It’s not exactly Christmas in June, but an offer worth considering, especially if your conference budget is gone but not your travel budget.
What’s the catch?
You have to be working in an Admissions office and the conference is organized by a consulting firm.
Kristin Dodge Narjes (who works at this firm, James Tower, and is also a reader of this blog) made the following pitch in the email she sent me:
The James Tower Technology in Student Recruitment Conference is an opportunity for admissions professionals to actively participate while learning. Coaches will guide attendees in creating action plans based on session topics like blogging, email marketing, and search engine optimization. In addition, Mary Chase from Creighton University will give a keynote address: “Embracing Web 2.0 – Purposeful Change with Today’s Interactive Technology.†All of these knowledge-packed sessions are provided at no cost to participants.
The event is limited to 40 people. The conference starts at noon on June 26 and ends at 4PM on June 27.
Beyond the keynote about Web 2.0 by Mary Chase from Creighton University, sessions will deal with:
- Implications from the latest E-Expectations research (James Tower does the study with Noel-Levitz)
- How to take your blog to the next level
- Secrets to successfully optimizing your website for the search engines
- Trends in behavior-based email marketing
- Ideas for handling the “secret shoppersâ€
Online registration is open until June 4th.
In a follow-up email, I asked Kristin why the conference was free and she explained that they started to do it for their clients as “a treat” and then decided to open it to everyone.
Obviously, I wouldn’t be surprised if you are pitched a bit about their services (but in a world where you sometimes have to pay to listen to pitches, that’s not such a bad offer, I guess). I know it. You know it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Anyway, if you end up attending this event, drop me a line to tell me how it went so I can share with everybody.
“Obviously, I wouldn’t be surprised if you are pitched a bit about their services (but in a world where you sometimes have to pay to listen to pitches, that’s not such a bad offer, I guess). I know it. You know it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
No lunch? Rip off. :)
here now, first session went well. no pitch wow. keep you updated. you should have come
attended this conference…. it was pretty good, and would recommend it to others. Web 2.0, blogs, IM, txt, SEO, “secret shoppers” within the context of admissions… facility was great (enormous actually)… great materials (including thumb drive)… fun staff/activities…. overall worth it (FREE – but room rates were expensive)
I was a bit disappointed. The conference was free but the hotel was expensive. Within 5 minutes of signing in, I felt like I was being sold to. There were too many people from the company and not to be harsh but it seemed like two of them didn’t know what they were doing, one loud male who kept interrupting and one female who didn’t seem to know much about blogging.
Overall, it was okay, but didn’t feel like they really understood the issues we are dealing with today. Learned more from the other participants, actually.