Vanderbilt’s video contest engages IT employees

Communicator Deborah Keim-Trewyn created a video contest to bring out shy IT employees and get them to know one another

The IT group at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center is astonishingly big. The group, called “Informatics,” numbers 525 workers, and comprises some 70 teams—and is growing. Scattered among six buildings on more than 330 acres of Medical Center and university land, this IT cohort serves 13,400 employees of the Medical Center and more than 42,000 patients a year.

Workers’ frustration: They don’t know colleagues

In 2006, Deborah Keim-Trewyn, communications officer at the Informatics Center, was concerned. Her latest survey revealed that Informatics employees, while by and large satisfied with their work, were frustrated. While they knew (of course) that Informatics had work teams, they didn’t know who was on which team or what the teams did.

Her solution: an Informatics’ video contest. She liked the idea of bringing IT people together on a project that involved technology, yet was fun and pressure-free.

A contest modeled on the Oscars