NAME:
Join.me

URL:
http://www.join.me

WHAT IT DOES:
Super simple, and free, screen sharing, screen controling, and virtual conference tool.

MY TAKE:
I don’t like having a lot of software on my computer. Several online screen sharing tools I get invited to, ask me to download something before I can use it.  While Join.Me does make me download a one time thing, it doesn’t ask my participants to do the same. They can just go to the special URL I give them and, like magic, they are in. This tool is only meant for small virtual conferences of 1-4 people.

SCREEN SHOTS:

While at Fordham University doing a training for their Orientation Leaders, I noticed right from the beginning one student with his head down. He kept his head down the whole time and almost never made eye contact with me. I figured he was either studying, autistic, or just straight up didn’t care what I was talking about. He was the only one in the group of 200 students, so I let it go.

After the program was done, several students came up to me to talk and ask questions, including my anti-eye contact audience member. He took me off guard because he started by thanking me for the program and saying how great it was.

“But you had your head down the WHOLE time…” I replied. To which he replied by opening up his notebook and showing me a page filled with drawings of all the lessons he pulled out of Dance Floor Theory. I was shocked as I’d never had a student, with such talent, draw Dance Floor Theory like he did.

Look below and see for yourself what he drew.

I don’t have any contact info for the student. I only know that he is an Orientation Leader at Fordham University, he’s interning with Marvel Comics, and he has a website where he posts his drawings. He said he’d follow up with me after the program, but silly me forgot to get his email and instead gave him my card. 99.99% of students never follow up after a program.

If you happen to know this student, please connect me with him.

While hanging out in Central Park, I watched a large group of people picnicking in a grassy area nearby. Without attempting to stare too much, I’d glance back to the group every five minutes. Each time I looked back, everyone had switched places. It was one big social waltz where everyone mingled with everyone.

Thinking back on events I’ve either hosted or attended, the best ones involved some kind of social waltz where no conversation dragged on too long and everyone mingled and connected with everyone.

Sometimes a social waltz happens organically, but more often, it’s up to the host (you) to make the social waltz happen.

In Dance Floor Theory, step two in turning a bad dance into a good dance is to introduce people to each other. DFT alumni should recognize this step as the “uh have you met uh” moment in the training.

As the host of an event, you get to make the social waltz happen. At first it might be tough, but over time it builds and eventually the dance should continue on without you.

KLM leveraged Social Media to creatively engage their traveling customers with a pattern interrupt of happiness. Imagine if your campus had a Social Media Prize Patrol that would track students down via public tweets and deliver them a pattern interrupt of happiness. (video)

To learn more about Blender Events, click here.
To learn more about our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training, click here.

While hanging out with friends, someone asked the group what our first online screen name was. We all shared and laughed as each one was more obnoxious than the previous.

• BigBlueEyez22
• LookAtMe_LookAtMe
• Itz*MEEEEEEEEEE
• TheKooliest
• sportygirl9
• footballdemon
• i<3puppies
• CrappyMcCrapper

Luckily we’ve all grown up and realized that those names, while fun and cool when we were in Junior High, are a bad reflection of our professional aspirations. So most of us now use either our real name, or something very close.

A couple years ago, I wrote about a Time Magazine article that showed how the adolescent brain develops from childhood into early adulthood. In short, the research in the article showed that the part of the brain that is responsible for making smart decisions based on long term thinking, is the last part of the brain to develop around the age of 25.

In the past, this wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but in today’s world in which every action we take is digitally recorded forever, it sets up all sorts of issues.

Let’s go back to online screen names…

It could probably be assumed that a right of passage into teenager-dom, is to set up your first Facebook account. During the sign up process it asks you what you want your special, unique, never-to-be-changed URL to be. And with a fully charged teenage brain, and more and more of the common names already taken, teenagers will resort to online screen names they think are funny and cool among their peer group…

• tazmebro666
• bobinator501
• caped_crusader
• JustShootMe
• Coldleftoverpizza
• pooptarts92

Now, fast-forward to when the teenager goes to college and finds out that college admissions officers use Facebook to screen applicants. The grown up teenager now wants to change her online screen name, but unlike when I grew up and it was easy to do, sites like Facebook don’t let you change your URL. So you will forever be known as the silly, stupid, goofy, socially not acceptable screen name your teenage brain created back in the day. Oy vey.

NAME:
Booshaka

URL:
http://www.booshaka.com

WHAT IT DOES:
Attaches a point-scoring system to the activity of your Facebook Fans to help you discover your Top Fans through an engagement dashboard.

MY TAKE:
Long time readers of the Swift Kick blog will know that I talk about the 90-9-1 rule often when it comes to community engagement, so to have a tool that really brings this rule to life is a big deal and something I’ve been waiting for. It’s not perfect yet as it seems to only track month-to-month, but I’m sure in due time, they’ll have a full data dashboard.

The actionable outcomes of having a visualization of your Fan’s engagement will be huge. You’ll be able to identify your trending leaders. You’ll be able to reward the top engaged users every month. You’ll build a game layer ontop of engagement. You’ll be able to…what else? How do you see this being valuable to your work?

