Reflections on CASE: CMT
I’m on my way back from the CASE: Communications, Marketing and Technology conference as I write this. What a great last couple of days! I had such a great time meeting everyone and learned a lot. Here are some of the things that stuck out to me:
Integration is key: I think almost all the presenters touched on the important of presenting a consistent message across mediums. It’s not OK for every department at your institution to have a completely different look on your website and a simple template system, giving them several options to choose from, is an easy enough solution. ”Brand” is still an evil word in higher education, but that doesn’t mean that its not important.
It’s easier to ask forgiveness than get permission: If you can’t get consensus to do something (like a Facebook page) at your school, just put one up. It’s not going to be the downfall of your institution and, all of a sudden, all the offices that wouldn’t give you the time of day before will say “we should be working together on this!”
“One Man Army” was probably the most mentioned phrase I hear over the two days. If you’re in the position of like this, it can be the most frustrating thing in the world to go to a conference that talks about all the great things you COULD be doing, while you know full well it would be near impossible to accomplish it on your own. There some part of me that thinks that this is just part of paying your “higher education professional” dues. The best advice I can give is to just do one thing at a time, but keep a list somewhere of all your ideas. When you’ve got a handle on one thing, move onto the next. Start to form alliances with other people at your school that can help you get things done. Eventually, you’ll get there.
Open Your Mind: I was shocked when 90% of the participants there openly labeled themselves as “Twitter Skeptics”. I guess it hasn’t quite reached the tipping point yet that I thought it had, even with its adoption by main stream media! I’m insinuating that one must adopt every piece of technology out there, but this is my final plea to conference attendees: Don’t write something off before you try it and give yourself a chance to understand it.
Did you attend the conference? What were your key takeaways? Leave a comment!
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April 17th, 2009
I’ve heard the “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” thing several times — have to say, I’m a fan and it does work in some cases.
As for the Twitter skeptics, I think that CASE really needs to start a few different technology conference tracks. Many of these “technology” conferences are populated by people who either know nothing about social media or people who’ve been doing it for a while and are looking for some fresh ideas. The one group needs a totally different set of sessions than the other.
April 20th, 2009
I really think the number of Twitter Skeptics at the conference was in direct correlation to the age of the participants. I would guess the average age was 35ish. In general, older people don’t breathe social media like younger folks, so it takes longer to see the potential. Yet it’s the sheer use that develop the potential of something like Twitter, moving it from “what I had for lunch” to more meaningful posts and a useful tool. This embracing of technology by young people is really well demonstrated in one of the books recommended at the conference, “GrownUp Digital.” (not to be confused with the earlier published “Growing Up Digital”). I walked down the street from the conference hotel to a nearby Border’s to buy it… it’s a very interesting read.