Apparently the fifth time's a charm, so I'm not going to go into as great of detail as I did for previous Hubbub events (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007). The event was pretty much perfect, reaching over 400 students. We only had two problems the entire day: we couldn't find the green screen for our
photo booth (ie, green plastic tablecloth) or our prize drawing tickets during early morning setup, but terrific folks from UK Libraries (thanks Doug and Sherree!) quickly came to the rescue.
We did a few new things this year. We invited the Writing Center and the campus tutoring center to join in on the fun. That went so well that I wondered
why I hadn't thought of it in the four years previous. We kicked the video games up a notch with an Unreal Tournament from KY Trade in the lab and a full size Galaga arcade game thanks to Louisville Arcade Expo, in addition to video games old (a Vectrex, seriously) and new. Students once again had fun with board games and coloring pages, and the new face painting booth was a major hit. We went with a less dangerous "minute to win it" type game this year using a b
room and marbles (no throwing floppy disks across the lab), but it still remained popular. And of course, Gilbert the Balloon Artist continued to wow the crowd like nobody else can.
I didn't play as great a role in planning the event as years past, largely due to my new job. We definitely couldn't have done this without our planning team (Jen, Jennifer, and Shawn) as well as the few dozen faculty, staff, and students who helped. This is a great event, and as long as I'm at UK, I can't imagine not being a part of it. What a way to kick off the new semester!
Photos by Whitney Hale, UK PR
