Wharton club goes all digital

Gone are the days of brain-storming sessions in a classroom or meeting in a high rise lounge. This new Penn club plans to interface solely online. Siliconfinance.org -- an undergraduate business club founded last fall under the former title Tech and Finance Club -- is boldly traveling where no student-run group has gone before: completely on the Internet super highway. The nearly year-old club decided to abandon traditional club practices when membership declined because people could not make the meetings. By going online, "We have tailored our club to fit [students'] schedules. This way, students can give as much or as little commitment as they like," said President Matt Gniadek, a College senior. The glossy new Web site allows students to discuss finance and technology-related issues via chat rooms. "We are now an online publication in which students can share their views and experiences on the emerging technologies and their impact on the financial world," said Wharton junior Edward Fike, one of the group's organizers. Students are encouraged to share information learned in summer internships or at a family business. Siliconfinance.org -- affiliated with both Wharton and the College -- will be updated twice weekly, providing interested students an opportunity to write articles, post comments and responses and participate in online chats on relevant club issues. Fike and Gniadek co-founded the organization last fall with three Penn friends: College senior Eric Norman, Wharton junior Ramin Mozaffarian and Engineering junior Matt Roberts, a Daily Pennsylvanian photographer. When the club was established last year, it sought to bring together students to discuss, research and share views on various tech and finance-related topics, including wireless communications, optical networking, finance, computing and biotechnology. Though roughly 50 students attended the first meeting in October 1999, membership had diminished at the end of the academic year. Gniadek cited busy student schedules and the inconvenience of weekly group meetings as reasons for declining student participation. "People were busy and we had trouble getting them to come," he said. The online forum will also enable the organization to host virtual chats with various business leaders in the fields of venture capital, financial analysis and other related areas. After last Friday's Wharton Club Fair, siliconfinance.org expanded its membership to over 100 students. Fike estimates that 50 percent of the club's members are from Wharton, with students from the College, the Engineering School and the Nursing School comprising the remaining half. Although at this point in time the organization exists only on the undergraduate level, the co-founders expressed deep interest in working with more experienced Wharton grad students. Students at technology-focused schools like the California and Massachusetts institutes of technology and financial institutions such as the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley will also contribute to the club's online publication. "We want to be able to tap into the brightest and most experienced students," Fike said.