SOC3: Where U At? Location-Based Services for Higher Education

Speaker: Thank you, Mark. So my name is Tim Jones. I am the director of web communication at NC State in Raleigh, North Carolina. Not the other North Carolina but North Carolina State University. And you can find me on Twitter, too, if you want to scan that. I don't know if it's big enough to scan from where you are but we'll talk a little bit about QR codes in a couple of minutes.

So what I'm talking about today is location-based services for higher education. I'll start with just a little overview of location-based services, kind of what they are and how they work. I'll talk a little bit about how universities are using location-based services. And then I'll talk a little bit toward the end about some things we are doing in NC State with location-based services that I think are pretty interesting. Of course, I would, though.

So like any self-respecting web communications professional, I decided to start this presentation with the definition from Wikipedia copied and pasted. So here it is: a location-based service is an information and entertainment service accessible with mobile services through the mobile network utilizing the ability to make use of the geographic location of the mobile device.

Seriously, "utilizing the ability to make use of?" Nice work, guys. I'm guessing that this was written by a committee of higher education senior administrators, or perhaps, some computer scientists.

But thanks to the use of clever use of boldface type here, emphasis is mine, there are some key ideas that get across here, so "entertainment," "mobile," "information," "geographical position."

Audience: Can you just turn up your volume?

Speaker: Yeah or no. How about I talk louder? Will that work?

Is that better?

Audience: Yeah.

Speaker: I do think we should thank the scientists for their hard work on that definition, nonetheless. But I'd like to try a different approach in defining location-based services. Something I think, that was inspired by scientists because it's math, but it's a little bit simpler. At least, for my money. So here it is: location + content = location-based services. I like it. It's a little bit simpler.

We all know that content is king. Everyone wants content. We do all kinds of crazy stuff to get it. User-generated authentic content, that's what is tough. So we know that content matters, but what about this location stuff? Does location really matter?

Well, according to Google it does.  One in five searches is locally related, according to Google. That's 20%. See, I can do math, too, 20% of the searches. In Google world, that's like two billion a month, I kid you not. And so you see, a guy who is searching "Justin Bieber" in North Carolina has the key piece.

So Google has been doing this for a while with nearby search results. So you search for something near where you are.  I'm sure all of us have used this since we have been here to find somewhere to eat, buy beer, or whatever it is we have been looking for nearby. So it does matter. Location does matter.

But what location-based services are doing now are evolving search in a whole new way. It's no longer "Find X near X." It's "Find X near X and go interact with that place." That's what location-based services can do.

And we have all of these players. We have Foursquare. We have Gowalla, Whirl, Brightkite, SCVNGR, Yell, Facebook Places, Loot and God knows how many other ones that are out there. I'm going to think that what they are doing are three fundamental things. Location-based services are connecting people to places, places to people, and people to people in places. And that's really fun to say over and over very fast to annoy the hell out of your co-workers, by the way.

So how does this work? How are location-based services connecting, say it with me, people to places, places to people, and people to people in places. Pretty simple, they all use the same fundamental principle of mechanics.

The heart and soul of location-based services as they exist right now is the check in. So the check in is pretty much the foundation for all these services. There's one thing that most of these have in common, so here is how a check in works.

If I use my preferred mobile device, and let us not kid ourselves, that's the iPhone. And I open up Foursquare and I use the magic of GPS to locate myself. I say, "Hey, Foursquare, go find me?

It tells me, "This is where we think you are." It gives me a list of places and I say, "Yeah, that's it." And I click the big green button then I check in.

So part of this process, I could check in, I could share it on Twitter. I could share it on Facebook. I could tell my friends where I am. I can, with some services like Gowalla, upload photos. And I can pretty much share whatever it is I'm doing.

I'm eating a sandwich at wherever. I am having the corn tortillas at Nada which are excellent, by the way. So a lot of people ask, "Why in hell would I do this? Why would I broadcast my location to the scary Internet?"

Well, it's kind of like in some ways, I think a little bit like reverse stalking, if you think about it. You're telling people where to find you. I'll give you a minute on that slide.

But I think that the idea that I can get content based on where I am at any given moment is pretty awesome. And for marketers, we can find where you are and give you what we want you to see based on where you are at any given moment in time, targeted marketing to a whole new level.

