This is just a small update, but I thought some people might like to know about it. Currently if you've ever tried to space out or align text using either the tab key or multiple spaces, it hasn't worked. This is partially because in HTML there really isn't any built in way to use tabs correctly for formatting. I've added an update to the site that should fix, or at least help with, this issue. You should now be able to use either the tab key or multiple spaces to position things in text boxes and it will show up on your website as well.

It was definitely great to see some old friends as well as getting to meet some remarkable new folks too at our Two Year Anniversary Party on August 21 (205 RSVP’s!). It always AMAZES us the exceptionally genuine people we’ve been privileged to meet over time through the Conjunctured community of friends and supporters. So, thanks for the amazement! Also, with your help, we were even able to raise some money for an East Austin classroom. A word about our kickass sponsors… We’d love for all our parties to be as great as this one, but can’t do it without generous sponsors. Please let our food and drink sponsors know you appreciated their goodness by interacting with them on Twitter & Facebook: Tito’s Handmade Vodka - @titosvodka, fb fanpage East End Wines - @eastendwines, fb fanpage KIND Snack Bars - @kindsnacks, fb fanpage Sweet Leaf Tea - @sweetleaf, fb fanpage The Green Cart - @thegreencart, fb fanpage

In case you missed the party, or simply to refresh your mind, here’s some highlights from the night: Video time lapse - can you spot who spends the most time at the bar? ;)

Credit: Conjunctured Two Year Anniversary Party from Nick Simonite on Vimeo. Live Art throughout the night There was a team of artists set up in the back doing randomly inspired pieces of artwork. Each were improvisational, and some even were based on a MadLibs-esque suggestion system. Special thanks to Zach Taylor for organizing the artists and helping to create some unique visuals

Good eating Special thanks to Green Cart, West End Bistro, and KIND Snack Bars.

Good drinking Special thanks to Tito’s Vodka, East End Wines, Sweet Leaf Tea & of course Mando and Sharlee (bartenders extraordinare!)

Music by Andrei Matei

Chatting it up in the back We turned our back parking lot into extra space for the party. Some christmas lights go a long way! This was the first time we’ve opened up the back for a party, and it turned out great! We had the music from inside piped to the back too.

Chatting it up in the front A number of us were hanging out on the picnic tables or on the front porch enjoying the nice cool breeze.

Chatting it up inside Nothing beats a lil a/c and good people

More Photos: Flickr Photos:

http://www.flickr.com

conjunctured’s Conjunctured’s 2 Year Anniversary Party photoset

Conjunctured Party Facebook Photo Album - Feel free to tag yourself! Conjunctured Party photos on TwitC - The founder of TwitC stopped by and took a bunch of photos too. Check ‘em out! Drawings by Honoria Starbuck - did you get drawn and eavesdropped on by our live sketch artist guest? Take a look and see!

Apple recently released a new version of iTunes and people all over the internet are really hating on the new icon. It's become a new game to see who can come up with a better one. I don't normally get into these sort of things, but I couldn't resist this one. Here's my entry for how the new icon should have looked...as opposed to this...

We recently added a feature that allows you to integrate Google AdSense directly into your website. You can easily drop Goolge AdSense ads onto any page on your website by using the new AdSense web block. You can find this block in the "widgets" section in the page editor.AdSense is a very easy way to monetize your website and all you'll need is a Google AdSense account to get started. If you don't have one, you can set one up directly in SnapPages. To setup your account or link to an existing account you can either try to add a Google AdSense web block to one of your pages and you'll be prompted to setup your account, or you can go into the setting tab on the home screen and look under the "plug-ins" section for the Google AdSense settings.Once the account is setup you can place both text and image ads anywhere on your web pages. When users click on these ads a portion of the profits will go directly to your Google AdSense account. It's that easy. Use the link below to learn more about Google AdSense:Learn More about Google AdSense >

