“Point” – the ETH community’s digital village square

 The new platform, named “Point”, will make content from the ETH community available to the ETH community. The name says it all: a virtual meeting point, where lecturers, employees and students from the farthest corners of ETH can come together. They will be able to create virtual groups around specific topics, inform each other about events or exchange tips on life at ETH and beyond. The marketplace will enable them to offer used items for sale, thus helping to extend their life.

Isabelle Castagna, co-initiator and project manager of the platform, and a member of the “Sustainability” Office of the President, sees the marketplace as a particularly important feature from the perspective of sustainability. “I’m convinced that plenty of ETH staff have things lying in their attics or basements that students could put to good use – not least those students coming to ETH from abroad and who have to settle here for a few years,” she explains. In addition, the platform is also intended to encourage debate and discussion on a sustainable future.

Born of necessity

Although the focus was on sustainability when developing the platform, the idea for the virtual meeting point goes back to the coronavirus crisis. As the first wave hit last spring, everyone's life suddenly changed: personal encounters and face-to-face events had to be put on ice, and loneliness and isolation became a major challenge for many ETH members – not least for those who had moved to Zurich from further afield. This situation was highlighted by calls for help to the Safety, Security, Health and Environment department (SSHE) coronavirus hotline.

Hotline staff developed the idea of a virtual meeting platform together with ETH Sustainability, marking the birth of “Point”, the digital village square for the ETH community. In implementing their ideas, the developers were able to benefit from the support of the computer science students in the IT Training Lab.

“Point” as a communal project

Various other contributors from a wide range of units, such as the Staff Commission, the Student Exchange Office, Corporate Communications, AVETH, VSETH and the Student Sustainability Commission (SSC), helped to define the platform’s profile and functionalities. Kristóf Sárosi from the SSC played a role in the development process, and emphasises that the suggestions and input from the project team were always gratefully received. He is justifiably proud when he says: “Many student groups have been waiting for this platform – and now we have it.” Sabine Hoffmann, who was able to share important experience on the part of the IT services, adds: “We’ve never had such a comprehensive platform for exchange. Now it’s up to us to make the most of what it has to offer.”                                         

To be continued

We all have to play our part in breathing life into the platform – the more we use it, the more useful it will be to us as a result. At the same time, “Point” will keep on developing, as Castagna emphasises: “We have a long list of things we want to implement.” However, these changes cannot and should not take place overnight, but as part of an iterative process aligned with users’ needs. One of the new additions will be a forum function in which participants can discuss specific issues within a group; this should be launched in the foreseeable future. Any further ideas for the development of the platform are welcome.

The long-term objective of the platform is that it will evolve into a hub for the ETH community as a whole, and a point of contact for networking and exchange long after the pandemic is a distant memory.