My name is Joe Denton, and I am a student of Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) here at the University of Texas at Dallas. My hobbies include photography, web design, and internet/mobile technologies, to be vague.

EMAC in a nutshell

The Emerging Media and Communication discipline is an extremely unique blend of web and mobile based technologies. Subject matter includes the study of social media, journalism in an online setting, web design and content creation, and mobile technologies and applications (to name a few.) What intrigued me most about the program when I first began study was the amount of enthusiasm the students had for the content being covered. I learned just as much from my peers in my first semester than I did from my professors.

This Blog

The purpose of this blog is to relay information about the EMAC program, and the UTDallas campus in general. Future posts will consist of things such as:

• Projects that students are working on
• Faculty interviews
• Campus events
• Campus information
• Student life afterhours

What would you like to see?

Is there anything specific you would like to learn about the EMAC program or the university? Let us know! Leave a comment, and we’ll try to incorporate it into the blog.

Placethings, a student created location based social media platform for mobile devices is a finalist in the Accelerator Competition at South by Southwest (SXSW), the world’s premier emerging technology event held each March in Austin. “Accelerator at SXSW searches coast to coast and across oceans for the next big thing in the tech business by the most ambitious talents in the world” Placethings competed with hundreds of other companies to become a finalist and will present at SXSW on March 15.

About Placethings: Placethings mobile media platform creates personal, shareable layers of media on top of real world locations, connecting places with “stories.” Tell people about your trip, guide them through a city, tell stories about where you’ve been, what happened, and what is important with video, pictures, sound, and beautiful, shareable maps. More about Placethings

Placethings was developed in EMAC’s MobileLab research group and was co-created by undergraduate ATEC student Nicholas Spencer and EMAC graduate student John Syrinek in collaboration with Professor Dean Terry. The project is a transdiciplinary and includes contributions from students in The School of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Management. The project is supported by the Office of Research and RIM, makers of Blackberry and has also been featured at Mobilize.

UT Dallas Ph.D. student Mona Kasra will be heading up a panel at this year’s SXSW Interactive. The panel, “2009 Iran Election: Women’s Revolution? Twitter Revolution?”, will discuss the role emerging media played in giving women, an often invisible part of Iranian society, a voice during this crucial time. Panelists will look at methods of women using social media, and the effects online activism may have on Iranian society and other marginalized groups.

Mona Kasra is a new media artist currently pursuing a PhD at UT Dallas with a focus on Emerging Media and Communication. Her research involves studying the effects of new media technologies on women’s social development in countries such as Iran. Also participating in the panel will be Roja Bandari, UCLA Ph.D. student and Iranian Women’s Rights activist, Dr. David Parry, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas, and Shireen Mitchel, Media/Tech Expert and founder of Digital Sisters/Sistas.

The panel is open to all ticket holders attending SXSW Interactive. You can find schedule updates on the SXSW website.