PITCH model makes good

Photo: Clinton Lloyd - www.twopointeight.co.nz

Sometimes things just work out really well. In 2006, Magdalena Schoemann modelled for five emerging CPIT designers at PITCH, the CPIT Fashion School’s end of year show. In 2009, she was crowned Miss World New Zealand. It’s a long way to the top, but Magdalena says PITCH gave her a ‘foot in the door’. Like most young girls, Magdalena had dreamed of being a model, but never thought it truly possible. So when she saw the ad for the PITCH model audition, she thought it would be fun, if nothing else. Then she caught the eye of second-year design student Emilie Pullar, setting in train events that will see the eighteen year old represent New Zealand in December at Miss World 2009 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“PITCH is a great way to get your face out there. You never know what other opportunities might come from it, and it’s great to be able to model for future leading designers!”

Since then Magdalena has done a power of work promoting Miss World and preparing for her part in the competition which is to be run on December 12th. Magdalena has proven herself to be a superb ambassador, not only for Miss World but also for our own show PITCH. She has given a lot of time and support to promote the event to a whole range of potential new models this year. And just when you thought people didn't give a glance backwards, Magdalena has shown that she really walks the talk.

Good luck in South Africa Magadalena!

Magdalena is organising a show, 'Celebrating Life' on the 31st October which you might like to check out.

Become a Miss World New Zealand Fan

Alpha96.1 is finding a wider audience

Do you have have Alpha 96.1 streaming on your computer?

I reckon you should. You may not fall into their demographic of a typical Alpha listener but I can guarantee you won't need to jump ship in a hurry. They wanted their audience to feel like they were listening to their iPods on shuffle and they've nailed it .. it doesn't matter which group you feel the strongest affiliation to .. the station hums!

Alpha Radio, which began life as a student course project, will run 'til the end of November. I would love to see it run 24/7 but next year they will re-invent the station for next year's course and so the cycle continues. In the meantime let them know what you think. These guys are in training to be the next crop of DJs and media stars and deserve all the kudos and support we can provide. Let them know you're listening ....

alpharadio.co.nz
twitter.com/alpharadio
facebook.com/alpha96.1

see what other people are saying ...
http://zambesigirl.blogspot.com

Listing Jobs on the Ignition Job Board

Good things come to those who wait. Don't they say that? Well in some way I would have to agree. We have finally managed to get the RSS feed of the jobs offered to our students through our job portal CareerHub, into a Job Board on the ignition website. Now they are out in the open. The next thing is to get all our students and grads to register with the service so they can actually apply for them!


A big thank you to our superb IT department and Dave Murch in particular for doing all the hocus pocus, black box stuff ...

CPIT on Facebook

CPIT represents a truly diverse collection of people. That is one of the things I really love about it. Keeping up with those groups isn't so easy but I have pulled together a few of those collections popping up on Facebook that have their feet in the Creative Industries Faculty.

You might want to join one!

My personal favourite (OK so this is shameless promotion) would have to be ignition. But there are lots of people building windows into their world ... take a peek!


General CPIT
CPIT
CPIT (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology)


Photography
Photography at CPIT
Photography level 7 at CPIT
CPIT Photography 2008
CPIT Photography 08 


MusicArts
CPIT Jazz School


Fashion
NZ Emerging Designers

Art and Design
Creative kids of CPIT Design
CPIT School of Art And Design
C.P.I.T Certificate in Design Spiral Posse
Viscom Unleashed
Christchurch Polytech School of Art and Design


Architecture
C.P.I.T Architecture Canterbury


Food
Salon Culinaire (Not quite in the Creative Industries family but one I have a soft spot for)


I will add more to the list as I discover them ...

External Links

Building networks is one thing. Getting them to work together is quite another. The pieces of the external network were quick to set up. The internal network within CPIT has presented more of a challenge largely due to the organisational processes and protocols that need to be addressed and managed. My greatest concern now is how best to limit the amount of information duplication. I trust that the most efficient method will become apparent after a little playing.

I have listed the steps I followed to create the external networks below. The steps involved in setting up the internal networks will follow shortly.






As Google owns a number of these sites (YouTube and Blogger) and will link them together I needed to create a Google account first. You'll find a SignIn link in the top right hand corner of the Google page. I used my work email as the principal contact address and will be the one used as the login name for Blogger and YouTube.

Blogger is simple to set up. Choose a username that matches as closely as possible the identity of the other site feeds you will create. Now that you have Google account you can log in using those account details.

Next you need to create a blog. If you have a problem creating this (as I did when the connection reset itself before the process was completed) then the blog name you have selected can be lost to you. So don't hurry things by impatiently clicking on the buttons for example. You can build multiple blogs under the one account.

Note that you will need to set up a blog before you can link to it in the other sites so it should be one of the first things you do even if you don't add much or any content at this point.







Create an account with YouTube. Once created YouTube will let you login using the Username you created or your Google account name which I elected to do to limit the amount of login info I needed to remember. However you will need to set the link between them before you log out. This can be found by following the Account link at the top right hand corner of the page and then clicking on the Manage Account link on the left hand panel. When you come back to YouTube you should find the option to login again using the Google account info part way down the page. YouTube is straight forward and easy to use.

You can upload videos up to 10 at a time or you can install Google Gears which will manage an unlimited number of uploads for you. (It works with both Firefox and IE7.) I recommend using the first upload option, unless you truly have lots of material to upload at once, as the file info is easier to edit there than on the bulk upload page. I also linked YouTube with my Blogger site, ignitioncpit.blogspot.com as well so that new uploads will get posted there. To do this click on the Account link, next to the other links at the top right of the page, and then Blog Setup on the Account Settings page.







