Its spring break for many students at Des Moines University, which makes it a great week for enjoying arts, entertainment and local events in other words, much-deserved breaks from textbooks, lectures, labs and studying. You can relish all three this Friday, March 23, at the Des Moines Art Centers HUE, a special installment themed around the color aquamarine.

Havent been to the art center? Youre missing out! Located at 4700 Grand Avenue, an easy walk from the DMU campus, the center is a gorgeous facility with an impressive collection of paintings, sculpture (inside and around the grounds), mixed media and much more. While theres a fee to attend HUE (see below), admission to the art center is free.

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How to boil down a 75 minute conference workshop into a shortish microblog post? I thought maybe a list of the top five things I took away from each workshop would be my best bet, so I give you the John-Cusack-in-High-Fidelity-inspired Top Five Things.

First session of my day was Social Media and Your Marketing Plan. Top Five Things:

1. Develop a social media policy. I know what youre thinking. I know because I wrote it in the Notes section of my conference program. It goes something like, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Not another policy! But seriously, this one is a good idea, because it allows you to be thoughtful about your social media efforts and concentrate them where theyll be the most useful. Decide which platforms you want to use and what kind of content youll use it for.

2.

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PULLMAN, Wash. – A series of four illustrations created by Washington State University senior graphic designer David Hoyt to highlight clean-technology research recently received a Grand Gold award in the 2012 communication awards competition sponsored by District VIII of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
The award recognizes the top entry in the photography and illustration category of the competition. The honor marks the fifth consecutive year WSU marketing and communications efforts have been honored with a Grand Gold.
The illustrations Hoyt created were incorporated in print ads published in Washington State Magazine, WSUs primary external communications publication. The illustrations address university research on the power grid, earth-friendly building materials and clean-energy policies. Read full post…

In a story today about Mayor Stephanie-Rawlings Blake’s State of the City address, our City Hall Reporter Julie Scharper touched a lot on how the mayor has essentially rejected city schools CEO Andres Alonso’s plan to rapidly rebuild the city’s dilapidated school buildings with more debt, and instead champions a plan based on a slower, but arguably steadier, stream of revenue.

But, I believe a sleeping giant is where the mayor and Alonso are of the same mind: schools, possibly some pretty historic anchors in communities, will have to close in order for any facilities overhaul plan will work.

If you remember, I wrote in October about Alonso’s plan to close schools that are underutilized or beyond repair–which he warned would be a large-scale, but painful process.

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