AI as Education topic in the BMS Faculty

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already part of the education and research in our department at the University of Twente. Not a common thing in a Business Administration study! Three examples of our work #utwente #ai #education #DigitalMarketing
https://www.utoday.nl/science/67758/using-ai-to-improve-education-at-the-ut

Master Class Behavioral Targeting on Oct. 2

The Master Class Behavioral Targeting (see previous post) seems to be very popular since more than 90 participants are registered already. https://www.facebook.com/events/1433086260061874 Considering our target of 75 participants we are quite happy that we were wrong!
The registration is now closed and we keep a waiting list https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/nikos/education/masterclass-behavioral-targeting/#introduction in case of cancellations.
Given the overwhelming interest also form colleagues and contacts abroad we will livestream the event.
The morning session (09:30 - 12:30) will be live in our Smart Marketing Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1674296056130955/ , the afternoon session and the panel discussion (13:30 - 16:45) will be livestreamed in the UT USTREAM channel http://www.ustream.tv/channel/universityoftwente

For those interested the program of the day below

Creating a Digital Marketing education ecosystem in (east of) The Netherlands

The strugle of businesses and advertising agencies who are active in online marketing to find personnel with knowledge and skills on areas related to digital marketing is well known. Under pressure from the field more and more technology companies like Google, Microsoft or IBM are creating educational environments for fast-track education in various domains.
Google for example launched in the summer of this year an initiative called Google Talent Factory
targeting college students who wish to make a career in digital marketing.

The program not only offers the possibility to students to get in touch with AdWords but also brings in touch students with agencies interested to hire them. As one of the universities participating with more than 10 groups every year in the Google Online Marketing Challenge we were also approached to bring this opportunity under the attention of our students.
Google is not the only technology giant active in the education of future marketers. IBM is behind the initiative Big Data University that offers a variety of online courses. In our Master course

Advanced Topics in Digital Marketing we have included two of the courses offered namely the IBM Watson Analytics and the Big Data Introduction courses as part of the course curriculum. I could mention more such initiatives reflecting the increasing anxiety of the field about the inability of the higher education institutions to adapt their programs in Business Administration and Marketing in particular to the new market and social reality, namely that the online world has become a platform where commercial, educational, social and transaction activities are increasingly taking place.
Here in the Netherlands and also in the east of the Netherlands where out University is located we observe an increasing interest by local businesses active in digital marketing domains to get involved and assist us in our efforts to educate and provide skills to future marketers. Companies like Team Nijhuis (top Google Partner in the Netherlands), AdWise (a very successful agency in online Marketing) are companies actively participate in our Digital Marketing courses providing guest lecturers and case studies. This week I attended with some of my students an open house event by a company in Enschede (Lime Square) specialized in Neuromarketing techniques. I was very pleased to see that the CEO of this company was welcoming visits and use of their labs by our students.
Another initiative taking place in the Netherlands is that teachers / professors of Digital marketing from the country will have a first meeting in October to discuss the state of affairs of the digital Marketing in The Netherlands. Possibly a yearly symposium of Digital Marketing in Education will be the outcome of this event.
All these facts signal the creation of a digital Marketing ecosystem in this country. We as University of Twente want to be in the forefront of this effort. After all the moto of this university is High Tech - Human Touch.

Does it make sense to study Business Administration in a Technical University?

This is a question for many students interested in Business Administration. I was asked by the Facebook Portal for Greek students in the University of Twente to explain what are the advantages of our program. Among other things we offer a unique possibility to students to enter the world of Digital Marketing both in the Bachelor and in the Master programs with two electives:

The 15 EC module Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses in the Bachelor

The 5 EC course Advanced Topics in digital Marketing

The interview is available in the following link

https://www.facebook.com/notes/university-of-twente-in-holland-greece-portal/interview-of-dr-efthymios-constantinides-assistant-professor-in-digital-marketin/1202289659844736

Digital Transformation in Action: Cognitive Computing (IBM WATSON) + Robotics + Internet of Things + 3D Printing + Sustainability = Olli

IBM in cooperation with Local Motors developed an autonomous shuttle bus named 

Olli. I found particularly interesting that many of the technologies used to bring about this product like IBM Watson / Cognitive Computing and IoT are part of our Digital Marketing curricula in the University of Twente. This is a fine example of the Digital Transformation concept that forms the basis of our courses and will revolutionize the vehicle industry not only because of the profound effect of driverless technology on mobility and human activities but also because of the emergence of car manufacturers who have very little to do with car manufacturing but rather with software. 

The University of Twente is among the 150 top universities in 2016

Great news for the University of Twente, more than 50 positions higher in the rankings this year vs last year, now nr 149 in the World University Rankings. The biggest improvement: Citations

Digital Marketing as educational topic in the University of Twente

It is some time ago that this blog was updated but last year has been a rally busy one. New courses, new challenges and new research lines together with my colleagues in the University of Twente and abroad. I will try to update the readers on the activities of the last year and keep them up-to-date on the future developments.