SCREEN SHOTS:

Like Joseph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey philosophy, we like to divide college students into 5 different stages of engagement based on the Engagement Pyramid below…

Each stage is defined by a different set of characteristics of an individual. Fully engaged individuals display a different set of characteristics than apathetic/uninvolved individuals. Thus, the way we interact with individuals in each stage should be different. A “5″ doesn’t want to be treated like a “Neutral.” And treating a “Neutral” like a “5″ might be too much too soon and thus demotivating.

Once we’ve recognized an individual’s stage, then the next step is to move them gradually up the Engagement Pyramid step-by-step. In our Dance Floor Theory program, we call this X+1. “X” being the stage an individual currently is in and “+1″ being the next step that is challenging enough for that indivdual, but not too challenging (e.g. +3) which might be demotivating. If you think of it like a video game, video games do an amazing job of knowing your current level and knowing what the next motivating challenge is for you. That’s the same thing as X+1.

The hardest step on the Engagement Pyramid is moving someone from a “Neutral” to a “1.” Where a “Neutral” is someone who doesn’t care and is indifferent to anything you do and a “1″ is someone who actually pays attention and is curious. Once someone is a “1,” it’s much easier to continue to move them towards a “5.”

Ask most educators and they will tell you student apathy is huge on college campuses. Campuses are filled with “Neutrals,” however most of the activities we do on campuses are geared towards “1″ through “5″ people because they are the ones who will pay attention to our flyers, emails, and Facebook invites and take the extra effort to actually show up to an event. But what about the larger percentage of our campus that are “Neutrals?” What can we do to engagement them, to give them their X+1 moment, and to move them from a “Neutral” to a “1?”

Enter Free Hugs…

Well actually, Free Hugs is just one example of thousands of examples of events we call Blender Events. Blender Events serve two purposes…

1. Cause people to have a pattern interrupt throughout their day. Or as we say in Dance Floor Theory, get people to go from “Meh” to “Hmmm.”
2. Build peer-to-peer relationships by mixing people together with near-peers. Near-peers are people who are models of success that are just a stage or two ahead. In the Engagement Pyramid, a near-peer to an “X” would be a “1.”

Every time we host a Blender Event on campus and cause a “Neutral” to have a pattern interrupt in their day, or get them to go  from “Meh” to “Hmmm,” or connect them with a “1,” then we are supplying them with an X+1 Moment. The more X+1 Moments they have, the harder it will be for them to stay a “Neutral” as they will start to display characteristics of a “1″ whether they want to or not. And once they are a “1,” then we can work on getting them to become a “2.”

So there you have it, That’s the ‘why’ behind Free Hugs. As you may have noticed, it has very little to do with the actual Free Hugs event and more to do with the introductions/connections/relationships that happen from the Free Hugs event.

In a series of brainstorming conversations with a fellow NY EOer we attempted to outline ways to increase retention within the NY EO chapter. After several rounds, he and I seemed to not be looking at the situation the same way. To figure out where the disconnect was, I drew the outline below to demonstrate what my approach would be like if I were working with one of our client schools.

To further explain my chicken scratch…

1. The conversation with a school usually starts in the middle with the idea of increased student engagement and involvement.
2. But one has to take a step back and ask why increased student engagement and involvement is important? Most of the time the answer is higher retention rates. Beyond intuitively making sense, there is research (Astin/Tinto) that draws the line between how engaged/involved a student is to fellow peers and his/her retention rate from year-to-year.
3. The next step is to list out all the tactics that an institution is currently doing to increase engagement and involvement.
4. By attaching a measurement/point system to each tactic we can then build an Engagement Dashboard that tells us who a school’s most involved, and least involved, students are.
5. If the data from the current tactics isn’t enough, then we need to brainstorm new tactics that we can create, measure, and plug into the Engagement Dashboard to get better results.
6. The end result is a dashboard that gives us a clear visual of who a school’s most involved, and least involved, students are. With this information schools can focus their energy on celebrating the engagement/involvement of the top third while putting their limited resources into supporting the bottom third who are at the highest risk of dropping out.

For schools, being able to target the bottom third is huge because they are the most at risk. From an administrator’s perspective, each student’s tuition from year-to-year makes an impact on the bottom line of the school.

Bringing the story back to EO…

After I laid out this Engagement Plan, my brainstorming partner quickly went, “Ah-ha! I got it. Unlike a school where there is a real desire to support the bottom third and keep them in school. EO is an exclusive organization and if you aren’t up to carrying your own backpack, then we don’t want you because we only allow so many members at a time. So with our Engagement Dashboard, we are going to put all our energy into celebrating the top third.”

Makes sense. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that not all communities want to keep increasing their numbers and retain as many members as possible. Some communities, like EO, are built on an exclusivity model.

As you build out an Engagement Dashboard for your community, make sure to be clear on if your goal is to be an exclusive or inclusive community.