New alumni online community a big hit

McGill alumni are taking advantage of new opportunities to get back in touch with old classmates. With Alumnilife, the McGill Alumni Association has created a graduates-only online community, and its appearance seems to have struck a chord.

Graduates from every decade since the 1940s, and from every McGill faculty and school have signed up. While most registrants hail from Canada and the United States, the Alumni Association will shortly be making a greater push to get overseas graduates involved.

Membership in Alumnilife, which is free, allows graduates to do the following (all in a password-protected environment):

• Sign up for McGill email for life or e-forwarding (until now, email for life has only been available to graduates from 2000 on). A web-based account with 15MB of storage space will be provided;
• See complete class lists from all of their graduating classes (for large faculties like Arts, alumni will see a department list rather than a faculty list);
• Search for any McGill graduate by name, region, field of work specialization and more (note that the possibility of contacting a graduate directly will depend on what contact information he or she has made available);
• Update or correct information in their alumni records;
• Enter and edit a brief profile with recent news, and even photos, while choosing what information to make available to fellow graduates;
• Send a McGill postcard to a friend electronically. Note that the general McGill Alumni and Friends website still exists, and is still the best source of general information about the Alumni Association and alumni programs.

There are three ways to obtain a signup code for Alumnilife.

• You may already have received a code by email from the Alumni Association. If so, with your code in hand, go to Alumnilife, click on "I want to become a member" and follow the instructions.
• If you receive the McGill News, your code is the 10-digit number on the mailing label. Again, with your code in hand, go to www.alumni.mcgill.ca.
• Send an email to community.alumni [at] mcgill.ca (our help desk) with your name, McGill degree and year of graduation, and at least one piece of information that will allow us to match you to your alumni record (e.g., home address).