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The University of Lethbridge is putting on the musical “Hair” (wikipedia entry). It runs from Tuesday, February 9th to Saturday the 15th. If you haven’t already, get your tickets fast because they’re almost sold out.

Hair tells the story of the “tribe”, a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the “Age of Aquarius” living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society. Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done, or to compromise his pacifistic principles and risk his life by serving in Vietnam.

Here’s the very local news coverage of the production:

Hair at the University of Lethbridge

I know a few of the actors and will be there opening night. It should be a lot of fun.

When I was down in San Fransisco a couple of years ago, I dropped into one of the first meetings of the Social Media Club.

While chatting with a group of strangers about social media, I mentioned how Stumble Upon had recently added a video section. One of the ladies was really enthralled and wanted to know just what you had to do to get her politically motivated video featured there.

My “clueless Internet marketing guru” radar was going off and I had to explain to her that videos don’t get put on there by work or money, they get put on there because Stumble Upon has an algorithm that calculates whether or not this video is something I’d like to see.

I explained that if you want your video to show up for me it would have to be something that is interesting enough for people with like-minded interests as me to give it a thumbs-up click. It’s an organic process that can’t be forced unless you are able to create a compelling video. I’m not sure I got through to her, and this saddens me, because I feel like I know tons more about how social media actually works and yet I see many of these self marketed Internet gurus that seem to know next to nothing.

My first thought when I heard that the University of Lethbridge has decided to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon is that hey, I’d be great at that job.

From the job listing as found on the U of L Notice Board:

Social Website Bloggers
$13/hour
5-10 hours per week starting in May
The successful candidates should be passionate about the UofL and eager to share their experiences, opinions and observations. They will maintain and update electronic social networking sites including, but not limited to, blogs, Twitter and Facebook. They will be expected, on a regular basis, to constructively comment on many of the happenings and experiences within the UofL and the City of Lethbridge.

My next thought when I read, “constructively comment” was that this is a bad idea. I wonder how tight the reins will be held on the winning applicant. In my mind, there’s really only a couple of ways this can turn out.

On the one hand, a paid blogger extolling the virtues of the perfect world existing at the U of L is going to come off as contrived, institutional in flavour, and won’t express the kind of unique ideas that will get the kind of attention the University is looking for in the first place. They might as well just save their money and keep pushing the kind of media they already publish.

On the other hand, if the new U of L blogger is free to present ideas about how they see the University run, unfavourable opinions may germinate and it could turn out to be a PR nightmare.

I still wish they had something like that when I went there—because it sounds like a fun job. But if I were the person in charge of this position I would keep in mind this post from Matt Haughey, This is how Social Media really works. It’s not about paying someone to get on twitter, facebook, and blogger, it’s about putting together a quality product (in this case higher education) and letting the social network do its own thing.

And for the record, it’s U of L not UofL —that’s a total pet peeve of mine.

On February 9th I took part in a Strobist shoot at the U of L pool.

(video by Michael Warf)

Here are a couple of composites I made from the photos I shot that day:

I’ve been looking forward to meeting up with the U of L Cross Canada Bike Team, Vanessa Esau, Brett Holmes, and Kelly Kennedy. They began their ~60 days of cycling across Canada on June 21 and plan to finish the 7,500 kilometres on August 29.

I know Brett from the U of L Water Polo league, and Kelly from my involvement as a director in the Alumni Association and I just happened to be in a first-aid class with them last month as they prepared for the trip. I’ll be over at the University while they are in Lethbridge for the meet and greet at noon to cheer them on (and serendipitously a free lunch).

The Sea 2 Sea cross-Canada biking team is making their way to Lethbridge!

All friends and family of the University of Lethbridge are invited to the Atrium on Wednesday, July 2nd at 12:00 noon for a FREE BBQ to cheer on the team as they arrive on campus and make their way down the pathway to the Atrium.

The Sea 2 Sea cycling group consists of U of L fourth-year student Vanessa Esau, employee and alumnus Brett Holmes (BMgt/BA 2008) and 2007/08 Students’ Union President Kelly Kennedy. The bikers are followed by U of L student Allan Hall in a noticeably decaled SEA 2 SEA van.

To learn more about the team, visit the notice board or to follow along on their journey and plan to meet up with them on their way see their blog University of Lethbridge Cross Canada Bike Tour (hint: check out the individual blog list in their sidebar).