Nov/Dec 2013 by SPAN magazine

Checklist for to

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Rs. 20

for business,

Applying U.S. Graduate Schools Best Small Towns in America

diplomacy, fighting gender violence, environment, careers, Marketing, Movies

1917-1963

igor was one of President John F. Kennedy’s favorite words. It was a quality he greatly admired and greatly possessed. “When the going gets tough,” his father told the Kennedy children, “the tough get going.” As children and as adults, they swam, sailed and battled each other at tennis and touch football as fiercely as they admired each other. When Kennedy ran for office, everybody helped in the campaigns. At 70, his mother was still meeting and charming voters for him. To strengthen his back, injured at football, he did five months of exercises, enough to get into the Navy during World War II. Assigned to a desk in Washington, he pleaded for active duty in the Pacific and got it. When spinal operations in 1954 and 1955 made him an invalid, he used his months in bed to write a book. Characteristically, it was a study of examples of courage in American politics. As President, he stirred up more people, ideas and enthusiasm than had been stirred since the early days of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Reprinted from SPAN’s January 1964 issue in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination Right: SPAN’s May 1962 cover shows First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi. Above right: President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru walk on the south grounds of the White House in November 1961. Far right: The First Lady receives a traditional welcome on arrival at the Raj Mahal in Jaipur in March 1962.

Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

John F. Kennedy

Left: President John F. Kennedy stands in an open car while a large crowd cheers as the President’s motorcade passes through Cork, Ireland in June 1963. The President’s family roots stretched back to Ireland. Below: President Kennedy at the beach with his family.

November/December 2013 For notification of new content, write to ezinespan@state.gov

http://span.state.gov

Entertainment

By Jane Varner Malhotra

Tweets and Status Updates for a Cause By Carrie Loewenthal Massey

Marketing Movies: The New Way

Diplomacy in the Digital Age

By Michael Gallant

Social Media Marketing Catches On, But Not All Companies Do It Well Q & A With Shruti Challa

What You Share Online Can Hurt You

By Giriraj Agarwal

By Howard Cincotta

By Joe Witters

Publisher Walter T. Douglas

Editor Deepanjali Kakati Hindi Editor Giriraj Agarwal Urdu Editor Syed Sulaiman Akhtar Copy Editor Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Editorial Assistant Yugesh Mathur Web Manager Chetna Khera

Editor in Chief David Mees

Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar Deputy Art Directors Qasim Raza, Shah Faisal Khan Production/Circulation Manager Alok Kaushik Printing Assistant Manish Gandhi

Front cover: Photograph © Getty Images

26 27

By Steve Fox

Q & A With Walter Russell Mead

Twelve-Month Checklist for Applying: 9 to 7 Months Out

By Richa Varma

By Don Martin and Wesley Teter «

Scope and Hope By Wendy Kantor

The 10 Best Small Towns in America By Susan Spano

Travel

The Latest Alternative Fuel: Social Media

Courtesy Joe Witters

Take Back the (Online) Power

By Anne Walls

mikerosebery/Courtesy Flickr

Social Media

Education

V O LU M E L I V N U M B E R 6

Research Services Bureau of International Information Programs, The American Library

Published by the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 23472000), on behalf of the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited, 18/35, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121007. Opinions expressed in this 44-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. « Articles with a star may be reprinted with permission. Those without a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted. Contact SPAN at 011-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

Take Back the By ANNE WALLS

“

www.20-nothings.com

We live in the real world where online actions have offline accountability. 2 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Most Influential Bloggers of 2013 and for good reason. Her thoughtful, often hilarious musings about the trials and tribulations of getting through her 20s have not only earned her legions of fans, but also a book deal. Rosen grew up writing and started 20Nothings two years after college while working in marketing for a film festival. Five years later, she was able to leave her day job to write full time. Her blog started organically. “I was writing blog post-style emails to all of my college friends, recounting my experiences dating and living in New York,” Rosen says. “Unbeknownst to me, those friends were passing my emails around to other friends, who were passing them along to even more people.” And a blog was born. Another young woman who has parlayed

JENNY ANDERSON

hink about it: with a quick online search, people can find out what you had for dinner last night, where you had it, and with whom. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and more allow your every move to be seen by anyone who wants to look. But it’s not always as innocuous as a plate of pasta. More and more potential employers are using the information they glean not only from a résumé, but from an online persona to decide if someone is hirable. How do you make sure your Internet presence doesn’t negatively cloud your in-person presence? By starting your own blog and making a positive stamp on both the Internet…and your future. One 20-something who has done this very thing is Jessie Rosen, author of the blog 20Nothings. (www.20-nothings.com) Rosen was just named one of Time magazine’s 25

Jessie Rosen, author of the blog 20Nothings.

(Online) Power Blog

ging your way to

success

personal

BLOGGING

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 3

“

The voice of your blog will find itself as you go, but not until you give it a chance to begin.

”

Courtesy Lindsey Indermill

http://squirrelsandcurls.com

Lindsey Indermill, author of the career and lifestyle blog, Squirrels and Curls.

her personal experiences into an innovative blog is Lindsey Indermill, a former television producer who started a career and lifestyle blog for women called Squirrels and Curls (http://squirrelsandcurls.com), which she describes as “Fast Company meets Real Simple on a sugar high.” Indermill’s inspiration came when she noticed a gaping hole in female content in the market today. “If an alien landed in front of a newsstand and wanted to know the difference between men and women from magazines alone, they would think (like many publishers do) that women only want to read about…celebrities and homemaking,” Indermill says. “There is no major magazine that offers women a chance to talk about entrepreneurship, launching a restaurant, acquiring angel investors, getting published, running for office....” Which is exactly what Squirrels and Curls has set out to do. And it’s not just the ideas for the blogs that get readers, and then Time magazine, hooked, it’s the volume of information these bloggers are able to produce. “Since

starting the blog in 2007,” Rosen says, “I’ve written at least twice a week, every week. I’ve maintained an audience through the ‘sticky’ nature of constant content. And I’ve allowed that audience to see every part of my life through that journey of growing up.” In regards to the often slippery slope that overexposure can have on documenting one’s every move (scandalous moves included), Rosen says: “Yes, you can be a different version of yourself online, but that will ultimately catch up with you because we don’t live online, even though it often feels that way. We live in the real world where online actions have offline accountability. I think enough mortifying stories have surfaced to teach today’s 20-somethings that lesson a thousand times over.” Indermill has advice for anyone considering firing up their computer and beginning a blog of their own: “Just start the darn thing. Even if you don’t have a good name, even if you can only afford a free Tumblr, even if you don’t know what to say, just start publishing. Make a habit of doing it every day, twice a week, once a week—whatever you have time for—and commit to that schedule. The voice of your blog will find itself as you go, but not until you give it a chance to begin.” Rosen echoes this sentiment: “You’ll never keep it up unless it’s a subject you’re incredibly passionate about, and the only way to figure that out is to write what comes to you as often as you can. It doesn’t matter if those are all different subjects or all the same. It matters if it’s consistent and good. Stop worrying about anything but the words. And then whatever you do, don’t stop!” Anne Walls is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California.

