In August 2021, the Yellowdig team had the honor of attending the ASU+GSV Summit event held in San Francisco, California. The Summit started in 2010 in a collaboration between Arizona State University (ASU) and Global Silicon Valley (GSV) to connect leading minds focused in transforming learning and work. The annual convening offers a tangible look at the EdTech industry with groundbreaking research, quantitative insights, and informed forecasts embedded in every discussion.
What Does The Yellowdig Team Have To Say?
“The ASU+GSV conference was a great opportunity to meet with, learn from, and get more exposed to all things innovative happening in the EdTech space. As an MBA intern, and being new to the EdTech space, I came into the conference with my eyes wide open and ready to absorb as much as possible.
Firstly, meeting with and learning about many of the other companies in the space broadened my understanding of the many ways we all are changing the education market. The companies varied from innovative ways to gamify education to embedding education into VR.
Secondly, talking with and learning from the investors in the space shed light into their investing thesis and critical approach to evaluating investments. One of my favorite panels, Path to a Trillion Dollar EdTech Company, brought together key investors in the space and they discussed the foundation of a successful company and how a pure EdTech company could one day be worth a trillion dollars. Finally, meeting with the end users of the products, educators and students, brought the whole conference together, because I was able to better understand how they envisioned the future of education at their own schools. Kailie and I spoke with an administrator at a large Higher Ed school system, and he shared with us his approach and struggles with evaluating all the technology platforms on the market, and how he chose what would be used for his school system.
Holistically, the ASU+GSV conference brought together a great mix of the various stakeholders within the education space that enabled a networking and learning opportunity for everyone. “
“Some of the overarching themes of the conference involved the lessons we learned from the pandemic, and how they can be translated in a post-pandemic world. There were also themes about ‘upskilling,’ or training, closing the gap between college and the workforce, making sure students are provided with skill sets that will help increase their employability.
One of the panels, Skills for Employability: Leveraging Technology in Higher Ed to Prepare Students for the Workforce, hosted by Shravan Goli, Chief Product Officer at Coursera, discussed this topic a lot in his session titled “S.” Institutions need to be providing flexibility and accessibility for students. They need to meet students where they are. They need to make sure that students are not valued with just a ‘degree.’
There were also awesome sessions on women leadership! Exhibit A: The Primal Scream: Experiences of Women in Leadership, where the speakers gave voices to women’s experiences and defined women’s influences in the highest echelons of the workplace.
I learned about baking your values into your culture and leading by example. For example, if flexibility was provided for everyone, it would make things easier for working parents, people taking paternity leave, and more. We have lives outside of work, and we need to be cognizant of meeting our employees somewhere in the middle. We’re conditioned to think that taking time off is not optimal or efficient, but it’s about time to unlearn that mentality and create work cultures where people know it’s okay to take time off and rest.
It’s been a tough 18 months, and we need to give our employees space and time to process. We shouldn’t pretend like what’s happening in the world around us isn’t happening and impacting us.
The ASU+GSV Summit was overall an amazing event that allowed the Yellowdig team and I major opportunities to make connections, and hear from company business leaders in the field.”
Key Moments
Yellowdig featured in Dr. Michael M. Crow’s “Stage X” Speech (24:45)
Don’t forget to also check out these cool videos:
We highly recommend you to read more about The Summit here. It was an amazing opportunity for the Yellowdig team to grow connections and learn from fellow EdTech enthusiasts.
We’d like to give a major thanks to everyone that attended, and a special thanks to all the people who coordinated the conference and made it happen. Hope to see you again next year!
