Author: Lauren Rewers
The Political Social Media Conference (SMOxy), sponsored by Oxypreneurship, will set the stage for non-profits and digital media experts to build relationships and social media skills on campus Nov. 9 and 23.
College students from Occidental and other schools in the greater Los Angeles Area are invited to participate in the conference. SMOxy has a two-fold aim: to build connections between non-profit organizations and local digital political consultants and to train and involve students in the process itself.
Notable speakers will include Joy Hepp, the social media voice of Occidental College and Scott Zumwalt, the digital director of the It Gets Better Project.
“(Zumwalt) is specialized in having a message go viral via YouTube, but still having that core message stay there and not letting it get out of control,” organizer and politics major Miriam Hamburger (first-year) said.
The need for social media education became evident for politics major John O’Neill (senior) after attending training on the dispersal of campaign data in 2011 and working with digital advertising at the Bully Pulpit Interactive this past summer. He noticed that non-profit organizations and political campaigns tended to use conventional means such as television ads to advertise their message. The medium that their audiences are exposed to – social media – was comparatively ignored.
“The conference is intended to create a conceptual framework about how they can integrate social media into their events,” O’Neill said.
The mainly Los Angeles-based digital consultants will be lecturing on topics ranging from creating a message to running online campaigns. Structurally, the event is divided into speaker and workshop sections. During the latter, attendees will apply the main points of the lectures to their personal campaigns and are encouraged to begin building their media platforms. The conference is split into two Saturdays, two weeks apart in order to give the attendees time to apply what they have learned. After the broad social media framework is introduced on Nov. 9, specific requests or concerns will be addressed on Nov. 23.
In addition, the conference allows students to intermingle with local non-profits and improve their technical skills.
“A lot of students here are really interested in non-profit work, but … they don’t really know how they can do that. I think that using social media is a really effective way for students to get connected with non-profits,” Hamburger said.
Oxypreneurship connected O’Neill with fellow members Hamburger and Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) major Calli Obern (sophomore) to bring the program to life. While O’Neill organized the speakers and workshops, Obern reached out to local non-profit organizations and Hamburger managed the logistics.
The conference is funded primarily through donations by the Bird Fund, Strauss Foundation and Associated Students of Occidental College (ASOC).
Although there are no solid future plans at the moment, O’Neill hopes that the conference will occur on an annual basis.
“Entrepreneurship isn’t about trying to sort of scramble something together and realizing you don’t have a certain skill and then trying to get that. It’s really realizing what you have. It’s like baking a cake – using the recipe and all the things you have to make something better,” Hamburger said.
O’Neill and Hamburger encourage students to register as soon as possible. Although there is an entry fee for non-profits, student admission is free.
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