economic times, thoseemployees find Twitter increasingly useful to keep up with conferences andnetwork with colleagues at other universities.Shawn Miller, a consultant in Duke’s Center for InstructionalTechnology, uses Twitter to follow and chat with leading researchers whostudy Web 2.0 technologies.“There’s a lot of information out there,” Miller said, “but with Twitter,because the posts are so short, you don’t have to invest as much timekeeping up with the latest academic research.”Stephen Toback, a senior IT manager in Duke’s Office of InformationTechnology, has found that casual, personal interaction on social networkshelp deepen workplace relationships and improve teamwork.
NEWS YOU CAN USE :: Volume 4, Issue 5 :: August 2009
>> See
SOCIAL NETWORKS
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PAGE 5
I feellikeI’m doing my job better byutilizing thesenew technologiesand keeping upwith new ways of communicating.”
— Andrea FereshtehSenior WriterOffice of News and Communications
Illustration by Barbara Puccio, Blackwell Interactive
STAFF AND FACULTY ACROSS DUKE USE SOCIAL NETWORKS TO CONNECT AND CONVERSE
Join the Facebook fan page for the Working@Dukepublication at hr.duke.edu/workingatduke
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