AUB's Online Collaborative and Clubs Days

View of Club's Stands next to West Hall

Today has been a very long day indeed, a long fruitful day.

AUB's Online Collaborative had its debut today during Clubs day where cabinets and active members of clubs and societies gather around West Hall to recruit members.

After struggling with the board for around an hour, we were set to go. The collage of social networking logos attracted many students who came closer to ask questions or take a flyer.

Other students had surprised or even disgusted looks when they saw our stand. They don't know how important and crucial our work is. Many thought that we are a group of people addicted to facebook and trying to recruit facebook addicts into one group.

Our humble board

Boy, they are so wrong.

What they don't know is how the whole world has its eyes fixated now on digital media, especially social media.

News outlets are leaning more and more towards online media. Many politicians, organizations or event planners are preferring to be interviewed by bloggers and online newspapers, and breaking news is usually first published on the internet, mainly on sites such as twitter.

Universities and companies are recruiting highly-trained and educated individuals for work, masters and doctorate degrees, internships or even conferences and workshops using professional social networking services such as Linkedin.

AUBOC President Mohammad Hijazi and
Secretary Tala Kardas

Blogging is also a rapidly developing method for students and business people to share their opinions on crucial issues that relate to their fields of interest. Experts say that a personal blog will become a prerequisite to many job applications or getting promoted in companies.

It is surprising how quickly the Lebanese youth have been integrating themselves into the digital era. The Lebanese scene on twitter is astounding, and might I add, very refreshing. The Lebanese are also leading the Arab world in the blogging sector on so many levels, from politics and news, to photography and comic blogs.

So what does all this have to do with AUB's online collaborative?

Perhaps students don't see this very clearly right now, but many faculty and staff at AUB have expressed their great interest in an our organization. Some of the will even help promote us to their students. And here is why:

AUBOC will help student bloggers promote their blogs and attract more readers from the Lebanese and Arab scene who are interested in the topic of each individual blog.

AUBOC will help students, clubs or staff/faculty start off their own blogs while providing them the basic tools and knowledge needed to launch a professional blog and customize it according their own taste and preference.

AUBOC will introduce individuals to the Lebanese on twitter and organize tweet-ups for them to meat each
other and make new friends.

AUBOC will aid soon-to-be graduates to use professional services such as Linkedin to secure a career or a graduate program at universities around the world.

VP Joseph Saba

AUBOC will relaunch the Lebanese Bloggers Convention (which was cancelled last spring) with much greater support from the Lebanese bloggers community, famous sponsors and highly-valued international institutions.

AUBOC will hold workshops and conferences to enlighten students about digital photography, comic blogging, basic HTML editing for blogs, twitter, etc...

AUBOC will be screening related movies, among other events which are planned to enrich students knowledge about these topics.

To benefit from all of the above, all you have to do is to sign up to be an official member today (Wednesday) on West Hall from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Believe me, you will not regret it.

For more information:
Join our official Facebook page.
Check out our official blog.
Send us an email to: online.collaborative@gmail.com