This year we offered for the first time to our 2nd year undergraduates of International Business Administration (IBA) the possibility to follow the elective module (15 ECs) Digital Marketing for Networked Businesses. The module proved to be very popular among students, we got 100 students, double number than we had hoped for. The module was including  a wide range of topics: "traditional" E-Marketing topics, Social Media Marketing, Big-Data and Big Data driven Marketing, Social Monitoring tools, online reputation management but also rather unique topics for a university curriculum like Internet of Things and Neuromarketing.

Sanne Heerink of Social Inc during her guest lecture

An important innovative element of the module was one of the group assignments, namely participation in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. This unique project of Google where around 3.000 groups of students from all over the world take part gets the students in touch with the practice of SEM / SEA: They have to develop a real AdWords campaign for a real business or non-profit organization with a budget of US $ 250 made available by Google. This is to my knowledge the first time that students from a Dutch research university took part in the project. The project ended with a Symposium (photo below) in the Classroom of the Future of the University of Twente where our groups presented the results of their work. The final evaluation of the campaigns was done by Google.

The Module has been quite successful if I judge from the student evaluations and the comments we received. A very big part of this success is because of all the efforts of my colleagues in the faculty and our student assistants but also due to the great presentations and help of our guest lecturers. I would like to thank all of companies who contributed lectures for their great and inspiring presentations: Team Nijhuis, Social Inc, Greenberry and Noldus.

In the meantime the results of the Google Online Marketing Challenge are known: Our groups have performed particularly well. Six groups received the STRONG and seven the GOOD ratings, not bad for a first time participation by the school.

The plans for next year are also interesting for those interested in education in Digital Marketing on Master level. Next to the existing undergraduate module Digital Marketing for Networked Business, for the first time we will offer the elective (Advanced Topics of) Digital Marketing as part of our Business Administration MSc profile Marketing and Strategy. With these courses and some more developments that are under way (I will talk about these in another post) we hope to realize our ambition to make the University of Twente the place to be for those interested for a career in Digital Marketing. We already cover with these two educational units most digital marketing skills in demand, as these are identified in a recent report of Marketing Profs.  

EuroTrip 2013: What are the effects of the Euro crisis on Greek businesses

With a group of 22  of our 2nd and 3rd year students we start from Monday the EuroTrip 2013, a study trip that is part of our Business Administration curriculum on the University of Twente organised by the study association STESS. A busy program with one lecture in the Athens University of Economics and Business and 7 business visits the students will try to figure out what are the effects of the crisis in the country worst hit by it on their strategy and marketing activities.
It promises to be a very interesting and educational trip

Details in my Twitter and this blog the most interesting news from the trip.

Back to business

This is the second week of the 1st semester here in the University of Twente and things go well: Many students (our International BA in Business Administration program has more than 250 first-year students in its third year from start). Together with the class Marketing for the Industrial Engineering and Management and the Minor Business Administration I have about 400 students to teach in this quarter. The program includes also workshops and guest lectures.
This week we kicked-off the Marketing Assignment: about 70 groups of students from 3 classes will put all their creativity and enthusiasm to work in order to develop the best strategy for the online presence of the Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Traditionally this project is always about online marketing of cultural, non profit institutions: We started with the Acropolis Museum in 2010, in 2011 we had the LVR-Archaelogical Park Xanten in Germany (the ancient Roman city of Colonia Ulpia Traiana) as subject.
Regarding research, our new focus on E-Marketing lays on Co-Innovation: Innovating together with your customers in Social Media platforms. I thought to use the term Social Innovation yet but a Google search indicated that this term is already used for other purposes. So Co-Innovation is the term that my colleagues and myself will use from now on.
The organization of the Social Media Practice congress on the 6th of November is another activity that keeps me busy, we as University of Twente participate in this with a survey that is conducted now aiming at the identification of social media strategies among Dutch firms in the North and East of the country, The "most social" company will receive also the congress award.

DISTIMO REPORT: iPhone first in mobile apps in 2010

DISTIMO is a startup from University of Twente graduates I mentioned in my posts earlier. In the just released report they reveal the 2010 trends in the mobile app market. As expected iPhone was the market leader followed by Android. Good work guys!!!

