Mark Robinson, Head of Change at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, traveled a long way to attend NCCI’s 2016 Annual Conference in Montreal. He came away impressed with the quality of the programs and his overall experience. “Presentations were many and varied, all were extremely interesting and relevant, and were delivered by excellent speakers,” said Robinson, who presented a Pre-Conference Workshop on July 14 entitled, The Saint Andrews Lean Model. “There was lots to learn and most sessions were very interactive. Always good for helping the speaker gauge interest and for keeping the audience on its toes.”
He was especially impressed with the University of California, San Diego’s workshop, Delivering Results Through Crowdsourcing. “I’d never thought to use crowdsourcing as a way to gather customer feedback, to hear the voice of the customer. But why wouldn’t you?” he said.
The crowdsourcing theme carried over into the keynote address by Allison Vaillancourt, Vice President for Human Resources and Institutional Effectiveness at the University of Arizona. The keynote, entitled, ‘Using Lessons from Social Revolutions and Crowdsourcing Campaigns to Navigate Change in Higher Education,” tied the techniques used in crowdsourcing to those utilized in social and political revolutions. And these same techniques can be used to navigate change in higher education. “Sounds like it will work” Robinson said.