“There is no library, campus or classroom larger than the world”.

Julio Wallovits interview for Campus Life: The Argentinean Julio Wallovits has been working in the communications sector for almost 20 years, working as Creative Director at prestigious agencies such as Bates, Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, El Sindicato and S.C.P.F. In parallel, Wallovits is a film director and playwright. In 2001 he wrote and co-directed the film Smoking Room, obtaining, among other awards, a Goya for best new director. In July 2009, he made his first foray into the world of theatre with the premiere of Las Listas, a work that enjoyed enormous success with audiences and critics alike. From La Doma, the advertising agency that he is a partner in, Wallovits aspires to provide the necessary framework for building common dreams between consumers and brands. Julio Wallovits’ favorite online site/platform is… Twitter. As a publicist, what effects do you think a particular aesthetic can have on a person’s emotional state? Everything has an effect on a person’s emotional state. Broadly speaking, I think that this ‘everything’ is shaped by experience – tradition, by the place we inhabit and, ultimately, by education. The very idea of culture is conditioned by these three factors wherever we go. Do you think this is also applicable to online environments? Well, virtual environments are products of globalization. That is, one does not find a difference in environments wherever they go. This results in two phenomena: on the one hand, a certain ‘corrosion of character’, since the cultural values one puts into play are sometimes attenuated to reach a consensus, to be accepted –it’s like when we have to communicate with several people in a language that is not ours; there is always a certain tactfulness when communicating ideas, both due to the fact that it isn’t ‘our language’ and also because we are unsure of how they will be received by our interlocutor-. On the other hand, however, the manipulating of technology fuels the ability to manage abstract ideas collaboratively, since in principle they are less rooted in environment and culture in general. I believe that the ideal situation is to achieve environments that combine connectivity and identity when it comes to ‘teaching’ the user to deal with the virtual world. And this is the big challenge facing virtual environments today. Distance education takes place in virtual environments. Do you feel that virtuality limits learning? I don’t believe in education in terms of usefulness. Education is, from my point of view, putting a mind to the test, developing it to be top notch. I believe that focusing education in terms of utility is one of the biggest errors of our civilization, in that it turns the university into a machine that generates frustration, instead of a place where one goes to ‘change form’. Seen this way, I don’t believe that the stimuli of an on-site university are necessary to achieve this. There are many cases of first-class minds that haven’t been able to deal with the university and everything it implies… and nevertheless they have studied, have been curious and have developed to give great things to themselves and to the rest of the world. I don’t want to put myself in the same bag, but I myself didn’t finish college. And I don’t mean to say that I abandoned my training period, which continues unabated and shows no signs of ever ending. I believe that the real stimulus for curiosity and the desire to absorb knowledge doesn’t come from symbols typically associated with the university, but from the world around us, from the river of life whose limits are much broader than any institution can offer. Imagine that you lead the advertising campaign of a distance university. How would you focus it? First, I would abandon the concept of ‘distance’, which only suggests being excluded from the sphere required for education. There is no library, campus or classroom larger or more diverse than the world, than experience itself. And we are all the same ‘distance’ from the world. If we all saw it like this, the so-called ‘obstacle of being unable to attend the university’ would not only be avoidable but would become an indispensable condition for gaining access to Education with a capital E. The university is nothing; it is a building. I’m not saying that it is an institution that is not worthy of respect, but it must be freed from these ‘false’ values it is bestowed with in order to put the focus where it should really be. Intensity, sensibility and enthusiasm, whether or not one goes to college, always find their way. Starting from this basis, distance education should ‘fan this flame’ that is in each of us so that it may become a fire that will warm us for a lifetime. In recent years, advertising has abandoned information for the sake of emotion. Is this strategy more effective when it comes to captivating the consumer? There are less and less differences between products. What was informative before now has little relevance in many of the categories of the products we consume. So, emotion became capital in these markets with a high ‘me-too’ factor, and also in those in which the products lacked usefulness, since they were merely things we might enjoy. Coca Cola is the most paradigmatic example, a product that ‘is of no use at all’ and that, literally, is the product most desired by the whole world. However, this too is changing. In what respect? Is ‘uselessness’ no longer attractive? In a way. Thanks to the virtual world, functionality has come back into style. And most importantly, it has become emotional. The possibilities offered to us by certain devices, social networks or even websites can be very exciting, not only because of their