Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55878
Technology 170-person dining hall. They choose the promotional messages that run on the school's digital signage, learn to use property management soft- ware, and take a technology course that covers the latest best practices in hospitality. Mocopay and mobile technol- ogy also will be integrated into the school's courses and activities to reflect the technology's growing use in the industry. "We want to prepare students for the ways the hospitality industry is implementing the mobile point-of-sale systems, from a market- ing side, a sales side, and a techno- logical side," says Corsun. "We want to create opportunities for students to learn this technology so they're not seeing it for the first time when they start their careers." Connecting Public to Policy with Mobile IT Beans, the student-run coffee shop at the DU's School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management, has added mobile point-of-sale to teach students to use mobile technologies effectively. Using Mobile to Pay and Learn Like managers in many industries, those in hospitality expect that mobile technology will change the way they handle transactions and interact with customers. That's why the School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management (HRTM) at the Uni- versity of Denver's Daniels College of Business in Colorado wanted to do more with mobile technology within its facilities, says David Cor- sun, the school's director. HRTM recently partnered with Mocopay, a software-as-service ven- dor, to enable students to use their mobile devices to pay for food and beverages at Beans, the school's 58 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2010 student-run coffee shop. Users will be able to check their account bal- ances, add funds to their accounts, and access their transaction histories within the platform. In turn, the students who manage Beans will use the system to send mobile mar- keting messages on its products to patrons. The technology is more than a convenience, Corsun adds. It's a learning tool within a school that is, in itself, a large living laboratory. In addition to the coffee shop, students manage HRTM's 2,800-square-foot kitchen, beverage management cen- ter, front desk operations center, and Most policymakers would like to get more direct feedback from the citizens they serve, but they find traditional polling methods to be less than satisfactory. Asking citizens to com- plete surveys on government Web sites seems too passive; phoning cit- izens at their homes, too intrusive. But what about tapping the power of the mobile phone? An international consortium of Euro- pean universities and technology companies has embarked on a three- year Ubiquitous Participation for Policy Making (UbiPOL) Project. Supported by a €2.7 million grant (about US$3.3 million) from the European Union, UbiPOL aims to develop mobile phone applications that will connect citizens to govern- ment and allow them to provide feedback on policies that affect their everyday lives.