The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition http://goo.gl/R579UN 4 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Jessie Rosen

http://thoughtcatalog.com/author/jessie-rosen/

Becoming

(CC) RANDY STEWART/blog.stewtopia.com

t started with baseball, as many American dreams do. But not out on the field. For Nate Silver, hearing the crack of the bat connecting with the ball and sending it out of the park wasn’t as thrilling as predicting it. When he was 25 years old, Silver, a statistician and writer, developed a way of forecasting the performance of Major League Baseball players that revolutionized the sport. He quickly moved on to political forecasting, and gained national recognition for accurately predicting the 2008 Presidential Election. With his blog, FiveThirtyEight—named for the 538 votes in the electoral college—Silver correctly called the winner in 49 of the 50 states, and predicted all 35 winners of the U.S. Senate Race. Silver’s reputation for accuracy was minted that year. Silver isn’t the only one who has accurately predicted these wins and losses. He has just done it on a larger stage, under a much brighter spotlight, than most. And this is mainly due to his overwhelmingly positive online presence. Through his blog, Silver has been able to brand himself and his ability to prognosticate major events. Is he always right? No. But is he always respected? Yes. Because he is able to maintain his online credibility. According to Silver, FiveThirtyEight is “devoted to rigorous, data-driven analysis of politics, polling, public affairs, sports, economics, science and culture.” That’s certainly a wide buffet of subjects, but the constant is Silver’s statistical accuracy. If the formula works, it doesn’t matter what it’s

Nate Silver

applied to. In 2010, The New York Times acquired FiveThirtyEight. Next, Silver published “The Signal and the Noise,” a best-selling nonfiction book about applying probability and statistics to real world circumstances. In 2012, Silver once again accurately predicted the outcome of the Presidential election. These days, Silver’s career has come full circle—in June 2013 he announced that he and FiveThirtyEight are heading to sports giant ESPN, where he will continue with his political, sports and other statistical predictions. All because he started a blog that proved itself innovative and accurate. —A.W.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Social Media

The Latest Alternative Fuel:

Harnessing the

Go Online Litterati

http://www.litterati.org/ http://instagram.com/litterati?ref=badge 6 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Food & Water Watch

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/

help

The Smart Citizen Kit http://goo.gl/nZs5mQ

power of the people the environment.

itizen scientists log backyard butterfly migration data online. Commuters reduce carbon footprints with car-sharing apps. Teens organize online petitions to protect endangered species. Today, anyone with a soft spot for planet Earth can hop online and make a difference for the environment using social media. Whether you are a leader or a joiner, opportunities abound to go green with social platforms.

PAUL BOUPHA

Dreams of a litter-free planet

Jeff Kirschner.

Out for a hike with his two young daughters, Oakland resident Jeff Kirschner walked past a bright red box of kitty litter lying in a stream. “Daddy,” said 4-year-old Tali, pointing to the trash with confusion, “that doesn’t go there!” “You’re right,” agreed Kirschner, so they stopped and picked up the box and took it to a garbage receptacle. The view from a child’s eyes reawakened Kirschner’s own sensitivity to the litter problem. He began taking photos of discarded items he found on the ground, tagging them on the photo-sharing app Instagram, and then putting the objects in trash or recycling containers. The images were all assigned the hashtag #litterati, and soon family and friends joined in, picking up trash and photographing it, contributing to the growing collection Kirschner calls a “digital landfill.” Then one day, a photo appeared on Litterati’s Instagram account showing a plastic wrapper lying in front of the Great Wall of China. That’s when Kirschner realized the

collection of images represented the potential for something bigger, documenting a worldwide effort by individuals to clean up litter, one piece at a time. Using the geotag from each photo, he developed a map to show where people pick up garbage. He is hoping a combination bottom-up and top-down approach might help Litterati reach its vision for a litter-free planet. On one end, individuals are compelled to make a difference with small steps, documented to inspire others. On the other end, data can inform municipalities about where waste disposal options should be expanded, and companies will see how their product packaging impacts the planet. “As more Litterati users begin tagging the type of trash they pick up, we have a growing body of data that gives us a better understanding of...product types,” explains Kirschner. In just one year, Litterati’s digital landfill has collected over 18,000 pieces of trash on Instagram. Kirschner appreciates the impact of social media for the movement. “Someone picks up a piece of trash, puts the photo on Instagram, then other people comment, the image becomes part of the photo gallery, it’s on the map, and now the person is part of a bigger community, which encourages individuals to do it again,” he says. “We have a real opportunity to build a platform that not only measures our own personal impact but unifies the movement under one umbrella. These actions are not isolated incidents—we are in it together.”

ENVIRONMENT

By JANE VARNER MALHOTRA

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 7

“

”

We use our blog plus social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to engage people and to help get our message into the mainstream media.

Courtesy Food & Water Watch

Twitter, memes and safe water

Environmental activist Emily Wurth.

Environmental activist Emily Wurth uses social media both to keep herself informed and to inform others about safe drinking water policy around the United States. During her seven years with Food & Water Watch, she has seen exponential growth in the use of social media for organizations like hers. “We now have 79,360 likes on Facebook, and I remember we were excited when we hit 10,000,” says Wurth. “We use our blog plus social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to engage people and to help get our message into the mainstream media.” Wurth goes on Facebook to list events like rallies and meetings and to invite supporters to attend. In jurisdictions around the United States where people are working on safe water issues, she follows live Twitter feeds from local reporters attending the hearings. “Twitter is really popular among reporters,” says Wurth. “It’s a way to get access to information, but it also provides us with a forum to reach busy reporters.” Creating memes—photos with simple slogans written across the bottom—has become another powerful method of harnessing social media for environmental action. Wurth cites a change on Facebook, where people share images more often than text, as a driver of this trend. The bumper sticker of the tech generation, a well-constructed

8 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

meme goes viral fast, providing a key opportunity for organizations working to raise awareness about issues like safe water. Social apps like Food & Water Watch’s Tap Buddy rely on crowdsourcing to expand usability. Users input locations of water fountains to help encourage people to refill their own bottles with tap water rather than buy bottled water. When someone adds a location to the database, the app invites the user to share it on Facebook and Twitter, of course!

Climate change and citizen scientists

The Smart Citizen project, a crowdfunded idea expanded through Kickstarter, aims to employ the power of the people to help monitor the environment. Inexpensive sensor devices mounted in urban and suburban communities around the world are tracking air quality, temperature, light, noise, humidity and levels of pollutants nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. A multilingual online social network allows hosts to visualize their own data and compare to others. Creators of the program hope that widespread collection of crowdsourced environmental information, particularly in urban areas, will help scientists track climate change indicators in the future. Jane Varner Malhotra is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

fighting gender violence

Activists

Courtesy Holly Kearl

By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

use social media to further their cause.

Top: Sidewalk chalking in Washington, D.C. for International Anti-Street Harassment Week in April 2013. Above: A photo shared by a user during a tweet chat as she rode in a mixedgender Metro train compartment in New Delhi.

ure, you go on Facebook to see what your friends are up to. And you may tweet your thoughts on a great article you just read. But social media offers so much more, including a platform to speak out on some of the most important issues of the day, like the fight against gender violence. In recent years, Facebook and Twitter have become launching pads for anti-violence campaigns and centers of conversation on how to make the world a safer place for women. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A [Twitter] hashtag that takes off and gets people talking, people who wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily talk about this stuff,

GENDER VIOLENCE

Courtesy Blank Noise

For a Cause

Tweets and Status Updates

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 9

Courtesy Holly Kearl

10 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Courtesy Holly Kearl

is really powerful. I find people stumble upon issues by seeing hashtags in their feeds, so it’s effortless. Then they can jump in and learn quickly,” says Nancy Schwartzman, a New York City-based filmmaker and activist against gender violence. Schwartzman runs The Line Campaign, a movement led by young people that uses film, social media, a blog and more to help end gender violence. The project stems from Schwartzman’s first film, “The Line,” which was released in 2009 and chronicles her personal experience with sexual assault. To draw people to The Line Campaign, she uses Twitter along with blogging and in-person events. “I’ve worked on other campaigns where Facebook pages have been good, but in general I think Twitter is more fluid and people are used to talking to people they don’t know on it. Facebook is a little more closed. On Twitter, if you have a good moderator for a discussion, it’ll be a good conversation and people will jump in,” she says. The Line Campaign’s presence on social media—the Twitter handle @thelinecampaign has more than 5,700 followers—caught the attention of someone who encouraged Schwartzman to enter a White House-sponsored competition to create a mobile app that helps prevent sexual violence. Schwartzman, along with others, created the Circle of 6 app, which enables people, when they find themselves in threatening situations, to connect instantly and seamlessly to six chosen friends. Prewritten text messages let users request rides home, ask friends to call them to create interruptions, or alert their circles that they are in trouble and need help. The app was one of the two winners at the competition and is

Top: Activists from Stop Street Harassment and Collective Action for Safe Spaces handed out flyers, shirts and bracelets with information on how to report harassment on the Metro system during an outreach day in Washington, D.C. Above: People who came by the Stop Street Harassment table at SlutWalk D.C. wrote messages on a whiteboard. Their photos were posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Go Online

