Innovative Kiosks

There was an interesting article in the New York Times this week about new kiosks being developed by Intel that could eventually be placed in retail locations. The kiosks feature large touch screens with software that can identify customers, recall their purchase history, suggest specials or additional items to coordinate with their new purchases, and even let customers try out virtual clothing and cosmetics. The idea behind the kiosks is that it will provide customers with more product information as well as customer reviews, in other words, the information that they would see if they were purchasing online. Joe Jensen, general manager of the embedded-computing division at Intel explained the kiosks by saying, “The prototypes are a vehicle for showing the direction we see retailers needing to move.” As retail locations begin to change their models to provide an online shopping experience in store, how will consumer’s expectations change? Or perhaps more importantly, what will students come to expect when they shop in the college store?

Training/hiring collaborative people/ideas

A member sent the link to the following video in, which in turn was forwarded among senior staff at NACS. The speaker talks about a culture and hiring philosophy that links to innovation and collaboration. The video is of Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University (training arm for Pixar). The idea of collaboration as being a process of building on other people's ideas (rather than judging and correcting). It is a 9 minute video worth watching. Find it at:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/pixars-approach-hr

A different stream of thought for a Sunday posting.

Innovate! Online

If you missed the Innovate! 2008 conference live in Minneapolis earlier this summer, you have another opportunity to see and hear some of what took place. Participants will also have opportunities to interact and network with their peers around the content.

NACS developed the Innovate 2008 Conference to help college stores explore their environment, promote their role in the marketplace, and create new models for doing business. Via the Internet, the Innovate 2008 Online Conference, Oct. 20-23, makes the Innovate 2008 in-person learning experiences accessible to those unable to attend the live event.

To register or for more information, go to www.nacs.org/public/events/innovateonline/.

Update on Innovate 2008

Sorry for the title rhymes. Innovate 2008 is nearing a close, and it has been a great event. Those who missed it will want to sign up for the online version in October. The online version is not the same as the real thing, but it is the next best to be sure.

If one thing could be said about this Innovate, it would probably be: "We thought a lot." The facilitator led us through how to form some good questions (and I am a big proponent of asking good questions). I particularly like how the process yields not just good or better questions, but how it yields questions that are actionable. When I was a faculty member and taught classes around information management, the core focus at the management or executive level is how to enable or facilitate actionable information. The process over the last few days was not always comfortable, but I think the majority of attendees really learned something from the experience if they did take time to think. And that is (as the facilitator noted) what we are paid to do, isn't it? To think?

I found myself surprisingly opposed to the messages at times, but the more I thought about things, the more I saw some real value in the content. Applying that to some of my daily work, I can see some opportunities to do things better. We came up with an idea for this blog as well, that I plan to put into action in the coming weeks once I test out some simple technologies.

I have quite a few notes from the confence and there is still a closing session to go. Among the news stories this week I will work on posting an item or two that captures a lesson or idea or information from one of the sessions or the event as a whole.

simple thought...

Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the idea for today's post. It's an old quote, but still a good one:

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

-- From "Rethinking the Future" by "Future Shock" author Alvin Toffler.

As this blog talks a lot about innovation and new developments in course materials and technology, the quote seems particularly relevant. How many of us do things because "we have always done them that way?" Change can be scary, but it can be exciting too. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith and innovate. (Of course, having done your homework in advance and knowing that you are not leaping blind off a cliff is not a bad idea either.)

Enjoy the Sunday! I am on my way to an ECAR/CIO Symposium in Colorado, where new ideas always seem to abound. I will post some of my take-aways from that event in the days ahead.

Big News coming at Innovate 2008...

It is a bit early to confirm yet, but we are expecting some big news to be announced at this year's Innovate 2008 conference. The conference will be held in Minneapolis on July 11-12, a much cooler location in July than Tampa -- host of the first Innovate conference in 2007. This year's program has a great lineup of sessions. This year's focus is more on retail technologies, but there will be some sessions on digital content as well. Last year's sessions by Ray Kurzweil and Jim Carroll were fantastic, and will be hard to beat, but I think we have some great speakers lined up again this year. We also added more networking opportunities and changed the workshop format -- all in response to feedback from last year. In the next couple weeks I will post some more detailed information about some of the sessions expected at the conference. It is shaping up to be a great event and the expected news release will make for another good reason to attend.