So what s it that compels people to check in outside of just wanting to fit in and use Foursquare because they saw it on the Internet? I think there's one thing that we can all agree works: check in, get stuff, the number one incentivized thing you can do with location-based services.

And so I can check into a location, show whoever at that location that I have  checked in and get something, like a coupon for 10% off for coffee, free T-shirt at the bookstore, or more like a bumper sticker. They don't give stuff away at our bookstore. TOMS shoes that are promotional, where you can qualify to get a pair of real shoes, not fake shoes.

An enterprising RD in NC State has offered, I don't think you can read all the way, a special sweet treat. Having no idea what that is, I'm just going to leave that alone. And then of course, free beer. At this point I would ask, "Why wouldn't you check in? Free beer?"

But this is higher ed, right, and we don't always have money or deep pockets  like McDonald's or a bar in Vancouver. So what can we do? Well, good news that it needn't be real. You could  give away fake stuff, digital candy.

The other part of location-based services, I think, is an interesting element. What these are digital rewards for checking in or meeting some sort of specific criteria. If I have 25 check ins at  three Oktoberfest locations, 10 taco joints, three times at the Apple store, all kinds of stuff. And what this is is a digital reward. You basically get a notification or an icon next to your name in your profile that you have accomplished or achieved something.

And it's an interesting layer to location-based services. It introduces a game layer so that we're constantly comparing ourselves to what our friends are doing and what rewards they're getting, both physical and digital rewards. So if someone in my building becomes the Mayor,  which is the ultimate in Foursquare is to be the mayor of a place which means you have checked in the most times in, I think, 60 days.

If I see that someone is the mayor, and I work in that building, I'm going after him. I'm going to try and get it. There is no explanation for why. It's just that competitive part of our personalities and I think that it is human and it works. We know this.

Anybody play XBox in here? Achievement on lot, right here? So this stuff works, There is a game layer that sort of introduces casual competitiveness to something social media oriented -- that's not really a phrase.

But anyhow, they reward all kinds of stuff with these digital rewards. They reward multiple locations, multiple visits, loyalty, time of day, unique locations, pretty much anything. And I think this works. I think we all know it works because it's the digital equivalent of the "I voted" badge. We've all worn that, some of us for two or three weeks after we have voted on our sport coat because we forgot to take it off.

But it works. Everyone goes and gets that badge. I don't know of anyone who has voted who hasn't gotten that sticker. It's kind of crazy, and people go nuts for this stuff.

It also does something else and this is a good case. This tells you that you had participated  in some sort of social shared experience as well. It makes you one of those people. It indicates something about you and you're personality and your behavior. And I think that that's what badges and digital rewards can do as well.

So on Foursquare you have this, for a while it is the thing, the Swarm badge which is to check in where 50 other people have checked in also. So you're participating in a shared experience. You're indicating that you are a part of the shared experience and you're probably displaying it on your Foursquare page.

Other services like Whirl which I don't talk too much about, but Whirl uses real-world patterns to pair you with people with similar interests. It's pretty crazy and it's really interesting, too. You can join a strange brew society for beer-related things.

And then of course, Facebook Places which launched earlier this year, which leverages the enormity of its social connections that already exists. And it introduces Place as something that could bind people together.

What all of these things do is they start to merge the physical and the digital. You start to have digital rewards for physical activity, all kinds of stuff. Did I say the same thing twice? I think I did. Sorry. But this stuff brings us together over shared experiences. It allows you to interact with places so you can check in and get stuff. You can check in and harass that you've checked in more than them. You can do all kinds of interesting stuff.

And it pings our human desire for social validation. That's what these badges do. That's what all of these stuff does. And it also give that sense of belonging you get, the "I voted" badge again. And so when you incentivize participation like giving coupons, free things, t-shirts, all kinds of stuff, you encourage people to come back and continue to try. So they get the residual rewards then they get the physical ones as well.

Some other services, and in Raleigh, I'll talk a little bit about Try-out throughout the presentation. But some of these services, and this is a locally based location-based service. Try-out NC is specific to the Triangle, just Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. And it basically has all the trappings of location-based services wrapped up into one service specific to the Triangle.  What this does is it establishes a stronger sense of relevance and a stronger sense of community.

So you're looking for things that the locals do, and we've done that. We've gone to the beach and looked at the things that the locals eat. You don't want Chili's. You don't want Applebee's, unless it's happy hour. And you find those places that the locals enjoy.

