How did we ever live without this place?

All right Aztecs, listen up! April 17th marks exactly six months since the grand opening of the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center, so I figure a report on our activities is in order.

People are asking, “Is the Parma Payne Goodall being utilized?”

You betcha!

131 events and 7,000 visitors in less than 6 months!

So what types of events have we been hosting here and how have they impacted our alumni and the campus? Let’s check out the highlight reel:

Our grand opening was fabulous as 600 people braved the 90-degree day and witnessed the dedication. A week later, we held our first business forum with the “Social Media Symposium” which drew 160 tweetering twitterers. November brought us some monster events including an alum’s retirement dinner for 200; a sold-out scholarship luncheon sponsored by Susan Weber’s BRIDGES group; a what-not-to-wear” seminar for students; the College Area Community Council; and our first sold-out event, the 5,000th Lifetime Member Celebration.

In December we just kept cranking up the heat with Alumni Chapter activities, Campanile Foundation events, a parade of Basketball pre-game receptions and dinners and luncheons with President Weber. January, February and March brought more of the same plus a high-tech, high-security community forum put on by our Homeland Security Department.

We’ve had highly-attended lectures by an Olympian and a mathematician. We’ve had retreats and seminars and corporate events and parties and celebrations of all kinds. Perhaps our biggest event was last month’s women’s basketball sweet 16 viewing party — our second such event in five days. These events showed how nimble and potent our alumni can be to quickly e-blast our constituents and produce satisfying, high-quality and fun events in the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center.

You know, during all those years we had to fine tune the articulation of the types of events we wanted to have in this building, we kept hearing similar refrains from the donors and the alumni community. The message was to keep this building dedicated and committed to serving the alumni public and the friends of SDSU. The theory is that when people who have a viable interest in the betterment of San Diego State come together from outside the campus and mix and mingle with those of us like-minded insiders, significant things accrue. So far, the mixing and mingling has occurred. In my next report I will tell you about the accruing of significant impacts!