This week, I spent a couple of days at The Mirage in Las Vegas to attend the Educomm conference, the conference put together by University Business publisher.
Originally EduComm was targeted to AV, IT and academic computing teams. They still seem to compose the majority of the conference attendees (with a total close to 1,000 according to UB Editor, Tim Goral). However, the conference has been trying to attract the Web Marketing and Communication crowd for the past couple of years.
With 2 of the 5 tracks focused on social media and digital marketing, EduComm has made a real effort to provide a wide range of sessions. I presented on Tuesday morning just after the big panel about Technology and Higher Education including representatives from Google, Cisco and Microsoft.
What I enjoyed the most about this panel (and you know when it comes to vendors, I’m a tough customer ;-) is the fact that there was a real effort to include feedback and questions from the attending and virtual audience via email and twitter. University Business editorial team also used Twitter a lot to quote some of the most interesting bits of the sessions – a really great social media integration powered by these designated conference Tweeters.
Last great feature of the conference: they recorded most of the sessions and make the recordings available to attendees for a full year. This is a really great idea and a good deal since you can send one team member to the conference and have the rest of the team watch the most interesting sessions later on.
In Tuesday morning panel, I was also very pleased (well, quite surprised actually, but that’s just my legendary and sometimes silly bias against vendors) to hear how much the panelist from Microsoft Education, Cameron Evans, really gets it. He spared us some of the corporate buzz-wordy talk his co-panelists from Google and Cisco used in some of their answers. The keynote given by NYT columnist David Pogue at lunch that day was entertaining and full of useful information at the same time. I learned a few things and really enjoyed his presentation style.
I used my session about Online Analytics to launch a new phase in the Higher Ed Online Analytics Revolution I mentioned when I did the survey. The session titled, Measure Twice, Cut Once: a 7-Step Plan to Your Digital Marketing Measurement Strategy, was an opportunity for me to test the waters with the audience and announce a very precise goal, a clear call to action and introduce the new website that will work as a basecamp for this revolution. If any of you are scheduled to present about online analytics, please let me know so I can add your presentation dates and slides when they become available to the website.
Revolution Bar at the Mirage Hotel by indichick7
We’re still fine tuning a few things, so I’ll tell you all more about it next month. I also plan to share the executive summary with the survey results at that time. I’m scheduled to present about the same topic at EduWeb in Chicago, and I don’t want to spoil anything for folks who plan to attend.
Next year EduComm will take place in Orlando, FL on June 13-15, 2011.