Nancy Schwartzman

http://www.nancyschwartzman.com/

Schwartzman runs The Line Campaign, a movement led by young people that uses

film, social media, a blog and more to

Courtesy Nancy Schwartzman

help end gender violence.

used all over the world, with people in India downloading it the fastest of any population outside of the United States. Schwartzman continues to use Twitter to keep the dialogue going about violence against women. She organizes Tweet Ups, conversations that take place on the social media site, which she publicizes by reaching out to a high-profile partner, such as the United Nations, and then telling 50 people she knows. As those 50 people share on their Twitter feeds, the participant list grows. “I have done a bunch of Tweet Ups about the safety of women in India, mobile technology and women’s safety and sexism,” Schwartzman says. Like Schwartzman, Holly Kearl, a Washington, D.C.based activist, uses social media to fight gender violence. Kearl founded Stop Street Harassment, an organization devoted to ending the kinds of public behavior that humiliate and victimize women—catcalls, indecent exposure and other actions that intimidate and limit people’s safe access to public spaces. Kearl uses Facebook to create pages for events she is hosting and share content from her blog, and Twitter to broadcast upcoming gatherings, host tweet chats and

Circle of 6

http://goo.gl/H9rCRF http://goo.gl/aZ6dO3

The Line Campaign

https://twitter.com/thelinecampaign

Holly Kearl

http://hollykearl.com/

Stop Street Harassment

http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/

connect with people worldwide who are sharing street harassment stories. She says there are positives and negatives to social media use, but that in general she finds the advantages are greater. “ I think street harassment is such a complex issue that it can be hard to discuss it through Twitter where you have to be so short. A lot of nuances are lost. … But [through story-sharing on social media] you see that gender violence and street harassment are problems in every country and we can speak out and amplify each other’s voices. That’s very, very powerful,” she says. Schwartzman agrees, saying social media is an important component of fighting gender violence and furthering other social causes. “We need boots on the ground, people signing and creating petitions and all the in-person work. If social media can benefit social causes too, then great. Some people call [social media activism] ‘slacktivism,’ like it’s not the same as being on the ground, but I don’t think that’s useful. We need all hands on deck,” she says. Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York City-based freelance writer.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Despicable Me 2

http://despicable-me.tumblr.com

Mar From top: JONATHAN PHILLIPS © AP-WWP/ Atlanta JournalConstitution; JOHN BADMAN © AP-WWP/The Telegraph; CHRIS PIZZELLO © AP-WWP/Invision; CHRIS PIZZELLO © AP-WWP/Invision; screen shot of http://despicable-me.tumblr.com/; SUZANNE HANOVER © AP-WWP/ PRNewsFoto/Universal Pictures; © Getty Images

Hollywood studios

engage audiences

ketingThe Movies New Way By MICHAEL GALLANT

ENTERTAINMENT

through Twitter, Facebook and beyond.

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 13

The “Twilight” trilogy set a record as one of the first movies to hit over 1 million followers on its Twitter account.

The Twilight Saga

https://twitter.com/Twilight

Courtesy Lionsgate

she says. “A movie is likely to have accounts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, and to interact with fans and followers almost from a first-person perspective.” Many movies, especially those created by independent filmmakers, are even foregoing traditional websites entirely, Picardo says, adding that they are opting rather to interact with fans directly via social media. Diving into the world of social media has brought huge results for film companies looking to make an impact. The worldwide blockbuster “Twilight” trilogy set a record as one of the first movies to hit over 1 million followers on its Twitter account. Similarly, the latest installment in the equally massive “Hunger Games” series had over 10 million “likes” on its Facebook page—a full two months before the movie even arrived in theaters. When it comes to social marketing, the “Hunger Games” series has pushed the envelope even further, recreating elements of the story online via its own virtual world, where fans can participate and interact with each other as if they, themselves, were characters in the story. Though the technological experimentation involved in selling movies like “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (the latest in the series) and “Despicable Me 2” may be cutting edge, adventurous marketing strategies for films have been around for a while. Picardo cites the 1998 psychological thriller “Pi” as an example. Courtesy Summit Entertainment

arlier this year, visitors to certain shopping malls in Europe were treated to a technological surprise—large digital screens displaying adorable, yellow, computer-animated creatures that could be controlled via shoppers’ mobile phones. Once a mall-goer texted an instruction for the playful, on-screen Minions to play or dance, wrestle or build, the virtual creatures would execute the command with slapstick charm. Afterwards, the people who texted the commands would be thanked by name on screen—and receive a text message containing a web link, allowing them to share the resulting personalized Minion movie via their Facebook or Twitter accounts. A creative public art installation? Not completely—rather, this feat of interactive media was a strategic marketing campaign, designed to fan the hype for the Hollywood movie “Despicable Me 2.” And when it comes to using technology and social media to spread the word about films, such endeavors are just the beginning. In fact, the degree to which social media has reinvented the way that movies are marketed to the public can’t be overstated, says New York filmmaker and film teacher Cheyenne Picardo. “At this point, Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers are starting to use networking sites almost as if the movie was a person, as opposed to a thing, a creative work,”

The latest installment in the “Hunger Games” series had over

10 million “likes” on its Facebook page—a full two months before the movie even arrived in theaters.

The Hunger Games

https://www.facebook.com/ TheHungerGamesMovie

“Their marketing campaign was basically spray-painting the Greek letter ‘Pi’ around New York City,” she says laughing. “That was in pre-social networking days, and that movie would have been even bigger if it had come out after Twitter existed. I see tweeting as the current equivalent of that same strategy— you’re just spray-painting online, instead of on a sidewalk.” Thanks to social media, films can garner worldwide attention, sometimes even before the actors are cast and the first

scene is filmed. Take the upcoming movie adaptation of the best-selling “Fifty Shades of Grey” book series. “That movie doesn’t have an official website, or social media accounts, in place yet, but every fan of the books is already using his or her personal Twitter accounts to do marketing for them,” says Picardo. “They’re rebroadcasting every single debate over who will play who. Because the name of the movie is mentioned in all of the Twitter hashtags, the movie might not even need its own

“

Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers are starting to use networking sites almost as if the movie was a person, as opposed to a thing, a creative work. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

MATT NAZARIO-MILLER/Foter.com/CC BY-ND

official account.” A similar phenomenon occurred earlier in 2013 with a forthcoming Batman movie, when actor Ben Affleck was announced as the director’s choice for the role. “That news gets put into one blog or magazine, and when tons of people rebroadcast it via social media, it gets all the visibility a movie studio could ever want,” says Picardo. The change created by social media has happened so quickly and dramatically, Picardo continues, that she has difficulty conceiving of how the business will continue to be affected five years down the road. “Five years ago, nobody expected social media to have the impact that it’s been having,” she says. “There’s the potential, in the future, to market an entire movie for free, just taking advantage of enthusiastic social media users around the world—as long as it’s done right!” Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

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“

There’s the potential, in the future, to market an entire movie for free, just taking advantage of enthusiastic social media users around the world—as long as it’s done right!

