Conferences and Training Resources

The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference and regional Connect events often include sessions that benefit IT Communicators. Other conferences, organizations and training resources can be found below.

Conferences

• HighEdWeb Conference (Higher Education Web Professionals)

  • http://www.highedweb.org/

    • From Katherine Ball, Michigan State University:

    • Many of the presentations from last month's (September 2015) conference are posted online. Visit http://2015.highedweb.org/schedule/ Click on any session titles and most presenters have presentations linked there.

    • There’s also a video recording of “Tragedy, Pitchforks, and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media,” that you can watch at http://2015.highedweb.org/attendees/

    • You could also look through the Twitter backchannel from the conference by going to https://twitter.com/hashtag/heweb15?f=tweets&vertical=default (all tweets) or https://twitter.com/hashtag/heweb15?vertical=default (top tweets).

    • We (Michigan State) attended the “Managing a Large Site with WordPress” pre-conference workshop and then these sessions:

      • “Your Email is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad, Too”*

      • “How to Boil the Ocean (setting priorities/goals)”

      • “It Takes a Campus to Raise A (Web Professionals) Community”*

      • “Bare Bones Content Strategy: Simple Ideas for Sustainable Change on the Web”*

      • “How I Get My Geek on in a Cost-Cutting Atmosphere”

      • “Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns”*

      • “From MySpace to Mobile: How 10 Years of E-Expectations Research Informs Future Digital Strategies”*

      • “The .edu Manifesto: A Call to Action for Higher Ed to Get Digital Right”*

      • “Looking Good, Looking Forward: Tips and Tricks to Give Your Content a Visual Makeover”

      • “The Blues is #1: Lessons from the Blues Masters on Weathering the Storms of Change”\

      • “Why a Beautiful Campus, but a Digital Wasteland?”*

      • “Popping the Higher Ed Digital Bubble – What Higher Ed Needs to Learn from Corporate Websites”

      • “Building a DIY Student Portal from Scratch”*

• CASE conferences (Council for Advancement and Support of Education)

  • http://www.case.org/Conferences_and_Training.html

  • From Kerri Testement, University of Georgia:

  • For marketing and communications conferences focused on higher ed, I suggest the CASE conferences.

  • CASE focuses on higher education (CASE=Council for Advancement and Support of Education).

  • I’ve been to a few of the regional conferences, which offer a marketing and communications track. Overall, CASE has a background in alumni relations and fundraising, but the marketing and communications info is valuable. CASE has a daily listserv for communications/marketing you can sign up for, too. Besides conferences, they also offer in-person and online workshops.

  • There is a CASE district for each region (here in the Southeast, we’re CASE District 3). Your Public Affairs office may have already made your school a member of CASE.

  • This is the CASE conference/training page. Narrow your results to communications and/or marketing: http://www.case.org/Conferences_and_Training.html

Organizations

• • AMA - American Marketing Association - very concentrated on external / business trends

  • IABC - International Association of Business Communicators - external and also internal focus (like HR)

  • PRSA - Public Relations Society of America

Trainings and Workshops

• CASE - see above