Choosing the right web technology

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m honored to welcome you to the very first World Higher Education Ranking Summit. And today we are joined by the brightest minds in higher education, most prominent change makers, innovators, policy makers, technology leaders. And today’s topic is really crucial for universities across the globe. The power of web technology. And I’m honored to interview a leader in technology and digital transformation, information management officer at United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR, Saber Mejaat. Saber is a leader in project development, leader in technology and project management. Saber thank you so much for finding time for our interview today, it is essential for all our viewers that are watching us today to hear your expertise in technology and understand why it’s so important to use the right web technology. This is the topic of todays discussion. Saber, why is digital transformation essential for every university?

So, thank you for your question and thank you for inviting me today. Let's start right away by tackling this problem; why digital transformation is important. Because digital presence today is essential, is as simple as this. If a university doesn't have a proper digital presence today, it is not easy to find. If a student cannot find the university that they want to participate in, how can they get information about it? How can they get engaged? How they can into what is their future, because when they're looking for university, they're looking at spending time in that university, sometimes 3 to 6years in that same place. Being able to find the right information for everyone to make the information accessible, to make the things that we want the other person also to see. Because we also want to give the right image of university or a bachelor degree or graduate degree or whatever type of formation you're trying to give. That is essential. And if you do not have it today, I don't want to be too catastrophic, or worst case scenario, but it might be a tiny bit late, because everyone is online today. It is essential to have it.

For digital presence, we have various points, we have the advertisements, because that's something that really helps students to see what other options are out there. We have the rankings that are key, in a way. And then of course, we have the search engine optimization. I think these three are the main key points. How easy is it for university to appear on the first page of Google, depending on whatever keywords the potential students have input? Then what information can you find about university? And based on the ranking that you see what are the ranking saying, and I think these are the type of information that every student is looking for. And if these do not appear correctly, or do not appear at all, this is a very big red flag that we're having here. This needs to be resolved as soon as possible. Otherwise, that I see this as being the basics. Starting from this, then we can go to the next level of doing maybe a bit of different type of target advertising seeing all the different levels of things that we might be able to do on a digital level. But without this, we cannot start the race.

Everyone hears this diversify your portfolio in a way. Don't put all the eggs in one basket. For instance, what we have seen there recently, let's suppose your university and social media advertising is very important indeed. But let's suppose you have put everything on Facebook, which is actually the case maybe for some universities, because you have a reach to over 1 billion people by doing that. But we have seen that today, there has been a big crash with the specific social media, therefore losing for you the possibility to track properly, the students that you would like to hire to get into your university, and be losing points and losing goals in terms of ranking. Because if it is not as effective to use it, you're putting a lot of money on a very targeted campaign, or whatever type of social media strategy you're having. And that is definitely not very cost effective.

I think the most cost effective option is to diversify, to try different types of strategy for different types of social media and different types of web technologies.

Of course, Google is on the forefront of this of having your website appearing on the first page, but then does not stop there, you need to also have reference try to get like involved in different types of social media strategy as being referenced with other sorts of articles. And this is the basics of SEO. But also to use different types of social media, let's call them funnels, to get the students towards you. And if you're relying only on one, this is very risky for you and for the future of university. Because every year things are changing very fast.

Talking about technology, today, we're talking about web 2.0. And I think that universities, that will try to leverage the power of the new technologies that are being with 3.0. Therefore, creating a way to engage a tiny bit more, to find way to attract these people that are interested into the new technologies, I think this can put some universities that maybe today or not in the top ranking appearing on the forefront, because things are moving really fast on the digital market. And if you know how to play your cards very well, I think it can be really interesting for some universities and very cost effective, because you don't necessarily need to put a lot of in terms of on a financial value in terms of capacity, you do not need to put too much. But it is very time consuming to come up with this type of strategies to come up with this type of innovative ideas to attract new people.

I see something to finally just resume what you have asked in terms of being cost effective is diversify the strategies both in terms of Search Engine Optimization, as well as social media, and finally try to invest more towards new type of innovative technologies or digitalization projects. You can find ways that are more engaging, and do things that other people are not doing as simple as that. A simple to say not to do of course, but I think this is the key to diversify yourself also from others.

This is another sort of red flag for me. If you have this, then you need as soon as possible to tackle your digital presence this is just key. As I mentioned earlier, it all starts with some basics and if you do not have those, we need to start like get you on board with that. It might be seen as an investment and it is true that to build digital presence, when you start from zero, it can be both time consuming and also in terms of investment you need to put some financial capacity to it.

Yes, I think this is definitely a red flag, the capacity that you have, needs to be put a tiny bit towards digitalization. Because if you have on this that in basically means that you appear somewhere, but you do not appear where you want to be apparent, basically, where the students can find you. And if that is not the case, then you're not having the basics of what needs to be a digital presence.

