2013 Project Midterm Report 1
Ken Stern (MS3, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine)
Project: To create a JMSA facebook page to help build the community by helping to connect members.
Contact: k-stern@fsm.northwestern.edu
Proposal Summary:
My proposal involves creating a Facebook page for JMSA to supplement the main JMSA website. The Facebook page will be frequently updated, reflecting changes on the JMSA website. Photo albums will be made available on the page. This page will also act as a portal site, connecting to previous web-based projects that other members have made. In addition, this page will allow a place for members who are doing projects that are not web-based to publish their findings and/or their progress. The page will have the capability to link to blog posts that the project leaders make, as well as provide a place for project leaders to upload their photos. Another benefit of creating a Facebook page for JMSA is that it allows for the monitoring of statistics. The page administrator will be able to see how much activity is on the page.
Current Progress:
The JMSA facebook page is now available at the following website –https://www.facebook.com/JapaneseMedicalSocietyofAmerica. Information about the background of JMSA has been filled and is displayed on the page. I have been updating the “newsfeed” page with any updates to the JMSA main webpage. Importing photos from other media has been an arduous process – finding who held possession of the photos and uploading the photos to the page proved harder than I anticipated, but the photos are now shown in the facebook page. People have started “liking” the page, which paves the road to gaining publicity through social networking. Overall, the facebook page is coming together well, with a solid groundwork already in place.
Future Direction:
I believe much of the foundations for the facebook page have been created already, but there are more changes I would like to work on. I would like to have more media up on the facebook page, but I am having a hard time finding any more than the 382 photos on the website already. Most of these photos are from three events – I would like to have media from more events, rather than many from each event. I also intend to contact students that are currently working on JMSA scholarship projects or have had previous JMSA projects. Perhaps I can use the midterm reports or final reports from past years and put excerpts on the facebook page. I would also like to get more “likes” on the facebook page – I believe creating a link to the facebook page from the main JMSA website will help.