Social Media Marketing on the rise

After almost two months of silence - due to an extremely busy schedule - I am back to blogging. A lot of interesting things have happened in the meantime. I survived teaching three classes Marketing Management in 1/2 semester and tomorrow the students should demonstrate what they have learned in the mid-semester exams. With our new International Bachelor BA course things were very excited since the group assignment of this year was a bit different than usual: The students must analyze the current online presence of the New Acropolis Museum and design a new one. The museum direction was very helpful and even made a special video for the occasion. The faculty offered a trip to Athens to the winning group and our University newspaper published a nice article about this.
Furthermore my NIKOS colleagues and I have survived another relocation of the department, inside the UT campus this time. I try to cope with the (accidental) formatting of the hard disc of my notebook and the avalanche of interest about Social Media marketing. Last week I enjoyed very much speaking to the ACCENTURE Social CRM Master Class in Amsterdam. Last month I participated in a Social Media Seminar organized by BothSolutions in the Venture Lab Twente and in November I will give two seminars on Social Media Marketing to the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. Other exciting news is that one of my BA students finished his BA thesis with subject the potential of Social Media as instruments of higher education marketing (see NEW PUBLICATIONS). Very interesting findings on the online social behavior of future university students in The Netherlands. A lot of interest already for this study since it was presented in the 2010 Student Research Conference in The Hague a few days ago; It is a good basis for a couple of scientific papers (the conference paper is available at request). This is part of research we do in online behavior of Social Media users.


So far so good but that’s not all; many exciting things have happened recently (and keep happening) in the Social Media domain. In the next weeks I will try to present some interesting cases of Social Media marketing in reference (whenever possible) to my Social Media Marketing Model - based on my 2008 JDDDM paper - that despite its age is becoming more and more actual. Those interested stay tuned.

The High Technology Small Firms Conference 2010 (HTSF 2010)

For the 8th time my department (NIKOS) in cooperation with the Manchester Business School organizes the annual High Technology Small Firms Conference (HTSF 2010) on the 27th and 28th of May in the campus of the University of Twente in Enschede (NL). There is also a Doctoral Workshop ogranized on the 25th and 26th of May. Info in the conference site and the Call for Papers. Hope to see you in Enschede next May

Busy times

The readers of this blog have most probably noticed that no post appeared in the blog the last 20 days. The reason: no time! The last weeks have been really hectic both professionally and personally. In the mean time many interesting things happen in the Web 2.0 /social media world, soon I will be back with new stories and comments. A taste of things happening in the Web 2.0 domain this video about Healthcare 2.0 ( this is by the way also subject of the Social Media Research Center of our University. Hopefully soon some fresh results form our research will be available in this blog

Health 2.0 2009 Opening Video from Health 2.0 on Vimeo.

Social Media Research Center: First studies completed

Last year my colleague Sjoerd de Vries from the faculty of Behavioural Sciences of our University invited me to participate as member of the scientific committee in a new research initiative, the Social Media Research Center (SOMERE)*. SOMERE is a junior research center designed in order to serve the interests of researchers and businesses interested in Social Media: about 20 MSc students from my faculty and the faculty of Behavioural Sciences work on research assignments offered by businesses and staff exploring the effects and importance of Social Media in the areas of marketing, education, healthcare, governance and entertainment.
One of the first assignments that was completed was the study by the MSc student Eze Ezekiel Onyebuchi called "MAKING SENSE OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY: DO EUROPEAN STUDENTS USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL GOALS?" Ezekiel made a comparison between Dutch and UK students in the way they use the SM for education and networking purposes. There are several similarities and some interesting differences here;
For example the most popular SM applications of UK students for educational purposes are Webcasts (99%), Social Networking (52%), Instant Messaging (42%) and YouTube(41%). Dutch students prefer to contribute and read Wikis (38%),  YouTube(35%), Instant Messaging (25%) and Social Networking (24%).

Regarding the use of social networking sites students in both countries use them mainly in order to stay in touch with friends (UK 70,8% and NL 79,4%). In both countries students are also using these sites for finding out information about people (in both countries around 44% of the students). An interesting difference in the number of students using them in order to make new friends (UK 42,5%, Nl 15,4%) and for finding a date (UK 38,9%, NL 5,1%). These last findings are interesting indeed, it looks that in the UK the social networking websites are used much more than in Holland for making personal contacts or relationships.
The study is available in the SOMERE web site under DOCUMENTATIE; it is also available at request to me.  More interesting results will follow in the future about our research activities in SOMERE (* the site is only in Dutch at the moment).

Entrepreneurial ex-students

After Stefan Fountain, an ex-student of mine and co-author in my paper
Web 2.0: Conceptual foundations and Marketing Issues who made it to TechCrunch with his company Soocial.com, the technology start up Distimo.com where another of my ex-students Remco van den Elzen is one of the co-founders (together with three other University of Twente graduates) also enjoys some very positive publicity in the same blog. The University of Twente has a long tradition of high-tech start-ups and these ex-students are a excellent ambassadors of the entrepreneurial spirit of our University. All the best to Remco and his partners with their venture.