Customer stories


Centre College

Mega FAQs for a Mega Media Event at Centre College

Questions, questions, questions.

When an army of reporters descends on a small college town, there are bound to be questions. And there's no better tool for finding the answers than FileMaker Pro, the award-winning database software application from FileMaker Inc.

Early in 2000, officials of Centre College in Danville Kentucky received exciting news -- their campus had been chosen as the location for the only Vice-Presidential Debate of the 2000 campaign. But tempering that initial rush was a wave of concern -- Centre is a small liberal-arts college with an enrollment of just 1200 students and a compact, yet dedicated, staff. What to do about the mass of journalists who would be descending on the college -- and the town -- come the fall?

The college passed that question over to Patsi Trollinger -- and Patsi had an answer. Patsi is Centre College's Coordinator of Public Information, and she knows how to keep answers coming, smoothly and efficiently. 'The communication staff is relatively small,' she notes, 'but has a tradition of -- and commitment to -- promptly responding to media inquiries.' Knowing that the full press of media representatives expected for the debate would want immediate responses to all sorts of queries about the college and the town, Patsi and her team decided to put together a knowledge database containing answers to the most likely questions. And for the foundation to this system, Patsi didn't have to look far -- the answer was clear -- FileMaker Pro.

'We heavily use FileMaker for everything in our office,' notes Patsi, 'where it has been extraordinarily dependable. We have about a dozen different FileMaker databases that do things including generate press releases and newspaper envelopes for student hometown news releases, along with envelopes and enclosure notes for their parents.' FileMaker Pro is also used around the Centre College information office for generating weekly advertisements for the local newspaper, preparing mailing-list letters from the college president, keeping track of all the photos in the College files -- in short, for documenting every conceivable kind of information.

Months in advance, student workers and information office staff began assembling a list of anticipated questions -- ranging from generic information about the college and the local community to esoteric details like the meaning of 'C6-HO,' a cryptic college slogan painted on the wall of a historic Danville building. All the answers were carefully researched and loaded into the FileMaker database, which runs on Macintosh computers loaned by Apple Computer especially for the event. The resulting system, called Ask-A-Mac, allowed staffers to instantly call up the answers with no chance of errors. Hundreds of questions, hundreds of answers -- all available at the click of a mouse.

When reporters wanted to know the breakdown of College Republicans versus College Democrats in the total student body, the Ask-A-Mac system flashed up the details. When a strapped-for-cash reporter needed to know the way to the nearest ATM -- Ask-A-Mac was there with a pointer in the right direction. And the system worked so smoothly that there was no chance for the staff to get bogged down. Big or small, every question was quickly and courteously answered. 'I personally recall,' notes Patsi, 'in the midst of the chaos that characterized the media hall for several days, using the database to answer questions for Fox News, the Louisville Courier-Journal -- the largest paper in Kentucky -- and Kentucky Monthly, a glossy in-state magazine.' The FileMaker-powered Ask-A-Mac system helped to turn the anticipated rush of questions into an orderly flow of information.

A Vice-Presidential debate is a big event, to be sure, but not necessarily an enduring one. Yet long after the debate is forgotten, the database will live on. Patsi plans to find use for the system. 'Looking to the future, I hope we can think creatively about ways to incorporate the knowledge database into employee training programs and as a tool for the admissions office.'

And, of course, whenever anyone wants to know that C6-HO is the score of a famous Centre-vs.-Harvard football victory in the 1920s, FileMaker Pro will be there, ready and waiting to come up with the answer.



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Patsi Trollinger
Coordinator of Public Information
Centre College
859-238-5719
trllngrp@centre.edu


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • When thousands of political journalists descended on Centre College for the U.S. Vice-Presidential Debate, event organizers turned to FileMaker Pro for help. The result? Ask-A-Mac, a FileMaker Pro-based solution which runs on iMac kiosks, and provides the press with answers to hundreds of anticipated questions.
Industry
  • Higher Education