We're excited to head to Denver tomorrow to particpate in the second annual Startup Alley at this year's EDUCAUSE, the largest IT conference for higher education.

While we were lucky enough to be invited to the first one, which took place in Philly last year, we can't wait to meet all the other great startups, vendors, and speakers that will be joining us this week.

If you'll be around, definitely stop by our table in Startup Alley to say hi and snag some RoomSync swag! 

This blog post is based on my presentation at the Georgetown Innovation Summit which begins at 2:53:00. 

To most people, hacking represents something negative. But I prefer to think of it as designing a workaround to achieve a desired result. By paying attention to these hacks, Higher Ed can gain all sorts of inisights to improve the overall student experience.

 

How Facebook learns from user hacking

In 2004, Facebook was growing, fast. Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the team needed to decide what feature to build next. They had to consider not only the time it would take to build the feature, but also the additional support costs.

One of the features being considered was the ability to upload photos besides your profile photo. Yes, there was actually a time when you could not upload your photo album to Facebook and tag all of your friends. It seems obvious to us now, however at the time it was not quite as clear that this was a feature that users wanted.

When the Facebook team looked at how people were using the site, they noticed users were changing their profile photo multiple times each day. Users wanted to show off their new photos and they came up with this 'hack' as a way to achieve their goal. 

 

Hacking the roommate assignments process

In 2003 B.F. (before Facebook), students would receive the name, email and phone number of their assigned roommate and give them a call. It never occurred to them to look that person up online because there was nowhere to look.

By 2005 A.F., more than 85% of college students were on Facebook; each wanting to know everything they could about their new roommate to be sure that the next year of their life would not be spent in agony (desired result). The hack that students across the country constructed was to research their roommate on Facebook and if they did not like what they saw, call into the housing office and ask for a new roommate.

I have spoken with hundreds of people who work in on-campus housing and 99.9% of them experience some level of Facebook related roommate calls. The only department that did not experience them simply decided to withhold the names of assigned roommates until the students meet on the first day of classes.

So there is the hack. Now, how do you fix the process by incorporating the hack? Our clients achieve this through RoomSync because we empower students to search for roommates on Facebook. They are given access to all potential roommates before the assignments are made. The result? Users who want to be in control of the matching process are happy and housing departments do not receive any calls about Facebook.

 

Next steps

How are students hacking your processes? Are they hacking their room like this Berkeley freshman? Try re-examining and thinking of ways to incorporate these hacks to improve the overall student experience. Do you have examples of hacks in Higher Ed? Leave a comment below!

My internship at RoomSync has been anything but traditional. I “loitered” around the (rather inviting) office for a few weeks before the program officially started, then, after the first few days, took to helping out. Roomsync's environment, as you may have peeked at in our various photos and videos, is very laid back. It's not uncommon to call it “the dorm room office,” which makes sense, considering our company's mission is to keep students in school by reducing the problems caused by mismatched roommates.

Once the actual internship started, the office became more lively and fun. The creative and productive nature of 8 other people all working quasi-independently was astounding. Between the basketball hoop, the endless supply (as far as I can tell) of Funyuns, and immense comfort of the big red couch, RoomSunc HQ feels more like home than home does.

If you're looking for an internship that isn't doing mundane work for a Fortune 500 company or somebody you know's dad, RoomSync is the place. I never would have thought that a work environment could be so much fun, yet foster real education about the business and higher education worlds. I learned to sell to businesses at RoomSync; I learned UX. I honed my power nap skill to a tee.

I'd recommend interning at RoomSync 110%.

I have read many articles lately about the impending digital takeover. Amber Case, founder of Geoloqui.com and a keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Convention, recently compared people who use up-to-date technology, as cyborgs. Neither I nor she believes an IRobot-type doom is impending, however, reading “The Next Generation of Student Support Systems” article on Higher Ed Live led me to question just how fast are students becoming technology dependent?

 

Last week I chatted with a man who grew up around the time of the first electronic digital computer. I was in my elementary school computer class when I first used a computer. My point is that everyone can say some form of the phrase “I was born before the (insert technological device here) was invented,” but is there a point where we won’t be able to reverse our dependence on the technology we've grown up using? Has this point in time already passed?

 

In my freshmen year of high school my English teacher assigned us a project while reading 1984. We were to stop using technology for a week. Yes, an entire week. No phones. No television. No computer. For the first couple of days I did very well…then I gave up. I tried this again over this past week as it was Spring Break and did surprisingly well. Being aboard a cruise ship without service definitely helped, but I did realize what Amber Case pointed out in her speech: “the best technology is invisible and just gets out of your way to let you live your life.”

 

So my questions for you are: Are you busy fiddling around with your apps and social media websites while life is happening around you? Or can you put the smartphone down for an hour or two each week, go out with friends and enjoy it before the cyborgs takeover?

Have you ever wanted to know what makes successful people successful? What goes through a person’s head when they perform any action? That’s what piqued my interest when going to class one day. And I was determined to find out. So, I went to the library and picked up the closest copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The book was a pretty fast read and gives a lot of supporting advice for one central idea: thoughts become reality.

Human beings by nature are thoughtful creatures. Thoughts are what propelled us through the evolutionary timeline to become what we are today. When a thought pops up in my mind, I naturally act upon it. Whether it is to get good grades, live a healthy lifestyle, or performing in a sport, I must first think inwards before I can perform the actions to the outer world. Such a simple process of acknowledging the process of thinking should be routine for many people, but even I was ignorant of how to think for the first twenty years of my life.

This past spring break, I traveled to North Carolina with seven friends and I realized thinking’s effects. While we were hiking on a trail in the mountains of North Carolina, each step I was taking was a preemptive thought. I envisioned each step taking place before the step actually occurred. When I was thinking about other things, such as my food or drink later on that night, my footing was unsure and slipped often. Applying this principle of thoughts becoming reality to other aspects of my life, such as school work or design has proven to be just as effective.

When people say, “I can’t do this,” all they’re really doing is not allowing a thought to be planted in their mind. I know many people like this, and all they have to do is change this backwards way of thinking. Take risks. Plant an idea. Live well.