The 2006 EduWeb Conference will take place on July 31st and August 1st in Baltimore, MD. After leaving her position at Salisbury University last year, Shelley Wetzel, the chair of the great Salisbury Web conference, decided to organize “her” Web Communications conference in Baltimore. Today, more than 150 people have already registered. Nice and efficient move, isn’t it? As she did last year, Shelley has accepted to answer a few questions to explain how she did it and what you should expect at this year’s conference.
1) How did you manage this tour-de-force?
On the second day of last year’s conference, I had several people approach and ask me if I’d be interested in (a) putting on the conference again wherever I landed and (b) if I’d be interested in hosting it with them. This was a great confirmation that I was putting on a conference that was of interest to others in education. With that beginning, and contacts I have made over the years at various other conferences I’ve attended, I started making headway late last year in partnering with a company and putting together an Advisory Board. They have been a huge help in getting this year’s eduWeb Conference – July 31st & August 1st, Sheraton Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD – off the ground.
As of the end of June, we have 180 attendees from all over the country including 3 internationally (Cairo, Egypt, Oslo, Norway and Quebec, Canada) and we’re still just a little over 4 weeks away from the start of the conferece. It will be a great time!
2) What would you tell people who haven’t registered yet to convince them to come?
We’ve always had a unique conference in the education arena; as I like to tell people when discussing the conference, it’s about “both sides of the fence” regarding the development of a website … the front end = marketing, communications and strategy and the back end = development, database apps, instructional design. It’s structured to have two tracks: Marketing & Development. Almost any department not in IT, or that realm of development, is now becoming part of the “front end” because they are slowly starting to realize that their website is representing them and what are they going to do with it? what content should be on there? how do we get our message out to our constituencies? I’ve also noticed, from my own experience in higher ed, but also talking to others, that those “sides of the fence” really don’t know how to talk to each other; they both have their own “language” per se and that’s another reason I created this conference…for them to meet, greet, network and learn from each other. The development side of the conference is not real techie so the marketing, admissions and other non-development attendees can learn about the “dark side” and vice versa.
3) This year’s program is packed with lots of presentations. If somebody can only attend 3 of these events, what should they be and why? In other words, what are your favorites?
My favorites for this year are:
“Getting Campus Buy-In” by Inas Haman, Marketing Manager, American University, Cairo, Egypt
This is a huge issue it seems for every campus; wherever the web office is located – advancement, marketing, IT – everyone wants their say as to what should be on the home page, how it should be stated and yet, no one seems to want to listen to the expertise of the Web Office. That’s why they’re there along with the marketing office working in conjunction with them. Does everyone in a web office know strategy, marketing, etc? No, but they usually have more knowledge about many issues since they have researched other sites, queried peers in their field and hopefully attended some conferences to learn more. This can also come into play when you have a “web advisory group” that has a smattering of representatives from all over campus to review website projects and you need to get their “buy-in” in order to proceed; not everything needs to be democratic. Also, this is a favorite of mine, because I wonder if “things are the same” at an institution in another country.
“E-Brand: Using Electronic Media to Maximum Effect” by Ineke Caycedo, Educational Marketing Group
This is where you need a strong marketing department that has support from their superiors to “sell” the brand (if the institution has a good, strong one to begin with) through the electronic channels available to us today. Also, Admissions, Housing, Career Services, PR and others, who are realizing how important their sites are to their markets, need to be open to hearing the possibilities from their marketing dept., again query their peers at other institutions to see what they’re doing, what’s working and what’s not and have a strategy and a plan. So many institutions are caught up in the politics and territorial control that they’re not willing to see the bigger picture, which I firmly advocate, which is, who is your ultimate client? It’s not yourself, your boss or really even the president, it’s the institution. It will be around a lot longer than anyone else.
“Can that Spam! Getting Control of Your Admissions Inbox” by Mary Beth Kurilko, Assoc. Dir., Admissions, Temple University
This session is appealing to me and really all constituents because the speaker will discuss the larger issue of using a web self-service product as a solution for handling repetitive emails. The concept of web (and other types of) self-service can be applied to just about every area of a university’s business. Natural Language Query boxes are used on student life pages, HR, faculty pages, financial aid, registrar, computer help desks, etc. Beyond reducing wasted man hours handling repetitive inquires, a self-service web product also allows the “customer†to get an instant answer; they don’t have to wait the typical few days to get a response. It will also cover the positives and potential drawbacks of using this type of solution to handle an office or department’s email inbox. This is a great PLUS for increasing audience of admissions professionals.
