alumni futures

Reunions in the Digital Age: More Compelling, or Less?

This weekend the New York Times gave Facebook a long look. Brad Stone asked if Facebook was "growing up too fast." His article covered a wide range of the site's uses and users, detractors and fans alike. In Sunday's Bits blog, in a posting titled Who Needs a College Reunion? I've Got Facebook, Jenna Wortham skimmed lightly over the question of whether she should attend her five-year reunion at the University of Virginia. After all, she wrote,

I already know which of my former classmates spent their post-graduate years planting gardens in the Dominican Republic for the Peace Corps...I've seen photographs documenting medical missions to South Africa, vacations to Ecuador and endless albums of wedding receptions and gurgling babies.

The dozens of reader comments on the piece offered a counterbalance to Ms. Wortham's posting. Among other things, readers pointed out that:

• Most alumni skip the five year reunion because many grads haven't done very much in five years, compared with what they'll have accomplished when the 20th rolls around. 
• Facebook may increase attendance at college and high school reunions because it makes it easier to spread the word, even to alumni who don't receive (or read) mailings from alma mater.
• The extension of Ms. Wortham's argument is "why bother making plans at all?" In other words, at what point does an activity pass "the Facebook test" and promise to be more interesting in person than online?
• Social sites help alumni relations by "keeping your emotional connection to campus going" whether you're near to campus or far away.  
• There's an experiential gap between the classes that are (right now) three and five years out of college. The former have had Facebook all the way through their undergraduate experience; the latter had to adopt it after they graduated. How this plays out in attitudes toward campus and toward face-to-face interaction remains to be seen, but must be monitored by alumni and development professionals.

There are a few counter-arguments as well, tending to support Ms. Wortham:

One reader states that at the "selective, private university" where he attended grad school, the undergrad reunions "seem weirdly insular and self-congratulatory...a re-affirmation of their Ivy League exceptionalism." This sounds like a success to me, as an alumni director. If alumni don't think there's anything special about their relationship with alma mater (and each other), the institution will have a hard time convincing them they need to return. 

Finally, one writer comments that he'd "rather reunite with my friends on my own terms. I don't need an institutional excuse." Another writes that if there are really a few "select individuals" you want to see in person, "you arrange it. Reunion stock is taking a nose dive."

Herein lies the big challenge for alumni associations. An alumni association executive once described inviting a graduating senior to join the official online alumni community. The student's reply: "I already have my network, and I'm taking it with me." 

If students and alumni don't see the school playing a relevant role, or providing services unavailable elsewhere, then the association and the institution will have no choice but to fade into the background. That's why most of us are trying to make our voices heard through LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups and Pages. 

And this strategy might work in the long run. But we should be working on a backup plan in the meantime, so we have an alternative that makes us visible, relevant and engaging to our alumni over time. 

What do you think?

[Updated 30 March: Link to the UVaToday blog posting on the topic.]

A note of appreciation to Donald Ivanoff at Polytechnic Institute of NYU, who independently mentioned Alumni Futures in a comment on the NY Times blog. 

Photo of reunion fireworks over the University of Virginia Rotunda from Flickr user David Werner via Creative Commons.

Are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter Converging?

[Updated 24 March 2009 with link to Interfolio, "credential, dossier and online portfolio service."]

[Updated 23 March 2009 with link to Andrew Careaga's post that brings newspapers and journalism into this thread.]

I recently mentioned in one of my online status updates that my personal and professional networks seem to be converging online. (Did I mention this on Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? I can't remember...and that's sort of the point.) 

Specifically, a large majority of people I know are active on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Facebook started out as my "personal" network and LinkedIn started out as my "professional" network. I'd find someone from high school on Facebook. Panelists at a conference would find me on LinkedIn. This was neat and easy.

Now, it's a big jumble. LinkedIn suggests that you "may know" your spouse and recommends you connect with him to grow your network. Facebook tells you...well Facebook tells you that someone you know took a dumb quiz. And now Twitter tells us what LinkedIn and Facebook are telling our contacts to tell us. 

So are these services overlapping, are they simply connected, or are they converging? Will we end up with a single place to connect with people and share "updates," or will the sites' functionality continue on more or less parallel paths? 

