If you’ve been around the CII corridor this week, you have likely noticed a big LCD TV display mounted behind one of the sets of glass windows facing out onto the plaza. No, that’s not just another television showing the campus cable network. Rather, it’s the debut of a brand new method for building awareness about campus events. It’s called Concerto. Concerto is a Web-based information system displayed on flat panel screens in main areas of RPI’s Troy campus. Now, you may point out that RPI has had a television system for announcements for years. That’s true, but Concerto sets itself apart for many reasons.

First, Concerto is a system designed, built, and maintained by students. We feel that it’s about time for students to really buy into a digital solution for campus communication to supplement all the cluttered signs and notice boards. With Concerto, we are sending a message: spreading the word about club events, on-campus services, and other important information is everyone’s business. Concerto taps into Wikipedia-like collaboration to strengthen campus-wide communication. Anybody with an RCS ID and password can visit the website and submit content to the system. Concerto blends announcements, online event calendars, and other text with vivid graphic flyers much like the ones people print out and post around campus.

Moderation of content sent to the system is not handled by one small group of moderators or by a bureaucratic regime—you can specify one or more categories (known in Concerto terms as “feeds”) when submitting your content. Each category is moderated by a different mix of students, faculty and staff.

For instance, a team of active student club members and Union staff approves content for the “Student Union” feed. Likewise, the Lally School of Management has its own feed for content applicable to their corner of the RPI campus.

The beauty of these feeds is that they can be mixed and associated with multiple areas of campus. You might see a unique set of messages for each flat panel display at the Institute. Gone are the days when you had to sit through the same dull notices about VPN configurations and wireless routers on a bunch of television screens regardless of which building you visited. Concerto is truly location-specific, and new feeds for content are likely to appear over time. Our completely Web-based system also allows new screens to be deployed with minimal costs anywhere there is a connection to the campus computer network. The Web Technologies Group, the team behind Concerto, will soon roll out the ability for webmasters to painlessly drop a “virtual display” onto their web sites that will draw feeds of their choosing from the system.

We’ve already received a phenomenal response to Concerto just during its first days of operation, but in order to make it a continued success, we’re going to need help from everybody with a club, event, service, or other RPI-specific message to spread. Check it out at: http://signage.union.rpi.edu/

Brian R Zaik