Bring It On ... no really

We are on the run to Thanksgiving weekend and a much needed break from the studio life we’ve been living. My son has now picked up an extra 2 classes a week out of pure interest. He has decided he wants to try his hand at Acro (mix of dance and gymnastics) and then another jazz class just for the kids on the competitive team. Means my leaving work by 4pm on Friday and then bring him along to his sister’s dance on Saturday so that he is at the studio in time for his new class.

'Spirit Fingers'

I almost forgot my ‘Bring It On’ moment! So if you have seen the old movie about the cheerleading team who go to a competition only to find many other teams using ‘spirit fingers’. I’ll give you some background. My niece is on the precompetitive dance team at another London dance studio. Each Saturday her mom and I meet at my grandmother’s for tea while we bide time as both our kids dance. We were sitting there having a good chat when my sister in law remembered she hadn’t mentioned that my niece was going to be doing an Extended Musical Theatre number. That reminded me I forgot to tell her about Kian dancing in his Extended Musical Theatre number to a song from Mary Poppins. My sister in law LOVES Mary Poppins so I was excited to tell her. That was when she announced my niece was ALSO doing a number from Mary Poppins. I pulled the song up on my Dropbox and it was the same song! Wow ... I swear it was like living Bring It On lol!!!

After the dance day was done and we were all back home I posted this same story on my personal facebook. Very quickly the owner of our studio saw my message and commented on it. I was glad to be able to give her the heads up prior to meeting this other studio at a competition in May. When I was dancing this would have taken ages to communicate and many telephone games to get to the owner.

At work this week one of my employees came to me to ask why a student who attended Western in 1994 did not have a campus email address. I had to explain that before 2000 we didn’t have a need for a userid and that only since 2007 have we stored Western Identity information beyond graduation. He was floored. When I mentioned that I didn’t have an email when I attended Western he couldn’t get his mind around it. He was born in 1994 so his entire life email has been a main tool for communication. Thinking on this it is no wonder that students have an expectation for the university to be on social media. The idea that transcripts aren’t available electronic ally just doesn’t make sense to current students.

This leads me into our new assignment on analytics. My manager and I were just talking about this in relation to our budget proposal and accomplishments. This was the first year that we included social media in our accomplishments. For this assignment I will use the work accounts that I manage for the Office of the Registrar at Western University. We haven’t officially created a social media campaign or set goals yet. I think this exercise will benefit me at work and help quantify how we are doing in our current efforts.