Top 2014 #highered Web and Social Conferences & Events

A Higher Ed Conference Guide?

Every year I publish a post with my selection of top higher ed conferences and events.

Since 2006 I’ve spent a lot time thinking, reviewing, attending and some time presenting at higher ed conferences. When you run a professional school like Higher Ed Experts, it’s important to stay on top of what happened in the conference world.

As many of you only get to go to one conference per year due to limited budgets, many often ask me for recommendations about the best fit for their specific professional development needs.

Last October while flying to Buffalo, I had a very interesting conversation about conferences with Jake Dolan, Director of Web and Digital Communications at Montana State University. Jake was also going to the 2013 HighEdWeb National Confernece with his 2 team members and we sat next to each other in the same airplane we took in Cleveland, OH.

Jake asked me about conferences. I mentioned a few options that could be a good fit for him and his team. While watching him take notes of the options I mentioned, I joked about being a “conference travel agent” for digital professionals working in higher education.

And, this is how the idea of the higher ed conference guide was born.

Since I’ve always said that Higher Ed Experts’ mission is to help you learn and grow in your higher ed career – no matter how you do it, I decided to take a somehow risky move and to build this guide within my professional school website (Why risky? Because we are featuring on our website events that sometimes directly compete with ours :-)

I spent about 30 hours working on this project this month, but this is just the beginning.

Now, I need your help to make the Higher Ed Conference Guide better

If you’ve attended or presented at any of the events featured on this new higher ed conference guide, please take 1 minute to post a comment and tell the community what you liked and why you would recommend this specific conference.

I will constantly update this list and plan to include my personal review and more information on the events (price, program, tips, etc.) soon. But, I would really like to make it a tool for the community by the community – and this can only be done if you spend 1 minute contributing.

Want to present at a conference this year? Check out the list of open calls for proposals!

The beauty of integrating the guide in Higher Ed Experts’ website is the fact that it can use the content framework we built with Stewart Foss when we redesigned the website last year. It’s responsive and support smart tagging and content chunking.

A direct result is the fact that I can now very easily maintain an up-to-date list of events with open calls for proposals.

Real-time information is what will make all the difference for you. By making it quick and easy to maintain the information for me, I can assure you’ll always get the latest updates.

How can I make this new higher ed conference guide better for you?

Now, I’ve said that this is only the beginning. I want to make the Higher Ed Conference Guide work for you.

So, feel free to let me know what you’d like to see added by posting a comment below or shooting me a quick note at karine@higheredexperts.com