Oh, how I love to be inspired – by students!

BuzzFlood: Dartmouth – The way a College ought to be.

Our mission is to celebrate Dartmouth and to give more people the opportunity to discover the Dartmouth family. We do this by sharing personal stories that highlight what makes our school timeless.

Founded by Dartmouth students in 2003, BuzzFlood is an independent, student run organization dedicated to telling personal stories about special things people at Dartmouth are doing everyday, especially Dartmouth’s students.

BuzzFlood is one more example of a university harnessing the power of blog software to create a powerful PR tactic via the Web.

I love it!

You may recall my ad nauseum adoration of Cornell.edu Redesign. That blog is a university’s use of ‘blog’ to involve stakeholders in the redesign of Cornell’s portal.

Dartmouth’s BuzzFlood is similar and unique. OK, it is better. I still love Cornell’s blog, but BuzzFlood takes a different tack. See BuzzFlood: About Us.

BuzzFlood is independently run, student powered, student created and a powerful public affairs tactic. BuzzFlood is a PR student’s dream. It incorporates some of the core practices PR students need to experience.

• Writing experience.
• Practical applications of theory.
• One beautiful ongoing campaign.
• Exposure to CMS.
• A community outreach project.

Only one downside to their site. No comments. They’ve hacked the CMS so that the “Comment” link is now a “Email To Friend” kind of link. That’s OK. I can understand not wanting to moderate all those comments (being on a university campus, can you just imagine the goofy stuff that would be posted?). And, the “Email” function does serve to ‘create the buzz’ their site is designed to generate. So, some will say it is not a ‘blog’ and I would agree. But, even as a CMS application, it is a winner!

Kudos! I’ve caught your buzz.

I feel another blog coming on.

Update: They liked my review. That was kind of them. Thanks BuzzFlood.