GSA_Logo

GSA_Logo

Sunday, January 15, 2012

What's a 'Google Student Ambassador'?

I've been asked this question many times "What's a 'Google Student Ambassador'?" - more than I can even count! I've been asked in person, via chat, online post, social networks, ...


Some amazing fellow ambassadors
from the training
And I believe that many of my amazing fellow ambassadors (photo to the right) were asked as well.
And -as expected- I answered each one of them. At first I was proud for being an official google representative, so I gave them the link of the google page, but most of them came with the typical reply: "So what do you do exactly?"
So this post is the answer, hopefully all those revisions would make it brief, informative and sufficient :)

My role consists of 2 parts:
  1. Bringing Google to my university (AlexU).
  2. Taking my university to Google.

1. Bringing Google to my university:
In case you don't know, Google is FUN!! And having the opportunity to bring google closer to my colleagues is simply wonderful.

In addition to that; google always takes side with the user, and they're the kind of company that follows their public stated philosophy.
Google has amazing applications and tools that they choose to offer freely to the users (us). And I was telling my colleagues about these products like google docs, youtube, gmail,... long before I became an ambassador, having the title only made it official =)

They make the life of a student SO MUCH EASIER! I can't tell how people before graduated without them.

2. Taking my university to Google
Google also offers lots of grants, scholarships, internships, ... And many students -and faculty- miss out on lots of opportunities just because they didn't know. So the second part of my role is to stay in contact with google's latest news and offers and notify my colleagues about them.

In a nutshell: this way I work as a link between Google and AlexU.

How do I do that?
Simply anyway I can -in a good way though- if I have and idea: I just tell google, they approve it, then they provide me with what I need.

If I'm thinking of .. let's say a competition, I think it through, I check all my requirements, budget, etc and I tell google, wait for the approval, then I start making it happen :)

This applies to anything you have in mind, info booth, workshop, code lab, ...
In a nutshell be creative, enthusiastic, and realistic; and send your bill to google =D.

The official google page shows exactly what are my responsibilities and privileges, but being an ambassador offers much much more!! Hopefully I'll post later about the perks of being a google student ambassador.

At the end if you have more questions just post them in the comments and I'll try to answer them.

And if I excited you about being an ambassador, and you want to know once the application is open next year, follow the google arabia blog, and the google students blog.
Or add me to your circles, or follow me on twitter, I'll be posting/tweeting about google updates.

-- 
John Matta
Google Student Ambassador
Alexandria University
Egypt