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The new edition of BU Now will focus on Boston University events coverage.

The Friends of the Libraries will host an evening with actor Leonard Nimoy tonight, best known for playing Spock on the science fiction series Star Trek.  A Boston native, Nimoy will lecture on his long career in Hollywood where he was nominated for three Emmy Awards for acting, has directorial credits on numerous feature films, became a successful recording artist and authored several volumes of poetry and two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock (1977) and I Am Spock (1995).  Nimoy is also an accomplished photographer and the recipient of a Master’s Degree in Education, an Honorary Master of Fine Arts and four Honorary Doctorates.  The event will begin at 6:00 PM in the Metcalf Ballroom (771 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston).  Admission is $25 for the general public and  free to members of the Friends of the Libraries and the BU Community.

Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to attend Radian6‘s first user conference Social 2011 located at the gorgeous Marriott Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. For those of you who do not know, Radian 6 is a media monitoring and engagement company that effectively “helps businesses listen, discover, measure and engage in conversations across the social web.” In other words, they manage social media for companies including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, discussion boards, video and image sharing sites. Their software gives a comprehensive breakdown of everything the internet ever had to say about a company, and offers an platform to effectively engage with their individual audiences.

Social 2011 was the first user conference thrown by Radian6, inviting some of the biggest names in social media to mingle with those who use the Radian6 platform: essentially combining theory and practice. As a PR student with a interest in social media, this conference was right up my alley. Not only did I get to listen to compelling speakers who are defining the social media industry, but I also got the chance to meet business professionals who work with social media oh behalf of organizations.

Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun opened the conference and announced Radian6′s new Insights platform, a web platform that is knowledge-aware and discerns the underlying meaning of conversations, making social media monitoring even easier. It combines over 75 different platforms including Open Calais and Open Amplify and combines them to make Insights more intuitive.

Next the two keynote speakers from Dell were introduced: Chief Marketing Officer, Karen Quintos and Adam Brown, Executive Director of Social Media. Quintos offered Dell’s perspective on social media, showing us footage from their impressive Listening Command Center which is their home base of social media monitoring. Quintos drove home her point by giving us some stats about people who initially were antagonistic towards Dell, became some of their most avid advocates through social media monitoring and good customer service. Brown then continued the discussion, speaking about how social media can be used for what he called “edu-tainment” or using highly-produced content to tell stories. He also went on to stress how social media has to demonstrate it’s value to organizations with demonstrable ROI’s.

After the keynote it was time for some breakout sessions. I first attended one with Radian6′s Amber Naslund, about the highlights from the book she co-authored The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Business Faster, Smarter and More Social. Naslund dicussed, among other things, how to measure soical media statistics and the right type of person to hire to do social media for your company (hint: it’s not an intern).

Next came some more Radian6 announcements. Executive Vice President Chris Ramsey announced the Summary Dashboard, a new feature of the Radian6 platform that enables a more user-friendly experience. He also announced that Summary Dashboard is formatted to accommodate tablets and mobile devices, prompting the Radian6 Mobile announcement.

After that I attended two of the “unconferences.” The first was a case study in crisis management from Intel. Rick Reed  and Ali Ardalan shared with us some of the slip-ups that Intel experienced, one with a print ad and one with a grassroots campaign. There The second part of the “Unconference” was a briefing from Mike Proulx of Hill Holiday about the resonance of social media in television.

The last keynote speaker of the day was President of Twist Image, New York Times Best Seller and Canadian marketing guru Mitch Joel. Joel gave an engaging speech about the future of new commerce and the next steps for social media marketing. He stressed the importance of targeted landing pages and quicker reaction times to match the pace of the 24 hour news cycle.

Overall the conference was an overwhelming success. Although I was only able to go to the first day, it was a great opportunity to network and expand my knowledge on the ever-changing social media industry. As a student about to graduate, one of the things that I found most interesting was speaking with people about what they majored in in college, and how they ended up in social media. To my surprise, not many of them studied PR or even communications. Many of them were business, history or english majors that sort of fell into the industry. One thing that many of the speakers stressed, however, is that those who grew up with social media as an integral part of our communications repertoire are the most capable of adapting at the quick pace that social media demands. So here’s to hoping that my increasing dependence on social media eventually leads to a job.

Samantha is a senior in COM, majoring in Public Relations. Follow her @skops

Leslie Epstein (Program Director)
David Ferry
Louise Glück (United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner)
Allegra Goodman (National Book Award finalist)
Ha Jin (Awardee of National Book Award, PEN/Hemingway, twice PEN/Faulkner)
Ronan Noone
Sigrid Nunez
Robert Pinsky (United States Poet Laureate)
Maya Sloan

Tonight’s event is free and open to the public.

Boston University Academy will hold its 12th annual benefit auction A Taste of BUA at tonight at 6:30 PM. The event will be hosted by NECN’s TV Diner personality Billy Costa and will include both live and silent auctions.  Food samples will be provided by area restaurants including Eastern Standard, Capital Grille, Davio’s, South End Buttery and West End Johnnies. A Taste of BUA is willing held in the 808 Gallery (808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston).  The event is open to the public; tickets sold at the door.

Each semester Dining Services features a Visiting Chef on campus. This semester they invited Jerry Remy‘s participate; a tw0 location (Boston Seaport and Fenway neighborhoods) sports bar and grill franchise named for, and created by, the President of Red Sox nation Jerry Remy.  Starting at 5PM tonight, and ending at 9PM, all of the campus dining halls will be featuring comfort food by Jerry Remy’s, chances to meet Wally the Green Monster and opportunities to win photo opps at Fenway and Red Sox tickets.  Admission to the visiting chef series is free and open to the public.