Building Relationships on Campus

DisclaimerThe speaker opinions expressed in the following presentation are strictly personal and not representative of the University of Pennsylvania, its Trustees, administration, faculty, staff, or any official member thereof, with the exception of the speaker.

Building Relationships on CampusMayumi Hirtzel, University of PennsylvaniaAHECTA Conference June 2013

Before we begin, take a moment to think about the important relationships in your life.Your mama or papa, your child, your dog What makes those relationships so significant?3

Before we begin, take a moment to think about the important relationships in your life.Your mama or papa, your child, your dog What makes those relationships so significant?4

Before we begin, take a moment to think about the important relationships in your life.Your mama or papa, your child, your dog What makes those relationships so significant?5

Love. Trust. Respect. Honesty. Mutual understanding. Synergy. Humor. Equality.6

Why bring that up? Because when you think about all the people all the relationships available to you on your campusthose are no different from the relationships that are closest to you. Or, they shouldnt be.Over the next 30 minutes or so, Im going to take you on my experience of finding and nurturing peer relationships on campus. Your mileage may vary.7Introductions So, like in any new relationship situation, lets do a quick speed-date intro.8

But, like any real person, theres more to me than that.9

VPSS (Video Professional Seeking Same)Mayumi (ma-you-me; its Japanese) Hirtzel (its Austrian)IT Project Leader for campus television services at University of Pennsylvania70 channels; 4 local originationServe 10,000 viewersBy Q3, PVN had recouped 130% of operating costsFrom allocated budget CATV service as well as solid client relationshipsNo student-run TVSo, here are the basics.16Who are you?Whats your name?Where are you from?Whats your endgame? (What do you hope to get out of this relationship?)Now that you know a little bit more about meIntroduce yourself! What do you hope to gain from me today?17Foundations What were doing here is figuring out what we want from each other. Thats the foundation of this relationship: the implicit agreement between us that well share knowledge, expertise, insight, to help the other person grow.18With ClientsProduction contractsQANegotiationSLABudget constraintsGoalsImpactsDistribution

When you deal with CLIENTS, clients are usually looking for a specific set of criteria. These are not bad things, in and of themselves. But, when you start thinking solely in terms of numbers and definitions, your client starts feeling like theyre just a project, a field on a spreadsheet.19Do you want to feel like this?

Its not a pleasant feeling. Its really not!20With PEERS

I encourage you to engage everyone in your projects as a PEER. That means, going back to that word cloud we saw before, and taking into account all those aspects of what a successful, meaningful relationship entails.21Welcome Back to First GradeKnow everyones name.Be nice.Smile.Look people in the eye when you speak or are spoken to.Be clear.Be patient.Be honest.These are all basic, respectful human interactions you should have with every one. You should also notice: these are all things good sales people do. Well, maybe not that last one.I dont mean to belittle what a salesperson does. It takes an incredibly confident personality to do what they do. But, sometimes Im sure youve come across this, yourself you find yourself bombarded with PROMISES.22The Best PolicyDo not oversell your services just to make the sale.

I cant stress that second point enough. If you cant do something, just say you cant do something. Or, make it very clear upfront youre going to have to hire more staff, its going to cost more money, whatever you need. Will you lose some projects with that kind of honesty? Yes. But, you will also gain something much more valuable than one job: INTEGRITY, for you, from your customer.23

Because, otherwise, youll find yourself in a dangerous situation, where youre going, How the heck did I get up here?26

Or, worse, this, where your customer knows you dont know what youre doing.27Reaching Common Ground (1)Manage realistic outcomes

So! Youve connected with your customer. Now, you need to find your common ground. Remember, keep things honest and upfront. Youll create an open dialogue of mutual respect. And, that foundation of respect and trust will grow stronger over time, creating a longer-lasting relationship.Weve been working with our Presidents Office since the inception of our production department, over ten years ago. Do we get every production job? No. But, they know they can trust us to make the very best 1- or 2-camera shoot on campus. Because weve learned its better for everyone in the long run if we stick to the basics.28Reaching Common Ground (2)Collaboration

There are also some projects where you and your customer wont be alone. Youll need to work with other peers: a networking group, a sound or lighting team, facilities managers, maybe even local media. The same rules as before apply here, too. The more honest and straightforward you can be with any of these groups, the better your reputation will become.29Collaborations Okay! First grade stuff is over. Now, were going to move into Collaborations: outreach, alliances, and the service part of customer service. Ill also get into some of the specifics of my experiences at Penn.30Connecting on CampusMake the match!

