Outstanding alum blogs about student
videos created in Design Process class

Robert Riggs, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, blogged about students’ portrayals of their experiences with social media in “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg,” a video project he assigned as a guest lecturer in the college’s summer 2011 Design Process class.

“Facebook is a common thread in all of the videos, an indication of just how deeply it has become woven into the social fabric of daily life,” said Riggs, who founded two online video production companies after a 27-year career as an award-winning television journalist.

Smartphones’ impact on social interaction was a popular second theme in many of the videos, he said.

“A video called ‘The Deathly Internet’ concluded that a social interaction is something you do on Facebook,” he said.  “And a male member of the class drew laughter when he expressed a preference for Facebook breakups because, he said, ‘I don’t have to feel bad about her tears.’”

Riggs’ thoughts appear as an entry on a blog page of PubCon, a November 2011 search and social media conference in Las Vegas where he’ll be a featured speaker. He’s also scheduled to moderate a PubCon discussion panel, Search Engine Optimization for Multimedia and Rich Media.

Before entering the field of online video production, Riggscovered the White House, Capitol Hill, The Pentagon, state department, and the New York and Texas state legislatures, earning a reputation for exposing corruption and providing a catalyst for major changes in public policy.

His reporting resulted in numerous honors, including a coveted George Foster Peabody award and three Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Journalism awards.

Riggs is a co-founder of frontpage TV, which creates, produces and search-optimizes online videos and produces pilots for reality TV shows, documentaries and TV commercials. He also co-founded frontpage shopping, which produces online video product demonstrations using on-camera hosts; the videos aresearch optimized, distributed to video portals and supported by social media campaigns.

See all the videos in the “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg” video channel on YouTube.

- Posted: Sep. 2, 2011 -

Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.