Join Higher Ed Experts to access free info and resources, network online with your peers in other institutions and get a great deal on professional development webinars

I was supposed to make this announcement last Tuesday. As you can understand, given the tragedy that struck Virginia Tech, I decided to postpone.

I’m launching a new website, Higher Ed Experts, to provide professional development and social networking online opportunities to higher ed professionals working in Web, marketing, PR and admissions.

Higher Ed Experts will provide registered users with news, resources and social networking components for free and webinars for a fee.

I’ve been working on this project behind the scenes for a while and I think it can help our professional community. I might be right on this one as the following five higher ed executives agreed to become volunteer members of Higher Ed Experts’ advisory board:

• David Bowers, Assistant Dean for External Affairs, California Western School of Law (CA)
• Andrew Careaga, Director of Communications, University of Missouri-Rolla (MO)
• Joe Hice, Associate Vice President, Marketing & Public Relations, University of Florida (FL)
• David Jarmul, Associate Vice President of News and Communications, Duke University (NC)
• Charlie Melichar, Vice President, PR & Communications, Colgate University (NY)

The website is actively recruiting members, speakers and webinar attendees.

Here’s why you and your colleagues (or even your boss) should consider joining Higher Ed Experts.

Top 5 Benefits for Registered HEE Members (Free registration is open to higher ed professionals and executives)

1. Get the scoop on the latest news and trends in higher education.
2. Share with other HEE members great resources about the Web, new media, social media and online marketing on the HEE Wiki Cookbook.
3. Network with your peers in other institutions via your HEE profile, personal Message Board, private messages and Public forum reserved to HEE members.
4. Get a 50% discount on all future webinars offered in 2007.
5. Get all the above for free.

Register now! It only takes 2 minutes and don’t forget to reply to the confirmation email.

Top 5 Benefits for Speakers

• Get recognized as the higher ed expert you are.
• Promote your institution’s best practices to a larger professional audience.
• Keep your travel budget and your time away from your office to attend your favorite conferences: EduWeb, HigherWebDev, CASE, PRSA, etc.
• Get the help and tools to shape and deliver a great online presentation.
• Earn 20% of all paid fees for your webinar session (a few free seats per session might be allocated to the advisory board members, media representatives and influential bloggers as part of our overall marketing strategy). If you prefer, your commission can even be donated to your institution’s annual fund or capital campaign on your behalf.

Learn more about how to become a HEE speaker and submit a proposal

Top 5 Benefits for Webinar Attendees

• Learn from higher ed experts currently working in universities and colleges (we don’t retain consultants and vendors representatives as speakers for our for-a-fee webinars, because we think you shouldn’t have to pay to listen to what often — not always — sounds like a sales pitch).
• Acquire a good command of a topic or practice with our unique approach: 3 1-hour live presentations by 3 different presenters in 3 weeks.
• Network with presenters, other attendees of your webinar and the rest of the higher ed experts community.
• Get prepared to implement best-practices-that-work for less than the cost of an introductory webinar elsewhere.
• Keep your travel budget to attend your favorite conferences.

Find out more about HEE webinar approach.

The first webinar “How to go viral with your videos on YouTube” (June 14 at 1-2PM ET) will be free for the first 300 registered members. Another reason to become a member today, I guess…

And, for those of you wondering if this is going to have any impact on this blog. Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere. Some of its posts will just be made available in the Higher Ed News section along with a future selection of posts from other higher ed bloggers.

Questions about Higher Ed Experts?
Post a comment below or send an email to karine@collegewebeditor.com