Startups I’d like to do. Long ago before coming to Ohio State I theorized on a concept like this. Heap – Capture Everything. Thinking about the progression and adoption of mobile technology, there are so many experiences developers don’t know, we don’t see, and its not because technology is lacking its because we’re not inventing layers to collect and capture the data. More so we don’t start with the questions we need and want to get answered.
Thats a potential problem with Heap. It makes sense, but it doesn’t if you don’t know what you want to know. Working in research taught me that the questions matter more than the answers. Questions frame the approach, you build an experiment to get the data to support the questions. Now there is pure exploratory you can do but you can end up with a massive dataset that is subjective to whatever you’re asking.
In a world gone fast, gone optimized, gone learning and story telling, focusing on the questions is even more important. Hopefully HEAP will engage and involve some themes or data collection base strategies for folks- course it may not since its just the capture tool and not the questions.
Taking the buckeye slice, i think about the learning analytics of carmen, or leveraging this kind of tech around Ohio State mobile. This takes us into what i see is one of the univerisities greatest assets, our ecosystem. Lotta people hate that word, i used to dislike it as well but it really helps you see the power of a university in this context. Our whole process, system, people, context, all of that creates momentum, it holds a ton of user interaction, those interactions analyzed (provided theres a question), yields data, that data can be turned into insight, that insight can be turned into another product, process, theory, etc. We swim in a world at Ohio State that is full of this potential yet we often do not recognize it. Leveraging our own momentum, thats a key for Ohio State going forward. How to do it? Keeping an open eye and open mind on the assets, contexts, and scenarios in play, and building systems, and questions we’d and others would want to see answered.
TCO’s role is to think beyond the construct of the university, we have to look to the market, find that potential revenue, bring in those extra dollars, to do that, we need to think more broadly. But good discussions to have! Wish HEAP the best and I envy their runway, they are likely to be acquired into the millions in 2-4 years, so it will be a quick exit and a great example of building a solution play on a massive ecosystem unfolding.