By Dan FletcherThe Daily Northwestern
A new student calendar and organization system dubbed NULink made its debut to student group leaders and senators at Wednesday night’s ASG meeting.
The system will be available Monday via a link on the HereAndNow Web site.
“This is going to allow students to better advertise their events, organize their lives, and communicate around campus,” said Robby Stein, communications director for Associated Student Government.
Stein said he expects the system will replace the HereAndNow portal soon.
“We think of HereAndNow as a two-dimensional piece of paper with some links on it,” said Stein, a Medill senior and former Daily staffer. “And yet, it’s one of the most important pieces of technology in students’ lives every single day.”
The central feature on NULink is a customizable calendar. Student group leaders can enter an event for their organizations into the system so that students can select any student group to see its upcoming events.
Students also have the option to create their own private events or a personal calendar.
NUlink includes a to-do list to keep track of tasks and a notepad that will automatically save any text put into it.
All the features of HereAndNow are still part of NULink, Stein said. The links are reorganized and placed near the bottom of the new site.
“Students won’t lose anything,” Stein said. “They’ll just gain a lot.”
NULink will be launched in a few phases, Stein said. Only ASG-sponsored student groups will be able to add content to the system between now and Monday.
Later, Stein said, the system likely will expand to Greek organizations, residential colleges and dorms, as well as student groups not sponsored by ASG.
Beginning in Spring Quarter, NULink will have additional features, said Kevin Palms, ASG’s technology director and the programmer of the Web site.
“In the future, NULink will allow you to create personal groups, kind of like those on Facebook, and create events to put on all your members’ calendars,” the Weinberg senior said.
The Spring Quarter changes will also allow groups to assign tasks to their members’ to-do lists and give students the option of having a text message reminder sent to their cell phones a half-hour before an event begins, Stein said.
Stein said he came up with the idea for NULink in the spring of 2005.
“It’s been an enormous project,” Stein said. “We’ve had three redesigns since we started.”
Palms said he coded the system almost entirely by himself after Stein brought the idea to him.
“I took the idea and turned it into a demo, and it slowly progressed from there,” he said.
After making an online to-do list to manage his own tasks, Palms said he realized the benefit a similar system could have for groups through NULink.
Student group leaders at the demonstration Wednesday night said they were impressed by the system.
“I think it’s great,” said Sarah Mumma, a Weinberg junior and publicity officer for A&O Productions. “It’s a much better way of getting our events up than HereAndNow, provided people use it.”
NULink is only a part of a larger technology initiative that ASG spearheaded this year, Stein said. In the past few months, ASG has updated the student group directory, which Stein said was “way out of date,” along with launching its own news portal to update students on ASG and campus events.
Reach Dan Fletcher at [email protected].