”

Photographs © Getty Images

t was still dark outside early one morning when I carefully maneuvered my way out of bed without waking my wife and two of my children who somehow managed to sneak into bed, AGAIN. I quickly got dressed and headed down to a quiet room to Skype with 200 of Afghanistan’s most talented and passionate social media users from 24 different provinces to explain how diplomacy has changed in the digital age. In Afghanistan, where only 10 percent of the population has access to the Internet, social media services are limited primarily to urban youth and yet this group of young Afghans is finding ways to use social media to express themselves and start social movements aimed at improving their country. They are poised to be influencers in an emerging market where Internet penetration is predicted to surpass 50 percent of the population by 2015 and the use of mobile phones is growing (currently 18 million mobile phone users or 60 percent of the population). So, why was I discussing these issues with Afghans via Skype before dawn? I work for the U.S. Department of State as the Social Media Advisor for South and Central Asia. The fact that I have a job is a testament to the strong belief the State Department has in the power to engage and communicate through social media. Today, the main State Department Facebook page has 410,000 fans, and on Twitter, the @StateDept feed has over 688,000 followers. The Department also produces its own blog, DipNote, and maintains a presence on Flickr, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube. But those accounts just represent our digital engagement initiated from Washington. In nearly every country where we have a U.S. presence, you will also find us on social media. To date, we have over 400 Facebook pages worldwide, 300 Twitter handles, 139 YouTube channels, and many other local social media platforms. So, why does the State Department put so much effort in

By JOE WITTERS

using social media? First: Times have changed. How people meet, how people get news and information, and even obtain education has changed. In India, for example, the number of Facebook users will reach an estimated 175 million by 2015. India will then have more Facebook users than any other country, surpassing the United States and Brazil. We want— and need—to be where our audiences are. And so we use our social media platforms to help you learn more about America, get information on studying abroad, apply for a visa, and attend Embassy-sponsored events. Our social media platforms are also dynamic spaces where you can learn more about U.S. foreign policy and share your opinions—and whether you agree or disagree, we want to hear from you. Second: Human beings today have the ability like never before to connect with common causes and people. In the right hands, social media has the ability to organize and bring people together to identify shared challenges and generate solutions, hold governments accountable, support women, civil society, and minorities, and give a creative outlet to youths worldwide. In a May 2013 DipNote blog post Secretary of State John Kerry said, “…With so many people with powerful technology in the palm of their hand, social media has become an enabler and facilitator of social movements—it’s empowered people all over the world to have a more direct and immediate voice with their governments and with their global cohorts everywhere.” This is certainly the case in Afghanistan, where the group of Afghans I spoke to via Skype were some of the most creative and passionate people I have met who see social media and new technology as tools to express themselves and their viewpoints. I heard from them about an Afghan artist who is trying to use social media to introduce Afghan street art to the world. Another idea I learned about is the Virtual Dinner Guest Project, which brings Afghans and people from other countries with similar backgrounds together to share a virtual meal and a discussion of global issues over Skype. But these must be just a handful of examples of what’s happening around the world, as every day U.S. Embassies are using social media to engage with new audiences, support you the best we can and hopefully share American culture. I hope you will look up your nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate and send us a message today. If you are interested in South and Central Asia, consider following us on Twitter @State_SCA and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/state.sca Joe Witters is the U.S. Department of State’s Social Media Advisor for South and Central Asia.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy in the Digital Age

Social Media Marketing Catches On,

But Not All

Companies

ÂŠ Getty Images

Do It Well

18 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

he Internet was a gold mine for enterprising companies such as Amazon and eBay that quickly understood the opportunities of the new medium and capitalized on them. Established firms soon followed the pioneers, and today almost every serious U.S. business has a web presence of some kind. More recently, social media has captured marketers’ imaginations—and wallets—with companies scrambling to take advantage of it for commercial purposes. A defining feature of social media is that, unlike websites built and controlled by their owners, almost anyone can post content. This openness has sometimes proved troublesome for corporations accustomed to controlling the messages they deliver to customers. For example, a global fast-food chain sponsored a Twitter campaign in 2012, inviting customers to share positive stories about their experiences at the company’s restaurants. Unfortunately for the company, a number of users instead posted negative and sometimes nasty comments about the chain’s food, prompting the firm to cancel the campaign shortly after it began. At the same time, many firms have scored impressive successes with social media, among them American Airlines, which was named the number one travel and number two overall brand in the 2013 Social Brands 100 survey done by Headstream, a U.K.-based social media agency. Jonathan Pierce, director of social media communications for the airline, said the firm realizes that customer interactions over social media are not just transactional but part of ongoing relationships. “We could see that customers were using [social media] worldwide,” Pierce told Headstream. “Then Internet-enabled phones

became so prolific, we were seeing social proliferating throughout the customer experience. We could see real-time sharing of experiences throughout a journey. Social is not just the role of a team of people in communications. It’s changing the way decisions have to be made and changing the way we act on customer feedback.” Another food chain, Dunkin’ Donuts, successfully mixed social and traditional media by inviting customers to submit photos of themselves to the company’s Fan of the Week photo gallery on Facebook, then posting some of the pictures on a huge digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square. Visitors to the company’s Facebook page also could “like” the photos and tell friends about them. Positive messaging is a key element in successful social media, research has found. A 2012 study by Jonah Berger, author of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” and associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, monitored the most emailed stories generated by The New York Times for six months and found that positive stories were more likely to make the list than negative ones. Marketing experts say that social media should be viewed primarily as a way of building and sustaining positive consumer attitudes toward a company’s brand. In an age where consumers are deluged with information, consistency and persistence are critical, they point out, along with restraint—if a company’s social media efforts are perceived not as useful or entertaining but as hard sell, potential customers will simply click on to something else. It’s also crucial to remember that social media is a two-way street—the audience is not

BUSINESS

T By STEVE FOX

“ ”

It’s changing the way decisions have to be made and changing the way we act on customer feedback.

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www.b2bento.com

7. ESTABLISH YOUR METRICS • Create and align metrics and monitoring framework with strategic objectives. • Some key measurement goals include Reach, Buzz, Sentiment, Influence. • Measure only what matters to the business.

6. ESTABLISH YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY • Source for existing content and repurpose it, e.g., whitepapers, case studies, opinion pieces, videos, etc. • Identify topics that align with key marketing focus areas. • Research to determine relevancy by searching for brand name, competitors, and target keywords.

1a. GET INPUT FROM STAKEHOLDERS • Conduct interviews and internal surveys to find out what social media channels would best serve your company and your goals.

2. WHERE ARE YOUR BUYERS? • Map your buyers’ persona. • Find channels where your team’s and buyers’ interactions intersect. • Determine which social media channels will work best in reaching out to them.

4. MAP RESPONSIBILITIES • Distribute key roles among stakeholders. • Set up a social media task force around key responsibilities.

SoulSoup/Foter/CC BY-NC-ND

5. SET UP YOUR CHANNELS • Use the internal survey results and buyers’ personae to determine which channels you will engage in, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

3. MAP INFLUENCES • Use monitoring tools to find out more about your prospects. • Discover the influencers of buyers’ purchase decisions —bloggers, partners, and even competitors.

QUICKSTART GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS

1. ESTABLISH YOUR GOALS • Ask why you need to be in social media. • Formulate your social media goals and objectives. • Align with the business goals of your company.

20 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

12. MONITOR & MEASURE • Set up monitoring and measurement tools based on the metrics established earlier.

10. DEVELOP A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY • Based on best practices, what’s acceptable, out-of-bounds markers, confidential information, business vs. personal capacity, etc. • Document everything to avoid grey areas that may hinder engagement.

9. SET UP ENGAGEMENT FRAMEWORK • Work out who responds, how, where (what channel), and how often. • Constancy and immediacy are keys to well-managed social media engagement.

14. YOU ARE OFF! • Analyze, Adapt and Improve: Adapt any new findings into current processes, and improve efforts as you navigate through this social media journey. • Remember—this is an iterative process.

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

11. PUBLISH YOUR INITIAL CONTENT • Develop an editorial schedule. • Populate your channels with appropriate content. • Establish content syndication mechanisms across social media channels.

8. CUSTOMIZE YOUR CHANNELS • Set up, customize and optimize your channels, e.g., multiauthor blogging platform, customized FB page, YouTube channel, etc.

13. HARNESS THE POWER OF YOUR INTERNAL NETWORKS • Time to get your team to provide the initial ballast. • Propagate, publicize, promote.

Go Online

16 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

passive, they can and do talk back to companies in ways that others can easily see. Here are some marketing tips from social media experts:

Social Brands 100

•

http://goo.gl/Iu97tC

http://goo.gl/D4zahU

Dunkin’ Donuts contest http://goo.gl/rCbjoz

Social Media Marketing http://goo.gl/1U8ee9

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• • •

Define your audience. Understand what they are reading, seeing and commenting on. Keep your brand consistent. Be sure your website and your social media campaigns have the same look and feel. Don’t try to do too much at once. It’s better to have an effective campaign on a few sites than an ineffective one on many. Don’t forget the “social” part of social media. People do business with people, not companies, so don’t be afraid to let some of your personality come through.

