The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

40 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS I don’t tweet. I don’t blog. I don’t have a personal Web page. My Facebook activity is limited to reading posts by family and friends. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, since I want to keep a low online profile. Everything, since as a member of AFSA’s Governing Board, I want to do as much as I can to raise the profile of AFSA and increase public awareness of the role of the Foreign Service. One of the best, easiest and most cost effective ways to promote AFSA, protect the hard won benefits that we retirees enjoy, and sup- port our colleagues who are still on active duty, is to use social media to reach out beyond our circle of friends and family (who probably already know and support the Foreign Service). Some AFSA members include a shout-out for the Foreign Service in the annual holiday newsletter that falls out of their card. Others write letters to the editor or the occasional column for local print media, or serve as an expert com- mentator for a local TV or radio station. Some AFSA members maintain an active online presence through blogs, Web sites and their Facebook page (for those members who are already e-active, please skip to the last para- graph; for those members who are not, please consider RETIREE VP VOICE | BY MEG GILROY AFSA NEWS Views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the AFSA Retiree VP. reading the next three para- graphs). What exactly is social media? Basically, it is using technology to exchange ideas with other people who are using the same technol- ogy. Kind of like a virtual town square or coffee shop (without the aroma or the calories), where you can chat and exchange information with others who may be six times zones away. The main costs are the initial investment in a com- puter (or laptop or netbook), a tablet (like iPad) or a smart phone, and however much time you want to spend creating content to post and reading other people’s posts. No fee is required to sign up for social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter (not an endorsement of either site, just using them as an example). What if you don’t want to spend your time “creating content?” No problem. Most social media sites make it incredibly easy for non-tech people to link from the user’s page to another page that might be information-rich. In a few easy steps, you can make your page a gate- way to www.afsa.org, wh ich has excellent information on what the Foreign Service is and why it’s important. You can also link to AFSA’s other online presences on Facebook (www.facebook. com/afsapage), Tw itter (www.twitter.com/afsat- weets) and YouTube (www. youtube.com/afsatube). Whether you choose to promote AFSA virtually or actually, thank you for your support of AFSA and the Foreign Service. n To Blog or Not to Blog? Kind of like a virtual town square or coffee shop (without the aroma or the calories), where you can chat and exchange information with others who may be six times zones away. AFSA Welcomes New Interns Our spring semester interns have arrived, and are already hard at work on behalf of our members. We want to take this opportunity to formally welcome them to AFSA. Jennifer Lowry is the Communications, Marketing and Outreach Intern. She is a senior communications major at the University of California, Santa Bar- bara, and has just recently returned from a semester abroad in Italy. The new Foreign Service Journal Editorial Intern is Jeff Richards, a senior international affairs major at The George Washington University’s Elliott School. Our new Advertising Intern is Andreas Dorner, who hails from Germany and is a student at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem, Netherlands. Catherine Fernandez, our new Scholarships Intern. She comes from Miami and attends Florida International University, majoring in religious studies. Finally, our Execu- tive Office intern is Lucas Rogers, a freshman international affairs major at The George Washington University’s Elliott School. We thank our departing group of interns—Jonathan Yuan, Emily Hawley and Edward Hardrianto Kurniawan—and wish them the best in their future endeav- ors. NEWS BRIEF