Cellphones, Constituents, and Politics

How do you manage to have personal and mutually beneficial relationships with tens of thousands of people of varying ages, statuses, needs, and interests? How do you do that in such a way that the relationship is so important to each of those people, it's now a part of their identity? This entry is the first in a series I intend to publish about how technology has changed us and therefore the ways in which colleges & universities are challenged to capture our attention [as people].

It’s only fair that I start this series in a university. I am taken back ~15 years ago to Hofstra University on Long Island, New York where I was listening to a lecture. I don't just go back to this time because thinking about universities and colleges is sort of the point, but because it’s immediately where my mind goes when I think about the challenges we face today. And it is now, more than ever before, that the words of Jared Diamond speaking in that large room feel true for me. I’ve always had a fondness for his work, and back then, listening to his words, watching him present his deck, I really thought I understood.

That evening he signed my copy of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” which is a possession, after multiple cross-country moves, the rise of digital media, and the boxing and unboxing across many apartments and houses, I still treasure. At the time I was studying so many things: modern philosophy and art and politics and sciences. I had taken some Multi-Disciplinary Courses at Nassau Community College, and during the Making of the Modern Mind 2, I found myself mesmerized with how much technology mattered. For example, I had already taken Physics 1 & 2 many years prior, but it wasn’t until thinking about the relationship to Philosophy and Psychology and Politics and Art was I able to understand the magic of Einstein or Quantum Psychics. I went out and bought “The Elegant Universe” and “The History of Pi” and read them (again) with a different perspective.

And with that (perhaps because of that), I started to better understand myself and my interests more than ever before. I was being challenged in ways I had longed for my entire life. I fell in love with thinking, and it was ultimately this love that made me choose Philosophy above all other subjects to study.

Fast forward several years, and I was working in technology and services supporting the changing retail and hospitality industries. (To my disappointment I was not, as I had imagined, working in a Philosophy Factory). We focused on protecting top line revenue while reducing losses adversely impacting bottom line revenue. The work we did was interesting — spreading across various types of technology (hardware and software) — solving complex problems. It was this changing paradigm that helped me find analytics and eventually Product Management.

With these new career interests, I also discovered how eventful it was for industry to keep up with the changing consumer. I saw the conflict between the new technology to help the consumer with the everyday retail careerist (the actual end user). As an example, I witnessed technology redefine and confuse the concept of merchandise theft. Before then passing all cash registers without intent to pay for the merchandise was the definition of theft; but now consider handheld devices (i.e mobile point of sale), Apple Pay, self checkout... and with that, defects, human error... the difficulty of identifying and proving intent. I also witnessed and helped eCommerce become more reliable and watched as brick and mortar flagship stores became websites, creating a merchandising and logistics nightmare. We made and experienced some exciting changes that now feel... normal.

I have moved from retail to biometrics and now to higher education, always with the thirst to work on technology in a similar moment in time. But, even in the height of that excitment, it didn’t feel like it does today. It didn’t feel like technology was changing everything.

Higher education is at the same breaking point retail was back then, but now I feel the change. The problems are difficult and fun, but the impact is personal. This industry matters so much to what happens to society, to our futures and that of our children. This crossroads and shift is not just the changing landscape of what the constituent expects and the industry can provide...

• It’s that who the student is today isn't definable and is continuing to evolve.
• It’s that the collective constituent (prospective student, student, alumni, and those donating time and money to the institution) is often in conflict.
• It’s that the political landscape is fierce and many people want to take a stand.
• It's that many people want to know and truly take inventory where their dollar goes, politically and otherwise.
• It’s that higher education is becoming a non-negotiable but the average American student cannot afford it without taking on long term debt.
• It’s that the ways we learn are changing, or need to change.
• It's that time to graduation is a growing metric, not just because it's costly for the institution, but it's costly for society.
• It’s that constituents have more choices than ever before, not just what and where but also how and when.
• It's that constituents curate their own information, their own truths, and that immediate satisfaction is king.
• It’s that institutions want to change and adopt technology (think about all of the research they produce), but they care about protecting us and our data at every cost.
• It's that funding is limited and institutions are expected to do more with less.
• It's that students intersect so many systems and tools on campus, keeping up with them and their needs is getting more and more complicated.

And, it's also that all of the problems retail faced 10 years ago are still widely unsolved in higher education.

There are so many things about now that are different, that feel different. I work on higher education technology because it matters. The opportunities institutions face are growing and unless we help provide answers, the list will continue to grow. Now is the time.

I’m going to spend the next few blog entries unpacking some of these problems, primarily relating these problems to how higher education manages constituent relationships and how that translates into solutions. I’ll take you back to Hofstra, take a visit to NYU, FGCU, Hunter College, and Baruch College; but, really, I’ll share with you some real challenges we face today and ultimately why institutions need to talk about it with their constituents.