Tim Ferguson, CIO at Northern Kentucky University

To what extent does our recreational use of technology drive innovation in business? Is business taking the lead or lagging behind?

"A change is going on in the consumer market that impacts business. NKU is on the front line of that because students come to campus with the latest gadgets: phones, tablets, and gaming devices, so we have the opportunity to integrate that into the learning experience in such a way that they will find it very simple and straightforward to use. In the IT space, ‘bring your own device’ has been a topic for a while, and some businesses have switched to it now, but NKU has been doing it since the beginning of the university. With a population of sixteen thousand students, we have to somehow ensure that any and all devices can work seamlessly on our Wi-Fi and our network. It can’t be complicated. Any applications that we write have to be simple and straightforward for their use because students expect no latency and very fast response times.  NKU is now wireless across the entire campus, including most green spaces and every year we are investing more and more in increased band width, connectivity and security. Later this year we will roll out a digital gateway to campus, so that all our students can interact with NKU from a digital perspective with a single point of entry. This gateway will be mobile responsive from day one and will accommodate users on tablets or coming from the web, and it will be for parents, faculty and staff in addition to students. It will be very search-friendly, almost leading the user to what they are looking for, and we will be inviting students to give us feedback by rating all of the short links and tools. We think it is the current state of the world to be taking in their feedback and adjusting according to their comments. Students are, after all, our customers and in most cases they have already been around and know how to speak in the social media environment."