And this is the sort of what this does. It allows you to explore a confined  or contained community ahead of time just through the digital world. And then there are incentives and badges and all kinds off fun stuff that you can do.

And this concept really encourages exploration. It's more about discovery and connecting with people inside of your community, which I think is an interesting concept. So not surprisingly, universities have figured out, "Hey, we're communities. We got people. We're a place. We can do this, too." And so they have.

Campuses are, by their nature, physical communities. They are already defined. There is nothing you have to do to create it. It exists already. Now, it's figuring out how to take this location-based service concept and lay it on top of what you are doing in your campus.

So it's always Harvard, right? Harvard got in early. Harvard worked with Foursquare to establish a branded Foursquare page. So this is the webpage and there are also some mobile elements to this as well. Quite  a few, actually.

So what this is a list of  60 or so places combined under the common Harvard banner. And what you can do is go here and visit all these places and get all these information, like "Since 1882," Harvard landmark and all the stuff  that the university wants you to see. But also when you select one of these places, you get tips from people who have actually been there, actually worked there or go to school there or participate everyday in the campus.

And they're giving you genuine information. So this place takes cash only, or "make sure to see this professor when you're in this building." There are all kinds of things that happen here, and it's really trusting the community to provide that information. And people love your universities. There's no question about it.

And so the concern about "what if somebody says this place sucks," it happens but the chances of them being shouted out by the people who love it is much better than it making any kind of dent in your reputation.

So Foursquare worked with A couple of universities. They are a handful, and this is by no means intended to be comprehensive but Harvard, Oregon, Stanford have all worked with Foursquare to establish these pages. And the three of them in particular, have custom badges. So if you visit five of those locations under the Harvard banner, you get the Harvard Yard badge the Oregon Inducted badge, or I don't remember the Stanford one's name. But essentially, you get badges for participating and being part of these communities.

 And this is a nice way to sort of generate content. So you're getting content from your user specific to the university by the people who are there just by offering this service for them.

Other schools like Florida do a little bit different with Gowalla. Gowalla is a competitor to Foursquare. It's not quite as big. I didn't mention this earlier but Foursquare has like 3 million users worldwide, 15,000 business partnerships, so it's up and coming in the growth graph. It kind of went straight up in 2009.

But Gowalla is a little bit smaller. They do things a little bit different and interesting. Gowalla lets you upload photos when you check in, which adds just another layer of content-generation to the whole process. But it also gives you the authentic user content that you couldn't get anywhere else.

How many times have we hired student photographers to go shoot an event to get that feel to it? This is happening whether we want it to or not. And you can take advantage of this by presenting in a sort of an organized, contained fashion on something like Gowalla.

Gowalla also uses Trips, and so the idea here is you can identify a set of points on a map and put information on them. It seems simple but that's the campus map. It's done. You can identify them and you can let people comment on them. They can visit them. They can navigate the campus themselves, and you get this nice Google Map out of the deal as well. So more and more content being generated.

So this is sort of a detail page, and the emphasis here is that tours equal content and I think that everyone here needs content. And you can see all the photos from the Swamp and all these other fun stuff.

So Foursquare and Gowalla are both actively  pursuing partnerships with universities, so now is a good time to consider if it's worth it and then try to reach out. So with Foursquare, you just fill out a form and say, "Here is what we'd like to do with Foursquare," and then you wait for them to call.

With Gowalla, is a little less specific because you essentially, just contact them using the email address on these sites and you can talk with them about how you can be involved.

So another up and comer, Facebook, you might have heard of it, 500 million people. It recently launched  Facebook Places and I mentioned this earlier. Places is essentially the Status update which sort of evolved to include location. It sounds ridiculous is that it allows you to add one more way to connect with people on Facebook. That is a location.

So the awkward kid in middle school has tracked you down in Facebook and you might have actually crossed paths. And you can find out where they are. Or your ex-girlfriends can stalk you, which is pretty awesome, too.

So you can put yourself in Facebook. You can check in the locations and become part of what people connect on Facebook. It's how they connect and so it's enabling them to connect by using your location as the foundation for that. There's no doubt that this is going to evolve into something that no one understands quite yet. I mean this is Facebook. They got a little bit of money.