Most of the time, youll be approached for a project, whether thats classroom or lecture capture, or a one-off event. For those relationships, well assume you already know your customer and what they want. If you dont know your customer, those first grade rules we went over earlier apply. But, what if youre the one with the need?31

Thats what happened to us (well, me), last year, after I heard Orca TVs session. How many folks here went to their session, on digital signage? I dont want to turn this into a commercial, but, if youre new to digital signage, I highly suggest you contact Orca TV. They really get what digital signage is truly about: ENGAGEMENT.

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A Brief History of (My) TimeInspirationLet me give you a brief history of what happened. I came away from the AHECTA Conference super-psyched, as I usually am, about this new direction into which I could take our admittedly rather boring Video Bulletin Board. At that time, our VBB was just a series of static images, one after another, with the occasional short slide show thrown in. Wed already upgraded to the Leightronix UltraNEXUS, which offers a neat little daily-updated information package: weather, traffic, news, that sort of thing. And viewers responded to it. It was a lot better than just the same old JPEGs all the time. But the channel still wasnt engaging them the way I wanted it to. And then, I remembered something that came up in that Orca TV session: students are more engaged by what they see when they see someone they know.35

Whoa photoThat is such a simple conceptbut I felt like a moron for not having realized it before. And, video allows us to engage in that way virtually, person to person like no other medium. Even if its the most God-awful video youve ever seen, if its about something or, better yet, someone you know and care about, that engages your interest and attention like nothing else can do.36A Brief History of (My) TimeInspirationQualificationSo, my inspiration was there: get viewers more engaged in what they saw on our local TV.But, I had to qualify that. I couldnt put up just anything. Id tried that before, withless than interesting results.37A Brief History of (My) TimeInspirationQualificationPerspirationSo, there was a bit of work involved, on my part. Figuring out what would engage viewers (mostly students), but not turn the channel into a free-for-all. Luckily, I have on campus just as you likely do, too lots of departments that use video: for academic projects, contests, internal communication. Not all of those videos will be appropriate, of course, depending on what you want your programming to accomplish. For me, I started out just wanting MORE video, of virtually any sort.Luckily, I already had a few departments who shared video with me every year: Public Safety likes running fire safety videos during move-in, we have a Universal Pictures student rep on campus who sends us promotional materials from time to time, and our student newspaper, that sends us annual recruitment videos. Those are all goodbut theyre also more-or-less professionally produced, with outsiders.38A Brief History of (My) TimeInspirationQualificationPerspirationCollaborationFor that personal, student-to-student engagement, I first approached our performing arts group, because theyre about full productions, designed to entertain, but starring friends, real faces, of my audience. But, one thing I told them, which I believe, is that video in that situation is best used to supplement their existing programming. They dont want to lose seats at a performance. So, I sat down with their program director, and I shared with him a few best practices of video. Performing Arts didnt have the money to hire our production team to record their performances, but thats not what I wanted. I told them: You dont want a video broadcast to replace your live event. So, give me video that gets friends and folks on the fence interested: behind-the-scenes, cast and crew interviews, director insights. Basically, commercials for their shows. I told them to keep it to under a minute (30 seconds, if they could do it), and get it to me quick, so it could stay timely.39A Quick Note about SharingPenn+BoxFTP sites (e.g., Dropbox)Public video sites (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo)*In order to keep your video timely, youre going to want to have a quick transfer or sharing service. Penn, for example, has a collaboration with Box, which offers secure file transfer, even of relatively large MP4 files. FTP sites like Dropbox also work well.As for public video sites like YouTube or Vimeo, they can work, there are ways you can download, but theyre not ideal. Of course, if you dont have the resources to encode directly from a master file, YouTube or Vimeo might be your only option. (Its not your only option.)I wouldnt recommend sharing video files through email. Your Network engineers will really hate you for that.40Extended Collaboration

