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The High School Class Reunion Goes Digital

November 13, 2008 View Comments by madia

Well friends, it’s time. I’m sure at some point I’ll be kicking myself for posting this because then people can do the math to figure out my age – nevertheless, my High School Reunion is upon us. In just a week’s time I will head back to Williamstown High to see a lot of my former classmates. It’s kind of like the train wreck that you just have to see. You know you’ll know people and have a pretty good time and have stories with friends about people you haven’t seen in decades.

The most impressive part about this story is not that I didn’t buy a new outfit. It is that we actually managed to do all the planning of our high school reunion online.

I am all about the application of technology to make things easier and more COST EFFECTIVE, so here’s the skinny…

Our Resources:

  • Windows Live Email Box: We set up an email address so everyone could reach the committee. Could have been any other free email service. Gmail is popular too because of the capacity they have.
  • WordPress: Used this to create a website where classmates could easily comment and the committee could upload information, like a class list, help finding people, etc… (http://whs98.wordpress.com/)
  • SurveyMonkey:We used this to survey the class (of emails we had) about what they wanted to do, dates that worked, what they were willing to pay, etc… We also did another survey to do a trivia game at the reunion on people. We’ll use that the day of!
  • MySpace: Myspace was invaluable in planning our reunion. There were a lot of people that had profiles, so we were able to talk to them and get their emails.
  • FaceBook: Facebook was a better tool to get everyone together, but not all classmates had it, so there was the issue. It allowed us to make a group page, from which we’re gathering pictures of former classmates and their families.
  • Classmates.com: Bottom line, you gotta do it. Bite the bullet and get a page. We updated our membership to gold and got to post the event. This helps you get a lot of people that have signed up with classmates to keep in touch with high school friends
  • Skype: Yeah, this is phone through the net, but did you know you can use it to host conference calls?? :)
  • Other Resources: Added events to local calendars on newspaper sites, did random searches of classmates to find out if they blogged or had a visible email address

So I was a big part of planning a reunion and through the fabulous internet, I didn’t have to fly back to NJ until the day of the event. Now the truth is it wasn’t ALL web. We had group meetings (some im chat involved but LOTS of back and forth email.) People still like personal contact so it was good to have a group of classmates that could reach out.

It’s true what they say about the internet… I can’t tell you how we lived without it.

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