All posts by: Magazine Editor

Baltimore social media entrepreneur Sean Carton ’90, English, headlined UMBC’s inaugural Social Media Strategy Summit today, speaking to a group of more than 80 from local colleges and universities about the “Myths & Realities” of social media in higher education.

Founder and director of the Center for Digital Communication, Commerce, and Culture at the University of Baltimore, and chief creative officer of idfive, a Baltimore-based advertising, web design, brand consulting, and digital media agency focused on higher ed and non-profits, Carton joked that as long as viral videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger Again” rise to the top of Internet viewership, social media practitioners will have to continually change to stay relevant.

“Until then, we all have to kind of work together to figure it out,” said Carton, who was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the Year by UMBC in 2005.

Read more about the Summit here. Stay tuned for video of Carton’s talk.

By day, Sam Eitel ’10 works in business administration for Beltway International Trucks. By night (and weekend, and every other spare moment he can find), Eitel indulges his true passion: dreaming up and making his own line of longboard skateboards.

Though Sam has only been out of college a few years, it’s clear from the moment you meet him that he is passionate about his labor of love: Roots Board Company. After a childhood spent body surfing and longboarding during family trips to Ocean City, in fall of 2009, Eitel found himself wondering just how hard it would be to make his own board. He combined his own experiences as a rider with some guidance from his uncle on the finer points of woodworking, and voila: his own hand-made long board.

“I just tried making one,” says Sam. “My friends loved it.” And since that first board, Eitel hasn’t looked back. He’s been refining the process ever since, experimenting with different types of wood, painting styles, and hardware. He started making boards for friends, and in the last two years, he’s made more than 70 custom longboards.

When asked how he finds the time outside of his career and family obligations, Eitel explains that his passion for the work inspires him to make the time for it.

“I like to be on the go constantly and I delegate time to it, especially on the weekends,” he says. “If the sun is up, I’m out there [in the woodshop] cutting, sealing, and shaping boards.”

Right now, Eitel makes most of his boards for custom orders, but he’d love to branch out into local shops and to even establish his own storefront in the next 5-7 years. In part, Eitel says, this dream is the direct result of his education at UMBC.

“I’d always been infatuated with business and how to run one, but I never thought about how to start my own company,” admits Sam. “UMBC pushed me in that direction.”

“I really enjoy this,” says Eitel. “I can see myself doing this [making longboards] as long as I can ride them.”

Learn more about Roots Board Company.

Tanner Almon ’02 has a lot on his plate, and everybody knows it.

That’s because the visual arts alum runs multiple blogs and Tumblr feeds chronicling his life, his photography and poetry — and pretty much anything else that strikes his fancy. The Huffington Post interviewed the Brooklyn-based artist this week about “My Daily Journal Thing,” which literally lists a daily to-do list and accompanying drawings each day.

HuffPost Arts: You have a lot of different projects on your website, what are you most passionate about? Photography or film?

Almon: I don’t know anymore. Film is where I started (at least it’s what I went to school for), but once I graduated and had no money I started taking photos and I really like that now too. Tumblr’s cool because I realized I really like writing off the wall stories and poems about my photos, if you look at tannerblog.com. So I don’t know, I really just like telling the stories in my head, it doesn’t really matter anymore if it’s photo or video or just written in a journal.

Read the full story here.

While a student at UMBC, Hasina Jamal Stearns ’09, computer engineering, founded the publishing company Fred & Barrel, Inc.  Now, the company’s first book, Guy, a philosophical play by Cinna, is available in the UMBC bookstore. Stearns is the editor-in-chief and illustrator.

Guy—a hybrid novel, play, and movie script—tells the story of Guy, a tall handsome tennis player who thinks deeply about mankind and life. At least, he does in the first act. He would continue to ruminate about such things if he weren’t so swamped with homework and projects. He spends most of his time in an old children’s insane asylum, which is now being used as a studio and research center by architecture students. One day, he decides not to return to campus and instead opts let his whim take him to wherever he is destined.

Other UMBC alumni contributed to the book: Truc Nguyen ’07 helped connect Stearns to its designer; Andrew Shoenfeld ’07 took the cover and illustration photos; Tim Brosius ’08 created the website and Hariklia Karagiannis ’09 edited the website.

Stearns is currently a graduate student at American University studying producing for film and video. One of her inspirations for this course of study is this book, which she hopes to turn into a movie.

Another book that Stearns hopes to eventually publish was written Jamie C. Heard, a UMBC student who passed away in 2008. She is working with Issa Legall ’09 to make this a reality.

– Originally published on UMBC Insights

Steven Fischer ’98, visual and performing arts, a filmmaker profiled with several other director alumni in the September 2011 issue of UMBC Magazine, has been interviewed by the Lincolnshire Review.

Read the Q&A in the Lincolnshire Review here.

The two-time Emmy-nominated writer/producer and the creator of Steve & Bluey recently released a new documentary entitled “Old School New School” in which he interviews artists he respects about the nature of creativity and how to sustain a career in the arts.

In photo:  Fred Weil, videographer, Steve Fischer, director, Brian Cox, actor and Chris Cassey, director of photography for “Old School New School.” Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.