My real interest in this site was to create a user group, Ignition, that I could use to build an online picture of what the Creative Industries Faculty students were doing and the events they were running and presenting during the year. In my mind this would become the social hub of the Ignition network if you like. To use this site however you must create a personal account first. I used my work email address here and uploaded a basic shot of myself (more personal but not required). This site uses the email as your userID. Then I created the group Ignition.

The crucial step here though is to import a list of contacts that Facebook can search for and help you connect with. You need a seed audience so you can let people know you have arrived! Facebook supports a wide array of contact list formats.

The beauty of Facebook is that it can both link to and with a lot of other sites. Facebook allows you to do this fairly simply. Once you are logged in you will notice a tab strip underneath your username. At the end of the Wall tab is a dropdown link that lists other options available to you on that tab, one of which includes Import. Import will bring in a range of other sites to your Wall as they are updated, including Flickr, Blogger and YouTube.






Before I could begin creating the Flickr account I needed to set up a Yahoo account. Flickr has a link there as part of its own account creation process or you can follow this link. Yahoo supplied an email address under their domain which doubles as the login username for Flickr.

Once logged in to Flickr I also wanted to link it with Blogger. To do this click on the You dropdown menu at the top of the page just beneath the Flickr banner and then on Your Account. You will see a tab called Extending Flickr that uses a wizard to set up additional functionality including linking to blogs. This particular function will send a post to the blog when new material is uploaded.



SUMMARY
I have included most of the key steps I needed to follow to get this far. Hopefully I have covered it reasonably clearly. Just to cap it off I have included a list of those steps below .... I will return to the internal network components in my next post.

Create a Google account for Your Company.
Create an account with Blogger.
Create an account with YouTube.
Link YouTube with Google.

Create a Yahoo account for Your Company.
Create an account with Flickr.

Create an account with Facebook.
Upload contact list.
Create a Group under Facebook.
Create events.

Begin creating content - blogs and uploading material.
Link each site with the others.

Making links

My community building mission meant that I needed to set up a range of networks. One network within CPIT and another externally using a number of accounts with some of the community sites, on behalf of CPIT. So over the past month I have have set up accounts with Flickr, YouTube and Facebook with Twitter planned for a little later.

The Flickr and YouTube accounts I'm planning on using as repositories for photos and video. Both of these provide options for embedding the files stored with them on any site you wish, which was a key requirement of mine. As much as possible I want people to be able to look at the content I'm linking to, within the page they are currently viewing. These community sites by and large can also link extremely well with each other updating one another as new material is added. A big plus!

Developing profiles on this range of sites I felt might create some confusion later when it came time to use them though. In spite of that concern I still didn't really plan the account creation process as well as I could have. For those of you thinking of doing something similar I would recommend you select a common username and email, and check their availablity with all sites before you finalise your application. I didn't and had to make some small tweaks to the username or userID with some sites.

Also be aware that the various sites authenticate you in slightly different ways too. Some use an email address while others use the userID that the sites generally create for you during the account creation phase. Some sites also let you choose the email you wish to use while others make you use one from a parent account. My whole rationale was to ensure that in spite of content coming from a number of different sites people would at least recognise a consistent username. In the end I'm not sure how visible the variations actually are to the user. Nevertheless I've taken the precaution of listing all my login details in a file so I don't forget them. I have described the process in more detail in subsequent posts, External Links and Internal Links.

Glue for Ignition

OK so today is testing my patience.

I work for CPIT but that's not the cause of my frustration: my role here is really a very interesting one. It's the technology that's driving me crazy ... and that's saying something because I am just a little bit in love with techno solutions. I'm not blind to their failings but I do believe in them in the sense that as technological tools exist it makes sense to embrace them. Because they can make jobs and tasks easier and more efficient ... unless they don't because the network is all choked up. It's one of those days!

Network issues aside it is perhaps, strange, that while some individuals or companies make great use of the broad range of tools available, a remarkable number don't and I'm not quite sure why. Especially now that there are so many and so many that seem at first sight to be easy and simple to use. Of course by tools, I mean computer or Internet tools. And the measure I'm using here when I qualify the success of a tool is its ability to improve our ability to communicate and socialise. My interpretation of that success though might well be limited by my ability to really understand it.

I came late to the Internet revolution and to some degree I feel like a traveller in a foreign land. Even though I have come to love the promise of this new world, making the leap to embrace the tools as extensions to or elements of everyday interaction requires a shift in thinking that still just eludes me at the moment. I love the idea of them but I don't quite get how they work. The question is can I can learn the lingo and make them work for Ignition?

Ignition, for those that don't know, is the brand (including the resources and management) that promotes and coordinates the events and exhibitions of the Creative Industries Faculty at CPIT throughout the year.

My goal, following the wrap-up to Ignition and specifically the CPIT Creative Festival in 2008, was to begin work on building the online and backend elements that could link the students, alumni and the community groups involved with the Faculty together. There is nothing there now in any real sense. Even in the pysical world there is little interaction between the Schools, the students within them or the groups within the community that in various ways support both. No mechanism for students to talk to and request help from each other. No mechanism for employers to contact students easily. No mechanism for the general public to build an idea of what the students in our faculty do. No mechanism for students to really profile themselves and build a platform that incorporates their work and their learning, their interests and their hobbies. And no way to maintain a relationship with the wealth of experience and knowledge held by the Faculty alumni. No community really, period.

I believe these communities can be developed and supported and that we can create these mechanisms online. Time will tell. This will be a record of my journey.