Steve Fox is a freelance writer, former newspaper publisher and reporter based in Ventura, California.

hruti Challa, a young Indian American entrepreneur, has been part of several social consumer Internet companies. She has studied economics and international policy at Stanford University and has worked for Silicon Valley venture firm Founders Fund, which is known for its investments in Facebook and Space X. While at Stanford, Challa founded and raised capital for her first consumer Internet startup, Tribal Atmosphere. In 2010, she joined the core team of a small startup called Campfire Labs which was sold in 2011 to Groupon pre-IPO in a talent acquisition. She has since left and started her latest venture, Mentorzen. “I love to mentor aspiring entrepreneurs. Mentorship was such a key part of my journey that I think it’s important to give back,” she says. Challa was recently in India to interact with upcoming entrepreneurs, business students, entrepreneurship organizations and business associations in New Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Kozhikode and Kochi. Excerpts of an interview with Giriraj Agarwal: What is your advice to young Indians who would like to try their hand at entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship is not a race. What I am encouraging is not that every Indian student goes and starts a company. In fact, the average age of starting a company in the United States is 47. So it’s important to understand that...you start your business when you are ready. Indians are inherently entrepreneurial. So, there are all the fundamentals and foundations here. However, one thing I would encourage Indian entrepreneurs to do is think a little bit bigger and think a little bit more local. Don’t just mimic what’s going on in Silicon Valley. Create solutions that are unique for the community. A third piece of advice would be just the

importance of relationships, whether they be with your mentor, whether they be with your team. It is important to make sure that as an early entrepreneur, as an early founder, you realize that your team is extremely important. How can social media help new entrepreneurs and startups? What’s important is that you use marketing channels and engagement channels where your customers are at. If your customers are not on Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest, then there is no real point in trying to get on those channels. But if they are, it is extremely important. Marketing has fundamentally changed and it’s more about listening to your customer’s needs, listening to their problems and engaging them as actual human beings. What is amazing about tools like Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest is you actually gain an understanding of who your customers are and you are able to communicate with them on a very targeted level. It’s actually extremely important to build what we call viral tools— tools that allow your customers to share how wonderful your products or services are. What kind of entrepreneurship spirit have you seen among Indian youth during your interactions? What did they want to know? Two areas that people have been asking me the most are around how do I market my product, how do I get the first 50 to 1,000 customers. And the second thing I have been hearing is how do I get access to capital to build my business. My message to both of these things is, get creative. Financing is all about fostering relationships early because there is not as much capital in this ecosystem yet. When do entrepreneurs succeed more— as a team of people with different kinds of expertise or as an individual ready to put 18 hours a day on their “great” idea? It’s definitely the former. I am a big proponent of entrepreneurs working in a diverse team. Innovation these days requires interdisciplinary knowledge. It is no longer an independent physics Ph.D. thinking of ideas. It is the physics major working with the computer scientist, working with the designer.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

HEMANT BHATNAGAR

Shruti Challa

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What You Share Online By HOWARD CINCOTTA

Remember, you may be among friends, but you are also in public. People you don’t necessarily know are watching.

magine that someone you may not even know is eager to find out more about you. Now take a long, hard look at your online presence, from blog entries to Facebook and mobile phone apps. How much personal information is available that could be used against you? Are there materials, including pictures, that could be embarrassing to you or hurtful to others? Are financial data accessible? Do you have too many unknown or sketchy “friends?” The commonsense bottom line for living and thriving in a social media world is this: always assume that anything you post online is 1) pretty much permanent, and 2) largely accessible to anyone with a computer or mobile device and the willingness to invest the time in tracking down your data.

Pause before posting

Go Online

Facebook Safety

https://www.facebook.com/fbsafety

Twitter: Keeping your account secure http://goo.gl/8R3LGB

Google’s “Me on the Web”

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1181793

International Travel Grandparent Scams http://goo.gl/VFG6gw 24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

The issue of social media safety isn’t so much the basics—strong passwords, firewalls and avoiding scams—but more taking a broader and more active role in managing your online identity. Why? Because who you are online and in social media is increasingly as important to your career advancement as are the facts of your education and experience. The dark side of social media is more than theoretical. Ten percent of

Hurt You

Indians, 8 percent of Americans, and 16 percent of Chinese between ages 16 and 24 reported being rejected for a job because of comments or images posted on their online or social media profiles, according to the Young People’s Consumer Confidence Index compiled by On Device Research. Those numbers drop slightly for those in the 25 to 34 age category. But there is a disconnect here between perceptions and reality. The survey also indicated that two-thirds of young people are not worried about the impact of social media on their future career prospects—and are much more likely to use social media to impress their friends than potential employers. Life online moves at the speed of a finger tap, and one of the most useful steps you can take is to pause before posting. Sharon Gaudin of Computerworld quoted this advice from analyst Dan Olds: “One approach is to ask yourself if you’d wear a T-shirt with the details you’ve posted about yourself. If you would, then you’re probably okay. But if that thought makes you cringe, then you’d better reevaluate what you’re putting on the web.”

Managing online identity

The answer to these dangers is not, of course, to avoid social media, but to be smart about them. One reason is how people use search engines. Studies show that 73 percent click on the first link in a Google search, and only 4.4 percent on

the sixth link, according to Leslie Hobbs of Reputation.com, which manages the online status and reputation of firms and individuals alike. “You have a very small window to be recognized,” says Hobbs. If that silly party picture is the first thing that pops up in a search of your name, you have a problem. Time to create a more positive professional presence, and push the negative stuff deeper down in the search results. The Internet offers ample resources to shape and manage your digital presence. Reputation.com notes several useful ones, starting with Google’s “Me on the Web,” which will notify you when you appear or your personal information is published online. Technorati provides a comprehensive index of the blogosphere where you can see your site’s scope and impact. Tools such as SocialMention and Hootsuite let you manage multiple social media and blogging sites, while TweetBeep will track you on Twitter by the hour. For anyone with a business, product or other online endeavor, don’t forget to check reviews on sites like Yelp, eBay and Amazon.

Cops and criminals

Two important groups with very different interests are active in social media: scam artists and law enforcement. The biggest online threat isn’t necessarily that someone will crack your password, but that you will inadvertently give out critical information—like announcing your vaca-

tion dates on Facebook, or posting too much specific information about yourself. And don’t forget your smartphone. Its geo-location capability is a nifty tool that cuts both ways: If your friends know exactly where you are, so do strangers. Just as you need to be alert on an unfamiliar street, you can’t afford to be lulled online by falling for phishing attempts to gain personal or financial data, or clicking automatically on an unknown link. Among the myriad of scams out there at the moment, for example, the U.S. State Department has highlighted one involving calls to grandparents or relatives falsely claiming that a young family member traveling abroad has had an accident or faces arrest and needs money wired immediately. For the police, social media are both a concern and an opportunity. A remarkable number of criminals have been arrested because they posted online images and accounts of their activities. According to research commissioned by LexisNexis in 2012, the top use of social media among law enforcement users is for crime investigations, followed distantly by crime anticipation. The lesson is clear: Stay engaged, positive, creative, even funny with your favorite social media sites as networking is invaluable. But it’s a big online world out there, so stay safe too. Howard Cincotta is a U.S. State Department writer and editor.

SECURITY

Can

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 25

Walter Russell Mead

Walter Russell Mead is the James Clark Chase Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College in New York and Editorat-Large of “The American Interest.” Mead is also the author of the “Via Meadia” blog at TheAmericanInterest.com, where he writes on international affairs, politics, culture, education, religion, economics, technology, literature and the media. He visited India for almost three weeks in August, traveling around to universities and meeting academics, think tank people and students to talk about U.S.-India relations. “This is my third trip to India and each time I come, I learn a lot more about how Indians see the world and how they see the United States,” he says. Excerpts from an interview with Richa Varma.

