A recap of the study tour’s final day comes from Gilda Schertenleib, University of Lugano, and Philippe Fabian, Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
In Search of the Holy Grail
At the end of this incredible week, we probably identify with the gold diggers that came to San Francisco in the 1840’s, a story that our fantastically funny guide illustrated during the Gold Rush City walking tour today.
And here we are, 170 years after the Gold Rush, repeating history with the “Social Media Rush.” A group of avid people, who travelled mountains and oceans in search of the Social Media grail. Like the gold seekers that didn’t actually find nuggets in the city of San Francisco, we didn’t find our grail, either. Simply because it doesn’t exist here, and might not exist anywhere on the planet.
Best of the Week Photos
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But as with those Californian ancestors, no grail doesn’t mean no riches for us. Those early settlers found other things and were successful in many other ways. They turned San Francisco into a prosperous city. Likewise, we found a whole lot of inspiration, gained unique insights into shooting stars and pioneers of the Social Media era, came across great discussions and made valuable connections with many people here in the Bay Area and with our Swiss colleagues. We could literally feel the heartbeat of Social Media.
Encouraged and enriched we will try to make the Silicon Valley spirit grow and prosper in our institutions back home. We will try to stay down-to-earth with the use of Social Media as American universities do. But on the other hand, we have to break new ground and not be afraid of stumbling.
Or, in the words of David Harris from today’s final workshop: “Fail forward or fail fast.” Just like the gold diggers did.
Day 3 of the Spring Study Tour is summarized here by guest bloggers Marcel Blattner and Cindy Eggs, from the Fernfachhochshule Schweiz, and Ladina Caprez, from the University of Lugano.
Die Luft der Freiheit weht
Today we discovered various ways in which the winds of freedom blow, as mentioned in Stanford’s motto. Whereas Twitter owes its success partly to the fact that it fostered freedom in some countries, at Stanford they think a little differently about it…
First thing in the morning we discovered Twitter’s conception of freedom right away when Elaine, the secretary, had to abandon her work to allow us a group picture in front of the Twitter sign (on the wall right behind her desk). Before starting the actual meeting, Thomas Arend invited us to serve ourselves at the vast breakfast buffet – including eight different kinds of coffee and at least fifteen different types of cereals – quite unusual for Europeans.
During his speech, Thomas elaborated on different dimensions of Twitter’s freedom: Tweets that spread all over the world in a very short time make it possible to overcome distance and therefore allow freedom of thought and speech no matter where your followers are; giving a voice to a mute girl commenting on soccer games, Twitter allows her to overcome many obstacles; by connecting people’s opinions beyond country boundaries, Twitter creates a platform for the oppressed to gain strength in revolution.
Twitter stream seconds after the earthquake in Japan, March 2011.
Creating a platform is also Stanford’s goal with their social media activities. Stanford gives visibility to its excellence in the field by collaborating with researchers, who publish their findings on the various social media channels. Even though Stanford’s School of Medicine encourages its scholars to produce content and to use their own voice and tone, they are still held to certain criteria, such as publishing date, journal standing, etc.
Heading to the alumni center, we became aware that the wisdom of freedom has other dimensions on this very nice and cultivated campus. The Stanford Alumni Association motivates current and former students to join their different social platforms in order to connect to the alumni network once they graduate. The data generated from these networks is used to list people with common interests and to link them with each other and with influencers.From the content point of view, the Association’s priority is to spotlight what their alums do instead of just broadcasting their own news.
At Stanford’s School of Engineering they see eye-to-eye with their colleagues: They tell stories on their Facebook page and collaborate with interns to create content that engages their audience. Thanks to reliable and extensive data, the social media team at Stanford knows what their audience is interested in and no longer have to rely on guessing. However, they keep an eye on the content created and sometimes do need to intervene and confine the freedom they conceded their interns.
To sum up, Day 3 of the #springstudytour showed that, at the bottom line, social media equals freedom, but this freedom can be interpreted in various ways – as with social media activities in general, by the way.
PS: Check out our group’s activity on Twitter using the #springstudytour hashtag – increasing steadily as slowly everybody discovers the freedom of speech on SoM
For Day 2 of the Spring Study Tour, guest bloggers Annika Glauner, from Euresearch – International Research Programmes at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, David Spring, from the University of Lausanne, and Lara Canonica, from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences reflected on the day’s rich program.
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And here is the team’s reflection on the day:
Trying to explain what Silicon Valley is to someone who has never been to the region is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind. Prof. Chuck Darrah from the San Jose State University tried to provide us with the peripheral definitions of what Silicon Valley is as a whole, in order for us “Swiss cookies” to better interact in this area and connect with its “tribes” over the upcoming five days.
Chuck Darrah is an insider because he lives in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Mountain View (aka Mountain Google), and he is an outsider because he has no cellphone. As an anthropologist his job is to study the “tech tribe” in Silicon Valley. He interviews and observes them.
San Francisco is not in the Silicon Valley of which San Jose is the capital. Officially, Silicon Valley doesn’t even exist.
Over the past forty years the Valley has changed a lot. The industry shifted from hardware to software to Internet. Now, there are 22,000 high-tech companies in the region. People come here from all over the world because of the highly paid jobs. The mentality is to take risks and celebrate failure. Mobility is important, and people tend to switch jobs every two years otherwise they are considered as losers. Here everything is transformed into technical problems that need to be solved. So in order to blend in, we became mobile too and drove to Cupertino for an appointment at Apple headquarters.