And I think this is interesting. The University of Kentucky jumped in early on this. They encouraged people to check in using Facebook Places. To raise awareness, they put in these giant wooden installations of the actual map markers in high traffic areas on campus, which is just an awesome idea. I think it's fantastic. And they have also done some interesting stuff with privacy which we'll talk a little bit about later.

So at NC State, we have a few location-based projects I will talk about. And the fun shouldn't be for current students, right? We all worked for administrators at some point. We have to make them happy. We have to earn buy-in from them.

And so in order to get our folks working with location-based services and comfortable with the concept, we picked the chancellor, right? Start small. He's new. Anyone here from Purdue? I'd like to thank you for him. He's an excellent guy, a former provost there.

But when he started, he wanted to tour  the state and get a sense of what NC State around the state. We are a university so we have a presence in all 100 counties in North Carolina. So  it makes sense, a guy goes somewhere, he's at places, map, content. It all seems to fit together. It's the formula of location plus content.

So we did this work with the chancellor's office to get all of the content that was being generated as a result of these visits. He was visiting with alumni, with researchers and faculty members. He was seeing all of our facilities. He was talking to donors and just sort of generally getting the lay of the land.

So what we chose to do was work with the guys at Try-out to create a custom map marker using the Google Maps API  to plotted these points on the map. And each one is imbued with content. We have flip camera videos. We have all kinds of photography. We have all these information that was sent out in the press packets all combined together.

So what you end up with is a list of stuff about a place, specific to the chancellor, so location-based content. And it's not as slick as "He checked in and he tweeted about it," but it's a lot less threatening and it works. It gets people comfortable with the concept that location can be important to what you are presenting on the Web.

NC State On Campus, so NC State On Campus is a hyper-local location -based service. It is all of the things that Foursquare and Gowalla are, at least philosophically, specific to NC State. And this lets us connect people-to-people inside of our community. NC State is the common denominator and we're hoping that this really takes off and gives people the opportunity to  connect and use location-based services.

But it introduces a level of control that I think, helps administrators sleep at night. It also gives us some unique opportunities.

It works a little different from other location-based services. It uses all of them so we're directly using APIs directly integrating with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, Gowalla, Tumbler and Flickr. I have a working demo on my phone if anyone wants to catch me afterwards and take a look at it. You'll be able to check in against your Foursquare  locations.

You can get the same benefit you can get with your Foursquare through On Campus. You can check in with Gowalla through On Campus. And once you check in, you relate this services, Facebook, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter. You create an aggregated Friends list inside of this software.

So this list here are people from different kinds of services. Since this is a beta, a lot of them are in Try-out, which is the company that we are working with. You can see Gowalla, Foursquare, Try-out, all of them sort of integrated into a single Friends list.

The thinking here is it's a lot more important where your friends are than what service they used to be there. So these allows you to directly connect with them and communicate with them regardless of whether they use Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook, even.

And you have your Friends list right there, all of them collected into one spot. And you can directly connect with them through email. You can tweet at them. You can send them notes on Foursquare. You can do whatever it is that you need to do right through this application.

And this is an interesting concept that a few people have considered, putting them all together. I know that there are some services that do it. But I think using NC State as a common denominator  is really interesting way to do it.

I the think we are doing is what we call advanced check ins. So does anyone know about that? QR code. QR codes are essentially square bar codes that you can scan with a smart phone and they deliver content. So I can point, scan and get stuff.

Newspapers are using them. A lot of advertisers are using them. Best Buy uses them in the corner of their circular ads. It gives you some mobile content. And you can generate them yourself which is really awesome. So there's a lot of potential with QR codes. It's a whole presentation in and of itself.

What we're doing with them is embedding check in data with the QR codes we generate through On Campus. So you'll be able to create a QR code for  a table inside of a dining hall. Put it on a table tent. A student comes in and sits down, points at it and scans it, gets a 10% discount n the ice cream that's there and also gets a mobile menu delivered to him, just from the QR code and they check in at the dining hall to get whatever benefits come from that.

Another idea we have with QR codes is to print them in play bills for university theater. So I'm sitting there and looking at it and said, "Hey that's kind of cool. Let me scan it and see what happens."

So it checks you into the theater and it gives you a little background on the actors or anything. You can deliver any kind of content you want as long as it is mobile-friendly just knowing that people are scanning this with their mobile device makes sense.

