37signals College Tour? Oct 16 2007
20 comments Latest by JF
Over the past few months we’ve been getting requests from professors around the country inviting us to speak to their business, design, or engineering students about Getting Real.
So we’ve been thinking about putting together a 37signals Getting Real College Tour. We’d pick a dozen or so schools and put together a speaking tour over a couple months.
If you are a professor and you think you can pull together 100+ design, business, or engineering students to attend a one or two hour talk (including Q&A) on your campus, please drop us an email at svn@37signals.com.
Important Note: Since we posted this we’ve been hearing from a lot of students. It’s great to hear that you’re interested, but in order to make this work we’ll need to be contacted by professors or department heads who would be able to sanction/sponsor the event. If you’re a student please let your professor/department know you would be interested in having us speak at your school. Please ask them to get in touch with us directly. Thanks!
We look forward to hearing from you.
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20 comments so far
Dan 17 Oct 07
What’s best way to introduce 37 signals to our department heads who haven’t heard of you?
Jacob Eiting 17 Oct 07
I would say, just have them read Getting Real or just ask them if they’ve heard of RoR.
Teddy K 17 Oct 07
37signals, in case you are not aware – universities hardly ever pay a company to come speak.
So as such, I don’t think you can use this as yet another opportunity to make bank at a speaking event.
JF 17 Oct 07
Teddy, we aren’t asking, expecting, or looking to be paid for these talks.
Robert Gaal 17 Oct 07
Wow, this is a great idea! Could work in other countries to, like Holland. I thought of presenting more at colleges, why not do it in a tour together with some other befriended startups maybe?
Pelle 17 Oct 07
Who wouldn’t like to have you visiting them? I assume that this suggestion is limited to the USA ? If so – perhaps have a Europe-tour later on?
Peter Berkenbosch 17 Oct 07
A European tour should be awesome ! May I also suggest Holland :D
But, great idea. This should be done more. Businesses and students should interact much more, they are dependend to each other!
karl@karl.karl 17 Oct 07
Getting Real Gone Wild!!!
Ryan Bergeman 17 Oct 07
Wish I was still in college :D
Mrad 17 Oct 07
Great idea! Just avoid frat parties.
Mike Trotzke 17 Oct 07
Great idea… I’ve forwarded this link on to a number of my university type friends here at Indiana University. Hope you hear from them soon, IU would be a great school for this kinda thing.
Geoff DiMasi 17 Oct 07
I am a multimedia professor at The University of the Arts.
I have been assigning Getting Real to my students for a year or so.
It has gone over well. We are located in Philadelphia in Center City. It would be a great venue. I will get in touch with you.
Matt B. 17 Oct 07
I worked in the largest two-year college in the state of MN for three years and also got my degree from there. No offense to any of you professors, but in my experiences, many web development classes were taught by “older” instructors who were behind on technologies. Classes were boring and everything was by the book. “Bueller… Bueller… Bueller…” These students need an inspirational INJECTION of the REAL WORLD ! They need to know that if you’ve got the skills, a degree doesn’t necessarily matter in this field. They need to know they can make $70k-Six-figures doing this STUFF . They need to know there’s no better time to start a web-based business than now. Hardware is cheap and you don’t need the overhead of an office building, etc. So much opportunity out there!
This tour is a great idea.
Peter Dietz 17 Oct 07
Student organizations can host events as well, such as The OpenSource Club. How would coming to The Ohio State University sound? We have over 50,000 students and a lot more faculty and staff.
Matt B. 17 Oct 07
Hahaha…. uh, telling them they don’t necessarily need a degree is probably not a good thing to preach at a college. I take that back (even though it’s true).
I forwarded this to some IT folks at that college.
Cameron Moll 17 Oct 07
Not necessarily true, Teddy. I’ve spoken a few times at universities now, at least a couple of which were paid.
Jonas 18 Oct 07
Is it possible for you guys to come to Sweden as well? Anyway, good luck with the tour, I think it will be a success!
Oren Sreebny 19 Oct 07
Jason -
We’d be happy to host you at the University of Washington, and I’m sure we could dig up a good crowd of Seattleites. Drop me an email if you want to chat more about it.
Vicky 22 Oct 07
Why is it so hard for people to give credit to a great company that is obviously trying to give something back.
It is obnoxious to say that their invitation to do a College Tour would be about receiving money to speak! I think they would make more money staying home and running their uberly successful empire.
Obviously you haven’t followed the company over the years, their book (which is available to read free), RoR (which is open source), or used any of their entry-level free versions of their software. They have opened a dialog of thought and re-evaluation that is suprisingly simple, yet asks us to reevaluate the way things have ‘always been done”.
I have heard them speak, and it is obvious when you hear and meet them in person, what their motivations are. I hope that this offers you more information and a different prospective on individuals who have generously contributed and shared with others what they have learned and experienced.
I wish them all the success in the world.
JF 23 Oct 07
Vicky, that comment made my day. Thanks so much.
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