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The Homecoming Way
A roundup of 71 North updates
71 NORTH
October 15, 2024
Only Huskies in the Building
It's Homecoming Week at NIU, and we're celebrating in style at 71 North! This year, we're decking out one of our garage doors with the theme "Only Huskies in the Building"—a fun, creative nod to the popular Hulu show. Led by Anna and Lynn, our cardstock-based decoration is a tribute to our huskies at home, with each window showcasing our community spirit and the exciting programming happening here at the studio.
Homecoming-themed window - Only Huskies in the Building
This week is packed with creativity, collaboration, and homecoming spirit. Whether coding with Julia, crafting innovative solutions for RHoK, or enjoying the festive decorations, there's something for everyone. Let's celebrate our Huskie pride, make an impact, and continue to push forward with new ideas and connections.
Go Huskies!
Startup Standup – Hackathon meets Improv
Startup Standup is a one-of-a-kind event that blends the worlds of improvisation, storytelling, pitching, product development, and comedy to create a unique and engaging experience for participants. The event highlight is the participants' showcase, where the spirit of a hackathon meets the excitement of improv comedy. In this competition-like scenario, participating teams are given random innovation elements to create a fictional product and then pitch it in a fun and entertaining way.
🗓 Event Date: Saturday, October 26 ⏰ Time: 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM 📍 Location: 71 North Partnership Studio Register and bring a friend: https://cglink.me/2sZ/r408288 Approved for Honors Engaged and Business Passport credits. |  |
RHoK NIU part 2: A Random Act of Kindness for Huskie Closet!
In collaboration with The Center for Nonprofit and NGO Studies, we're hosting a two-part Random Hack of Kindness (RHoK) event aimed at tackling the unique challenges faced by NIU's Huskie Closet.
 | 🗓 Event Dates: 10/17/2024 ⏰ Time: 3:30 PM – 6:30 PM 📍 Location: 71 North Partnership Studio Sign up: https://rhockniu.github.io RHok NIU is Business Passport and Honors Engaged approved! |
How It Works:
This two-part event, held over two three-hour sessions, allows participants to fully immerse themselves in the Huskie Closet environment, understand the challenges firsthand, and work collaboratively on thoughtful solutions. It is a way to give back and make a lasting difference for the NIU community.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
This Week at 71 North
Tuesday:
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM: Office Hour with Richard Mocarski - Join us for an informal office hour with NIU’s Vice President of Research, Richard Mocarski. Bring your lunch and take a seat at the Ingenious bar to meet and greet our new leader.
1:00 PM: NCSSC 24-25 Case Study Competition Team - Dr. Chung meets with the team for a deep dive into the upcoming case study competition.
2:00 PM: Agile Espresso - Enjoy coffee and conversations about Agile practices.
5:00 PM to 6:30 PM: Tech Taco Tuesday! - This week, our Tech Tacos champion is a new entry: Dr. Krislock, who will introduce us to the Julia programming language. Afterward, we’ll walk over to La Salsa for tacos. Tech Tacos are Business Passport and Honors Engaged approved!
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Huskie Hackers - Prep for the Imagine Cup by Microsoft
Unlock your startup’s potential with the Imagine Cup – the premier global technology startup competition for student founders using AI technologies on the Microsoft Cloud. Compete for the grand prize of USD 100,000 and participate in a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
Wednesday:
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM: Sport Management Innovation Lab with Dr. Chung and Dr. Ishaq.
Huge shoutout to these NIU Sport Management rockstars for volunteering for the Chicago Marathon! Volunteers assisted in the Runner Refresh Exit area and were in the presence of a women’s marathon world record performance!
12:00 PM to 2:00 PM: VR Sampler in the Opportunity Zone - Sample a VR experience and connect with Adam in “real reality.” Everyone’s welcome to explore!
1:00 PM to 2:00 PM: Caffe’ Italiano - Federico Bassetti & Biagio Palese.
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM: The Gateway Podcast - by Dr. Amin Vahedian, Dr. Biagio Palese + Russell Devereaux
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM: NIU Makers Club - Where creativity meets craft. The club is a hands-on experience that promises fun and learning in equal measure.
