We are looking for new teammates passionate about spreading news and information about the University of Illinois.

What does it take?

We’re looking for writers, photographers, marketers, and team leads for future projects. The Quad is flexible – we encourage innovation and collaboration. The sky is the limit about what you can accomplish while working on The Quad. At the very minimum we’d ask that you do one “thing” per week – write a post, brainstorm an idea, or take the next award-winning photograph. At the maximum we hope you’ll take the initiative to continue the vision of The Quad – to create the most entertaining and informative news source about the University of Illinois.

Why?

The Quad is a University of Illinois Registered Student Organization, so we’re looking for passionate, informed University of Illinois students who want to make an impact on this campus and beyond. Your time is important – so we won’t add any of the bureaucratic nonsense that other organizations have. You’ll be able to scratch that creative itch, produce amazing content, and grow an organization – giving you some great experience for job interviews and resumes.

Interested? Fill out this simple application by Friday, September 25, 2009, and we will get back to you soon after that.

Join The Quad

Quad Day is today, Sunday, August 23, on the Main Quad, from noon till 4:00 pm.

Be sure to stop by our booth for some free ping-pong balls!

As many of you know, The Quad is an official registered student organization (RSO), which means that we will be participating in this year’s Quad Day festivities. We are not your typical RSO however, so we are planning some pretty special activities. We will be live-blogging from the event and hosting live-video from our Quad Day tent. We also have some awesome freebies including pens and ping-pong balls. Don’t miss it!

Quad Day is from 12pm-4pm on Sunday, August 23rd on the main quad. Come to our tent early to take advantage of the give-a-ways. We are offering a free preview of the Quad Day organization map so you can check out our location and scope out the location of your other favorite RSOs. It is included at the end of this article.

On Quad Day, we are looking for readers and writers to join our team. If you are interested in writing, please stop by and have a chat with us. We’d love to have you aboard. It is our hope, as an organization, to bring new writers, editors, and designers to our team. We’d like to create a news source that spans the many disciplines and lifestyles of Illinois’ students.

We’ll see you on Quad Day!

Official Quad Day Map – Download Here

Just as an update, we’ve been improving our Twitter presence recently – we now post tips, links, tricks, and links to all new Quad posts. If you’re on Twitter, check us out.

Twitter.com/TheQuadBlog

This is the 500th post for The Quad. We’ve been sharing the good news of the University of Illinois for over two years since our first post on May 15th, 2007. We’ve seen the removal of Chief Illiniwek, an Illinois Football Rose Bowl visit, multiple Facebook redesigns, an impeached Governor, and one of the most historic presidential elections in modern history Through it all, we’ve been here, with you. We’d like to thank you, our readers, for suporting us throughout the years.

At this time, it is our pleasure to announce that The Quad has recently become an official Registered Student Organization (RSO) at the University of Illinois. It is our hope, as an organization, to bring new writers, editors, and designers to our team. We’d like to create a news source that spans the many disciplines and lifestyles of Illinois’ students.

Nothing you see here will change dramatically, we will still be providing you with the latest Illinois news. Any changes will only be an improvement. Our coverage will improve as we add more writers and editors from all walks of life. We will be on the ground running during the Fall 2009 semester.

Please continue to stay tuned and look out on campus for more information on our new endeavers.

Thanks again for the support, and Go Illini!

Today marks the official end of the 2008-2009 school year. Congratulations, you made it!

We at The Quad would like to thank all our loyal readers for sticking with us throughout this exciting year. We’d also like to encourage you to continue to follow us whether your graduating or coming back to school. We are going to be taking a short break, but we will be back for the summer bringing you the very best in Illini news. We are planning on making a number of changes over the next few months and when the Fall semester begins, we will be better than ever and ready to serve you.

Congratulations to the graduates and we hope you all have a great summer.

Have fun, and Go Illini!

Your University of Illinois news source,
The Quad

So what’s up with this Twitter thing, you might ask? Isn’t this just a Facebook status? There is actually a lot more to Twitter than just a personal status message, and people from all over UIUC are beginning to take to it.

A recent article in the blog DoshDosh describes the ins and outs of Twitter and lists 17 different ways you can use the service.

Twitter gives you a fragmented experience of opinions, events, news, ideas and feedback largely because its structured to accommodate non-contextual usability: You can easily follow thousands of users and listen in and enter into conversations conducted among multiple users at any point. And this is usually the case.

On the other hand, Twitter can be actively used as a tool to push out messages that capitalize on the attention you’re receiving from other users. Yes, I’m talking about self-promotion and marketing. This involves active user engagement.

Apart from its use as a info resource and publicity tool, Twitter is also a communication platform for individuals and their personal social networks.

The Daily Illini published a recent article about the possibility of the University using Twitter to spread information.

Todd Short, director of emergency planning for the University, said the Division of Public Safety is just starting to look into the viability of using Twitter for notifying students about emergency situations. He said the University already uses nine different ways to notify students of emergency situations.

Here at The Quad, we’ve been using Twitter for quite some time. Both writers Doug, and Gavin have an active Twitter account. We are also pleased to announce the implementation of The Quad’s very own Twitter. To start, the account will link to our posts when each new one is published. Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with everything that’s going on. There are also a number of other Illini using Twitter, check out The Quad’s list:

(we have created a new, updated list in our latest twitter post)

If you have something to add to this list, let us know in the comments!

You may have realized that yesterday’s article about The Quad calling it quits wasn’t realistic. That’s because it is not true. Don’t worry, we are not about to stop this awesomeness. I mean, we’ve had so much fun up till now, why stop? The Quad will continue to come to you everyday bringing the latest and greatest about life at the University of Illinois.

April fool’s! …now get to class!

The Quad would like to announce that we will be taking a break from blogging. The stress of school has become too great, and our grades have taken a hit. Additionally, the economy has frozen our funding for hosting. We just don’t have as much time or money as we used to, and we have chosen to pull the plug. We’ve had over 400 posts and it is going to be hard to say goodbye. It has been a fun ride, and we want to thank all our readers for the faithful following. This will be the last post for the rest of the school year. We will hopefully be back in August. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please take this time, as we will, to work on your schoolwork and study for those classes.

Happy April Fools’ Day

While you were relaxing at the beach last week, The Quad was busy making some changes.

We have widened the text block where you are reading this post. This should allow our articles to be clearly read and allow for the insertion of more images to capture your attention. At the same time, we have also redesigned the watermark images in the background of the header and footer of the site. If you scroll down the page, you will see a new feature in the right column called “Top Tags.” using this feature will allow you to quickly find any articles related to the most used topics. Also, we have added a new tab at the top of the page called “Categories.” This button will open a drop-down menu and allow you to view the articles separated by categories. We hope these changes will create an easier way to find the articles you are looking for.

Thanks again for following The Quad and we want you to know that we are continuously making improvements just for you, our valued readers. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions at anytime for further improvements.