I’ve been to more than a few conferences in my day.  Some good.  Some not so good.  Some that were just a complete waste of time and money.  Lately I’ve gotten a lot of questions about which conferences I would recommend people attend.  There’s definitely not one right conference that I would recommend above all others.  It really depends on your point of view: 

Just starting out?  Then CASE: Marketing, Communications and Technology or eduWeb are good options.  These are more the “Director” type conferences.  In other words, these are the conferences you want to convince your boss to attend to get them caught up to speed with where you already are.  There’s nothing wrong with that - we were all beginners are one point and all have to start somewhere.  But if you’re more advanced with the web in higher education, you’ll probably find yourself being pretty bored at these events.

Marketing versus Development: I’m very much a web generalist - though I write mostly about marketing on here I started out on the web developing web sites.  But most people don’t do both and rarely will you find a conference that covers both effectively.  If you’re more into development, then An Event Apart or HighEdWeb are good options.  I’ll admit that I’ve never been to HighEdWeb (though I really want to go!) but I’ve heard enough good things about it from people I trust to put it on the list.  On the marketing side of things, I was very impressed with the Stamats Integrated Marketing conference in November and the sessions at the American Marketing Association’s Symposium on the Marketing of Higher Education were really high quality.  I found the Stamats conference to be a particular breath of fresh air in terms of the content of the presentations.  It’s not often I come across e-marketing concepts that I hadn’t considered before and at that conference, I had more than a few new ones introduced.   

Want to be inspired? Are you the type of person that can take abstract concepts or theory and twist and turn it so that it can be applied to your institution?  If you’ve never been to South By Southwest, I think everyone should check it out at least once.  I’ll admit that I’m kind of over the novelty of SXSW - its great if you’re looking for a party but there are just WAY too many people there for my liking and I’m less than impressed with the topics that have been chosen for sessions. Lately I’ve moved to smaller conferences like An Event Apart. I also attended a seminar with Edward Tufte was pretty cool.  

Ultimately, the best way to find interesting conferences is just to keep an eye out for them.  There are a bagillion of them out there, with new ones popping up all the time.  When you’re looking at the schedules, I would always start with a base assumption that everything is at a beginner level (which is great if you’re a beginner, but it gets harder to find stuff for more advanced practitioners).  

What did I miss?  What are your favorite conferences?  Leave a comment and share your advice.