Georgetown officials joined flocks of art and music enthusiasts in Austin, Texas, at the South by Southwest Conference when Chief Information Officer Lisa Davis, Provost Robert Groves and Program Manager for Innovation and New Media Z. Michael Wang (MSB ’07) presented a standing-room-only seminar titled “Designing the Future University From the Inside” on March 5.

Though Georgetown has attended the conference in past years, this is the first year that the university has participated in the conference’s Education Week.

The panel began with a video on the state of higher education today and the massive changes education is undergoing with respect to affordability, packaging and delivery. Davis discussed the role of technology in the future of higher education, as universities attempt to best integrate technology into academics.

“My role was to discuss how we’re integrating the technology with all of the disruption occurring in higher education today, how we work in partnership from a technology and an academic and research perspective to build that future university,” she said.

Groves discussed the Georgetown Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship’s ITEL program, short for Initiative for Tech-Enhanced Learning, on the course and degree levels.

“How do you reimagine and repackage everything the university delivers in terms of degree into different content packages?” Wang said.

Wang, who moderated the panel, addressed the larger picture of engagement with the community as well as the innovations that directly involve the Georgetown community, such as the Hackathon.

The audience, compromised of K-12 and higher educators, vendors, technology education startups and government representatives, was able to participate in the panel on multiple levels through in-person dialogue as well as on social media.

“We had lots of questions and engagement from the audience. We had a lot going on Twitter, tweeting about what we were discussing, so there was a lot of excitement and activity going on during our panel,” Davis said.

Twitter users tweeted about the event under the hashtag #GUatSxSW to respond to and discuss the panel and to follow Georgetown’s progress in the future.

Some of the tweets shared links and personal commentary, lauding the interactive format of the panel.

James Britton, communications coordinator at Purdue University, tweeted, “Great format!”

Afterwards, the audience had the opportunity to divide into small discussion groups, allowing participants to delve deeper into the higher education conversation.

Wang said that the heavy feedback and energy generated from the conference is indicative of a growing interest in the future of higher education.

“Even though we’re big organizations, institutions, I think there’s a lot of excitement around the fact that universities can be innovative and be experimental as well, and that we’re not just going to be on the sidelines,” Wang said.

Looking forward, Davis said that she hopes Georgetown can a play a role in the South by Southwest conference in the future.

“We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We enjoyed doing the panel; we enjoyed the engagement with the folks that were there. We won’t know until the fall whether we’re invited back, and as we work through the many initiatives that are going on through the provost’s office in designing the future university, whether we come back and offer another panel or we come back from a participation standpoint,” Davis said.

“Georgetown will continue to innovate and use this experience to further the relationship between technology and education,” Davis said.

“I think what was great about the panel was it gave us an opportunity to create new partnerships with possible companies and some of the innovation and technology they’re using. So I have many follow-up meetings with about three or four of those vendors on some of the technology capabilities that we might be able to use here at Georgetown as well as peer institutions,” she said.

Wang, a Georgetown graduate, said that he felt proud to be a part of Georgetown’s first South by Southwest experience, especially as it involved participation from all different areas of the university.

“There was a lot of pride in seeing that we as a university invested in, put in the effort to, for the first time, be at South by Southwest, share what we’re doing, and sort of take that leap,” Wang said.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Z. Michael Wang’s title as Chief Innovation Officer. He is the Program Manager for Innovation and New Media. Additionally, SxSWedu does not constitute its own week but rather a four day event in conjunction with the SxSW conference.