THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
Once our fundamental processes were in place, we felt comfortable inviting other students to be a part of our club. But it seemed like we needed a more formal way to introduce ourselves to the university community. We wanted to develop some marketing materials like a website and a little flyer or brochure to hand out at events. Although we are all linear-thinking engineering types, we embraced the opportunity to express ourselves more creatively.
New Logo
We started with a brainstorming session about how we wanted to present ourselves as organization. Adjectives like dynamic, cool, fun, technical were all popular. The students like colors like purple (the new pink!), and naturally scarlet and grey (OSU's colors). This discussion led to a critical analysis of the ACM-W logo.
First, we liked how the ACMW logo derived from the ACM logo. We picked out the diamond shape, the 'Venus Sigil' and the layout as features that we wanted to keep. But we wanted to also express something of our energy level, our affiliation with OSU, and our interest in computing. Several members had negative feelings about the color scheme. They also felt that the logo was too rigid, static and linear.
We also really liked the Grace Hopper Celebration logo, but couldn't rationalize that big of a departure from the official ACMW layout.
After several iterations we finally chose this logo. It has the same general layout of the national ACMW logo, but uses the Ohio State University seal as the background diamond shape. The brush stroke sigil and font choices inform our energy and creativity. We also wanted people to understand that we are a computer science group, so we added circuitry that extends outward from the seal. Finally, so that there would not be any ambiguity or misunderstanding, we put the organization name right into our logo. This logo has worked out well for us. It is featured on our website (see below), brochure, posters that we use to advertise our meetings, on t-shirts, buttons and at our tables for student fairs (below).
In marketing terms, having our own stylized logo has helped us form a local identity that still honors the national organization.
Website
The next step in our marketing campaign was to create a website for our student organization. As it turned out, one of our founding members was already a webmistress for part of the CSE department website. She was able to significantly shorten our development time.
Unfortunately, the site was originally built in my (the faculty sponsor) web space. This ended up creating some persistent security issues as we struggled to keep the files write-enabled for only the student webmasters to edit.
We found out later that Ohio State has a student organization resource group that provides secured web space for clubs. We moved our site to their host and that has solved many of our access concerns.
Brochure
The Central Indiana ACMW chapter gave us some good advice on what elements should go in a brochure. They emphasized profiles of student members. We collected pictures and the officers wrote some testimonials about how great ACMW and computing is.
Since our flyer features profiles of current officers and a little calendar of upcoming events, it needs to be updated each time we use it. And since that happens two or three times a year, we don't invest in professional reproduction on heavy stock. I don't really like the flimsy feeling of the color copies we use now, but they're serviceable.
Student Involvement Fair
The week before classes start in the autumn quarter, OSU holds a Welcome Week. One of the Welcome Week events is the Student Involvement Fair. Because the university provides a free lunch just prior to the Fair, there are usually between 10,000 and 15,000 attendees and over 500 student organizations participating. Each student organization gets a table to feature their organization and try to solicit new members.
OSU did a pretty good job of grouping similar organizations together, but I was totally unprepared for the carnival-like atmosphere. The marching band was playing loudly and circulating, the crowds were four deep at each table and every group was giving away food or drinks. It was nearly impossible to have a normal, civilized discussion. I felt seriously geriatric. Perhaps this sort of thing is better left to the youngsters.
While we did a pretty good business giving away cups of popcorn (with our logo pasted on the cup) -- the flyers and a big poster of our logo were much more helpful in delivering our message. We also ran a video of one of our Computer Jenga sessions, but in all the noise and confusion, I doubt that it was really appreciated.
We collected names and emails on a clipboard. After the fair, we wrote to each person and invited them to visit our webpage and join the listserv. Few did, so I added them manually, and no one complained.
Engineering Student Activities Fair
About a month after classes start, the College of Engineering hosts an COE Student Activities Fair. This event is very similar to the campus-wide Student Involvement Fair, but much smaller and more targeted. We set up our table the same and offered the same popcorn in cups. The popcorn aroma proved very alluring, drawing visitors from offices and classrooms to our table.
Interestingly, at this more focused event, we drew more critical visitors than we had at the university-wide fair. There were a couple young men who even offered the observation that 'women in computing is an oxymoron'.
That said, we did collect a fair number of names (male and female) at the event. Some of these even went on to become officers, so it was a very worthwhile recruiting effort
THE FIRST THREE MONTHS
We spent the bulk of our first quarter just getting organized. We had to figure out how to do meetings, how to get money, and how to get along with other student organizations. [read more...]
THE FIRST YEAR
We tried to do some new things and we tried some old things done differently. [read more...]
For the latest on OSU's ACM-W student chapter, please visit us at http://acmw.org.ohio-state.edu
For detailed information on ACM-W, please visit our web site at http://women.acm.org/
Last updated by Bettina Bair, 07/12/2004