As our campus partners welcome back their students and kick off the fall semester, the OrgSync Client Services team is in full gear traveling all over the country to visit more than 40 campuses for on-site trainings. This summer, we worked closely with the campus administrators and now it’s time to launch OrgSync to the student leaders! Last week, our team visited Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem State University, Grant MacEwan University (Canada), Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy, and Penn State Altoona. At Winston-Salem State University, OrgSync RockStar Vivian Spencer created OrgSync t-shirts to hand out at trainings. Check out the Student Engagement staff in their t-shirts below (bottom right)! Wake Forest has re-branded OrgSync as “WakeSync” and there are magnets all over campus with the logo. This week, we’ll be at Texas Christian University, Ferris State University, East Carolina University, Wichita State University, Washtenaw Community College, and Colorado State University-Pueblo. Our campus partners have been doing an EXCELLENT job marketing OrgSync to their students and getting the buzz going and we love seeing the results of their hard work when we arrive on campus. We are excited to see what this week’s campuses have in store for us!

Mr. K.'s Classroom On our 2 year anniversary party RSVP Eventbrite invitation we asked generous party attendees to contribute money to East Austin Schools. We are thrilled to have raised $85 via this casual request for donations. To top it off some, Conjunctured is going to pitch in an additional $25 to the cause. What is the cause exactly? Mr. K.’s mathematics class at “Austin Can! Academy” a school for at-risk students, located 5 minutes away from Conjunctured, needs color and black ink cartridges for their classroom printouts. We’ve donated the $110 in donations we raised from the party and want you to take this project on home. If you have not already donated or would like to donate more, please go to Donors Choose right now and donate a small amount of money to this cause. If money is tight, please use their social media links on the page to promote the cause. Thanks again to everyone who came out to celebrate our 2 year anniversary and very special thanks to everyone who donated!

Wesley Campbell, also known as Weswog to fellow members of the GameSalad community, is a 13 year-old game developer. Recently, Wesley was invited as a guest on The SOS Computer Talk Show on 860AM WGUL, a Tampa Bay talk radio station. Download the podcast HERE. Wesley’s segment begins around the 28:42 mark. Like we said, Wesley is 13 and makes video games. And we’re not talking about making some flash games he shares with his buds after school. Wesley uses GameSalad to build games for iOS devices, and he sells them in Apple’s App Store. In short, Wesley is a 13 year-old entrepreneur, and he’s good at it. Wesley gives a pretty amazing interview and, we believe, will now be a regular contributor to the program, offering his take on the must-have apps new to the App Store. Congrats, Weswog on the radio gig! It’s always great to see a community member get noticed.

We've had a lot of reports in the past day or so about photos not appearing on web pages or blog posts. This seems to only have affected new pages/posts created within the last few days. I believe I've tracked down the problem and fixed it but you might need to resave your page/post before the images appear correctly on your site.If anyone else has any additional issues please be sure to report them to the help desk as well as we are doing our best to address them as quickly as possible.

Over the weekend I released a small update on the site that will now detect whether or not a visitor has flash installed, and display a different slideshow accordingly. If they don't have flash ( because they have an iPhone/iPad and Apple hate's Adobe), they will now see a much simpler full html/javascript slideshow, and if they do have flash (everyone else) they will see the normal fancier slideshow.The album links that show up next to the slideshow on the gallery pages are now completely in html for everyone. The reason I didn't leave these in flash at all was because they really didn't need to be since I could do all the same stuff with javascript. If you are a non-technical person you probably don't care about all this and have just read blah blah blah iPhone. So the main point is that the slideshows will now display your photos on both the iPhone and the iPad.

This is a guest post from new featured artist on display at Conjunctured, Lavanna Martin, who was featured in the Austin American Statesman, Artist devoted to ‘guerrilla’ coffee shop portraits.

