Per usual, I was procrastinating making my last video for this class. I was completely out of ideas and so in class I asked Samantha to help me brainstorm. She was also trying to think of a third video idea. We started talking about our professional tech frat and how they had a meeting that night, and somehow we got to talking about our major, Informatics. No one ever seems to know what it means or what it’s about, so we came up with an idea for a video: What is Informatics?

Obviously we both thought it was a great idea and both wanted to use it, so we asked if we could do it together since it would require a lot of work for just one person. Samantha rented a camcorder from LSA, and we both set up times to meet with some friends in our major to have them give us some insight on how they describe the major. Then, Samantha met with our Tech frat, Kappa Theta Pi, and took videos of them doing the same thing. I did the editing of the videos on my computer (while Samantha helped and supported me) using iMovie. We gave credit to those who helped us at the end, and we also included a special dedication to our favorite GSI who helped us pass impossible programming classes.

This was definitely my favorite video that we made. It was fun to make but it was also really informative and a great idea to get the word out about Informatics and what it really is. Next time someone asks me what Informatics is, I’ll just direct them to this video. One thing I thought was funny about the videos we took were that almost everyone paused when we first asked them “What is Informatics?. The major incorporates such a wide range of disciplines that it is hard to know where to begin when explaining it. I think those moments were funny and real and tells a viewer it’s ok that they don’t know what Informatics is, because we have a hard time explaining it too.