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM: CAUSE Social Entrepreneurship - Engage in meaningful discussions and activities focused on driving social change through entrepreneurial action.
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Innovation Club - Developing engaging activities like the Value Proposition Mad-Lib to introduce the early stages of the innovation process.
5:00 PM to 7:30 PM: ECON 691 - A session on mastering data tools like Python, R, and Julia.
Thursday:
3:30 PM to 6:30 PM RHoK NIU - In collaboration with The Center for Nonprofit and NGO Studies, we're hosting part 2 of the Random Hack of Kindness (RHoK) event aimed at tackling the unique challenges faced by NIU's Huskie Closet.
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Indie Game Developers Organization - Creativity and collaboration with the Indie Game Developers Organization.
Friday:
8:30 AM to 1:00 PM STARS Academy - STARS positions faculty for funding through empowerment with the tools and networking needed to self-direct professional development and steer a career.
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Vespa Mode - A collaborative project to develop a simulator for riding a vintage Vespa in virtual reality. Vespa Mode is part of the Huskieverse program.
4:30 PM: Appy Hour with Brandon Goff and the Appy People - Join the creative minds behind the Appy Hour podcast as they work on the next episode.
Saturday:
9:30 AM: Breakthrough Community Business Academy - The Breakthrough CBA covers all the essential topics about running a business, such as budgeting, marketing, bookkeeping, cash flow analyses, pricing strategies, and credit building.
Monday:
Northwestern Mutual Outreach - Parker and Veronica will connect with the student community on campus.
3:30 PM to 6:30 PM: PHHE 335 - The next Public Health Communication session offers students a chance to develop a podcast episode and dive deeper into effective communication in public health.
Looking Ahead:
Social media is a great way for people to express themselves, connect with others, and find information. However, false and malicious information can also find its way onto your FYP (for you page). Sometimes the misinformation is obvious, but rumors and lies can also be presented more subtly and end up being spread unintentionally by large numbers of users. From false claims about immigrants eating pets to wild accusations about the personal and political agendas of candidates, social media users are finding themselves scrolling through a lot of problematic information regarding the upcoming election. In this workshop, NIU Associate Professor of Communication Andrea L. Guzman explains just how so much bad information ends up on social media and how users can help to stop disinformation instead of accidentally contributing to it.
The "Tech for Good" workshop series at Northern Illinois University, College of Business and Office of Innovation challenges the prevailing narrative that technology is solely responsible for societal ills and environmental degradation. Through interactive workshops, it showcases how technology, when developed and applied ethically and responsibly, can be a powerful force for positive transformative change. Topics covered include design thinking, digital entrepreneurship, ethical leadership, and innovation in action. The series addresses valid concerns around tech's impacts and equips students with strategies to mitigate potential harms while inspiring them to use technology as a potent force for good. Ultimately, it aims to cultivate a new generation of tech-savvy innovators committed to making a meaningful difference in the world.
In this presentation, Professor David J. Gunkel will 1) demystify the technology of LLMs by providing an accessible explanation of the inner workings of these algorithms, 2) evaluate the costs and benefits of machine generated content in different areas of human communication, and 3) explore the impact these technologies are likely to have on writing and its future. In effect, the presentation asks and seeks to respond to these questions: Does an LLM application like ChatGPT write? Do these algorithms know or understand what they are saying? And if so (or if not), how will this affect and/or alter our understanding of human communication and writing? | Wednesday, October 23, 2024 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM  Large Language Models (LLM) are a recent innovation in natural language processing (NLP) technology that employ transformer architectures pre-trained on massive amounts of digital text scraped from the Internet. As a result, applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as well as Anthopic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini can now generate original content that is, in many cases, indistinguishable from human written material |
HEALTHIER@NIU
A collaborative forum dedicated to exploring innovative solutions to complex health challenges, fostering creativity and cross-pollination of ideas. In partnership with the College of Health and Human Sciences.
Looking Back:
RHoKNIU generates ideas for the Huskie Closet
We contributed our share! Part 1 of the Random Hack of Kindness brought together student teams to generate ideas to help the Huskie Closet.
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