exactly at the time they needed it most: to keep in touch after leaving the university.

The service, which still exists is called Pidgeme.com and having signed up over 1500 leavers in its first year, continues to cater for thousands of Oxford graduates. After launching a similarly successful service at Cambridge, UCL contacted Aluminati to run, on an official basis their own “Email for Life” service (as it is now known in the sector): UCLMail. Other universities soon followed suit.

Over the next few years the Aluminati team grew, deeply developing their industry insight and establishing a team of technical experts in the field of designing and operating engaging online platforms for alumni.

From 2008 the company began to apply this expertise more widely, developing new products in the online space, all in service to the educational sectors objective of keeping alumni connected and engaged.

Over the subsequent few years Aluminati released sophisticated services in the area of extracting social network data from hyper-popular online networks Facebook and LinkedIn including establishing a formal agreement with LinkedIn for full profile access to their API.

The company also released Aluminate, their flagship online engagement platform that aims to deliver an online space that, in contrast to all existing platforms on the market, is specifically designed to give alumni a reason to engage on a regular basis. Aluminate’s modular approach accurately reflects the faceted interconnectedness of educational institutions with modules that offer value not just to the alumni office but also to the key careers, recruitment and international operations.

Aluminati now operates worldwide with customers in the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.