When I asked this in a status update last week, I received a few interesting reactions:

Charlie O'Donnell from recently-launched career site Path101, wrote about behavior and experience: 

Behavior on these networks is vastly different. I could have all the same contacts in each (which I purposely do not) and they wouldn't be anywhere near the same experiences. Facebook has so many more ways to communicate...Messages, wall posts, pokes, comments...It's "live". Facebook is the quad, while LinkedIn is the rolodex that sits on my desk. LinkedIn is not an engaging, social place. It is an effective tool. What will prevent LinkedIn from becoming more social and more communicative is that throttling and controlling communication is how they make money.

Sherry Main (who works at the University of California–Irvine) mentioned the portfolio approach to marketing oneself. Profiles on network sites are not enough anymore:  

I'd throw in a VisualCV type of tool in too. Particularly since college graduates are coming out with all kinds of portfolios these days, ranging from dance majors to computer science majors.

And Princeton's Andrew Gossen made several related points (including a similar one about portfolios; see Interfolio for another example of this service). Among them:

• LinkedIn will become more like Facebook; not the other way around. 
• Profiles should appear one way to personal friends and another way to actual and prospective professional contacts and the filtering process should be automated. Enter your info once, and have the system display what's relevant to different categories of people (after you've assigned them to a contact type). 
• Some way to sync evolving professional and personal networks with smartphones or PDAs would be incredibly valuable. 
• To a large extent, status updates are a game of one-upsmanship. But you'd brag very differently to a professional audience than to a personal audience. As the two types of networks converge, different channels for these two types of communication must evolve. 

These are great insights and ideas and bear watching. I personally believe we're moving toward the incorporation of network tools (including Twitter) into the OS or desktop; we won't need to "log in" to a site or service. The functions will be "always on" and therefore, so will the network.

What are your ideas or observations about the ways in which our networks are coalescing – or resisting integration? 

Leave a comment.

Photo of converging, connected lines via Creative Commons from Flickr user Bill Frazzetto.

 

What Our Alumni Are Saying About Us on Twitter

There's a lot of talk about Twitter, and criticism about the irrelevance of what people are saying in that channel. But you might want to check and see what they're saying about you. And if they're not talking about you, maybe you should join the conversation (and of course, be relevant).

Here are a few tweets that popped up when I did a quick search of Twitter for comments that include the word "alumni."

But are they alumni? Are you limiting access to your LinkedIn Group to alumni (and allowing current students to join)? If you're not – what, exactly, makes it an alumni group?

I knew you could "fly" in Second Life, but I didn't know you could ice skate. I also didn't know anyone was still using Second Life. I don't hear much about it anymore. Do you?

The other day, by the way, Michael Stoner wrote about Second Life and Twitter.

We all do now. 

I'll share more alumni tweets from time to time. If you see a good one, send it along, or leave a comment.

Guest Blogger Andrew Gossen: Social Networking Meets Philanthropy

[Note: This posting was written by Andrew Gossen, Senior Associate Director at the Alumni Association of Princeton University. Andrew has a wide range of responsibilities, including oversight for alumni education programming. This is his second guest posting. He wrote about GoCrossCampus in 2007.] 

There has been a recent increase in media coverage of a new breed of web sites that combine social networking with philanthropy, such as Ammado and Razoo. When I started getting news stories on Facebook telling me that Princeton alumni were joining Razoo’s Princeton University Alumni and Donor Network, I went in for a closer look. 

The concept is simple: sites such as Ammado and Razoo connect users with two groups:

1. non-profit organizations that have a presence on the website, and
2. other users with similar philanthropic interests. 

The sites also make it possible to donate to the non-profits. Giving activity then appears on users' profiles and is disseminated throughout their networks. This philanthropic activity is the new type of social information that makes these sites distinctive. 

This raises the question: what is the potential impact of the sites on development and alumni relations in one of the largest non-profit sectors, colleges and universities? I have two initial thoughts:

• There’s a transparency issue with these sites that ought to worry advancement officers. It’s not clear for instance, exactly where the money goes. Does it go to the Development Office? If so, where? Annual Giving? If so, are there processes to make sure the gift is credited to the appropriate donor or donor group? 
• There is also an issue with restricted funds. On Razoo, for instance, in addition to allowing the user to specify the amount and recurrence of the donation, the donor can designate the money for a “specific fund, project, person or account.” How are restricted funds channeled into the appropriate accounts, to guard against comingling of funds? What happens if a donor specifies a use that isn’t officially endorsed or permitted? My guess is that for many university development offices, extensive groundwork would be needed to integrate this type of donation stream into established advancement practices.