I started painting “live” in coffee houses in Austin in the spring of 2008. I had thought about doing it for years, and had always drawn people with my mind’s eye in public. After almost a year of terrible stagnation in the studio, I began formulating my first attempts at “live” painting. I chose the coffee houses because I knew that the bohemian “anything goes” attitude would afford me the comfort and cover that I required. (I had worked at the legendary, original coffeehouse, Les Amis, profiled in the movie, “Slacker”). The first day, I set out for Epoch Coffee, the 24-hour hipster hang-out closest to my house, and painted until time to pick up my daughter from school. I went back that evening. I was hooked. The first day, I did 9 paintings. I was in my element. By August, I ran into another former Les Amis waitress at the Spider House. She got a kick out of what I was doing, and told me to start a blog. I didn’t know the difference between a blog and a website, and didn’t have a clue how to begin. While researching places to practice my “guerrilla painting” (a moniker given to me by local graffiti artists that thought I was their age), I found out about Cafe Caffeine, and the “jelly”, originally started by the Conjunctured boys. Well, I went there, hoping that they could hep me start a blog. From there, I followed the trail over to their new location on East 7th. David Walker helped me set up my blog “I Stare At People” on Wordpress, . Since that time, the blog has grown “organically” to a Page 4 ranking - pretty shocking for just a local art blog. I’m still doing it - painting live. I keep a record of everything that I paint. At first, by journal entries pasted on the backs of the paintings, and now, my blog serves this purpose. I even record my color palette for every painting. The paintings are all live, with no touch-up or re-dos in the studio. I would really like to branch out of the coffee house to do “guerrilla painting” anywhere. In the past, I have refused to sell them, or give them away. I’m rethinking that. —————————— If you’d like to come view Lavanna’s artwork at Conjunctured, swing on by 1309 E. 7th Street M-F 9a-6pm.

Last year, Gendai Games brought GameSalad to SXSW and was a huge success. In fact, it went over so well, we’re currently being considered for TWO possible panels at SXSW 2011. And, guess what? YOU can have a say! Right now, you can vote at SXSW Panel Picker. You’ll need to create a login, but once you do, you can submit your vote for what panel you’d most like to see at SXSW 2011. One is on games as communication and a means for people to artistically express themselves. The other is about the day to day operation of GameSalad. This is your chance to put the Gendai team on the stage and give yourself the opportunity to ask us the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. No more waiting around for a ‘yellow post’; this is your chance to make us sweat under the lights and put us on the spot. For more info on the two panels we’ve submitted, check out the details below: Games: Tools for Mass Communication Art, education, economics, propaganda. Games are arriving at the forefront of media to become an important way to engage entire generations of people. What’s different from before? Five billion people are replacing the most common communication device, the simple cell phone, with a full-fledged gaming system in their pocket. There are multiple ways to publish and distribute games over the Internet and to the masses. For many, game creation is becoming a regular activity, as tools become both easier to use and more powerful for people without programming knowledge. This panel will cover unique perspectives on how games are becoming more meaningful forms of expression and a significant tool for communicating ideas. Behind the Scenes: GameSalad Games are a form of communication like literature, music, and art. Just like all those forms of communication, you must be literate in the form to participate in the conversation. Right now, there is a great wall dividing the few who can fully participate and the millions on the other side who would like to be part of the discussion. That great wall is Coding Knowledge. Right now, in order to make a game, you have to code. Until that wall is breached, the act of game creation will remain as a privilege for a limited few. For hundred of years, the ability for printing was restricted to those who could work a printing press. As access to the process of printing expanded, literacy likewise expanded, and human communication soared to a new level. And so the question remains: how do we teach people to use the world’s newest printing press – the tools of game creation? Promising “game creation for the rest of us” is no short order. Delivering on that promise is even more of a feat. How does one company bring the complex behaviors and mathematical formulations involved in game creation to everyday users? Over the course of this panel, the team behind GameSalad will show how they are bringing more than the tools of game design to creative professionals the world over, they’ll show how by eliminating the need for coding knowledge from game creation they have opened the door to a whole new form of human communication to millions all across the globe. Voting is open now and closes at midnight on Friday, August 27th, 2010. VOTE NOW!

We here at GameSalad didn’t get the chance to attend QuakeCon this year, despite its relatively close location some 3 hours up I-35 from the Gendai offices in Austin. We did, however, get to read some incredible accounts of what people in attendance got to see. Of course, what got us all excited was John Carmack of id Software showcasing their Rage playing on an iPhone. An iPhone 4. At 60 frames-per-second. Awesome. But what really caught our attention — even beyond coolness of Rage on an iPhone — was Carmack response to questions about porting to Android phones. According to an article at CrunchGear, Carmack will “continue focusing on iOS devices for now”. There seem to be two reasons for the choice of iOS over Android. First, people just send more money of the App Store than in the Android market. Also, Apple iOS doesn’t have near the same level of fragmentation present in Android OS versions and devices etc. When you put it together, you have a pretty clear choice for developers: develop for fewer targets in a more profitable market, or spend more resources developing for more targets for less money. Makes sense, no? Mahalo. SOURCE: CrunchGear.com: QuakeCon: Carmack Has Rage Running At 60 Frames Per Second On The iPhone. Whoa.