26 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

On the U.S.-India strategic partnership: Opportunities and challenges I have to say that each time I have been here, I have sensed more interest and excitement about the U.S.-India strategic partnership, in all kinds of ways. Business people, academics, military people, civilian policy makers are deepening their understanding of this partnership and the importance of it. For example, I spent the last week at JNU meeting with a group of students and professors at lectures every day, and what I found there was that sort of interest in how the U.S. and India can work together to create a peaceful Asian future in the 21st century. How we can try to make sure that the continent is able to grow in peace, that no one country tries to dominate the others, that we deepen the economic, political and security cooperation with India, Vietnam, Japan, Korea and even China in some kind of new Asian space. It was a real sense of excitement about just what the U.S. and India might be able to do working together. On India’s regional role with reference to Afghanistan One of the things I think that is changing for Indian foreign policy is that in the Cold War India sort of thought of South Asia as a very self-contained geopolitical unit but increasingly India now sees itself as part of the Indo-Pak region more than simply South Asia, that is South Asia and East Asia are blending together into a new Asian theater. With that, in some ways, Pakistan and Afghanistan, while these remain very

real and current issues, somewhere sort of issues of the past, and that when Indians think about the big foreign policy challenges in the future and the big economic opportunities of the future there is much more interest in China and Indo-China these days. As the U.S. continues to draw its forces down in Afghanistan my understanding is that the zero option is not on the table and I would expect that one way or another the many great powers who don’t want the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan will find ways to work together. Russia, China, Iran, the United States and India all don’t want to see Afghanistan become a kind of a state sponsor of terrorism or a safe haven for the world’s terrorists. Pakistan may have a somewhat different view but I don’t think Pakistan has the ability to impose its vision of Afghanistan over such a group of powers. So my guess is that there will be a lot of very interesting diplomacy as some of these countries work to find common ground for how we can preserve a government in Kabul, ensure that the Afghan people have some freedom and also make sure that the terrorists are not in charge of that country.

Via Meadia

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/

Follow on Twitter

https://twitter.com/wrmead

This article is the second of a series on what to do in the 12 months leading up to submitting your application at a U.S. college.

Twelve-Month Checklist for

Applying to Graduate School 9 to 7 Months Out

9 months before applying

1. Start preparing for any standardized tests required as part of the application process. Depending on the program, most graduate school admissions committees will require the GRE, GMAT, or in some cases the MCAT, which is for medical school applicants. In addition, as an international applicant you will most likely be required to take a test to demonstrate your level of proficiency in the English language. The Educational Testing Service, the Graduate Management Admission Council, and the Association of American Medical Colleges have preparation materials on their websites. Other organizations, such as Barrons, Kaplan, Petersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and the Princeton Review offer test preparation classes. In addition, you can go to your local bookstore or EducationUSA Advising

Center and find a host of printed materials and study guides. Standardized tests bring varying degrees of stress for prospective students. While test scores measure a certain level of academic ability, they by no means cover the entire academic arena. Most admissions committees do not have a cut-off requirement for test scores, but some do. It is a good idea to find out what each of your options looks for. 2. If you can afford to visit an institution more than once, make your first visit unannounced. How you are treated as a complete stranger can be revealing. In addition, you may not have the financial resources to make a campus visit at all. If so, be sure to take the virtual campus tour that is offered on most admissions office websites.

EDUCATION

ÂŠ Getty Images

As we suggested in our first article, graduate school involves a major investment personally, intellectually, socially and financially. Be sure to allow yourself enough time to get all of the information you want and need.

By DON MARTIN and WESLEY TETER

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 27

8 months before applying

1. Now is the time to do some additional research on your options. One area that may be of interest is the type of press they receive. There are at least two ways to find this out: One is to go to the website and look for a link that might read: “(institution name) in the news,” or “press coverage of (institution name).” A second way is to search online for press coverage. This type of search will yield more news clips because institutional websites tend to accentuate only positive press coverage. 2. Another way to learn about your options is to read their institutional and student-run newspapers. In some cases you may have to ask for access to these, and in others you can view them freely on the website. This allows you to review both external (press) and internal (institutional/student) perspectives on faculty, research, etc. that you will not find in admissions or other promotional information.

28 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

3. Find out if there are rankings of institutions offering the graduate program you are seeking. Various organizations provide annual or biannual rankings that can be useful to you. However, remember that rankings and reputation are two different things. Organizations that do rankings may try to provide reliable information, but those actually doing the data gathering, analysis and dissemination of the rankings have biases of their own. Often times they have never stepped foot on campus. Also,

rankings provide a source of revenue for the organizations doing them. One ranking differs from the next. You may be better off looking for trends, such as: Has a particular institution or program of interest been consistently ranked in the top 20? Remember that rankings and your success in and after graduate school are also two different things. Your ultimate success will depend on two qualities you need to succeed, which come from within: persistence and determination.

7 months before applying

1. Contact current students at the institutions on your list. If you know someone who is attending, contact them and ask questions. If not, ask the admissions staff if they can put you in touch with a current student or two. Many admissions offices have student volunteers who are willing to talk with prospective students. If you can ask the same questions for each of your options, you will have more information for your spreadsheet. 2. At this point, do a second evaluation of your options, considering what you have discovered from external and internal press, rankings, and conversations with students. Remember, you are not ready to make your shortlist yet. You can, however, change your spreadsheet evaluations at any time. Also, something you learn from the press or rankings about an option that was eliminated earlier from your list may cause you to place that option back on.

Don Martin is a former admissions dean at Columbia, University of Chicago and Northwestern; and author of “Road Map for Graduate Study.” Wesley Teter is a former regional director for EducationUSA in New Delhi. He is also the editor of the multimedia outreach campaign, 10 Steps to Study in the United States.

What do Alumni Have to Say?

Applying to Graduate School in the U.S.

Contacting current students and recent graduates about their experiences can provide some of the best

insights into what to expect at a given school or department. While university websites and brochures focus on an institution’s strengths, students and alumni have little to lose by sharing their real experiences. Here are a few questions that will elicit good information from current students: • What are the top reasons you chose this institution? • What are two of the most exciting or rewarding parts of your student experience? • Is there anything about the program that has not met your expectations? • What other schools and programs did you apply to? • How do you like your fellow students? How do you like the courses and faculty? • Have you found the staff such as financial aid and career services to be helpful? In addition, alumni have a unique perspective and possibility to reflect on their student experience—and have the added benefit of time since graduation. Look for individuals who have been out of grad school for five to 10 years.

Here are key questions to ask alumni: • Has the value of your educational experience increased or decreased since you graduated? • How has your graduate school experience most helped with your career? • Have the career services and alumni offices been helpful? • How much contact have you had with your former classmates? Do you believe the alumni network is strong? • If you had to do it over again, would you accept the admissions offer and enroll? Once you have concluded your conversations with students and alumni, go back to your spreadsheet (see the September/October 2013 issue of SPAN), and in the columns marked “interaction with current students” and “interaction with alumni,” provide letter grades. You might also add some comments regarding what stood out most in your conversations. NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

30 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Scope & Hope

Courtesy Jigar Mehta

hen Jigar Mehta was in the fifth grade, his grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He remembers her talking and laughing—now, after chemotherapy and a double mastectomy, she is bedridden and doesn’t always remember him. “She isn’t the same,” says Mehta, 19. “If there were more, better treatments, then she wouldn’t have undergone all the pain.” Now a pharmacy major at Northeastern University in Boston, Mehta wants to develop new, better medications. “I want treatments to be less harmful, more beneficial,” he says. Born in Mumbai, Mehta moved to Ahmedabad when he was 13. His interest in medicine started from an early age as his parents own a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. “I could hear my Dad talking about medicines every day,” he says. Mehta’s interest in this field came to the fore in his ninth grade, when he met five other students at a science seminar, and with them, designed a glove that allows medical students to learn anatomy and do virtual surgery. “It lets you learn better,” he says. “Many medical students just observe surgery. This will let them get hands-on experience much sooner.” A year later, the team took their fully functioning glove, along with a paper about making the technology more affordable, to a conference in Thailand and won first place. “It’s something we can explore further,” he says. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.” Over the next two years, Mehta worked on epigenetic therapies for cancer at Universal Pharma’s research laboratory. “There is a lot of scope and hope in this gene thera-

py,” he says. “It reduces the amount of pain and focuses on the target area without damaging healthy tissue.” After his high school graduation, instead of going straight to college, Mehta continued his research. “He showed promise from the very beginning,” Mehta’s mentor and head of the department of research, Siddhesh Gopinathan, said in an email interview.

