Yesterday I was asked to speak at the Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference: Technology, Collaboration, Results on how to implement interactive technologies and constantly track/monitor them to determine ROI. I’m really excited about this for a few reasons - I was asked to speak last year and unfortunately had to pull out when I left my last job so its great to have the opportunity again. I’ve worked with Stamats quite a bit over the last several years and have always been impressed with the quality of their work and their out of the box thinking.

Also, in talking to a friend of mine, the illustrious Matt Herzberger, it seems as though they’re inviting a lot of younger, opinionated people to speak. This could make for a VERY interesting event, with lots of ideas being thrown around and debated. I love debate. I think it’s extremely beneficial to civilly disagree with smart people because it helps you to really clarify your own position. I’ve written before that I find more higher ed conferences to be excessively boring - it’s just the same presentation on the same subject over and over again, many times by vendors who haven’t has “in the trenches” implementation experience in years. B O R I N G!

Lastly, I really like the topic. I think that higher ed does not go far enough in tracking the results of its efforts so establishing methods to determine ROI is something I’m really passionate about. It really baffles me - showing ROI through quantifiable numbers to the higher ups can oftentimes get you the funding you need for a particular initiative or the back for a strategy. Why WOULDN’T you want to do that?

Hope I’ll see you in Florida November 5-8!