Ever since Bumps from Utopian Games (and built using GameSalad) debuted on the App Store on August 5th, it has been picking up momentum like a snowball rolling downhill. In the two weeks since its release, the adorable puzzle/strategy title has skyrocketed up to #18 in all paid games on the iPhone and #30 in overall paid apps! That is absolutely incredible and a testament to the fantastic design by Utopian Games. In the game, “aliens have imprisoned the cute bubbly-eyed bumps, and it’s up to you to rescue them!” Bumps features 54 levels of fun, colorful physics puzzles and is more than worth the current price of $0.99. Official word from Bumps creator Utopian Games is that update 1.1 is on the way soon, and should include an additional 9 levels of awesome! On behalf of the GameSalad team, we can’t wait for the new levels and especially can’t wait to see what Utopian Games have coming up next. They are definitely development house worth following. Congrats, Utopian Games, on a marvelous game and wondrous success on the App Store. Well deserved! TITLE: Bumps PLATFORM: Apple iPhone RELEASE DATE: Available Now Bumps is available for the iPad right now on the iTunes App Store. Check it out now!

The new Photos app is finally here and it's live on the site for everyone to enjoy. The Photos app is one of our most popular tools but it was in need of a serious update because it was almost 3 years old and we've had a lot of requests for new features over the year. I've tried to incorporate as many of your suggestions and wishlist items as I could.There are so many new features in this app that it's hard to know where to begin. The most obvious features you'll notice right off the back is the integration with other social networking sites that we've added directly into the app, but the more you use the app the more you'll see that just about everything in the app has been greatly improved. 3rd Party IntegrationNow if you have photos stored on Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa, you can import them directly into your SnapPages photo library by easily dragging and dropping the photos from one album to another. When you connect with one of these 3rd party sites, all your albums from the other site will show up right alongside your SnapPages album. You can click on the albums and view the photos directly from the Photos app, and even drag them to and from the albums to import them to SnapPages or export them back out to the 3rd party site. Yes, it's as easy as it sounds! Improved Photo EditingThe new Photos app comes with completely new photo editing features so that you can crop, adjust, and enhance your photos all online. This gives you all the power of professional photo editing software right on SnapPages. We've even include a new red-eye removal tool and a "save-as" feature so you can save a copy of your edited photo while keeping the original.And Much More...Faster - Everything about this app is faster from imports to editsImproved photo importsUpload GIF and PNG images to use on your siteSeparate library for "graphics" so buttons and icons don't mix with photosPreview photos in the new 3D photo wallReorder album photos from the main library windowImproved tagging engineOptimized thumbnail zooming in libraryRedesigned UI to fit with other appsPhoto edits now apply to source imagesSimpler album creationand more...

