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)
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)
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
Trainings and Workshops
CASE - see above