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Virtual Conferencing A Way to Keep Alumni Together

Keeping 26,000 business school alumni connected to the school and to each other presents quite a challenge. One solution may be a familiar technology, but with a new twist.

As faculty and students settle into the new, state-of-the-art Knight Management Center, virtual conferencing is likely to become more common throughout the business school. In the past, portable devices had to be brought to classrooms and operated by technicians. But now, in many of the new facility's classrooms, video can be streamed from a remote control room, and the professor needs to do no more than flip a switch at the lectern to go live.

"Ideally, this becomes a technology we can use with all our chapters to deliver content and thought-provoking research and ideas," said Sarah Roach, associate director of alumni relations.

A recent videoconference between alumni gathered at Stanford and in Belgium was a harbinger of how the technology can help. On April 7, two panels of experts — one in a classroom at the business school and the other in an auditorium at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven — discussed technology innovation and entrepreneurship in real time. A moderator in Leuven guided dialogue back and forth between Silicon Valley and Belgium.

Dirk Wauters, MBA '81, Belgium chapter officer of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association, was part of the alumni audience at Leuven. "It was a good interaction," he said. "We were able to see top professors like Robert Burgelman in action." And, Burgelman noted, "I didn't have to fly to Belgium."