Last year, Gendai Games brought GameSalad to SXSW and was a huge success. In fact, it went over so well, we’re currently being considered for TWO possible panels at SXSW 2011. And, guess what? YOU can have a say! Right now, you can vote at SXSW Panel Picker. You’ll need to create a login, but once you do, you can submit your vote for what panel you’d most like to see at SXSW 2011. One is on games as communication and a means for people to artistically express themselves. The other is about the day to day operation of GameSalad. This is your chance to put the Gendai team on the stage and give yourself the opportunity to ask us the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. No more waiting around for a ‘yellow post’; this is your chance to make us sweat under the lights and put us on the spot. For more info on the two panels we’ve submitted, check out the details below: Games: Tools for Mass Communication Art, education, economics, propaganda. Games are arriving at the forefront of media to become an important way to engage entire generations of people. What’s different from before? Five billion people are replacing the most common communication device, the simple cell phone, with a full-fledged gaming system in their pocket. There are multiple ways to publish and distribute games over the Internet and to the masses. For many, game creation is becoming a regular activity, as tools become both easier to use and more powerful for people without programming knowledge. This panel will cover unique perspectives on how games are becoming more meaningful forms of expression and a significant tool for communicating ideas. Behind the Scenes: GameSalad Games are a form of communication like literature, music, and art. Just like all those forms of communication, you must be literate in the form to participate in the conversation. Right now, there is a great wall dividing the few who can fully participate and the millions on the other side who would like to be part of the discussion. That great wall is Coding Knowledge. Right now, in order to make a game, you have to code. Until that wall is breached, the act of game creation will remain as a privilege for a limited few. For hundred of years, the ability for printing was restricted to those who could work a printing press. As access to the process of printing expanded, literacy likewise expanded, and human communication soared to a new level. And so the question remains: how do we teach people to use the world’s newest printing press – the tools of game creation? Promising “game creation for the rest of us” is no short order. Delivering on that promise is even more of a feat. How does one company bring the complex behaviors and mathematical formulations involved in game creation to everyday users? Over the course of this panel, the team behind GameSalad will show how they are bringing more than the tools of game design to creative professionals the world over, they’ll show how by eliminating the need for coding knowledge from game creation they have opened the door to a whole new form of human communication to millions all across the globe. Voting is open now and closes at midnight on Friday, August 27th, 2010. VOTE NOW!

New to the App Store this week is Vampire Surgeon HD for Apple’s iPad. The game features skilled drag & drop gameplay combined with stunningly beautiful artwork. Vampire Surgeon HD was developed and released by D7 Studios and built entirely within the GameSalad creation tool. In Vampire Surgeon, you have the choice of playing as either Dr. Vlad von Vinderschplatz or his beautiful wife Dr. Diva von Vinderschplatz – both vampires, both surgeons, both awesome to the power of awesome. The happily married vampire couple serve at the mercy of Dr. Van Helsing, a renowned monster hater. With you as the von Vinderschplatz of your choice, the evil Van Helsing forces you to perform a series of surgeries on various “test subjects”. You’ll need fast thinking and even faster fingers to master the use of your forceps, stitches, scalpel and medicine in order to stave off disaster. D7 has built a gorgeous game with top notch touch controls. The game features a brilliant balance of style, humor, stakes, and fun. At $2.99, the game is more than worth the purchase. According to D7, the game was built by only 3 people and went from idea to product in only 8 weeks. Amazing work, by any standards. D7 Studios also has a slew of other titles due out in the coming months, and if Vampire Surgeon can be taken as a sign of their talent, they have a great chance at becoming one of the premiere development studios for iOS games. TITLE: Vampire Surgeon HD PLATFORM: Apple iPad RATING: 5 Stars RELEASE DATE: Available Now Vampire Surgeon HD is available for the iPad right now on the iTunes App Store. Check it out now!

Last year, Gendai Games brought GameSalad to SXSW and was a huge success. In fact, it went over so well, we’re currently being considered for TWO possible panels at SXSW 2011. And, guess what? YOU can have a say! Right now, you can vote at SXSW Panel Picker. You’ll need to create a login, but once you do, you can submit your vote for what panel you’d most like to see at SXSW 2011. One is on games as communication and a means for people to artistically express themselves. The other is about the day to day operation of GameSalad. This is your chance to put the Gendai team on the stage and give yourself the opportunity to ask us the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. No more waiting around for a ‘yellow post’; this is your chance to make us sweat under the lights and put us on the spot. For more info on the two panels we’ve submitted, check out the details below: Games: Tools for Mass Communication Art, education, economics, propaganda. Games are arriving at the forefront of media to become an important way to engage entire generations of people. What’s different from before? Five billion people are replacing the most common communication device, the simple cell phone, with a full-fledged gaming system in their pocket. There are multiple ways to publish and distribute games over the Internet and to the masses. For many, game creation is becoming a regular activity, as tools become both easier to use and more powerful for people without programming knowledge. This panel will cover unique perspectives on how games are becoming more meaningful forms of expression and a significant tool for communicating ideas. Behind the Scenes: GameSalad Games are a form of communication like literature, music, and art. Just like all those forms of communication, you must be literate in the form to participate in the conversation. Right now, there is a great wall dividing the few who can fully participate and the millions on the other side who would like to be part of the discussion. That great wall is Coding Knowledge. Right now, in order to make a game, you have to code. Until that wall is breached, the act of game creation will remain as a privilege for a limited few. For hundred of years, the ability for printing was restricted to those who could work a printing press. As access to the process of printing expanded, literacy likewise expanded, and human communication soared to a new level. And so the question remains: how do we teach people to use the world’s newest printing press – the tools of game creation? Promising “game creation for the rest of us” is no short order. Delivering on that promise is even more of a feat. How does one company bring the complex behaviors and mathematical formulations involved in game creation to everyday users? Over the course of this panel, the team behind GameSalad will show how they are bringing more than the tools of game design to creative professionals the world over, they’ll show how by eliminating the need for coding knowledge from game creation they have opened the door to a whole new form of human communication to millions all across the globe. Voting is open now and closes at midnight on Friday, August 27th, 2010. VOTE NOW!

