ALUMNAE/I ONLINE COMMUNITY TOPS 2,000 MEMBERS

Fifty-seven Bryn Mawr alumnae who work in the sciences have forged new connections recently. So have alumnae who are foster parents, former members of the Asian Students' Association, residents of Portland, Ore., members of the Class of 1960, snow-sports enthusiasts and knitters, among scores of other groups. They made the connections through Athena's Web, the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Association's new online alumnae/i community. Officially launched just a few days ago, Athena's Web already has more than 2,000 registered members.

Athena's Web is powered by inCircle, a product of Affinity Engines. The software allows users to identify networks of friends; join or create groups based on profession or industry, geographic location or interests; create profiles; post albums of photographs; search resumes; exchange messages; and create blogs — or post headlines from their already existing blogs. The site is password-protected and restricted to Bryn Mawr alumnae/i.

About three weeks before a general notice was e-mailed to all Bryn Mawr alumnae last Monday night, Kimberly Blessing '97, a professional Web developer who serves as the Alumnae Association's special representative for electronic communications, introduced the new community to about 150 people who attended the College's Alumnae Volunteer Weekend, Oct. 21-23. About 30 of the volunteers opted to attend a workshop in Guild Computing Center to orient themselves to the new virtual space. After registering, these alumnae sent messages to friends asking them to register as members, and the new community's growth exploded. Message boards were humming, invitations were flying through cyberspace, and more than 150 groups had been created by the community's official launch date of Nov. 15.

"The people at Affinity Engines were really floored by the response from Bryn Mawr," says Alumnae Association Senior Project Manager Sara Macro Forrest '92, who oversees the association's electronic-communications efforts. "I have heard amazingly resounding positive reactions from alumnae — they were clearly ready for this kind of tool."

Affinity Engines President and CEO Steve Loughlin says that the Bryn Mawr community is already "one of our top sites," even though Bryn Mawr is significantly smaller than most of the 35 colleges and universities using inCircle — a group that includes Dartmouth College, Drexel University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. "There are tons of photos, the message boards are alive, groups are multiplying — it's a vibrant community. The traffic is very high, and that's a testament to how close the relationships are at Bryn Mawr."

"We've been looking for several years for an easy, user-friendly way for people to post photographs and create an electronic network behind a password," Forrest says. "Some people want to share information with their friends and classmates, but they aren't comfortable posting personal information and photographs of their families on a public Web site that anybody can find through a Google search. InCircle gave us what we were looking for and a little more."

According to Loughlin, the site adheres to all the latest, strictest security standards. "It's very important that we create a secure, trusted environment," he says. "Our business depends on it." Loughlin says that the company hopes to introduce new features every three to six months, in response to comments from users.

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