eduWEB is over for another year and it’s back to work for everyone. It was a most exciting conference with .eduGuru winning the eduStyle People’s Choice Award for best High Ed Blog. I also got INCREDIBLE feedback from my presentation on SEO so to everyone who attended, thank you for attending, and I’m so glad that you were all able to get great information for actionable take away steps. For everyone else the slides and all the information is available: doteduguru.com/seo
So it only seemed fitting to shoot a short video of my thoughts for the conference.
Links to learn more about what comes before Social Media
I know the video is a bash on Social Media (at least from an institutional adoption standpoint), but something that has definitely been swirling around in my head was put to words in this post by Tim Nekritz; hashtagged to death: will social media kill conferences? I think Tim makes some great observations, and the comments are quite insightful too. All I would add is that last year at eduWEB there were only 30 of us tweeting and sharing the backchannel at the conference. Don’t believe me, just check out the list of twitter names from last year. The channel wasn’t overwhelming and all-consuming. It was easy enough to follow while still giving the presenter the attention that they deserve. This year that number probably doubled.
The livestreaming last year was something we did for fun and to test the limits of social media. This year there were vendor sponsored livestreaming video and photography abundant. Did it make for a better conference? ABSOLUTELY! Innogage did a really good job putting this together. Going to Tim’s points, does it spell the end of conferences when you can consume all this information from your desk? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Honestly it makes those who aren’t there wish they were there more and it makes everyone in the community better connected and builds stronger relationships across the board. I’m already feeling upset that I won’t be attending HighEdWeb and thinking about taking some vacation days to come hang with this wonderful community of friends.
Other Reflections
Leave a comment with your reflection and takeaways, or leave a link and I’ll add to it in this post below.
- Head of Marketing ’s eduWEB Wrap-Up
- Think More Like a Publisher and Less Like a Marketer (and Other Lessons From eduWeb 2009)
Wow! Thanks for the mention! And I agree that reading all those tweets only makes me more excited … not just for thinking about conferences but also for pursuing the ideas that can benefit us in the near-term. So much great information shared.
Tim,
You are right though… it was overwhelming and I WAS THERE! There were times that I found myself just tuning out the stream and you know what… that is ok too.
Kyle,
You hit the nail on the head. The sessions were great, but more from a “reinforcement” standpoint than a “learning something new” standpoint. But when you need to make a case for doing something new or different, using a conference AND blogs as back up give you more credibility than just blogs, at least in my case. And the networking component was amazing. Even if it took this introvert a couple of days to recover! Thanks again for your presentation.
Well, I’m sorry to hear that you’re leaving but good luck at work.
content content content. nice post.
Kyle, that’s why doteduguru is deserved to be the winner, as it have a huge compilation of excellent articles in the archives!
Hi,
You have done well but sorry to hear that you’re leaving, wish you all the beset!