Vote for “Games: Tools for Mass Communication” Vote for “Behind the Scenes: GameSalad”

A Conversation about Diversity with Carlos E. Cortés Professor Emeritus of History – University of California, Riverside carlos.cortes@ucr.edu Let’s talk about Limits.

On June 28, 2010, in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the U. S. Supreme Court voted 5-to-4 to uphold the right of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law to deny official recognition to a student organization, the Christian Legal Society (CLS). Hastings’ action had barred CLS from access to state funding and use of school facilities. Albert Einstein recommended, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  So here’s the issue in a simple non-lawyer’s nut-shell. Hastings has a nondiscrimination code for student organizations.  The national Christian Legal Society requires members to sign an agreement to refrain from “a sexually immoral lifestyle,” which includes having sex outside of heterosexual marriage.  The upshot is that this requirement excludes gays and lesbians, ergo discrimination.  When Hastings refused to recognize the local CLS chapter, the organization took Hastings to court. The Supreme Court could have ruled in favor of the CLS’ right of free association.  Or it could have ruled in favor of Hastings’ written nondiscrimination policy.  It did neither.  Rather it punted, which is why the ruling’s fall-out may go on and on and on. Instead the Court ruled in favor of Hastings on much narrower grounds –- that it had an “all-comers” policy, meaning that recognized student organizations had to accept all students who wanted to join, which CLS was not willing to do.  To the court majority, this policy was OK because it was “viewpoint neutral.” Principles in Collision

I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t comment on the legal issues involved.  Obviously they are complex enough to provoke deep division within the court. But as a diversity specialist, I find this case to be extremely significant precisely because it pits hallowed diversity principles against each other.  And it exposes a slippery-slope topic studiously avoided in many diversity discussions –- the issue of when, how, and why to set Limits . . . to almost any diversity principle. I’ve been addressing the Limits Dilemma for two decades in my diversity talks and workshops.  Yet it’s also something that I find many diversity advocates unwilling to face head on. Things were simple back in the good old days of the Civil Rights Movement.  Our moral compass was clear.  Eliminate racism.  Down with sexism.  End segregation.  Simple enough. But over the decades, diversity stuff has become more complicated, particularly when diversity principles collide.  The Greek philosopher, Epictetus, argued that you must go beyond developing a moral compass.  You also need to learn how to apply that compass to the map of the world, with its messy complexities. Consider some of the general principles espoused by diversity proponents like me, principles that collided in the Hastings-CLS situation:

support for full inclusion. opposition to discrimination. the richness of multiculturalism, including the right –- even the benefit –- of people creating and maintaining affinity groups based on common identities. respect for groups with varied sets of beliefs and values, sometimes referred to as cultures. the importance of multi-perspectivism, such as learning to understand (not necessarily accept or tolerate) the perspectives of others, including group perspectives with which you may deeply disagree. the need to be responsive to group differences, not just individual ones, rather than championing one-size-fits-all “solutions.”

