JOGGING WITH THE PRESIDENT OF RISD
Several times a month, John Maeda, the recently inaugurated president of RISD hosts a community jogging event called "Jogging with John." This issue, Big RED & Shiny offers a short podcast about these events.
Maeda's a big deal, to say the least, though you might assume otherwise if you consider community jogging's position in the hierarchy of social events. RISD's position in the art and design around the globe - and not to mention its ego - warranted the search for a rock star of a new president, and when he formally assumed the presidency in June, the Providence Journal called him nothing less. He's been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and ranked #41 on Esquire Magazine's top 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
It's also difficult to find people to say bad things about the guy. Big RED has only second-degree, off-the-record accounts of the less than stellar social skills that Maeda may possess. Even if the tales are true, however, you'd be hard pressed to find someone as engaged with the community as Maeda who doesn't have a couple rumors (good or bad, of varying degrees of veracity) hanging in the air of the offices and classrooms he's perpetually roving - the more people one meets, the more one is likely to eventually rub someone the wrong way.
Listen to the podcast. Though it's a story about a college president that runs an 'open' jogging a couple times a month, I hope you get a sense of what the RISD and Providence community think about the guy.
Download the "Jogging with John" MP3. (10 Minutes)
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- John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design.
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- John Maeda (left) with “Jogging with John” joggers at just before 6 a.m. on October 7, 2008.
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- John Maeda (left) chats with Steve Cronin, CEO of Mercury Print and Mail, who suggested the jogging event to Maeda at a Providence Geeks event.