One really cool thing developed from that interaction with Penn performing arts. Because they didnt have the money to hire a professional production team, I suggested they work with another group on campus, the Weigle Information Commons at the Library, that loans out cameras and editing computers for student use. All I did was put two departments in touch with each other I didnt even know the right people and they handled the rest of those logistics between them. So, these two groups came together in a learning and sharing environment of their ownand I got programming for it, in the end.41Opening DoorsAthleticsLibrariesHousingFacilities ServicesWhat I learned from that situation was that, once you engage one department or even one person in a department that extends your presence on campus. Some of you probably already have a strong foothold on the production scene at your campus. But for those of you who dont or, those of you who want to start crossing old territory lines or opening new doors it really only takes one.What happened next was new departments were getting the idea and coming to me on their own: Athletics put together a few commercials for upcoming games, starring their players; the Library shot some videos supporting their International Festival (and those videos helped them with their biggest draw so far, of over 200 attendees); even our Housing and Facilities services groups got involved, with some practical housekeeping videos, produced with their own (charismatic) staff.42Opening DoorsAthleticsLibrariesHousingFacilities ServicesDocumentary ProjectsIndependent StudyCampus Film ContestsAnd, once I had examples to show new collaborators, I started getting more and more programming, of higher quality. Senior theses from the Law School, independent projects from our Study Abroad program, interview and process videos from our annual Mashup Contest. All of these, in turn, helped raise awareness not only of what our video network could do, from an administrative perspective, but what our students could do. We were engaging departments who were engaging students who were engaging us, to support stronger and stronger video.43ExamplesGo with the FlowIm not sure if we have time to take a look at a few of these, but Ill run each for a few seconds, and well see how we go.44Example: Athletics

Example: Athletics

That video isnt fantasticbut, its a lot better than this!46Results By the NumbersAY 2011-2012: 1-3 full video spots per rotationMovie trailers/screenings/ticket giveawaysSafety videosAY 2012-2013: 10-12 full video spots per rotationStudent Film Contest retrospectivesRecruitment videosArts Performance behind-the-scenesStudent instruction (College House series)Special Events promotions (e.g., International Fest)Athletics Events promotions

In AY 2011-2012, we had a crop of standard full motion video in rotation. In one year, working directly myself with only a few departments (4 people), wed expanded to an average of up to a dozen full videos per rotation. That may not sound like a lot, but the return on investment has been enormous!48Put THAT on your Evaluation!Increased visibilityIncreased credibilityFulfilled departmental mission objectivesWhat the initiative showed my superiors was that this sort of collaboration and engagement with other departments on campus. It increased our visibility, because more people were watching, if only for their friends. Increased our credibility as more than just Cable TV, or those guys you call when Comedy Central goes down. It was fulfilling strong departmental mission objectives to support academics and civil awareness on campus, using our existing technologywithout any upgrades (my budget administrator really appreciated that one). 49Put THAT on your Evaluation!Increased visibilityIncreased credibilityFulfilled departmental mission objectivesCreated communityPerhaps most importantly, though, the program created a real sense of community. Students wanted to create, academic departments wanted to teach, service departments wanted to instruct and inform. And its come together from video. Because, as I mentioned before, video can connect people in a way no other medium can achieve: dynamically, creatively, extemporaneously.Of course, I cant take all the credit. Many of those connections and collaborations probably would have happened without us, eventually. But giving the parties on both sides of the fence an impetus to seek out each other helped them both grow their own relationships. I like to think so, anyway.50Conclusions Here we are, coming up on the end. What have we learned?51RecapCampus relationshipsI dont want to say creating and building relationships on campus is easy, because its not. Not always, anyway. People come into relationships for different reasons, with different goals and endgames in mind. 52RecapCampus relationshipsInterpersonal relationshipsWhich is why you cant think of your relationships on campus even if theyre strictly business as anything other than people relationships. That guy, that dude, that pompous jerk sitting across the table, who thinks he knows everything about video because his shitty YouTube video of getting kicked in the nuts has, like, a billion hits, so hes going to tell you how to do your job? (Im just using that as an example.) Hes a person. Hes sitting across the table from you for a reason. He wants your expertise. He needs your expertise. But, the moment you enter into a conversation or a meeting with someone for whom you hold contempt, for whom you dont consider a peer at some level is the moment youve lost that job, that project, that forever-after of everything to follow. So, what happens, now?53RecapBe excellent to each other.I think Bill and Ted said it best. Be excellent to each other.Dont be afraid to get your hands dirty. Make connections. Be open to new opportunities. Give good feedback. Be sincere. Help, collaborate, guide. And be honest. You wont always get the big jobs, but youll like the ones you do get a whole lot more.54Thank you!Mayumi Hirtzel, hirtzel@isc.upenn.eduUniversity of Pennsylvania, Penn Video NetworkHopefully, Ive given you something to think about and take away when you leave. Or, if not, at least we had a few chuckles.55