The Limits Dilemma

Because these principles clashed in the Hastings-CLS case, whatever the Court did, its decision would have inevitably set Limits by elevating some diversity principles over others in this specific instance.  Most post-decision reactions, however, have tended to gloss over this dilemma. Backers of the decision tend to laud the Court’s support for Hastings’ “neutral” all-comers position, even as some rued the Court’s unwillingness to address the written nondiscrimination code.  This reminds me of Mark Twain’s comment, when talking to a friend who claimed that he was “neutral” on a controversial issue.  Responded Twain, “Then whom are you neutral against?”  The Supreme Court supported neutrality against the Christian Legal Society, a victory for “one size fits all.” In contrast, some opponents have framed the Hastings decision as the approval of a secular institution that was stomping on people of faith.  Wait a minute!  People of faith didn’t form a united front on this case.  For example, while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Orthodox Jewish organizations supported the CLS, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Reform Jewish organizations supported Hastings.  Absent some tortuous logic that manages to exclude Jesuits and Reform Jews from people of faith, that framing doesn’t hunt. So the Hastings-CLS case involves competing diversity imperatives: anti-discrimination vs. respect for cultural differences; full inclusion vs. support for affinity groups.  Platitudes and moral pieties won’t help us engage the complex ethical challenges that arise when diversity principles clash and force us –- as institutions and as individuals –- to determine organizational and personal Limits. Challenges for Student Affairs

Here are a few considerations for Student Affairs professionals.

The Court’s decision was narrow, particularly its refusal to rule on Hastings’ more-elaborated written nondiscrimination policy, including the Limits it placed on individual organizations.  This means that we’ll have to await future nondiscrimination code cases, some of which are already coming down the pike. An “all-comers” policy might “work” in a law school, but it’s trickier at the undergraduate level where, for example, fraternities and sororities select their members.  What about a women’s choral society or a Muslim student association or a sports club for those with disabilities? Some campuses might wish to form work groups involving Student Affairs professionals, diversity experts, and legal counsel to conduct an ongoing review of current practices and written policies, while also discussing their future implications and possible unintended consequences, including the Limits Dilemma. When discussing complex diversity issues, we all need to be wary of holier-than-thou posturing.  That also means refraining from demonizing people with whom we disagree and positions which we oppose.

Student Affairs professionals are going to need to strengthen their analytical “multicultural muscles” –- their ability to think through and make tough decisions in situations where laudable diversity principles collide.  Traditional awareness training, multicultural abstractions, and rhetoric about privilege and social justice won’t suffice.  We need a new generation of applied diversity training that helps professionals address the Limits Dilemma by testing conflicting diversity principles through complex real-world issues. So let’s thank Hastings, the Christian Legal Society, and the Supreme Court for, however unintentionally, bringing us to this important multicultural crossroads.  Let’s also hope it leads to more nuanced, less strident, diversity discussions. I’d like to hear your thoughts about this case and about Limits.

Just another quick update on the new Photos app that we are working on. In addition to the Facebook and Flickr integration we added last week, you can now also import and export your photos to and from Picasa web albums. All of this is done by simply dragging and dropping photos from your Picasa albums to your SnapPages ones. You can also drag them from Picasa directly into Facebook or Flickr as well. This makes it truly easy for you to manage all your photos from one central location. Again this is still a beta product and we haven't fully released it, but if you want to try it out just log into your SnapPages account and then go to:http://snappages.com/apps/photos

OrgSync just returned from its first Campus Technology conference in Boston, MA. The conference was a great chance for OrgSync to meet with IT professionals from across the country. The buzz around Campus Technology was all about ePortfolios and finding new ways to integrate the latest technologies into campuses. The conference offered our team a great opportunity to unveil our new Budget Management System which enables colleges and universities to manage organizations’ budgets, funding, and payment requests. We were also excited to show off our new design for our upcoming ePortfolio that we partnered with the University of Wisconsin system to create after receiving a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The feedback we received was very positive and we look forward to continuing to showing other campuses what we are currently working on. If you are interested in learning more about our ePortfolios or Budget Management System, please email Cayce Stone (cayce@orgsync.com) or visit our website at http://www.orgsync.com.