College student

Jigar Mehta

wants to combine his passion for

medicine, technology and public service.

By WENDY KANTOR

“He is an intelligent and ambitious young man. He required virtually no supervision. There was never an occasion or excuse to come in late, leave early or miss a day; he amazed us all. This is the reason why he is different from the other...people out there— because he knows what he is doing and he also knows how to do it.” While Mehta loves medicine, he hasn’t decided if he is going to change his major to pre-med or stick with pharmaceutical studies. He does know that he wants to somehow combine his love of medicine and technology with his passion for public service. As a child, Mehta visited orphanages and nursing homes with his grandfather to take food to people in need. Carrying on that tradition, Mehta founded a nonprofit organization, Give A Week, as a high school student. Its members have organized blood drives, planted saplings, and visited juvenile detention centers to give math, science and computer lessons. Mehta now hopes to open a chapter in Boston. When he’s not studying, Mehta plays basketball, writes poetry—or just goes out and explores a new neighborhood and meets new people. Someday, he plans to return to India and marry his love of medicine and community service. “I really want to help people back home,” he says. “I can help people get a better life.” Hopefully, he says, he will find a way to connect disabled people with advanced technology—whether that is helping improve prosthetics or working with virtual reality devices. “I want to help disabled people communicate better and get the life they had—or the life they want,” he says. “Every person has the right to live a good life.” Wendy Kantor is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 31

The10Best Small Towns With its focus on towns with populations less than 25,000, this two-part series takes you on a leisurely stroll across small-town America and its unique culture.

Big-city smart meets New England natural in an art-rich mountain setting. 32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

ou’ve got to slow down when Route 7 leaves behind the wide-open valley of the Housatonic River to enter Great Barrington. The road becomes Railroad Street there, right of way to pedestrians stalled in the crosswalk trying to decide whether to have sushi or chimichangas for dinner. Others carry yoga mats, bags of farmers market produce, books, CDs, double espressos and all the other stuff it’s hard to find in surrounding Berkshire Mountain villages like Stockbridge and Lenox. Compared with them, Great Barrington (population 7,500) is like a big city where you can get Copyright © 2012. From Smithsonian Magazine, May, 2012.

America

By SUSAN SPANO

Great Barrington Massachusetts

anything you want, to borrow the chorus from “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” by hometown boy Arlo Guthrie. He was 18 when he wrote the satirical ballad about true events on Thanksgiving Day 1965, when he got arrested for illegally dumping some of Alice’s trash, ultimately making him ineligible for the Vietnam War draft. Trinity Church, former abode of the celebrated Alice, is now the Guthrie Center, a stage for folk music, starting point of the annual “Historic Garbage Trail Walk” and a place for interfaith spiritual exchange in a town where there could be something contrarian in the water.

Or in the food. At the forefront of the bigchain-grocery-store-defying, eat-local movement, Great Barrington is devoted to its family farms, farmers markets and co-op. Berkshire Grown, an organization that promotes the production and marketing of locally grown food, spreads the word with lectures by writers like Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and most recently “Food Rules”). Great Barrington’s latest unconventional endeavor is to mint its own currency, an experiment launched in 2006 aimed at getting people to buy everything—not just food—local. Almost

Above: Main Street in Great Barrington.

TRAVEL

Anc516/Courtesy Wikipedia

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 33

LEE COHEN/Courtesy Flickr

johnhenryf/Courtesy Flickr

Left: Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center offers a year-round schedule of music, dance and lectures. Below left: Farmers market at Great Barrington.

Town of Great Barrington

http://www.townofgb.org

34 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

400 businesses in the area trade BerkShares bills; the 5-BerkShares note features W.E.B. Du Bois, the great African American author and educator whose boyhood home just west of town is a National Historic Landmark. Incorporated in 1761, around the same time as Stockbridge and Lenox, Great Barrington, too, attracted rich summer people who built Gilded Age mansions like Searles Castle, now a boarding school. But Great Barrington grew up as a mill and railroad center, its blue-collar ring never excised. About [200 kilometers] from New York City, it attracts a hip crowd from the Big Apple, along with New Englanders and recent immigrants from Asia and Mexico. “Great Barrington is a small, manageable, economically and ethnically mixed town. That’s

what I love about it,” says locally renowned Northeast Public Radio director and commentator Alan Chartock, who proudly lives in a house once owned by one of the judges at the Lizzie Borden trial. When passenger trains still stopped in town, they brought performers from New York, booked to appear at the Mahaiwe, a vintage 1905 vaudeville theater. Now lovingly restored, it offers a year-round schedule of jazz, rock, dance, lectures and HD broadcasts from London’s National Theatre and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Executive Director Beryl Jolly, who came to Great Barrington from New York’s Public Theater, calls it the Mahaiwe Mix, no categories excluded, for the whole “big mix of people you see walking down Railroad Street.” Early summer brings the Berkshire International Film Festival to the Triplex Cinema, and classical music performed on historic instruments to the Aston Magna Festival at the Bard College Simon’s Rock campus. Not to mention such famous cultural institutions as Tanglewood, Shakespeare & Company, the Norman Rockwell Museum and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival just a country drive away. Then there’s the frame that nature put around the picture, with [500-meter] Monument Mountain to the east and the rest of the Berkshires to the west—such cozy mountains! Orchards are sheer walls of pink in the spring, farm fields thick with corn in the summer. Fall leaf-peepers train cameras on golden oaks and crimson maples. Honking geese pass over ice-coated bogs and ponds in the watershed of the Housatonic River. All this, and bagels, too. Arlo got it right.

mikerosebery/Courtesy Flickr

New Mexico

TERENCE FAIRCLOTH/Courtesy Flickr

Modern art, ancient history and counter culture in the luminous high desert.

eyond Santa Fe, the high road (Highway 76) and the low road (Highway 68) are both beautiful routes to little Taos in the enchanted upper valley of the Rio Grande. Before the counterculture found it in the 1960s, before Spanish missionaries and mountain men like Kit Carson arrived, even before the building of the Taos pueblo in the 15th century, the Anasazi were here, leaving their ghosts to walk in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. These days tourists, seekers, skiers and other outdoor enthusiasts pack the plaza of the old adobe town, dabble in its many galleries and museums, delve into history at the 1804 Spanish Colonial Martinez Hacienda and attend concerts (the Music from Angel Fire is a world-class chamber music festival). But Taos (population 5,700) still speaks most compellingly to writers, photographers and artists who, like Georgia Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Keeffe and D.H. Lawrence before them, come for the flash of a passing spirit and the quality of the light.

Taos

mikerosebery/Courtesy Flickr

Above: The visitor center of the Earthship community in Taos. Earthships are houses made of natural and recycled materials. Above far right: An installation outside Elevation Coffee. Above right: An art gallery. Right: Musicians at the John Dunn Shops walkway in Taos.

AID G/Courtesy Flickr

Taos

http://www.taosgov.com/

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Right: Ice boats on the Navesink River in Red Bank. Below right: The window display of Funk & Standard Variety Store. Below: An aerial view of Red Bank.

Red Bank

illiam Count Basie grew up and got his musical chops on Mechanic Street in Red Bank. In the early 1920s he moved to Harlem and the rest is jazz history, to the tune of the “One O’Clock Jump.” His hometown on the south bank of the Navesink River about [40 kilometers] south of Manhattan went through some lean, mean times after that, but has since made an astonishing cultural and economic comeback, linchpinned by the refurbishment of the 1926 Carlton Theater, now the Count Basie performing arts center, a venue for ballet to rock to Willie Nelson. Cafés, galleries, clubs and shops followed, along with farmers markets and street fairs, attracting people from well-heeled Monmouth County and the Jersey

Red Bank

http://visit.redbank.com/

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Shore. Town folk (population 12,200) went to work on neglected old homes with good bones, the landmark Victorian train depot was restored and the silver was polished at the Molly Pitcher Inn, named for a Revolutionary War heroine who is said to have brought water to thirsty soldiers serving under George Washington during the Battle of Monmouth County. The Navesink got a spiffy waterfront park, the setting for jazz concerts in the summer and iceboating when the river freezes; string quartets and youth choruses perform at the Monmouth Conservatory of Music, while the Two River Theater Company stages new plays and musicals. It all adds up to a model for small-town renewal. JTFeldmus/Courtesy Wikipedia

New Jersey

Willie Nelson sings and Basie swings in a riverfront town graced by Victoriana.