So there are a lot of integration possibilities there and ways you can take advantage of QR codes. And they scale really well, so taking Kentucky's lead and make some big ones. We're going to spray paint this thing on the Free Expression Tunnel with NC State, which is a tunnel where you can spray paint almost anything you want. So it's the nearly Free Expression Tunnel.

But it's a huge QR code and this Photoshop but it looks pretty good and it scans, too. So you'll be able to do this in whole banners, physical installations on brick, building sides, all kinds of places that you can put these QR codes, assuming that our facilities folks agree. This one, we don't have to ask them so it's an easy target.

But we have started  working on athletic folks, student affairs, alumni associations, dining, to get these ideas out there and have them start thinking about how they can use this service because to go with it is to offer it as a service and not as a solution. Just a series of tools for location-based services contained within NC State to let them do whatever it is they can do with it.

We have no idea where this is headed. It could go horribly wrong but we like to see how it goes and let it grow organically. This is like Twitter. If Twitter had stuck with "What are you doing right now?" instead of  evolving the way that its users evolved it, there'd be no Twitter. I can say that now. So hopefully, location-based services offer that same potential.

And we felt like creating our own service. The guys at Try-out have helped a lot with this. They are pioneering some ideas there but benefitting from their expertise and working with them has given us opportunities to develop NC State specific thing.

And of course, we'll incentivize participation. Another advantage to having your own service is that you can create as many badges as you want. And you get to design them yourself. They don't have to be circular glassy or have web buttons. They can be, blocky and stodgy like ours. I'm kidding.

These are just sort of concepts. They were not really done. But you will be able to manage a location specialist right through the software so you can, say, working with student affairs. They can promote student events and that sort of thing directly through the tool, free ice cream, free t-shirts which I have some, so catch me afterwards.

Newt, we checked in their nuclear facilities. Or Warewolves -- that's not a typo, that's kind of a pun, and early on name for the On Campus project was Werewolf.

Events, we can manage events, too, so you can do location-aware events. By checking in to the Brickyard at NC state -- I know no one knows what any of these things are. Brickyard is a yard of bricks.

So you can check in the Brickyard. Take a look at what events are happening and see that there's a farmers' market going on. The student organization is doing something, a blood drive somewhere in Tally Student Center or there's an event later that is sponsored  event that we've worked with someone to put together.

So you can imagine the potential for events. I mean events are like the bread and butter of universities. So tailgate student service events. All these can have different components.

So you can incentivize participation for the events. You can promote them, sort of with location-aware technology. And you can give away badges for it, check in at Tailgate, scan a QR code, get a free barbecue sandwich, all kinds of interesting things you can do.

The alumni and athletics folks are really excited about the potential so think about checking in into the fanzone at a football game and then getting a coupon from one of the affiliated vendors for 10% off. I mean the potential is rich here. And so we're hoping that it takes off. We'll see.

Another thing we can do with On campus is create content. All these photos that you can upload. All the video, which is a new location-based service. I don't know that anyone is really doing it. You'll be able to upload video and share lots of services. Video works with Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, So you'll be able to push out content as well.

And this is a real powerful concept for us. We want students to create content on our behalf. And we're hoping that this works and  it didn't turn into a disaster. We may kill the Internet with video uploads of location-based stuff. Who knows? But it's worth the shot.

So we'll compress the videos and you can upload. The idea here id that we're working to evolve the campus ecology. The expectation is for interacting with campus will be different. Walk around, see a QR code, scan it, you expect to get something. You can participate in a whole new level. You can find your friends, what they're participating in.

NC State is a very decentralized place, both physically and philosophically. But this sort of begins to unify that. So if your friend is an engineering student and you're a design student, you'll find him in the basement he is in and he'll find you in a coffee shop you're at. Those are the kinds of things we are hoping that these will inspire.

Another big piece of this knowledge is analytics, metrics and research. With this software and this tool, we'll be able to know where you are, where you checked in, where you checked in before or checked in after, what time of day, locations peak, what details -- we can manage the details so those nasty comments, we can manage those through here -- photos and we can directly message specific users based on where they are. 

So instant  customer service, you joined a visitor center. Somebody checks in and says, "I have no idea what am I supposed to do. This place is empty." Somebody can see that or monitor it as close to real time as you want a monitor and reach  out to them and say, "Hey, we are already at the bell tower. Take a turn on the left. Turn and pull and drive, whatever it is that you need to do."

