Gopher Bridge

Elisa Tvete, Tim Weiland, Kerry Lewis, Regan Sieck, and Sam Maresh

The Issue:

• We noticed a disconnect between students and what’s going on campus

• Students weren’t hearing about events and other happenings on campus

• Students are missing out on potentially important information

• Event planner, etc weren’t seeing the turnout they desired

What’s been done before:

• Posters on campus• Ads in the Daily• Mass emails sent out from the University

administration that not many read• Explore U day during Welcome Week

Why was that not successful

• People don’t see the ads • if they do they DON’T CARE!• Too much information

What we are planning to do

• Start a regular email to students who would like to receive it

• Include news and events that all students could use

• Facebook group and possibly a twitter to do the same thing on a smaller scale

The big picture

• We want students to know what’s going on and around campus

• We want them to take advantage of that

KNOWLEDGE = POWER

Main Players

• Students• The people and groups with the information

that students need to know– Adminstration– Student groups– Businesses around campus– Twin Cities community organizations

Who can create change

• Everybody does, but students have the most power

• Students have to demand the information and actively seek it out

Obstacles:

• We have been having trouble finding the information

• Narrowing down what information is important, relevant

• Getting student support (people signing up)

Getting over obstacles

• Creating relations– We have to make our offer irresistible to pass over–

Action steps

1. Finding information- talking to student groups- talking to programs on campus that deal with student events

2. Creating relationships with organizations-building social capital with key players for what’s going down on campus and the community

3. Finding students- informing people about the issue and the effect we want to have on campus- getting people to sign up

4. Creation of the means to accomplish this- email- facebook- twitter - This step can be done at any point in time

• 5. execution– Collecting the information– Putting it into a useable format– Sending it out on a regular basis

How will we measure success

• Measure how many people subscribe to our email and facebook group

• Ask them to respond if something was helpful

Why pick us?

• Well, our idea is simple, but can potentially benefit the entire student body in some form or another

• While we don’t need the money to operate, we could use it to help pay for advertisements and help involve our technology capabilities.