To develop ideas for advancing social media’s role in business, student teams from the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the School of Information Studies will participate in a weekend-long project.

The “Social Media’s Future Charrette,” sponsored by VPA and the iSchool, will take place Friday through Sunday. Thirty-six students from eight colleges at Syracuse University will participate in an event and work on a specific problem through a visual collaborative process.

A charrette is a design-based collaborative project that works by creating a neutral zone, allowing people to feel safe and build upon each other’s ideas, said Chris McCray, the director of the School of Design.

“The key to the success of the charrette is a diverse group of people bringing different skills to the table to have free-flowing conversation,” McCray said.

Deans of each of the participating colleges chose students for the Social Media Features after e-mails were sent out asking students if they might be interested in the topic.

The students participating in the charrette will be presented with a specific problem dealing with social media’s relationship with business. The students will then work together to find solutions to that issue. There are no preconceived notions for the conclusions, and solutions students will design and conceptualize, McCray said.

The project is “completely exploratory where we let dialogue flow organically and go where it needs to go,” McCray said.

The idea for the charrette developed from a large interest from businesses and corporations in social media that were dealing with the problem of not knowing how to use that interest, McCray said. The student projects will explore ways to maximize the potential of social business as a way for businesses to communicate both internally and with their clientele.

The weekend charrette starts on Friday with dinner and introductions at the COLAB, located on the fourth floor of the Warehouse. The COLAB was created as an interdisciplinary space meant to bring together students with different skills and interests in order to approach projects and problems collaboratively, according to its Web site.

“One of the major aspects of collaborating is getting to know each other, checking our egos at the door and getting rid of the fear of working with each other,” McCray said.

The rest of the charrette will be focused on guest speakers and introducing the problem for discussion, he said.

A visual thinking process will take place on Saturday. The student participants will hear presentations about social media and business from SU alumni and current SU student entrepreneurs.

Students will present their ideas on Sunday to businesses and professionals attending the presentations. Creators of the event hope they will be able to implement some of the students’ ideas within their organizations, according to an SU news release.

Social media has become an important part of people’s daily lives and affects the way people think and act, McCray said. The charrette will be useful for adding insight and informing businesses how to use social media resources better in the future, he said.

Social media was born in “academia,” McCray said, “and in the life of college students and for us, we see students as the future consumers and customers of business.”

 

Published on April 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm