SOC9: The Kids Are Alright

[Intro Music]

Announcer: You’re listening to one in a series of podcasts from the 2009 HighEdWeb Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mark Greenfield: Just so you know, I'm going to move pretty quickly today. I normally do this as a four-hour workshop. So, fitting this into 45 minutes is a bit of a challenge. And hopefully I can talk fast enough and not skip over too much information. So, why don't we get started?

Because I am leaving out a lot of information, I will have a Web page available when I get back to Buffalo at that top Web address, markgr.com/presentations/heweb09. This is the presentation that I give today along with the bibliography of a dozen books. Probably 50 or 60 links to related information will be available at that top link for you.

As many of you know, I am a big Delicious user. I've got about 2500 links on Delicious now. And if you are to tag millennials, you'll see what I've been looking at over the past several years when it comes to this topic. And finally, if you want to follow me on Twitter, my username on Twitter and anywhere else for that matter is markgr.

All right. Let's get started. And I want to introduce you to my daughter. This is my daughter, Michaela. She is now 9 years old. And a couple of things I want you to know about her. First of all, she would much rather watch or be on the computer than watch television. She rarely watches any TV. But I have to monitor her computer time because she would spend all day on there if she wanted to.

Secondly, she is more adept at using the computer than her grandmothers. I remember 10 years ago when I first started doing Web work, trying to do some work with my mom, showing her how to use Photoshop. Now if you've used Photoshop especially back in the mid-'90s, it was not an easy thing to use. So, after three months of trying we decided for the sake of our relationship, we probably should stop doing that.

When my daughter turned 4, it was actually Christmastime when she turned 4, she had seen me doing a lot of Photoshop stuff. So, she decided, "Now, let me see if I can play around with it." So, I spent 10 minutes showing her the basics of Photoshop. Now, here's how the toolbar works. If you ever get stuck, just close the window, open up a new one and start all over again. That is all the instruction that she needed. And she proceeded to produce this kind of magnificent artwork with no help from me with 10 minutes' worth of training.

Third thing about my daughter is that she loves to make PowerPoint presentations. What you are watching today is 50% my work and 50% my daughter's work. You will find out very quickly that she loves the PowerPoint. So, that is her work.

Fourth thing about my daughter is that she has been asking for a cell phone since she was 3 years old. They make cell phones for that market. I don't know if you're familiar with the Firefly. This is targeted at elementary school kids. If you look up there, there is a picture of Mom, a picture of Dad. You can program in five numbers. You're only allowed to tell those five numbers. And it has actually been pretty popular with the elementary school set. They're quite new cell phones targeted right at that audience.

And much to the chagrin of my neighbors, my daughter just turned 9 in September and she got her own cell phone. So, she's a proud owner now of a Motorola RAZR. What we do in my house is I get the new phone. So, I get an Apple 3GS. My wife got my iPhone 3G. Her phone got handed down to my daughter. And she was excited as you can imagine.

Now, a lot of people think that why am I giving a 9-year-old a cell phone? It is for me as much as it is for her. I am a self-confessed helicopter parent. I'm sure all of you have heard that term now. And certainly, it's something that we're seeing in colleges and universities. It has been a big issue with our advising offices more than anything.

This is an article from a front page of The Buffalo News going back a couple of years ago. It talks about letting go or maybe not. First story in this article talks about a UB student getting stuck in an elevator. So, what did they do? They didn't call public safety. They called mom. Now, the only problem was mom lives in Syracuse 150 miles away. In the same article, they talk about an appointment at Niagara University, which is a little north of Buffalo. And I think it was a sophomore student who had to go in and see their academic adviser to get scheduled for classes for the following semester. But instead of the student showing up, dad showed up instead.

So, we're seeing a lot of these. As much as I laugh about being a helicopter parent, I'm very concerned about myself when my daughter gets to the age where she is to become independent. You know that willingness to let go.

Some other stories for you. It used to be that if you had a problem in a dorm room or just the typical thing you would run into in college. You would go deal with the dorm director or an RA. If your parents are really bold and brash, they might actually go and talk to the dean or talk to the president.

What we're seeing now is when there's a problem like that, many students are going through their state legislators. This was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed talking about state legislators as copilots. So, I don't know how many faculty, if we have any faculty in here, a couple of faculty, I don't know if you've dealt with this.

I haven't talked for a couple of years. But it was amazing when I gave a student a bad grade, what happened with that? Last time I taught was at the grad level. I actually, of the 15 students in my class, failed three people. They didn't turn in their final project. You have to do the grade, do the math, they failed. But their parents said, "You can't do that." And I had to actually go before the dean and just go through this whole process because of these overprotective helicopter parents.

So, anyway, you definitely got an issue. Yeah, go ahead real quick. Well, next. [Laughter] They're actually still fighter parents. As much as I would like to say that this trend is going to go away, it is not going to go away. What we're going to see demographically is that right now the majority of parents of college kids are baby boomers. What we're going to see in the next three or four years is that the majority of parents of college students are Gen X parents. And they're going to bring that same mind set of no child left behind that's in K-12 right now to college. So, be ready for this because it's coming. And they expect return on investment. There is a whole bunch of things that come with this whole equation.

The reason why I bring this all up, many of us can relate to this, is that we need to make sure that we address the needs of parents. When kids today choose what college they are going to go to, it is a co-purchase with their parents. And as much as we focus on, we think about the admission site it's for the 17-year-old. Well, guess what? Mom and Dad are there as well. So, make sure that you have a strategy when it comes to how you're going to deal with parents.

Why does this whole idea of millennials makes sense for this conference? I'm just going to give you a little background story on why to me understanding millennials is something we all need to think about. I was asked by our provost back in 2001 to write a mission statement for my department that was newly created. So, what I did in typical academic fashion is write five pages, single-spaced, every big word I could think of about what this new department was going to be about. I took it home, showed it to my wife who is also an administrator at UB. She diligently spent 20 minutes reading through it, looked at me and said, "You know what, Mark? I have absolutely no clue what you just said."

So, being the Web writer that I am, I went back and approached this to see if I could pare it down a little bit. So, instead of five pages, single-spaced, I came up with nine words. This is the new mission and vision statement for my department. Understand the business. Understand the user. Understand the media. That's posted on my wall at home and at work. And this is the process and the philosophy that we follow. And you will notice that in the middle of this is understand the user. So, I think it's very important for us to understand the mind set when it comes to technology, when it comes to the Web of our students today. So, that's why I think all of these is very applicable to our jobs.

So, let's talk a little bit about millennials and technology. You can see that my daughter actually used that pose in that picture I took of her because she was putting this presentation together and actually thinking about those kinds of things. She is going to be very creative when she gets older.

This is Doc Searls who wrote "Cluetrain Manifesto", one of the authors of that book. And let me share with you a quote from him that sums up the approach that a lot of us take with technology. I want to make sure I get this right so I'm going to read it. So, he says that everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal. Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn 30 is incredibly exciting and creative. And with any walk, you can make a career out of it. Anything that gets invented after you're 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

So, for millennials what we think of technology is not technology then. It's just part of their environment. It is around them. So, it's almost like air. It's always there but they don't think anything of it. So, as excited as we are about a lot of technology, it's no different than how we think about electricity to somebody my daughter's age.

One of my favorite iPhone apps is called "Shazam". Do we have any Shazam users here? As you're going to find out in this presentation, I'm a big music person. Shazam allows me to take my iPhone and if I hear a song anywhere on the radio, whatever it may be, I just have to hold my phone up. It will listen for about 10 seconds, figure out what the song is and tell me what it is. It's just awesome. This is the coolest thing I've ever come across. When I talk to high school kids about this or college kids about it, let's just say they don't share my enthusiasm. No reaction as whatever. They just expect this to be able to be out there and happen when somebody my age thinks this is just the coolest thing. So, their mind set when it comes to technology is much different.

I'll have on that website a list of about 12 books that deal with the millennial generation. This is the most recent, and if you're going to read one book, I would probably recommend this one. It's called "Growing Up Digital", written by Don Tapscott. He wrote "Wikinomics", if you've heard of that book before. He wrote a book going way back called "Growing Up Digital". And this is really an extensive studying worldwide about the characteristics and traits of the millennial generation. I'll be referring to this book throughout the presentation.

This is one of the quotes I think we need to keep in mind. We think about going to the Web to find information, where millennials think about the Web as a place to connect with their friends. And that's a much different mind set

My favorite academic resource when it comes to all things social media and technology is Dana Boyd. If you're not familiar with her work, somebody I think you definitely should follow. And she actually did get a PhD from Stanford recently and has been studying academically millennials, their use of technology.

Now, let me share with you a couple of her findings in terms of how they use social media. Again, I want to make sure I get this right. So, one of the things she talks about is how teens use social networks to hang out with their friends. And the problem is that if they had the option, they would hang out in person, but they just don't have that option anymore.And that's because, one, parents are afraid. They won't let them go out. I will not let my daughter ride her bike through my neighborhood without me around. I might be overprotective but I'm worried about the people going 50 miles an hour in a 25-mile speed zone. There's no sidewalk in my neighborhood, etc.

Even at the local malls in Buffalo, if you're under 17, you're not allowed in the mall on Friday and Saturday night without your parents. So, they're not allowed to hang out at the mall anymore. So, what they've done is turned to going online and that's where they hang out.

But also over schedule. A lot of us think that, "Why can't they conduct their business with us between 9:00 and 5:00?" And the reason is they are unbelievably busy. So, they used to be able to do things at all hours of the night. And the whole culture that we have in higher ed in terms of service being between 9:00 and 5:00, I think that something is going to have to change as we go forward.

So, one of the things that I've been interested in, always have to be to see how this all plays out, is that one of the reasons they were on Facebook was because that's where they could go and hang out without Mom and Dad around. But guess what? Mom and Dad are there now. And the whole issue of having Mom and Dad prying over their shoulder and knowing who their friends are, all that kind of thing. I'm wondering at what point do they start using a different social network for those kinds of things and maybe start to leave Facebook.

There was just a report that came out a couple of weeks ago, talking about how that demographic has leveled off in terms of growth on Facebook. So, something to pay attention to. Obviously, I'm not saying don't think about Facebook today because that's where everybody is. Let's come back five years from now and see if Facebook and see if Facebook is still Facebook or Facebook is Friendster now. Time will tell.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about using social media with high school students. This is part of the e-expectations report. Just for pure authenticity and transparency, in addition to working at UB, I am an associate consultant with Noel-Levitz. And some interesting results this year from the e-expectation survey, the first question was, "Should colleges and universities create a presence within these networks to promote their programs?" Again, this was high school students. Seventy percent said yes and 28% said no.

Second question was, "Should schools create private communities like these that are password-protected and only for invited students?" Again, 75% said yes, 22% said no. So, if you are looking for some good research on whether you should be doing this or not, there you go. They are out there and looking for us.

And let me just say one thing that came up in a couple of our presentations in this room yesterday. It's that when you go into social media, it is very important to go in there to contribute and not to control. And that's a much different mind set than most of us are used to.

One thing about students is that they are extremely pressured. They are pushed to get good grades in an early age. They feel this kind of trophy kid mentality to succeed because their parents are giving them so much time and attention that they want to do real well. In New York State, which has a very good public school system, there is a lot of pressure that comes with it. There are state tests that are given for third grade, fourth grade, eighth grade. And the school district gets money based on how well they do on those tests. And my daughter from when she was in first grade dreaded taking that statewide test in third grade. Even though the teacher didn't directly put pressure on them, there was definitely indirect pressure for them to do well.

So, let me show you a video that sums this up. You're going to see my daughter's influence here.

Speaker 1: I must say we are very impressed with your college application, young man. I think our college would be lucky to have someone with your... what's that?

Speaker 2: What's what?

Speaker 1: It says here you received a B in middle school woodshop.

Speaker 2: I can explain that.

Speaker 1: Did a meteorite hit your school?

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: Then you have no excuse, do you?

Speaker 2: Well, I was under a lot of pressure. And my brother gave me a demerit. And I couldn't finish my little woodcraft.

Speaker 1: Is that it? You fold it and wound up with a B. Listen up, Sparky. We hear at big snooty Ivy League college do not take people who got a B.

Speaker 2: It was only woodshop.

Speaker 1: Don't worry. We have a position for you at our school.

Speaker 2: You do?.. No. No. No.

Mark Greenfield: I think it does a good job of illustrating. And that's Disney. You're just a middle school student worrying about getting a B in woodshop in seventh through eighth grade and not being able to get into the college you want. And as far fetched as that sounds for me, I think there's some reality in that.

So, one of the approaches that we need to take with students is to lighten up a little bit. And I think a lot of us, when we look at the kind of content that goes out there, higher ed is traditionally very conservative. And I think we need to start to just loosen things up a little bit. And I want to show you a couple of things that I think are very creative in terms of how you can do this.

This is something I took from Stanford. And I guess if there are Stanford folks in here, you probably have seen this before. This is actually a YouTube video. So, I want you to picture what is going on as I play this.

Speaker 3: The faculty at Stanford University have made critical contributions to pioneering ideas that have changed our world, among them laser technology.

Mark Greenfield: It's a bit stodgy, let me pull you the video.

Speaker 3: The faculty at Stanford University have made critical contributions to pioneering ideas that have changed our world, among them laser technology. This cutting edge research helped harness the power of light and advance everything from modern medicine to information technology. And even now, over 40 years later the laser's full of potential has yet to be realized. Hail Stanford!

Mark Greenfield: I think that is awesome. So, again, we're actually going through this on our campus where we're thinking about finally getting on YouTube. We're going to take those commercials that we create for television, overproduced on message that nobody understands. What I'll tell you, this resonates so much better with a student than that typical 30-second TV spot that you'll see with all the big branding states and say nobody can make the connection.

Let me show you another one. I apologize for not being able to get this into my PowerPoint. I was not sure why this didn't work. I'm not sure how many people have seen this. This is a virtual tour of a school up in Canada. They did this in one shot. All right? If you've done any video production, this is absolutely incredible. Let me make this full play for you.

It's in Quebec, I think the University of Quebec in Montreal. And it's part of a worldwide project with this kind of thing. But again, think about how you normally do your virtual tour. This is showing their student union. And it was done in one take, one morning. It took about two hours to do. Think about the community that they created with these students. I think most of these students were actually incoming, actually don't know a lot of people. Think about how much fun they had making this.

They're showing their building. It actually is a very nice student union but very fun. I mean, this was the song hit of the summertime and people just enjoyed it. Well, let's just play it. And again, as you can see, it's a really nice building. You're getting a tour of the building. Just think about somebody who did the video work, it's just incredible that they could do this with a couple of hours in one take. So, there is no ending to this. It's just the camera rolling.

So again, you guys had enough courage to show that? Well, guess what? You know what? I don't think they had been able to cut that yet. But I don't think I could do something like this. All right. Unfortunately we don't have enough time to watch the whole thing. I'll have that up to take a look at.

When I looked at that last week, there were about 400,000 hits on YouTube with that. When I looked this morning, it's over a million. It got featured on CNN. Are they promoting it? Right. I just got to say, that is the single best college video I think I've seen.

And I don't know. Again, think about does the culture of your institution have enough courage to do something like that? And if they don't, we need to work on that. Right. Yeah?

Again, let's talk about transparency. I mean, if you watch that whole video, that's just a small part of it. If you listen to the words, you can understand why they're doing it at that point in the song. I don't think it's promoting drinking in any way. To me it's promoting what that song is about, which is having a good time. The message for me in that video is that if your son or daughter goes to this school, there's going to be all this energy going on. There's going to be a lot of friendship. There's going to be a lot of community building. And at the same time, they're actually showing the building.

So, again, I personally like that. I mean, I'm not naive enough. Do I want my daughter going to a school where it's a big party school? No, I don't think that's the message in here. But this is the reality. And the point for me is that this is what connects to students. Think about how many of those professionally produced videos that you have up on YouTube channel with 30 views? This is over a million. So, this stuff works, OK? Now, we'll come back to that. I got to move through this. We can talk about this if there's time at the end.

Another thing about students is that it is absolutely essential for them to stay connected. This is a quote from New York Times getting really old right now. But it was an article about what happened when somebody doesn't have their cell phone. It's almost like they don't exist. I teach a senior or coming in a guest lecture in a senior honors communication seminar every spring. And one of the things we do is take away all of their electronic devices for a week and see how they react. They have to actually keep a journal of what they're doing. So, I'm talking no phone, no Internet, no music, no television.

Now, I'm not sure whether I'm doing this. It could be mean or it's just the way the semester rolls out. But I do this during the first weekend of March madness. Needless to say, at least the males in this class are not happy at all. But it is very interesting to watch how they react to not having that constant connection and need to always be connected.

When I was in college, I went to school in Central New York, I used to jump in my car and drive up to the other round ups and stay up there for a couple of days and not even tell anybody. I'd go by myself and take a couple of books. And I'd go up there and read. It is out of the biggest camp. But my students I have today can't imagine doing something like that. How can you not have your cell phone with you? I mean, that's really interesting how they really need to stay connected.

I'm going to go up on my soapbox for a minute here and talk about text messaging. We are fairly intelligent people. We know that it is not a good idea to text message while we're driving. I will not ask for a show of hands. I've seen the research numbers one in four people admit to texting while they drive. But why do we do that? What is it in our nature that wants us to stay that connected that we will take that much personal risk to actually text message or be on a cell phone while we're driving? But I think it really gets to the point of how important it is psychologically to be connected with other people. With millennials, it is even a bigger stronger urge.

One of the things I think we need to pay attention to is mobile Web, mobile technology, because this allows you to stay connected. I think the mobile Web is going to be a big paradigm chip. I got on the Internet back before it was called the Web in the early '80s, working out in Colorado. And back then, you needed both access to a mainframe computer and the ability to sit at a command line to get on the Internet. Not very many people had that skill set or had that access.

What we saw in the '90s and even up to today is that now you can get on it with a personal computer. Netscape in 1995 was an important date because now Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa could be on the Web with very little skills. We have seen WiFi spot. Most of us are sitting here on the Internet right now, but we don't have full-time activity yet. That's what is going to come with the mobile Web. We're going to have the ability to stay connected all the time.

And one of the things I want everybody to remember is that when we get to the mobile Web, it is not about taking your current big-screen Web and just putting that onto a small screen. It is going to be a completely different paradigm. When you look through the various mass media channels, this is the same thing that happened when we had cinema and television came along. A lot of people said TV will never work because you're going to take this big-screen movie and put it onto this little 25-inch television. That will never work. Who's going to do that? Well, guess what? It's a totally different channel. It can be used in totally different ways. And that's what's going to happen with the mobile Web. And again, think about Shazam. To me, that's the kind of magic that can happen with a mobile device that you couldn't begin to do with the regular Internet.

Another thing about students today is the need for speed. They are almost in hypertime. And I'm very interested in the real-time Web and how quickly information can get out. A lot of questions I get are what's the expectation if somebody posts something on the Facebook page or to Twitter, with the questions, "How fast should it get back to the students? Is it OK to get back tomorrow? Is it OK to wait a couple of hours?" Well, the answer is their expectation is that you get back right away.

This is a study that was done by a group back in 2007. And it found out that 50% of email users expect their response in 24 hours, which in my group of friends is not true because I think a lot of people I know use email as a synchronous communication channel and almost expect their response immediately. I have learned to manage my email by only checking it three times a day. But people will call me and see if I'm all right because they sent me an email, knowing I'm at the office and I didn't get back to them in 10 minutes.

Again, in my generation we used email as our primary communication channel. For millennials, they use SMS, text messaging as their primary communication channel. They expect a response back in 5 minutes. So, we really need to think about support issues when it comes to getting back to millennials with answers to their questions. It raises an interesting dilemma when it comes to the fact that most of us probably are still in 9-5 jobs, Monday through Friday 9-5. Well, guess what? Most of these questions are not coming Monday through Friday, 9-5. So, how do we change the way we work in order to accommodate this kind of thing? I know some people are going to more flexible time. People are starting to work a little bit of nights and weekends.

We've had the Meebo widget, if you're familiar with the Meebo chat widget, on our library site and a whole bunch of other sites for quite a while. And when it was confined to regular business hours, it got absolutely no traffic, no use. When they expanded the hours up to 11:00 at night during the weekdays, and I think it goes from like 12 to 10 on the weekends, tremendous amount of traffic, very efficient way to stay in touch with students.

Now, the libraries could do it pretty easy because they have people physically in the library on the weekends. But for a lot of support offices, you're dealing with overtime or dealing with comp time, whatever it may be. I think we're going to have to rethink this whole 9-5, Monday through Friday concept when it comes to supporting students.

I won't get into a lot of discussion about Twitter. We've had a lot of good conversations in this track about Twitter. For me, the power of Twitter is that it really for me is real time. If I need an answer to a question right away, I post it on Twitter, I got 5 or 10 responses almost immediately. People do use this synchronously.

And a lot of conversation about whether millennials are on Twitter or not. There has been very strong arguments both ways. My take on it if they're not there right now, I think they will be when there's value there. And right now, maybe there's not a lot of value. We've had a good presentation in here this morning about what they're supposed to be doing with Twitter. Very successful. So, like I said, if they're not there yet, I think they're going to be there very shortly.

Another thing about millennials is that they are what called in the "Growing Up Digital" book the new scrutinizers. When they make a purchasing decision, they will go out on the Web and do a tremendous amount of research. They're going to look it up. They're going to look at all the miles, all the prices. They're going to look at all of the reviews and make their decision after doing all of that research. And I'm what finding and a lot of what I've read is they're bringing that same mentality to their college selection process. They are really thinking of this is as a purchasing decision and doing that prerequisite research and review.

Again, a quote from the book, "The arrival of the next generation means that many of marketing's fundamental tenants must change." Now, I'll get into more details about this a little bit later. To me, the biggest change is that right now, for millennials and for a lot of us as well, the trust is in the network. Students trust peer review sites more than they trust a college's homepage. And that is a very scary thing for a lot of us, myself included. They put the trust in the network. And this is a study from Forrester that was done. I have seen a half-dozen research reports in the last six months saying the exact same thing.

And the story that I'd like to share is that when I bought my last car three years ago, I didn't go to the manufacturer's car site to decide whether I was going to buy that car or not. I went to Car and Driver. I went to Edmunds. I went to all these review sites, made my decision about whether I was going to buy that car or not on what I read on those sites that had nothing to do with the manufacturer. Once I had made the decision, then I went to the manufacturer's site to find out where the dealers were, get straight facts on what the options were, and then went through my very painful process of negotiating price. I can share that story. It actually worked very well. If you're interested, talk to me afterwards about that.

One of the things about students, especially millennial students, is that they have finally tuned the yes meters. They have been marketed to their entire lives. And they recognize that girl sitting under the tree for what she is. All right? That is not necessarily representative of the campus and they know that right away, which is one of the reasons why they go to these peer review sites. So, keep that in mind as you're thinking about content and you're thinking about your approach to your institutional website.

I have been blogging for about eight years now. And by far, the most visited post I ever did and the most talked about post I ever did was about two years ago, where I asked the question, "Will .edu sites become irrelevant?", based on this whole idea that I just talked about with the car. Well, that same principle applied to higher education. And I think that we're starting to see some of that right now. I have seen so many of these peer review sites starting to take off. I think of a site like Unigo. College Power is in that. College Confidential is in that. We're seeing all of these peer review sites coming up.

And as I talked to some students, again, this is anecdotal more than anything else, they spend a lot of time on those sites. And there is just this kind of mistrust factor because when they go to the college site, it looks like it's still all that marketing and PR stuff. And they see right through that.

So, another way to reframe this discussion is that back in 2005 I spent 100% of my time working on sites within the buffalo.edu domain. When I look at my work at UB right now, I spend less than 50% of my time working on site within the buffalo.edu domain. I'm working on our Facebook site. I'm working on our Ning site, our YouTube channel, Twitter, whatever it may be. I'm out in all these other places, still doing that kind of work.

So, maybe our .edu site has not become irrelevant but maybe it's a little less relevant. I think the challenge for all of us is to make sure that we keep the college website relevant. And a lot of that has to do with the philosophical approach about how you're presenting your content. You need to do it in an authentic, transparent way if you have any chance of having students spend a lot of time on these sites.

All right. How are we doing for time? A couple of concluding thoughts. A book that I didn't bring with me but is an excellent read is called "Millennials Go to College". There are two versions of this out. Really good insight in terms of how millennials are going to impact all parts of colleges, really something that Web people would exclusively be interested in. A lot of our senior administrators have read this book and really got some insight in terms of how it would affect admissions and alumni and the classrooms and that kind of thing. But this is one of the quotes I like from it. It's that they are a much different generation than your typical students. And we really need to approach what happens both inside and outside of the classroom in a much different way.

I've given this presentation for about five years now. And traditionally it is called "Born To Be Wired: Technology, Communication and the Millennial Generation." In the last couple of months I've changed it to be called "The Kids Are All Right". And the reason I did that is there's a lot of books out there and a lot of articles about how bad this generation is, that they're not very smart, that they're very self-centered. They spend all their time online. They don't have any social skills. Whatever it may be, there's a lot of that kind of publicity and press out there.

My take is quite the opposite. And if you've read the book that I brought, his take based on all of his research is again quite the opposite. In fact, while some of those are issues, there is online bullying, there is a dark side to the Internet. You can spend any time on YouTube, you see the dark side of the Internet. But all in all, the kids are all right, which is why I remain with this presentation to that.

And to wrap up here, which will take about five minutes or so, I want to share with you somebody who I met on Twitter. I was speaking at a case conference back in April. I normally have my Twitter account protected for a variety of reasons. We'll get into that discussion at another time. But what about the conference? I opened it up because I wanted to be part of the back channel.

And when I was at this conference, I went and checked out people who were following me. And I found 2010emily following me. And as I looked at her bio, she's a high school junior, actually she's a senior now, living in North Carolina. And I go, "What is she following me for?" And the answer is she was actually using Twitter as part of her college search process.

Now, she is the kind of student that all of us wants. She is a semi-famous actress. She has been in movies that you have heard of. Her SAT scores I think are over 15, 30. She was not happy with that. She is an athlete. She plays volleyball. She is looking at Ivy League schools, all the big schools, probably can get a full ride to wherever she wants to go. But I found it fascinating that she thought about using Twitter to help her in her college search process.

So, what happened was I asked her. I sent her a message. I said, "Why are you following me?" She emailed me back. We actually created this kind of Internet friendship online. And one of the things I was concerned about is called the "creepy tree house effect". All right? I am a 50-year-old male living in Buffalo, New York, and here is a 16- or 17-year-old girl living in North Carolina conversing on Twitter. There's something a little bit creepy about that, perhaps. So, I wanted to make sure that she was comfortable with me, also engaging in conversation.

And we actually had a lot of very good conversations. She wants to go in medicine. And she posted a question on her Twitter account talking about the programs where you can go be admitted right in the med school as a freshman and wanted to know who knows anything about that. She asked me if I knew anything about that.

