Reconnecting with Alumni

Today (Valentine's day 2008), Rick Vaz and I had a meeting with Dexter Bailey, head of WPI's Office of Development and Alumni Relations. We discussed how to reconnect with the over 450 alumni who conducted their Interactive Qualifying Projects (IQPs) in Venice since 1988. We would like to engage them through a "social network", connecting to popular services such as Facebook and mySpace. One of the first items on the agenda is to share with all past Venice students our inaugural Newsletter and to get ideas for the 20th Anniversary celebrations. WPI already has an alumni community portal, which we will try to leverage for this purpose. Hamlet Nina, a current student who was in Venice last fall will be helping us on this front.