News Updates

Today at the Michigan Campus Alliance @ Michigan State University LGBTA Leadership Summit we will be voting for our first executive board, and voting on the first Constitution for our organization.

First we would like to again thank Michigan State University, it's faculty and staff who put on the summit.

The people running for the 2008-2009 elected board, their biographies, and their statements of why they want to run for a position are available from this link.

Campus representatives and Planning Group members will receive an electronic ballot in their email shortly.  Please follow the instructions in the email to process your ballot.

Details on our first internet video/audio/chat conference

In Brief:

What: First Internet Meeting of the Michigan Campus Alliance
When: Saturday, April 5th, 2pm (Group test March 29th)
Why: To get status updates from campus orgs, get people involved, plan for future.
What you need to do: Determine Location, Install Software, Test Test Test & Attendadf

** Please read below for full details **

Michigan Technological University bought a 25-seat license for Marratech, an Internet Video/Audio Conferencing, Whiteboard, Text Chat-based application used for distance education. Michigan Tech's Educational Technology Services department is giving us short-term permission to use this system for free, outside of normal 8-5 business hours, and on weekends. While not as high quality as pure video conferencing, it is free vs thousands of dollars for the real thing.

Date/Agenda

The hope is to have our first group internet meeting on Saturday, April 5th starting at 2pm and going till whenever we finish talking. The agenda is still in the works but includes things like asking attendees for status updates on how their campus group is doing, brainstorming how to get the word out and increase involvement in the Alliance, talking about who is and is not involved and what we can do about that, and preliminary planning for a physical sit down day long meeting.

Location

Many schools already have a location with a webcam/video camera and a microphone that may have this software already installed, check with your IT department. However; The software client is free and you can use it on your home machine/laptop. We are recommending that campuses and groups that are close together try to use one location and share a 'seat' at the online conference because the number of connections/seats is limited to 25.

Software

The free software client for Mac, Windows, and Linux is available from the following link: http://www.marratech.com/download/ There is an 'Introduction to Marratech' PowerPoint presentation available at the following link: http://www.ets.mtu.edu/vc/marratech/marratech.ppt . We strongly recommend you become more familiar with the applications features before the conference.

Hardware

You do not need a webcam to join in on the conference; you can elect just to do the audio part, or even just do the text-chat stuff and digital whiteboard. How much you want to be able to do is up to you, and what you have available. The software client will hopefully scale to meet everybody's needs. Webcams are cheap though—most retailers have them from $10 up to $100, and with a cam you will have a much better experience. You will absolutely need a high speed internet connection.

Configuring Your System

Once you have installed the software, you need to setup and test your audio and video inside the application. To setup your preferences: In Windows/Linux click the 'Tools' menu item and choose 'Options' from the pull down menu, on Mac OS click the 'Marratech' menu item and choose 'Preferences'. In that Options/Preferences dialog box you will see options for audio(demo), video(demo) as well as other settings. The defaults are normally pretty good but please make sure to test your Audio while on the Audio tab. While in your preferences click the Viewer(demo) tab and enter "http://emeeting.mtu.edu" in the 'Home Page' field and choose "Home Page" for the 'At Startup, show' option.

Testing Software

Once you have configured Marratech and relaunch the application it you should be taken to a website that has the Michigan Tech logo on it(Click to see demo). On that webpage should be a listing of public rooms, if you want to test out the software click on the 'Public' room listed. This will take you into a room where you can see the features of the software. We strongly recommend you test the software with another person to make sure your audio levels and video output are setup correctly. If you are in need of someone to test with Patrick Hopp's, our contact at Michigan Tech and advisor to MTU's GLBTA group, is in the "Read More" section below and he has volunteered to help people get setup and tested.

Group Test

We will be setting up a time to do a big group test sometime on Saturday, March 29th. This day will conflict with University of Michigan's Queerlympics. We encourage people to support this U of M program and we are happy to schedule another test with anybody attending the Queerlympics, just let us know.

Thanks, and if you have any questions contact mca@micampusalliance.org

If you/your group plans on attending

If you or your group are planning to attend please send an email to mca@micampusalliance.org with which campus you or your group is representing. We will be using that information to send out a userid/password needed to get into the private Michigan Campus Alliance 'meeting room' on the 5th of April.

Pat's contact info in the read more section....


Read More

This is the beginings of the Michigan Campus Alliance. The Michigan Campus Alliance is only in the planning stages. The hope is that this Alliance will connect all the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersexed and Ally college, university, and other educational institutions in the state of Michigan.

The purpose of this Alliance and it's makeup are only now in the begining stages of being determined. If you wish to be involved and have a Facebook account please visit the Alliances page in Facebook by clicking here. If you are not on Facebook do not worry. Please check this pages for updates. We will be working on transitioning our work after some of the initial steps have been taking to the most accessible means possible.

If you would like to be involved and haven't made contact any other way please contact mca@micampusalliance.org. Please feel free to send questions, comments and suggestions to that address as well.