Attention: Special offer to college/university instructors who use Buying In in class

A few weeks ago I undertook an interesting little experiment that worked out really well: I “visited” a university class on the other side of the country, via Skype (video).

And if the circumstances are right, I am willing to do the same for your class, too.

The deal is as follows:

The experiment came about because of a note I got from David Horowitz, who used Buying In in a Consumer Behavior class he’s teaching this semester at Sonoma State University. We had a little exchange, and somewhere along the way he said (paraphrasing): If you’re ever in the area, come visit my class, etc.

This is something I get a lot. But of course it’s extremely rare that I happen to be in the right city at the right time to visit a college/university class — which is a shame, because I always enjoy such meetings and discussions when they do come about.

Anyway, so I’d been thinking about this very dilemma for a while and offered to visit the class … via Skype. Dr. Horowitz was game, and his classroom had the necessary technical specs: a WiFi connection, and video projector hooked up to his laptop. Not unusual for the contemporary college or university classroom these days, I believe.

So we picked the day, and I turned set Skype’s video preference to “on,” called in, and spent about a half an hour chatting with and taking questions from his class, of about 30 or 40 students I guess.

It was pretty cool!

In fact I consider the experiment successful enough that I’m willing to do it again. Thus this announcement: If you teach a class and use Buying In as part of it — I don’t care if it’s consumer behavior, marketing, design, cultural studies, whatever — I would be happy to do the same thing for you.

Obviously there are some scheduling constraints; I can’t do it every day. But if you’re interested, now or for some future semester, please drop me a line at murketing@robwalker.net (subject heading “class visit” or somesuch) and let me know. We’ll work something out.

(Also obviously: If you’re a student who thinks this is a good idea, simply bring it to your prof’s attention.)

Finally, I’d like the offer public thanks here to David Horowitz, and his students, for playing along with this experiment. Hope you all enjoyed it, too.