The VHS of tomorrow. A few interjections

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My initial thoughts for the heckler I was invited to make a contribution to the self-image of adult education centers at the VHS Day. To get into the groove of it, I had written a possible lecture to myself. In the end, I rejected this draft because it seemed too general and moralizing to me. […]

My initial thoughts for the heckler

I was invited to make a contribution to the self-image of adult education centers at the VHS Day. To get into the groove of it, I had written a possible lecture to myself. In the end, I rejected this draft because it seemed too general and moralizing to me. I opted for a more entertaining version, which you can view below. However, in addition to the lecture actually given, the predecessor version might be of interest. Therefore: Please!

I don’t know if you had time to read my dis.kurs article? I was asked by the VHS to take a look at the VHS from the outside and how I see the VHS of tomorrow. So please don’t be irritated if you imagine the future quite differently. It’s just an attempt on my part to imagine the awesome institution of VHS in the 21st century.

Because you need to know: Until now, I was one of those who believed that traditional educational institutions could no longer survive in the 21st century in the face of increasing disruption at the margins.

But I can’t tell you that here in view of your special day, so I sat down for a few days and seriously thought about what a VHS would have to look like that, in my view, could take on a truly meaningful function in the 21st century.

And even if I was skeptical myself, I have found a vision – only it may be located somewhere quite different from where you decree it.

Let’s get started …

The challenge of the old reverential institutions, whether in education, business, or politics, is, after all, that over the years of their institutional successes, they have come to take INSTITUTION as the starting point for their deliberations.

Then it was all about getting even bigger – following the old idea of growth: more employees, more customers, more money. That was the logic and it worked for a long time.

Today, however, we live in a time when small companies like Instagram with 15 employees can develop a gigantic market value that brings down old warhorses like Kodak, for example. Why is that? Because technology enables this exponential growth and customer scaling.

Singularity University, for example, estimates that there will be about 8 billion of us on the planet by 2020. And ALL people will then have free access to the Internet.

Google, Facebook, Elon Musk with his SpaceX rockets are working on it. They launch satellites the size of shoeboxes into space to provide Internet access worldwide. However you want to classify it, it’s going to happen, is already happening in some precursor variants, and will empower the entire world.

Energy, mobility and communication will soon cost nothing, envisioned Singularity University at its summit in Berlin in April 2016.

The entire world will then be networked via the Internet and will use its pooled, collective intelligence to educate each other. Whether you think that’s good or not, no one asks. People just do it.

Why is the network so successful?

But is it really technology that is enabling this exponential growth? Maybe in the second step, in the executive branch, so to speak.

At the forefront, however, is a reversal of the view of the market.

  • For the past 40 years, for example, various concepts have evolved over time that have focused on optimally aligning information, access, and user experience.
  • Twenty years ago, for example, the first thoughts began about how to reverse the customer perspective. No longer offering a product to which the customer is obliged to adapt if he wants to use it. But to create a product that the customer actually wants. To meet him, to help him.
  • Then, about 10 years ago, came the possibility to really network everything with everything, to experience mobility more intensively – and out of all this came a new age, namely this tangle, where everything is connected with everything. From this tangle, one can now offer different offers.

You surely know this graphic?!

What Apple and Google are doing in this case is accommodating the user, finding a first thread with which they can unravel the tangle. This radical view from the user’s perspective is served with maximum efficiency, in the way that best meets the customer’s needs. Regardless of whether it takes people, machines or algorithms to do it.

And now they are looking at the 3rd application. If the first two screens are user-oriented, this one is supply-oriented. There the engineer shows what he can do and you have to watch as a user yourself for a quarter of an hour to make the right entries without knowing if you will find the right thread to the ball behind it. This app doesn’t care if the user is overwhelmed or not. You offer it, done. That’s the old supplier market.

Where does the VHS stand?

Now let’s look at the common discussion around VHS. From my outside perspective, the sole issue here is how SMT can continue to maintain its imposing position. Of course, she only wants to do good for the weak. That is not out of the question at all.

But what is different here? It is the classic view from the supplier side. You want to please the audience – and may be snuffed out if the audience no longer wants what you want. The university for the people uses the people to maintain their “HIGH SCHOOL”.

I told you it might get a little uncomfortable … but we’ll soon have reached the bottom.

You see, and this is where a gap opens up from my perspective.

The VHS, like the other large institutions, revolves around itself. On such a day as VHS Day, you are allowed to revolve only around yourself, but in general I have the feeling that almost all German educational institutions are looking at digitization like a rabbit at a snake ….

But why actually?

  1. The digital tools offer a lot of convenience (as long as they were not developed by large German institutions).
  2. Digital tools and media offer a wide range of opportunities for exchanging ideas with customers and partners (provided that the idea of user experience is consistently lived).
  3. And digital environments, as we know, turn the tables: From a supply market to a demand market, as we have just seen. We no longer have to develop something that no one wants anyway.

This is because these tools and media are now also available to customers, who either craft something themselves that is more in line with their customer needs or use services from the providers that are most likely to suit them personally.

And there are a lot of new providers in the media and education sector that offer great, contemporary services and help to create a good user experience. This ranges from civil society initiatives to all the more or less progressive startups that are currently sprouting from the ground.

The VHS of tomorrow

But why perceive these network offerings as competition, I ask in my dis.kurs contribution? It’s great when the people learn and develop.

Why not think: Okay, there’s this ever-branching ecosystem with lots of really great, diverse, new offerings worldwide – we’ll show the people how to make sense of it all?! We help the people to educate themselves in the best possible way by providing interfaces into the new network.

The worldwide offer is primarily English-language. Why not serve as a translator, a stirrup holder, a representative of the people’s interests? At least for those parts of the population that are happy to be helped because they also want to participate in the digital transformation. Want to understand it, what is currently happening.

You will certainly notice that there are still some gaps in the offer – you can fill them, if possible developed in a supra-regional agile way, so that you quickly become an attractive provider visible to many customers. But these are details that would have to be discussed again.

What would be important to me is to see the VHS as a door opener, to accompany people in the digital transformation in a meaningful way. And thus also act as a lobbyist for popular education interests in politics.

  • Starting with the demand for access to the Internet,
  • via diverse formats that enable entry, not didactically prepared, but at eye level, experimental, creative,
  • and finally, using new hybrid formats for community exchange.

I can think of so many things where VHS could serve as an interface between the people and network education. You have established structures, you have personnel, you have access to local markets.

Do something to lift the sleepy digital literacy in Germany!

In case of doubt, even more violent disruptions will occur in the future. Amazon has started to build bookstores locally. to give people physical access to the network. Udacity is also starting to do this. If you as a SMT don’t take over this function soon, others will.

Create access points to all these great new education providers, initiatives and environments! As a scout, as a coach, as a socializing effect.

Perhaps your institution as such will have to shrink back to its core, but that will make you stronger, more successful for the 21st century.

Employee numbers, hierarchical levels and the mass of potential offers are no longer an expression of success. It’s the agile, customer-friendly, forward-thinking view that makes for success.

I wish them much success!

Actual heckle

And now here is my actual lecture, which was thankfully recorded via Periscope by Joachim Sucker, an author of the Volkshochschultag blog, and then put on YouTube. (Please fast forward to 1:37 …)

And here is the official record of the entire forum:

Last, but not least, a sketchnote by Karl Damke about our forum.

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