While the pages for the non-profits on the sites allow some customization – news feeds, video feeds, logos, links to the organizations’ websites, and so on – an unscientific investigation of about a dozen college and university pages on Razoo suggests that few of them are taking advantage of these features. Indeed, I wonder how many of them are even aware that these pages exist? 

Of course, many schools don’t have the resources necessary to develop a presence on every social and professional networking site that pops up. When a page on Razoo appears to be your institution asking for money, however, the game changes. We invest enormous effort in multifaceted communications to cultivate, solicit and steward donors. With the advent of this sort of third-party solicitation, advancement offices have lost their monopoly on fundraising-related communications, and that changes the environment. Would we even want a third party to appear to be raising funds on our behalf? This is a serious policy question.

As of this writing, the Princeton University Alumni and Donor Network on Razoo has approximately 50 members who have donated approximately $225 since its apparent creation in December 2008. In the context of a $1.75 billion campaign, that’s nothing. Nevertheless, as is so often the case with Web 2.0, the ground is shifting ever so slightly. These new sites may offer as many opportunities as challenges, and we must pay close attention.

Business Networking for Higher Ed: CASE Group on LinkedIn

As a professional organization CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) has a very broad mandate. Part of its stated vision is to be "the primary resource for professional development and information."

Until fairly recently this meant performing traditional association tasks: providing a master web presence, publishing a magazine and an e-newsletter, and of course delivering workshops and conferences. In other words, it meant being the hub for fundraising, alumni and communications professionals in higher education. Top-down. Centralized.

But the same forces that are decentralizing and flattening the communication model for our institutions are at work on our entire profession. So a couple of months ago a CASE Group appeared on LinkedIn. Without any advertising or marketing, this network of advancement professionals has slowly grown to 268 393 481 568 652 members with a few more joining each day.

There are several possible uses and outcomes for the group. CASE is still some months from the launch of its new web site so LinkedIn will likely end up as the de facto online directory of advancement professionals. And despite their many imperfections and quirks, LinkedIn's Groups can reward those with a reason for using them, and the patience to learn how they work and what they do.

Here is a quick look at a few of the features of the CASE Group on LinkedIn.

Discussions: Perhaps the most immediately useful short-term networking tool for professionals in LinkedIn Groups. You can ask a question or search for expertise, ideas, experiences and resources among fellow Group members. 

News: Users submit links to articles that are about CASE, or directly relevant to its work. Group members are notified on their home page or by RSS when something is posted.

Jobs: It's hard to believe nobody has posted a position here yet. I'm guessing that soon job postings will pop up in the group.

Members: Who else is in the Group? This tab will tell you the number of members, their degree of connection to you within LinkedIn in, and their job title and network size. There's also a link for sending a private message. And of course you can click through to view another member's individual profile.

And a Settings tab lets you decide whether to display the CASE logo in your LinkedIn profile or next to your name in search results. You can also turn on email updates, specify the address where you'll receive those updates, and determine their frequency. And you can decide whether other Group members can send you private messages via LinkedIn. 

This is a very quick snapshot. Used prudently and with just a little forethought, this Group can act as an additional valued resource for those of us who want to visualize our network, increase our awareness and reach within the profession, and find answers and ideas to help us in our work.

Of course, our alumni are participating in Groups on LinkedIn as well, in official and unofficial alumni groups. You should read and contribute to those discussions so that 1) alumni can see where alma mater adds relevance and solves problems and 2) you can keep up with what alumni need and what they are doing.

One last thought: The CASE Group was started by a volunteer leader – not by a CASE staff member. This is another good example of something important, which should be clear to all of us by now: if organizations don't seize the tools and start working outside our old silos, our audience will do it for us. Are you comfortable with that?

CASE Group on LinkedIn

Also: 

Facebook Group for CASE 

Directory of Groups on LinkedIn 

Join LinkedIn if you are not already a member