technological advantages, but also because they help us to communicate better, to be connected and, in some cases, to reflect better and more. We should never think in terms of technology when it comes to conceiving consumer needs. We have to think in terms of ‘social tools’. The great ideas in this domain today move us all. And for these ideas to be great they must contain elements that have nothing to do with technology, but rather with the ideology and sentiments that unite each group to that which we seek to conquer. How would you conquer online students from an emotional dimension? In the case of virtual education, I would never forget the possibility that the new technologies offer students to connect with talented and sensitive people to find the solution to problems they have to tackle during their studies. I would stay focused on the idea of ‘Comprehending’ and not on that of ‘Knowing’, because knowledge seems to be available to everyone, everywhere. That is the challenge of education today! To endow students with criteria and train them in meaningful searching – which the virtual world cannot offer by itself, are aspects that would be included, without any doubt, in the emotional design of the learning process. After all is said and done, everything is there. What we would like to know is what we can build with all of it, how we can make the most of our potential. And for that, it is likely that we also need to know what Leonardo da Vinci, Orson Welles or Steve Jobs himself would do in our place. How are the new technologies seen from the advertising sector? Advertising is going through a time of great transition because the new social tools multiply the possibilities for improving communication with the consumer. Let us not forget that we consumers are the masters of brands. Brands exist because of our demand for them.  And this, which has always been this way, now has a clear channel of expression through new technologies. I predict a future in which brands are totally dependent on the opinions, ideas and visions of the consumer such that, on this basis, they put all of their corporate intelligence to work on meeting a challenge, one that assaults their imagination. What degree of prominence do you foresee for the new technologies in the field of education? As regards the field of learning, I see a future where the brands related to the new technologies are much more involved socially. I believe that brands will be the first factor of social change, even in the field of education. Like it or not, many of the services offered by the majority of brands carry with them a series of responsibilities that they must accept. To give an example, I think that Google should emphasize the formation of criteria. And why? Because it is Google’s responsibility for us to be able to know and see ‘everything’. The producers of electronic games, on the other hand, should break into the field of education in a much more forceful way. In the very near future, the majority of the absorption of knowledge will be experiential. This will eventually come about through the willingness of brands. And it will happen much faster if we demand it. For this, it is key for us to be heard, to complete the image of brands as well as our own. From a marketing perspective, what role do social relations play? Right now, they are essential. Nowadays brands should seek prestige of a ‘personal nature’, separate from the corporate stereotypes that generate so much distrust. To achieve this, the means must be credible. And nothing is more credible than the relationship between people, than the recommendation of a relative or friend. What about in education? On the educational level, I’m convinced that social networks can be greatly exploited. One of the great engines of social tools, since their appearance, has been forums, which basically group together persons with similar knowledge and interests. Forums are a magnificent idea because they don’t take the idea of community as something defensive, an attitude that is so fashionable today, but uphold the old idea of community: to be together to share something that we enjoy; we educate ourselves mutually and reinforce our identities. Not to detract from the academic world, but it’s amazing how many things one can learn today from anonymous people, who you find on Internet. Technology is an engine of social change. How do you conceive the society of the 21st century? Hopefully, the 21st-century society will prove to be a society that uses all the tools and possibilities available to it to engage in ‘Comprehension’. This is the heart of the matter. In reality, I see the new society as a society of ‘rich’ people. We are rich. Not monetarily speaking, but in terms of the possibilities to reach out to others, to influence and participate, and in a way that was unimaginable only a few years ago. This is a time in which the institutional space is growing smaller, and therefore we must also educate our young people to be able to make good use of their personal space, which is growing at a tremendous rate. Distance education is part of this new way of approaching reality, but it is still undervalued because, even today, there is a terrible fear of letting go of all things institutional.

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Mobile Learning & Commuting: Contextual Interview and Mobile Scenarios

Last week we had the opportunity to attend the conference CAFVIR 2012, about Quality and Accessibility in eLearning. Here you have our presentation about Mobile Learning & Commuting, and the design of Mobile Learning Scenarios (in Spanish):

Moreover, here you can find the complete paper and the rest of articles of the conference (also in Spanish): LibroActasCAFVIR2012.pdf

Enjoy!