OPINION

Bet Ya Can’t Download Just One!

Terry Calhoun, IT Trends Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

The tri-annual board meetings of my employer-association, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) are often intense, exhausting affairs with elaborate preparation – reports, charts, graphs – and all-day meetings with working lunches, and so forth. But there can be times when they are actually quite enjoyable, too. One of those times happened during a recent weekend when I mentioned Picasa, a new, free, software from Google. SCUP has academic planners, budget planners, IT planners, and campus planners–all sorts of folks who aren’t even ‘planners’ per se but who do planning as part of their work—in its membership.

When I off-handedly mentioned how Picasa was on its way to solving my problems with storing, accessing, and using images, pens were whipped out of purses and pockets and everyone was writing down as I spoke. They were all paying attention to me and excited about what I was saying. What a feeling of power!

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