And cross promotion, if you know where someone was  before and after, they came to your event, you can sort of evaluate whether the events were effective or not. And you can also sort of say, " Hey, we know a lot of people who are going from this place to this place." Maybe we should put some bread boards out there and point in this direction.

Or this information can inform all kinds of different marketing initiatives, like where you out your print racks, where you do all kinds of stuff, pull banners and any of those things. It's kind of creepy isn't it? I love it.

So that's Phase I. The next thing we're hoping to do is integrate more content onto the On Campus idea. So we have a mobile app already that we would be able to take all these mobile stuff and put it inside On Campus so that when you check in a location, On Campus
you will have news events, other events, libraries, all kinds of stuff,  the dining hall apps.

We are working on these already. We can do all this with the QR Stuff and so you check in and it delivers you to the mobile stuff that already exists. But that's the key thing, to sort of making all of our services work together.

But of course, Wolfwalk -- I'm not sure if anyone knows what this is because it's already in the apps store. It's a historic tour of NC State, the location of  libraries. Phase II of this is to put Wolfwalk in On Campus.

So if I check in anything which has a Wolf Walk component, I get to see the history and the archival footage that's along with it. You guys can download this if you want.

And so as part of the educational role of this, we've put together a cartoon to sort of demonstrate what we imagine this would look like, because we often imagine our campus populated by cartoon wolves. So here it is.

On Campus, so the check in. Wolf 1 checks into the library and sees his girlfriend checked into the farmers' market, and decided to meet for coffee. She had won an award.

So they go and get some coffee. Somebody sees that they have checked in, joins them, scans the QR code in the table tent and gets a free cup of  coffee or a discount. They decided, "You know what? I got to go and study so I'm going to scan this QR code and get the menu for lunch. I'm going to go find out. Let's eat some lunch together."

This guy gets a tweet saying, "I'm going to study for the Econ final. Want to join me?" So they connect and they study and realized there was a nearby event, a basketball game and go pack. So they all end up. They photos and they share content.

So this is a sort of a lofty idea behind what we are trying to do. So that's the NC state project.

I can't talk about location-based services without mentioning privacy. Everybody is terrified of this stuff, telling people where you are, people knowing where your students are. And I think this comes down to personal responsibility and accountability. You have to know the services that you are using, who you have chosen to share your information with and how you are sharing that information.

The University of Kentucky did a good job enrolling on Facebook their promotion there about how to put up and how to control it and ensuring that you're not sharing with people that you don't want to. That's brilliant. It's all about education.

And the other thing you can do is turn it all off which On Campus, we agreed to turn everything , by default, off. If you are not sharing anything with anyone if you choose to at the point of the check in which is one way to sort of discourage people from making horrible decisions which we can't always do with technology but it's somewhat our responsibility that we are not enabling bad decisions to the extent possible.

And if you think about it, we have been telling people where we are as long as I can remember, whether it's in concrete, "Gone fishing," bathroom stalls, like my daughter telling me that she is on our driveway.

So we've always had this need to connect and make places social. And I think that's where location-based services are headed. Congratulations, you've earned this award.

I have a handful of t-shirts up here for the first 15 or so people who want them. So I'm taking questions if I have any time.

Host: Because we're podcasting this, I want questions on the microphone. So we'll start over here.

Male Speaker 1: I work in University of Oklahoma and we are one of the schools who started with Foursquare as well. One thing that I have noticed is that we --I'm not on the main team that's been doing all the big pushes -- one of the places that we're  pushing it is at football games and basketball games. Places like that.

Speaker: You mean you're not scared of athletics?

Male Speaker 1: No. The biggest issue that I have seen with Foursquare and location-based apps is there are things that require you to check in, that require data, that when you are at large events like football events where you can't get out to send out texts let alone to check Foursquare, you have to provide a solution.

And even with as large as our campus-wide WiFi network is, even that's not possible in those situations. So how do you think is way to deal with those kind of situations?

Speaker: So how do you deal with bandwidth demands with location-based services, particularly in highly populated event areas? You work at a smaller school, number one. Kidding. You lose football games, no.

I don't know that there is a solution. I don't know that location-based services will solve that. I do think that it's important to offer through the mobile networks, that's through your cellphone providers and wireless. So you have to have a mobile app. This sort of works in the same way that enables the check ins. That's a key piece of it.