In order to do that, you need to start investing, again, on the Search Engine Optimization, start thinking a tiny bit more about your social media presence. And then of course, thinking about technologies that you would like to use. And if you're a university, then you have different types of faculties and different types of people that you can use, I think, an idea that could be for instance, if someone does not have maybe the capacity or means maybe financially, is to also use the students in itself because they have a lot of knowledge. Maybe students from marketing students from engineering to help you with that, and therefore, help them as well to bring their ideas and knowledge to make an actual use case. And think why not use what you have in house to do this rather than maybe rely on outside, on an agency or something else, which is also a very good idea. I'm not taking that out. But let's suppose you do not have the means.

I think you have some means in house to do this. And students know best because if they are in that university, then they know why they picked it for a way or another and they're most likely be able to convince others to tends to get there if there's a reason for it, of course. I think you can use that, it's definitely something that can be done. But to have a definite strategy is not to give, of course, students a white paper to do whatever they want to do. But to have come up with an idea or strategy of what type of digital presence do you want to have? Where do you want to be? What type of ideas you would like to accomplish? All of this needs to be set in stone? Without this, I think it's going to be very difficult to arise, both in terms of rankings, both in terms of you being present for other people, and then to get new students as simple as that.

There are various definitions from web 3.0. Just to resume it very quickly, web 1.0 was just having a text on a page for people to be able to access web 2.0, which where we are today is getting a tiny bit involved. You are putting some data, someone is putting some data and you're interacting with the data very basically; likes, comments, this type of things. But web 3.0 is going to be pushed to the next level of engagement. And it's also going to be in a way that is decentralized. Therefore, you put out only what you would like to put out, it's not going to be the same as let's suppose with Google today, I have a lot of information about everyone that has a Google account. But when you're going to create a website that is like that, you are not going to have information about other people, but you will have the information that you ask them to give. And they are free to do whatever they want to do.

When we go towards this level of decentralization, and based actually on Blockchain technology, this is how today we picture the web 3.0. The key elements here are these:

Are you thinking about Blockchain technology for your university? Is this something that you're teaching, for instance, in your university or not?

Just by saying this, it tells you to what level you are, and this level of being in the future of this, you need to be having teacher or students that understand this and go towards that direction.

Decentralized means also getting less information, but at the same time, more quality information, because the person that decides to put in information is doing it willingly, which is very important, you're getting very quality information, or getting what you want from the students or from whatever other stakeholders you would like to have, and then you can also think about other ideas have come up with different strategies of getting some financial value out of it. Because when you develop this type of page, you can do tokens, for instance, you can maybe average students.

I'm just being very meta with my ideas, but instead of every student having their actual student card that might have an NFT of their car, which is not necessarily physical, but at the same time, it proves that like they are the only person that have that car. No one else can be actually potentially getting into just making an example here getting into the universities, with someone else's car, because there's only one holder of it. And there's different type of use that this can be done with tokens or different type of getting information in a way that is anonymous, but at the same time, you will know that it's true. Only the students that are within that university can give you for instance, some feedback or some suggestion for some things and that improve the security that you have within University and again, the quality of whatever things you're trying to accomplish.

These are just very hypothetical ideas. Very few universities today are working with 3.0. And I think if the one that will start doing it are going to be the ones that are going to be on the forefront of innovation, and some leading universities, of course, they're working with Blockchain, they're working as teaching, what is the technology, but using it within the university, when it is not a project, actually using it as an essential tool that is completely something else.

I think, it needs a tiny bit of innovation and a tiny bit of tryouts to make this thing come true. And again, I just think that the one that will do it will be the one that will be ahead of the game, compared to other universities, because these things are changing extremely fast. They are on day by day basis. This is my view. But then again, of course, we can discuss this a lot. And then these ideas are also not very easy to implement. It is true, but of course, high risk, high reward, this is also how it works.

In a way, yes. But, of course, we do not know. But to be in ahead in the race of technology, you need to use the tools that are ahead, it's as simple as that. You cannot have be in the forefront on a Formula One race, if you don't choose the forefront engine, the flagship engine, if you're using something that you're using since the 1980s, I think you're well behind in the race, that does not necessarily means that you do not race at all. But I think that you need to give yourself the best means if you want to win a race, and without using the most innovative technologies, or at least trying to, it is not necessarily important to use it successfully. Because I mean, there are not 100 examples of successful use at the moment. But there is a lot of trials. And without this trial and error, we will not come to the actual solutions that we're going to be used in the future. And that's what I think that it's going to be implemented. I don't know, just my thought right now, the number of universities that had an app, for instance, of a website just 10 years ago, or maybe 15 years ago. But today, I think these numbers are within millions. Things are moving really fast. And I think that university try to adapt, but not all university try to innovate, which is different.