Before I built Canvis.app, I studied Environmental Governance at the University of Freiburg. One of the coolest parts about my program was the international community. We have students and alumni from nearly every country on earth! My class alone had 27 different nationalities represented.

And many of these students have gone on to do great things in their home countries, in Europe, or elsewhere.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see where everyone is, where they work, and what they are up to? What sorts of places and work do we have in common?

Using canvis to map your alumni network

Similar to our example of a couch surfing network, we created a canvis project with just three pages.

1. A landing page, explaining what the network is for, who is invited, and how they can take part. We also encourage people to log in with a canvis account (not required).
2. A mapping page, where members mark their current and past employers and home cities on the map (As accurate or inaccurate as they want) and answer a few questions.
3. A conclusion page, saying thanks and encouraging everyone to stay involved, with links to relevant social media and alumni sites.

Now, all we do is share the link around our alumni network, and ask people to mark a few things on the map:

1. Current place of work
2. Past place of work
3. Current home city
4. City of origin

They can be as vague or specific as they want, provide contact information, and give advice for future Environmental Governance students and alumni! Turns out some alumni were living and working in the same cities and didn’t even know it.

That’s the power of maps, and the power of canvis.app, making it cheap and easy to launch fun and useful projects like this! If your network is small and you keep the project basic, you can run it totally for free!

Need help or have questions? I’m happy to help any time, brendan@canvis.app