So HTML 5 is really awesome stuff and it really opens the door to a sort of combine your WiFi to your cell networks. And I don't know if there are other solutions, to be honest, other than maybe trying to localize the check in points so whether it is distributed, or make it a progression so you check in at the gate and as you are leaving so that it's not contained all at once. Pace them throughout the game and not at a single moment, but I don't know at the school where you are whether that is really possible.

Male Speaker 1: I think that's a short-term problem and not a long-term one. It's amazing how far behind the US is in terms of building out that mobile infrastructure  compared to the rest of the world. Five years from now, I think, this is not going to be an issue.

Male Speaker 2: I'm from Purdue so you're welcome, by the way. We've been kind of toying around with this idea for a long time and the big challenge for us and one of our goals in my small team, is we need to support teaching and learning. So how can we engage the students in and out of classroom at that actual moment of learning?

And that's kind of the challenge. Like how do you do location-based stuff and handle learning at the same time. Have you guys thought about this at all? Have you seen solutions?

Speaker: We have. So how do you involve learning in location-based services? Is it all just kinks? To some extent, it is. But there are opportunities and I think that it is a really interesting area. I think this is where it's going to head. And I think the university is going to have to figure this stuff out.

And to be honest, no, we haven't figured it out. We are trying to give our campus the service to let them sort of explore how to do it. But also, you could do something like the history stuff, or architecture or design or some of those things. Like using those opportunities and adding these spots on campus to the services.

So you can say, "Go here. Here is a tip." Or "to do" and getting students to contribute or participate. You're getting a record of this. Even if you don't partner with Foursquare, you can see who checked in.

Of course, there is the "requiring them to have a Smart Phone" thing. That's bad. But that's one of the downsides, right? In order for people to use this stuff, they  have to have some level of Smart Phone or at least  know how to use the computer, which is not always the case.

But I don't think that really answers the question. I think it's an untapped area.

Male Speaker 2: It's a challenge for you guys, too. It's a tricky thing.

Speaker: Absolutely, and the strategy has been getting this thing up and running and see how it works. See how it goes and sort of develop from  there.

Female Speaker 1: So I think  museums for location-based learning is a  really good example. The other thing that I thought up for location-based learning. is Evernote, and  the value of "I took this note from this location." So I think there are some tools that are kind of related to that. "This is where I learned X."

Speaker: And people are talking about doing things like attendance with location-based services which I'm not sure how that works. You noticed we stir very, very far away from student services.

We're not talking to places like Peoplesoft or anyone at this point. This is kind of its own thing.

Female Speaker 2: I'm from the College of Licester which is a really small, about 1,800 students. We have a really small team and limited resources. What are your suggestions for implementing location-based services for a small campus?

Secondly, how do you encourage the pick up of that? We've marked everything on campus on Foursquare. We've got a very small group of people who have adopted it. It's very fledgling. What are your suggestions for getting us moving?

Speaker: Well, I think that I mentioned the incentives. I think that the idea that students are going to do something just because you want them to is absurd. That's not going to happen.

I think it's important to incentivize in ways that you can find to incentivize. Realizing that you have a limited budget resources. You're not getting a Foursquare badge and you're not building your own tool. Maybe if you claim your locations on Foursquare which is the first step is to go through and big old greens check in sticker and have the ability to offer promotions. Just start thinking creatively on what you might be able to offer to offer.

You offer like web design services or free consulting. You can make up stuff.

Male Speaker 3: Free t-shirt or something like that.

Speaker: Free t-shirts are awesome. That's what we're doing and t-shirts are not that expensive. And I would say incentivize and then market the hell out of it. Just put it everywhere that you could possibly can.

Unless people are on a location -based service, they are not going to see the advertisement inside of it. It's just one of those things that I think we forget. You have to point them to the thing and explain it. So a little bit of education on the value and then that sort of stuff might help.

And also if you can get the university to actually promote from the homepage, that's a great way to start. Your admissions counselor is using it, the campus tour folks are talking about it. Buy like 5-10 iPods and hand them out. Use your WiFi and get them to check in. Give them something when they're done, all kinds of stuff.

Partner with other people off-campus, too. One of the things that we've done by virtue of working with Try-out is that we have this sort of "Search On Campus" or "Search Try-out." So we sort of given people this opportunity to sort of search  locally and point out their business. There are some concerns with that in terms of  promotions and stuff.

