During the past year the University of British Columbia has implemented strategies to create a useful networking community for their alumni. In June 2006 they launched “Trek Connect” a similar site to “LinkedIn“, which is a networking community of business professionals who want to reach out to others in their industries and to potentially find work or what’s going on in their field. Recently an announcement was sent to all the alumni in their database to join up and connect with other alumni. As a webbie and a social software enthusiast I was very interested in the idea and how it would play out. To be sure Canadian universities alumni communities don’t rival that of Yale, Princeton or Cambridge to name just a few. In recent years the Young Alumni Association of UBC has been quite active with networking events and socials such as the annual Murder Mystery Halloween party. However, a lot of the alumni from the 70s to the 90s have lost touch with their former colleagues and this is what Trek Connect is all about.
I registered myself in and interestingly enough and not surprisingly most of the people who registered are recent graduates within the last five years. Perhaps this reflects the new digital revolution and the attraction of the types of websites such as MySpace and Friendster that people are starting to use as a form of socializing. The majority of the people at the moment who are attracted to this social software seem to be in their teens and 20s.
The website has a few interesting attributes which includes adding your external blog to their blog feed, a forum, a place to post your resume and your bio. Even though I registered with my former student number it only connected me with one of my majors (I did a double major), and my blog feed doesn’t seem to have taken hold. The forum looks promising, however, in my experience the forums are successful when there are a few dedicated individuals who regularly visit and post on it. An example of a successful forum is on techvibes.com.
update Sept.29/06: Darren Barefoot has also made some interesting comments about the new UVIC alumni online community.
July 10th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Thanks for this post about TrekConnect, I really like what you wrote. I work for UBC Alumni Affairs and oversaw this project so it is great to see so many people interested in it.
I think your observation about the age of the users is interesting. I sent invites to about 19 friends in the 35 - 45 range and not one signed up yet!
Please never hesitate to share your feedback (good & bad) with us.
All the best…B