01 May 2004

They Actually Did Print It

John W. Gudenas, Ph.D.
Society for Amateur Scientists, Board of Trustees
Professor of Computer Science
Aurora University, Aurora IL

In the beginning:

I received an email from Heather Smith, our Director of Program Development for our LABRATS project, inviting me to submit an article for a virtual conference on service learning. The notion of a virtual conference was an intriguing idea, albeit I was wondering exactly what I could contribute. I had received a grant from SBC Corporation that was titled "Community Service for Computer Scientists" that was designed to build content in my CS Capstone Course. This project would create awareness in our CS students of the opportunities that existed for them in community service agencies from local libraries to the Quad County Urban League. All these agencies were working to improve computer literacy and all needed help. While important, this project was well documented on the AU WEB site and folks are in agreement that solving our digital divide is a good notion.

Giving the concept some reflection, I decided to take a light hearted, but I suspect, interesting discussion of my episodes, surprises, and fun with the news media. Most of the anecdotes are associated with SciFair.org, but I put another in to complete the illustration.

Service learning is usually, but not necessarily, associated with a community. Considering WEB activities it may be a global community, but each instance will involve a local agency of some form or fashion. Press coverage is important, if not vital, for these activities. It opens the door to local funding agencies, picks up additional help and verifies that you are "real". Normally such interviews with reporters are simple asking who, what, where and why. A useful "matter of fact" article will show up in a day to some unknown time. Every now and then you will get photographers and naturally you forgot the tie and still have on a sport shirt. Tough! This will be great press. Pictures mean a feature article and that is good. What I am going to tell you about are the more unusual adventures that I have had. None were unpleasant, some were surprising, and all were accurate to some degree (I believe all reporters took a course in Fuzzy Logic and learned the true value of linguistic hedges).

In case you haven't noticed:

Consider this a forced hypertext link to another page. It is a virtual conference. I am speaking to you. It seems quite unusual to write in the first person. Certainly not a novel approach, but for a scientist it is rather different. Considering that I am a Professor and lecture is part of my normal behavior, it is not strange to address an audience. However, I can't see you, or hear you. I have to envision you as being in front of me captive in your seats desperately wondering how long we will be covering the Relational Algebra and seeing in your eyes a great question to why you need to know what a functional dependency is anyhow. Unfortunately you aren't captive and can go back, forward, up or down. So all I can do is beg you to stay and offer a story or two that contains a message.

In the news:

You may not know, quite frankly you may never know, if you end up with a news article. This seems to happen for several reasons. Most reporters are never quite sure when the story will be published. You may not (especially with WEB activities) even know that a reporter is doing an article on you or your project.

Adventure with U.S. News

U.S. News is certainly a prominent vehicle that is respected and is a great place to find your project highlighted; if you knew it was there. I periodically do GOOGLE searches of various key words associated with myself or ongoing projects in order to see who has linked, acknowledged or listed information. SciFair.org will turn up usually from one to five (currently three) on a GOOGLE for "Science Fair". It is useful to keep browsing down and see what else might turn up. On November 14, 2002 (I know this because I have the print in front of me) I was browsing GOOGLE and I found a reference from U.S. News to SciFair.org. Interesting. I followed the link and ended up in the USNEWS.COM archive. With the entry of a charge card and the flash of a screen I was treated to a February 7, 2000 article titled "Why science fairs turn parents into Dr. Frankenstein". Terrific, just what I wanted to see. However, the article had a prominent reference to Scifair.org as a site for help and refuge. It would have been nice to know in 2000 rather than 2002!

Adventure with the Chicago Tribune

Alex L. Glodfayn writes a column each Saturday for the Business section titled "MY TECH" for complete metro distribution. I knew his column and read it from time to time. I received a voice mail message from Alex on my University extension after I returned from class and an ad-hoc meeting with my Dean. He instructed me to call as he was on deadline. I called the next morning and was told that I was supposed to call yesterday. I countered with the simple fact that Professors teach in classrooms, work in laboratories and for the most part return calls as soon as they can. Did he want to hear about my web site that was pulling a couple of million hits/month? That opened the door for an excellent article in the April 19, 2003 section of the Business Section of the Chicago Tribune titled "Web site big hit for science fairs". At the very end of the interview Alex slid in a trivial question "Hey, how old are you anyway?" which I unfortunately answered. Guess what appeared immediately under my named picture? Be careful, anything you say can get printed.

Adventure with BizEd

BizEd is the publication of the AACSB (see http://www.aacsb.edu/) a very prominent accreditation agency for University Schools of Business. Last summer I developed and taught a course in "Principles of Information Security" for a combined audience of Business students and Computer Science Majors. I was fielding many phone calls about the course from faculty advisors and prospective students so when the phone rang and I was queried about this course I stopped questioning who was on the other end of the line.

This past February I was doing my typical GOOGLE search on who knows what and why about my activities and I find a link to BizEd November/December 2003. Here we go again. In the Technology section is a very prominent article highlighting the Information Security Course and nifty color graphic. Not only that, they had an interview with me! Apparently one of the phone calls I fielded was a BizEd reporter doing an interview. (I wouldn't mind having a copy of BizEd November/December if anyone has one). I now always ask whom I am talking to on the phone, no matter how trivial the questions are.

In the end:

All in all the press has been a great friend to all my community projects. They like to help, but you never quite know when and what will appear in print. I didn't address all of the marvelous community newspaper reporters that are the typical event. However, these folks bring your project in front of the individuals you are trying to help. It pays to help them.

I certainly hope you enjoyed your visit with me and listened to a few adventures with the press. If this format worked for Warren Buffet in his report to Berkshire Hathaway, I guess it must have some value. He seems to know what he is doing.

Enjoy the remainder of our Virtual Conference.