That’s how Ball State University President Jo Ann Gora kicked off the International Digital Media Arts Association’s “@ The Digital Edge� conference here today on the BSU campus. Actually, it was former Democratic National Committee Chairman and one-time U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean who said that when Gora introduced him at another function taking place on the campus last night.

“At one point in introducing him, I talked about how he was an architect of 50-state strategy and one of the fist candidates to use the Internet effectively,� Gora shared with the attendees. “They thought it was a “large ATM,� as he put it. They all thought it was all about community.�

Gora said that she thought that was a “pretty good insight� for “an old guy.� And she said Dean concurred.

Gora said that helped explain the university’s commitment to emerging media, investing some $17.5 million in a variety of initiatives over a five-year period, to help facilitate it.

Some of those efforts culminate each spring in a conference on the BSU campus that, in the past, has been mainly for the university’s faculty and friends. Now she says, Ball State will open it up to the greater community. More on that later.

Howard Dean

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