Above far right: The Depot Bookstore & Cafe in downtown Mill Valley. Above right: Early morning fog over the town. Right: A house in the Cascade Canyon area of Mill Valley. Below right: A rehearsal in progress at Throckmorton Theatre.

Courtesy Marin Convention and Visitors Bureau

FRANK SCHULENBURG/Courtesy Flickr

California

FRANK SCHULENBURG/Courtesy Flickr

A Bay Area enclave that put mellow on the map keeps its funky vibe.

City of Mill Valley

http://www.cityofmillvalley.org/

ill Valley is one of the jewels in a necklace of beautiful towns—along with Sausalito, Marin City and Tiburon—across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It’s tucked into a canyon on the flank of [784-meter] Mount Tamalpais, near the giant redwoods of Muir Woods National Monument and marshland surrounding Richardson Bay. The setting and proximity to San Francisco attracted sawmills, dairy farms and resort operators, then Beat poets and hippies.... A more recent

PHILIPPE VIEUX-JEANT/Courtesy Flickr

TONY FISCHER/Courtesy Flickr

WASTED TIME R/Courtesy Wikipedia

Mill Valley

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Courtesy Marin Convention and Visitors Bureau

influx of wealthy commuters has made Mill Valley (population 14,200) one of the nation’s wealthiest ZIP codes. Shops, galleries, organic food restaurants and art festivals cater to the newcomers, threatening to crowd out ratty old landmarks like the beloved Sweetwater Saloon where Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder, Jerry Garcia and Elvis Costello played. The good news is that, as of this past January, the Sweetwater’s back, occupying new quarters in the town’s old Masonic Hall. The Art Commission sponsors concerts and comedy in the town plaza, and the Throckmorton Theatre welcomes music groups like the Kingston Trio and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, along with a June festival dedicated to gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Above: Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. Below: Mount Rainier overlooks Gig Harbor.

DEREK LYONS/Courtesy Flickr

Gig Harbor Washington

f you come by boat, as so many people do— beginning with a team of surveyors from the Congressionally mandated Wilkes Expedition in 1841—it’s easy to miss the narrow opening on the ragged west edge of Puget Sound that marks the entrance to Gig Harbor. That would be a pity because it leads to one of the snuggest harbors in the Pacific Northwest, a thicket of sailboat masts rimmed by tall pines on the far side of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. When the sun shines you can see Mount Rainier and the snow-crusted Cascades on the eastern horizon; in squally weather the sky closes in so seascape artists paint from memory. Never mind. As local gallery owner Bill Fogarty would say, “Don’t let the drizzle get you down. Think of what it does for the rhododendrons.” The unprepossessing little town (population

7,500) has lately been discovered by outlanders from Tacoma and Seattle in search of still relatively affordable waterfront property. Chain stores have sprung up out on the highway and old fishing docks have yielded to fancy powerboats and yachts. Day-trippers come for gourmet restaurants with Washington State wines, for nautical tchotchkes and for gallery walks held on the first Saturday of the month, during which one might meet, say, renowned local jeweler Kit Kuhn. Yet Gig Harbor remains a working fishing village with a fleet of about two dozen boats that head up to Alaska for salmon every summer. The fishing way of life is still passed down from one generation to another. “It sure spoils you for the 9 to 5,” says Guy Hoppen, who has done plenty of salmon seasons in Alaska. He’s

Take numerous art galleries. Add sailboats and local wines. Stir. Enjoy.

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Harbor History Museum

ALAN CORDOVA/Courtesy Flickr

http://www.harborhistorymuseum. org/

TOM COLLINS/Courtesy Flickr

Left: Net sheds at Gig Harbor. Above: A permanent gallery of the Harbor History Museum.

the director of the Gig Harbor BoatShop, a former commercial facility in a tight cove bounded by working docks that is now an interpretive center promulgating the art of shipbuilding, partly to make sure salmon boats never get crowded out of the increasingly high-rent harbor. Trained eyes can pick out venerable old fishing vessels like the 1922 Commencement and 1925 Beryl E. among the pleasure boats. Settled in the 19th century by immigrants from the Adriatic Coast of what is now Croatia, Gig Harbor is a little like Maine without Yankees. The Jerisiches, Dorotiches and other founding families were net fisher folk and ship builders. They stayed close together, founding Gig Harbor’s Roman Catholic St. Nicholas Church, still the starting place for the annual Maritime Gig Festival, highlighted by a blessing of the fleet. Meanwhile, the peninsula’s forested hinterlands became home to many Scandinavians, who built dairy farms and planted strawberry patches that send their riches to Puget Sound markets. Gig Harbor was isolated until the building of a bridge across the strait that separates the Olympic Peninsula from Tacoma. Engineered by the same company that gave

San Francisco its Golden Gate Bridge, the [1640-meter] span was a wonder when completed in 1940. Thankfully, no one died when it collapsed a scant four months later, leaving Gig Harbor all but water-bound until the completion of a sturdier bridge in 1950, paralleled by another in 2007. You can still see dredged-up chunks of the first bridge’s foundations at the spacious new Harbor History Museum, added to the waterfront in 2010, along with a restored 19th-century one-room schoolhouse, a vintage Thunderbird sailboat hull and exhibitions about languages spoken by Native American Puyallup and Nisqually tribes, the bay’s first residents. On any given summer weekend there’s likely to be a chowder cook-off, a quilt show or a festival celebrating boats, gardens or wine; vendors at the farmers market offer mandolin lessons along with strawberries and grass-fed beef. The town center is Skansie Brothers Park, where the city is restoring one of 17 historic net sheds that line the waterfront. On open-air film nights folks pile on blankets spread across the lawn to watch “Free Willy,” “Jaws” or another maritime classic.

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(To be concluded in the January/February 2014 issue.)

Susan Spano is a New York City-based travel writer.

T State Department photos

he U.S. Congress held its first-ever Diwali celebration on October 29. Sri Siva Vishnu Temple, one of the oldest and largest temples in the Washington, D.C. area, organized the event in cooperation with the U.S. House of Representatives Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans. “It was an honor to celebrate this holiday and the diversity that makes our country great earlier this week at the first-ever Congressional Diwali reception,” Representative Ami Bera (below, second from left), the only Indian American currently serving in the U.S. Congress, said in a statement. Attendees included Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs (bottom). http://goo.gl/vt9ubl

Courtesy the Davidson Institute

ive Indian American students were part of the 2013 Davidson Fellowships awarded by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development in September. Davidson fellows, who are students aged 18 years or younger, receive $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 in college scholarships for having created “significant projects that have the potential to benefit society in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, music and philosophy.” The program has provided more than $5.3 million in scholarship funds to 226 Fellows since its inception in 2001 by the Nevada-based nonprofit organization. http://www.davidsongifted.org

S JAYESH DADLANEY

ina Davuluri became the first Indian American to win the Miss America beauty pageant in September, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Davuluri, 24, grew up in Michigan and traces her family roots to Andhra Pradesh. “To be able to stand up there, and be an example for other little girls that America is now a very different place, that’s everything to me,” she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Davuluri, who plans to become a cardiologist, also had the opportunity to meet with President Barack Obama in October and tweeted, “Had the pleasure of having a conversation with President Obama in the Oval Office today!” https://twitter.com/NinaDavuluri

teven Cook, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, met students, community leaders and journalists on his visits to Lucknow, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune in September. He engaged in discussions with American Studies and Political Science students at Fergusson College in Pune (above) and spoke about India’s international role and the United States and the Middle East. http://goo.gl/GZpbgn

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