It's always a weird sensation when you just start to ponder the implications of a new technology and you pick up an article or see a post in a blog and discover that someone else is thinking about that very same issue as well. That happened to me last week as I noticed a couple of our staff placing a new 42in LCD panel in our Arts Center. There's also a couple new screens in our Communications Studies Department and our Meteorology Department has had several for some time now. I am aware that our campus, like many institutions is struggling with an ever expanding list of communication modes and that it is having a significant impact on the institution's communication plan. It occurred to me that this effort by departments to replace their department bulletin board would be approached more effectively in a centralized architecture that also allowed for local control, i.e., a quasi network and affiliate approach, where the network could supersede local programming. Who could argue against the very real need to "get the word out" in an emergency.

In this article in "Campus Technology" a few schools are moving exactly in that direction. We should look into this as well before we spend to much more money without asking about the impact on campus communication questions.