Vibrant University Engagement - Exponential Knowledge Flows

An empathic, energetic, open minded, networked, student-life interested staff member needs a way to effectively engage relevant university stakeholders on one shared goal (vision) because otherwise energies of engaged staff members are wasted and engagement goes to zero.

Here is what emerged of different ideas, and got resurfaced while doing a MOOC together with an energized international team #CitizenScienceLab:

1. weekly online meeting (30min) of heads of staff/ departments about ongoing things (minutes shared publicly within the university)
2. public online forum (within university net)
3. free WiFi access in all campus premises (including cafeteria) for students, staff, and alumni
4. gamification of interdepartmental communication
5. Facebook page with interactive elements (providing credit points to students who involve, and staff, professors) 
6. Systems Thinking/ System Dynamics as a new curriculum (touching all other departments
7. real-world (within the university) use cases on improvements
8. a startup accelerator within the university (without public funding, in order to enable students to learn to run a business earn money for the rent, and learn for future work)
9. publish all (!) thesis 
10. only allow thesis with companies that are fully published to the public (so knowledge is spreading across disciplines, and time)
11. OLED-flat screen at the university cafeteria
12. WikiWall at very places within the university campus where different disciplines meet
13. publishing the regulations of certain university-related funding projects
14. entrepreneur boot camps as part of the general curriculum for all departments (including distance learning teams)
15. providing funding for conference attendees at other universities around the globe to learn what their approaches are
16. create ambassador teams of alumni (physical)
17. create ambassador teams of alumni (virtual, e.g. just on Twitter/ Facebook)
18. making it for new professorships a must to have a Twitter account
19. alumni days
20. summer school
21. entrepreneurial incubator (funded)
22. eliminate paperwork across the staff
23. deliver laptops/ mobile devices to all staff (with usage tracking)
24. person tracking so one can find relevant discussion partners across campus (either professors, students)
25. creating an alumni network with added value (what?) for them
26. allow alumni to use university web services/ free of charge WiFi around campus
27. mentor-mentee groups (with alumni)
28. organize tours to companies that are run by alumni
29. create multidisciplinary teams to solve city-based challenges (becoming part of the curriculum)
30. establish an Ultimate Frisbee league (leadership, tracking of body movements, a mobile computing application, interdisciplinary, competition)
31. encourage staircase using (instead of the elevator) by providing incentives (to be used via swipecards) for staff, and students
32. Install seating opportunities in prominent areas of the campus where a large, diverse mass of people flow by
33. engage special interest groups for improvement of processes e.g.. Lean Thinking, System Dynamics
34. engage politicians to do empathy walks for a day through the campus, telling in realtime what is good/ tricky / learned / action (#PresencingStatus)
35. Doing a #PresencingStatus (What is good? What is tricky? What have I learned? Next minimal viable action?) as a standard process for incoming students (after four weeks, bachelor students in their 2nd year, master students in their 1st year, professors, staff members) and publish those findings
36. engage as a university (with the non-obvious challenges around the transition from university to work) during the Global Entrepreneurship Week, and Lean Startup Workshops in Dresden, that I plan to organize)
37. open-door policy
38. student counselling 15 min with #PresencingStatus - on a PostIt® for all, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralflippold/sets/72157623063031728/
39. establishing standard processes to bring university news across floors, departments, and stakeholders (e.g. web-based standardized documents)
40. bringing the needs, and challenges of the different departments within the university to the public (#PresencingStatus)
41. lowered workload
42. single-entry-point where news from all faculties streams in in real-time
43. drawing together public websites of faculties where news come up
44. make sure that once published work is reachable even when servers, URL is changed in the future
45. automatic streaming of information about departments, university, student work, events
46. include the relevance of serendipity into the curriculum, and on the website of the university (with given examples where it turned to amazing results)
47. bringing together technical departments with non-technical departments on student projects
48. GoogleHangouts with alumni interviews (standard questions, #PresencingStatus; once a week, public, inviting up to 8 students
49. Workshops on specific topics led by alumni at the university (live streamed) to give students the work experience 
50. lowering the workload of staff members (what is really necessary? what is helping the student? what is going wrong over and over again (systemic failure)?
51. Interactive both like @SenseableCity's bus stop in the university entrance hall where bypassers can leave a message
52. RSS feed connecting hub bringing news of different departments up in real-time 
53. microblogging/chat program for all staff members (indicating online status, so questions/proposals/meetings can be done online/offline at no constraint