So, I went to our pre-health adviser who answered all of her questions through an email and created a very good relationship. She had never had heard of UB before and publicly thanked us on Twitter about helping her out. Now, had she gone on to UB? Looked in my admission records and listing. But you know what? She is not coming to UB. She can go to a much more challenging school than the University of Buffalo and that's what's going to happen.

But publicly she saw how helpful UB was. So, not only is she going to relay that message to her friends, also publicly people can see that UB is a pretty cool place. They may have never heard of that before. They look like they're very helpful. They have all these kinds of things. So, we've had this very good conversation about that.

Over the last couple of months I have started to use Emily in some of my presentations because I think she represents now, again this is anecdotal information. A lot of people mistake this part of the presentation as saying this one girl's opinion is what I'm saying is fact. That is not at all what I'm saying. This is just anecdotal. But the reason why I'm doing this is that I think it does a good job of reflecting the views not only what I read in books but all of the interaction that I have with students.

So, what I did over the summertime was post a series of questions for her and had her answer some of the questions that were on my mind. And this is something I continue to do. Now, let me just say one thing real quick. I don't know if there's any admissions people in here. But I would appreciate it, she would appreciate it, that we don't all start following her and pestering her with crazy kinds of questions. And that has actually been pretty good. I've talked about her.

And this is something I actually talk to her and her parents about. It's whether you want me to protect your identity because I'd be happy to do that if you want me to do that. Now, she has said, "You can use 2010emily." Although if you go there, it's easy enough to find out her website and that kind of thing. But give her some privacy as appropriate.

So, anyway here are some of the questions and answers that came from Emily. First was we were talking about again college websites and the relationship between the regular website and some of these review sites. "All websites and college brochures have those cheesy gray pictures of students laughing. Maybe I should add under a tree. And the amazing pictures of the campus that always seem to flourish in perfect weather." Well, guess what? In Buffalo we don't have perfect weather. And you're never going to fool anybody that we have perfect weather.

Now, I talk to her a lot about blogging. And if we have a blog on the official admissions site that she thinks that's authentic, her take was no. Even though we don't do it this way, her feeling was this has to be something that is being embedded by the marketing department. Even though we don't do that and we're very upfront about doing that, I don't know whether every student sees them that way. But it certainly is something to think about.

Another thing on trust. She is talking about trusting perfect strangers rather than the institution. "Even though this means I am trusting a perfect stranger, respect of students is something I hold in higher regard in making my college decision." You can read the rest of that there. Again, this has been very enlightening. And again, this reflects my interaction with hundreds of students in terms of how they look at these kinds of issues.

Unfit. This has probably been the most enlightening thing I have talked to Emily about and something that really has changed the way I look at how we approach our recruiting. For her, it is not about going to the best college. It is about going to the best college for her. And there is a big difference there. Not everybody, even if you could get into Harvard or Yale or any major school is that a good fit.

So, I think that as institutions we need to recognize who we are and what we do and be completely authentic about who we are and what we do because it will make this whole process of finding the perfect fit much better. So, again, going back to the whole idea of social media and authenticity, be true to who you are.

I think one of the biggest challenges we have in higher education is that a lot of us don't know who we are. I remember going to a presentation last year. In this presentation they showed the logo of 20 universities on one slide. On the next slide they showed the tag line from those same 20 universities. Not only could you not match the tag lines to the school, you couldn't differentiate between the tag lines. They all basically said the same thing. That to me is the problem that I think we need to address and fix more than anything else.

And that wraps it up. I thank you for your time. And we have a couple of minutes for questions if anybody has any questions. Yes?

Audience 2: [Unintelligible 43:52]

Mark Greenfield: Right. Perfect. I mean, our tag line at the University of Buffalo is reaching others. Now, a lot of money and time was spent figuring out that's going to be our tag line. But share that with a 17-year-old or their parents and ask them how that distinguishes from our competitors. Right. But I think that's what we need to think about. We need when it comes to brand figure out who you are and make sure that's what you articulate.

All right. Anybody else? Great. Well, I appreciate your time and enjoy the rest of the conference.

[Applause]