“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.” --Thomas Jefferson
I’ve done a lot of web projects in the past. I’ve set up sites for friends, businesses, and other interests. I actually do this as a hobby to keep my skills in check. I don’t actively seek work, and it seems that every time I feel like doing a project, it falls into my lap. How lucky is that?
As graduation nears, I began looking for an ‘official’ Kaplan University alumni site. Much to my dismay, I didn’t find one. I am pretty good at searching for things, and I might have missed something. However, I am pretty confident that I did not. What I did find was certain groups or communities on social networking sites like Facebook that have Kaplan grads in them. But that’s not exactly what I was looking for.
In an effort to get a jump on things in case the opportunity presented itself, I registered the domain names of kaplanalumni.com, kaplanalumni.net, kaplanalumni.info, and kaplanalumni.org. I started building a content-oriented site based on Joomla and Wordpress, but had to put that aside and think the project through.
In an effort to get some information on any existing site I might have missed, or to get some feedback from the people at Kaplan, I sent an e-mail to the alumni staff at Kaplan, but I have not heard anything from them. It’s been a few weeks now, and I would have expected to hear something.
I would like to get the site launched. My only goal is to provide a central location where Kaplan grads and current students can network, share information, etc… I was hoping that I could enlist some help from the school in terms of communication with grads and current students. The main problem I have is that the Internet is a vast monster of a network, and finding people who are interested and/or qualified to take part in the site would be a colossal task to say the least.
I know that one of the main selling points of a college is the network they provide. They work to keep students together after graduation. This allows people to find jobs, organize ventures, and generally stay in touch with each other. The possibilities are limitless when something like this comes together. I am not even sure if anyone has thought of deploying such a site.
I am hoping that someone from Kaplan will read this and get back to me. It is a project that I am interested in running. If I do not hear from Kaplan, I might set up an ‘unofficial’ site that is not affiliated with Kaplan in any way. I know that’s been done before. It might be harder to get off the ground, but could be worth it in the long run.