54. glass doors at offices
55. 3D-model of the university campus with the appropriate origin of information from RSS-info (point 52.) so deeper inquiry can be done directly
56. smartphone app for university microblogging, and location-based  - with gamification incentive (such as most direct contact with professors, response-time evaluation)
57. online, visualization of room occupancy in the buildings around campus (who, what, when) - so interesting thesis presentations or such can be visited
58. creating an ideation environment (d.school-like) within easy reach within campus main building, inviting also outsiders (for fresh ideas)
59. University speed-dating evenings on challenging questions that students and stuff bring up over and over again
60. PlasticLogic (electronic paper) in the main hall visualizing all courses and their rooms currently so one gets an overview
61. WikiWall-net within the campus (8x8 matrix for each department that is fed by automatic RSS-feeds + individual input), with daily capturing
62. MIT Sloan CONDOR solution to track the information flow across the floors, and departments (without tracking exact names), so information constraints or overload can be examined
63. a semantic-web solution to capture information flow 
64. put the formal curriculum out of work and create an entrepreneurial university - learning by doing only (like Team Academy, including the given faculties as the grounding)
65. open office building like BMW Plant Leipzig, http://leanthinkers.blogspot.de/2011/08/bmw-werk-leipzig-semperoper-starbucks.html
66. bilingual website to attract foreign students to include other cultures
67. sponsoring of books to the library (with mention of the giver in the book and electronic catalogue including how to be reached via social web)
68. Yearbook of all students (current) and electronic (printed on-demand basis) supplement with all alumni (with current base, work position)
69. Upon entering university short one-page pitch (person, background, interests, hobbies, social media presence, past work, picture, etc.)
70. Staff yearbook (and one-pager or three tags # on each person)
71. University BarCamp (during the week; free for all - practical design thinking workshops with practical relevance - get all stakeholders into dialogue
72. Twitter account for each department just like MIT Cambridge (e.g. http://smbrown.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/mit-on-twitter
73. Professors on Twitter (have a single entry point to find their accounts; e.g. http://connect.mit.edu/blog/12-mit-professors-who-use-twitter/
74. Short cafeteria-based 5-10 min workshops about what to write on Twitter or share in general (e.g. http://connect.mit.edu/blog/tweeters-block/ )
75. Creating a "creative communication office" (e.g. Orbiting the Giant Hairball, The Creative Paradox), one person as knowledge flow catalysator
76. Chartering a train (for roughly 700 persons), and run a week-long boot camp train tour (having flip charts, WiFi, and other facilities onboard)
77. sponsor a university world tour to learn who other universities tackle the challenge of communicating across campus
78. Initiate "viral campaigns" about news about the university that has to be spread into the public, and across campus
79. run ideation workshops (public to anybody) with oversized electronic boards for visualization
80. Surface table and touch-sensitive whiteboards in the hallway 
81. visualize the flow of moving information across different departments (especially on where waiting time appears) - these are the points where intervention and inquiry into root causes are most effective
82. no data closure on information flow
83. put a system dynamics department into place to act as internal flow improvement accelerator
84. writing a book by alumni "What was really really good, and should be replicated from the old days"?
85. inviting alumni and professor emeritus, as well as the staff who have left the university 20 years ago - engage in dialogue to learn from them
86. on entering the building send via your smartphone on what was hindering good information flow yesterday
87. Café outside at the entrance where all meet
88. encourage staff and students to take tram and bus (gamification, such as meeting at least two people of the university to talk with on the bus and so get into a conversation)
89. regular fire alarms (every quarter) - that is when people meet
90. make a day when every staff member wears a name badge with name, department, and three hobbies/ interests
91. create an open day in departments (one by one) and enable that others learn about your work and challenges
92. Job rotation (and only for a few days) so to see what the others do 
93. internships for university students (of all faculties) by the university at fields that students feel could be improved
94. cross-faculty projects that have the intention to generate revenue in a lean startup approach
95. mentor fireplace chats (live covered by students on Twitter)
96. students mentor staff on new media usage in a business context
97. open office with laptop use, and only electronic documents (paper scanned directly)
98. smartphone app where small incremental improvements individuals have achieved within university information & knowledge flow (e.g. establishing an alumni group or a Twitter account)
99. Innovation Nights where students pitch 5 min (5 pages) improvement ideas on things that bother them, sponsored catering/ drinking
100. GET CHANGE INTO MOTION ;-)

(taken from my first assignment of #DTActionLab MOOC 2013 offered by Stanford University)