Male Speaker 4:  I think one of the problems is a lack of critical mass. We put together a Gowalla tour. A lot of people accessed that Gowalla tour. Not a single soul has checked  into it because they're not in Gowalla.

We also did an orientation session using SCVNGR which was great. But when they did it, they looked at it as a game. This was not a lifestyle. It's like, "OK, it's a game so you don't have to ever use SCVNGR again." They didn't do that but because it is such a fragmented thing. I think that's difficult because we are all too busy so how do we manage or to even try to manage six different systems.

To that end, how do you make sure or what do you use to determine that you hit critical mass? How do you know that this is a solid venture to pursue that you've actually got enough in your own campus, that it's worth such a big build-out?

Speaker: I think you have o define your own terms for success. I wouldn't say that a SCVNGR event -- for those who aren't familiar, SCVNGR is a Google back location-based service that Has this idea of challenges, this sort of collected challenges. It's called SCVNGR for a reason, I think, because the point is for scavenger hunts. But it's that game layer. It's almost entirely a game.

But I don't know if that should be considered a failure. I mean people participated and enjoyed  it and they left with a positive experience. And they might remember or they may not. So offer more, try it out and continue.

And if you offer them and it becomes a sort of expectation from your students, they will become part of a lifestyle. There is also the opportunity to integrate or just pick a few services. I don't know if it's really a requirement to do all 300,000 of them whatever they are out there. That slide was just me Googling for 10 minutes on what's out there. And most of us have some user base behind them.

But obviously, at NC State, we chose to go at the other direction  which is to do one and put the other ones in it so we didn't have to pick. It's just use whatever you want.

But I think picking a handful that are effective and can help you accomplish whatever it is you want. So if your goal is to get people engaged in a campus tour, do that. Or your goal is some sort of personalize experiences for existing students, doing something like "Here's the best route from Building X to Building Y.  Make sure to stop here on the way in and get a free t-shirt or get some candy or something like that."

We've started on some tours inside of Gowalla that are actually specific to the different colleges. NC State is big so we have 10-12 colleges depending on who you ask. So what we've done is the Engineering Tour versus the Design School Tour. Just acknowledging that there are differences and that people can talk about "This building sucks. I want to go to this one instead," or "Make sure you take classes here and not there," that kind of stuff.

But also just helping prospective students here on how people use the campus on a day to day basis.

I don't know if that helps answer that, but I think picking a few that overlap well with your goals and knowing a little bit of the difference between them, like Gowalla focuses on the journey and trips, Foursquare is mostly a game to get badges and outdo your friends, SCVNGR is a scavenger hunt. And just see what works. Social media is all about failure.

Male Speaker 5: Just a quick question about your use of QR codes. I'm relatively new to the higher ed industry it I have worked with them quite a bit in a previous job at an art museum. I'm seeing a big difference in the audiences with these technology in particular. Are you using best practices to introduce them to the students?

Speaker: No, we're totally new to it, to be totally honest. We started using them in a couple of places that with decent results, sort of the heavy-handed stuff. Like "scan this, automatically Like this on Facebook" kind of  stuff. And it's interesting that they've sort of started to make their way from the West Coast to the East Coast. Since I'm in Raleigh, it has taken awhile and people are  looking at them and saying, "What in hell are these things?"

And so we're actually hopefully going to be able to do an education campaign behind it: Here is what the QR code is, here is how it works, and here's what you can do with them. We started to do that internally with our different departments and introducing them to the concept. And there are a handful of people who are already using them.

Our alumni association uses them to Like on Facebook but also give direction s to where you buy your ring. I mean there's things like that.

But in terms of best practices, the way QR codes work is the less data you have in them, the simpler the designs are which means the bigger you can make them. So the shorter you can make the URLs or the information you embed in them, the more you can put stuff in the middle of them, which is kind of cool, too.

But I don't know, I think it's about education. I think QR in education, particularly, is new so it's important to sort of talk about how other people are using them and not benchmarked against higher ed. I'd benchmark against Best Buys and  the other people who are doing them, like the Times Square, giant QR codes, that type of stuff.

So it's mostly just about education and potential and I think it's an interesting field. And probably somebody will present it on the next term, I'm sure.

Host: All right, we have to wrap it all here. Tim. Thank you. Great presentation. Thanks everyone.

[Applause]