Next month the big event on campus is RISD by Design weekend, which runs from Friday, October 10 through Sunday, the 12th (and Monday is Columbus Day, so you get an extra day to recuperate...). If you haven't been back to campus for a while, why not give it a try? You're sure to discover all sorts of pleasant surprises and interesting people - including RISD's new president, John Maeda. To get in the spirit of things and find out who's coming, check out our RISD by Design blog.

If sculptor/installation artist Jim Drain '98 SC is half as colorful and complex as his work, the talk he's giving as the first in this year's Alumni Lecture Series will be well worth attending. Jim will speak and show slides of his work on Tuesday, October 28 at 6:30pm in the RISD Auditorium. Designer Carol Catalano '80 ID offers the next lecture in the series - on Tuesday, November 4 at 6:30pm in the Chace Center's Michael P. Metcalf Auditorium. And Jr Neville Songwe MID '05 rounds out the free series on November 18 - again at 6:30pm in the Metcalf Auditorium.

Alumni living and/or working in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or Vermont have until October 31 to respond to the digital call for entries for the upcoming RISD New England Alumni Biennial 2009 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown MA. Dina Deitsch, assistant curator at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, will curate the exhibition.

If you're in the NYC area, you have until September 28 to catch the RISD NYC Alumni Biennial 2008 at the American Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn. And this Saturday there's a series of studio tours and gallery talks. Even if you can't get there in person, you can check out the work online.

"Hotels are so 20th-century," chirped The New York Times' "Freakonomics" blog in joining last month's press frenzy around AirBed & Breakfast, a new web venture launched by San Francisco-based entrepreneurs Joe Gebbia '05 ID/GD, Brian Chesky '04 ID and Nathan Blecharczyk (a recent Harvard grad). The site allows travelers to book cheaper rooms with local residents instead of hotels and pay for the transaction seamlessly online. "And the coolest part is that we can help RISD alums stay with other RISD alums living in Providence during RISD by Design weekend," Gebbia adds.

For longer-term studio and housing solutions in New York, check out the Listings Project organized by artist Stephanie Diamond '98 PR, who knows from experience how difficult it is to find good space in the city. Sign up here to receive a periodic e-mail listing available spaces or e-mail Stephanie at mail@stepaniediamond.com if you have a space to list or are looking for a roommate or specific type of space.

"Everyone asks me: 'Are you bringing technology to RISD?' I tell them, no, I'm bringing RISD to technology," RISD's new president John Maeda told Dominique Browning in an interview published earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal. For ongoing updates of Maeda coverage check here.

As RISD welcomed 450 freshmen, 90 transfer students and 200 new graduate students to campus this month, the first class of Brown-RISD dual degree candidates - 13 students who will graduate in 2013 with bachelors' degrees from both RISD and Brown - began their odysseys last week with Foundation Studies classes at RISD and orientation at both institutions. Click here for a Brown Daily Herald article about the new program.

Last week RISD launched a fun new digital bulletin board system to share calendar information at central locations on campus and allow students, faculty and staff to post electronic artwork, messages, musings and more.