We met Steve Wilson, iTunes U Producer and Deirdre Espinoza, Sr. Marketing Manager Education Content. They presented iBooks and iTunes U. Apple is as brilliant as you would expect it to be: it’s vivid, creative, buzzing. And in this spirit we left for the University of California, Berkeley.
The meeting we had with Christina Sponselli (Social Media Director), Kathryn Bader and Ram Kapoor (Office of Public Affairs) was comforting, down-to-earth and inspiring. At Berkeley they are not implementing a strategy, but rather validating it through a process of experimentation and co-creation. They provided us with tips and tricks and good advice. UC Berkeley has also a Social Media User Group (SMUG), who gathers once a month to share experience and to discuss how to reach more students and alumni. With a small and flexible team and very little resources, they are active on different platforms like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Foursquare to name a few.
So what have we learned today? That we too are able to facilitate innovation by applying The Infinite Loop using a human-centered approach, as the people we want to reach are the experts, they know what they need.
On Sunday, March 18, 2012, swissnex San Francisco welcomed 14 representatives from Swiss higher education for a week-long, immersive study tour on the subject of social media for academic institutions. swissnex director Christian Simm welcomed the group and introduced our work with Swiss universities. Gioia Deucher described the organization’s activities with Swiss startups, particularly university spin-offs. With introductions and program overview out of the way, the day wound down with a welcome dinner at Urban Taverna. Here’s a quick recap in video.
A couple of weeks have passed since the fall study tour participants left the swissnex San Francisco building and flew away from the Golden Gate. We’re still talking (and tweeting) about it. #fallstudytour
Fall Study Tour crew (most of them) at the swissnex San Francisco event, Robot Revolution.
The final day of the study tour was full of meetings and new ideas, as was each day before it. But something occurred to me on day five. Our little group had become a community of friends as well as colleagues, making the study tour a wild success in many ways.
Sure, the week was well planned. Of course, the meetings were informative and motivating. We promised they would be. But the participants (you, if you’re reading) played the biggest role in this victory. The group was inquisitive, professional, thoughtful, and really really nice. It’s hard to emphasize that enough. Reeeeealllllly nice.
On day five, it truly felt as though lasting connections had been made not only between the swissnex San Francisco staff and the study tour participants, but among the participants as well. This was evident in the banter and conversations between meetings, in the tweets, goodbye toasts, final presentations (silly and sincere), and certainly at the North Beach beatnik bar Vesuvio.
This kind of camaraderie is all we at swissnex could have hoped for. The spirit of social media is, well, social. Without that element, without sharing, it’s hard to grasp the full potential of the tools let alone successfully practice them to benefit a university. The supportive environment that was fostered here during the study tour will allow the participants to help each other as they lift their individual institutions into a new era of communications. The benefits will likely help promote the excellence of Swiss higher education globally.
Lessons from Day 5 David Harris doesn’t believe in a social media strategy. Period. It sounded shocking at first. “What? But, but,” we were tempted to interject.
“Social media is a tool,” he continued. “You should have a communications strategy, but social media is just one of the tools that you use to achieve those goals.”
Harris also covered how to measure success with social media tools, from general awareness to engagement and investment. He led an exercise in strategic planning (complete with little red workbooks), where participants were encouraged to outline goals, define audiences, and suggest reasonable metrics to measure success.
Gold Rush City
Our walking tour of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast took us back to 1850s San Francisco, when life along then named Yerba Buena Cove was lurid and wild. Strangely enough, the swissnex San Francisco building was a lone bastion of civilized culture back in those days: it housed the Golden Era literary magazine, which Mark Twain and Bret Harte wrote for.
Mobilize
The walking tour ended on Gold Street directly in front of Blackboard Mobile. If anyone doubted the power or influence of mobile technologies, this meeting with the company’s “Mobile Evangelist” David Small probably changed his or her mind.
Blackboard Mobile began as a small start-up of Stanford University students who built an app for the school. They were acquired by the e-learning giant Blackboard and have been steadily growing since. Our final company visit of the study tour, Blackboard Mobile’s presentation drove home how important mobile is for the future of university communications. It’s not enough to think about the website and social media channels. Forward-looking leaders within the institution should be staring at the smartphone.
Goodbye for now, but stay in touch
The study tour ended officially with a goodbye dinner at Fog City Diner. Some returned to swissnex San Francisco for an event on Swiss university spin-off companies working in the robotics field. And some explored the city after that, even using social media to find the group when lost (you know who you are).
All that was learned and thought throughout the week will never really fade thanks to social media. There’s this blog, for one. There’s the Paper.li, Social Media Study Tour Daily (check the archive editions to see what was captured September 26-30, 2011), and our Storify. Multiple participants made videos, webdocs, and contributed to the Flickr album. And many of the presentations and materials from the week are accessible in the library on this very website.
For the 11 fall study tour participants reading this, we’re quite far from a goodbye—we are actually planning a hello. Our conference call on October 31st will give us the chance to check in with everyone, ask follow-up questions, share ideas and progress, and generally re-energize. Fill in the Google document to help define the agenda and stay tuned for the exact time.
Until then!
Goodbye dinner for Fall Study Tour at Fog City Diner.
