2008 OmniUpdate Users Conference

Greetings from Palm Springs, the site of the 2008 OmniUpdate Users Conference.  OmniUpdate, a partner of James Tower, was kind enough to allow me to speak at this year's conference on the topic of blogging for colleges and universities.  As promised during my presentation, I am including a copy of my power point for attendees from the conference to use as needed.

Download blog_eat_blog2008omniupdate_user_conference.ppt

It still surprises me, even with the growth that blogging has seen in the past year on college campuses, how many institutions are still clinging to their desperate hopes of controlling every aspect of their message.  As such, they are not even entertaining the possibility of blogging or are restricting/preventing comments in the blogs they do maintain.  I spoke with a number of attendees about this very issue and to a person, they all got it.  Their struggle is in convincing administrators that simply do not understand the way in which the Internet is ingrained in the daily lives of their students and that the digital revolution is already here!  For some, they have simply by-passed their administration altogether in favor of an "unsanctioned" site for allowing a blogging program to exist and for users to provide an authentic voice about their institution!

There are a number of ways to mitigate that, many of which I have previously discussed in my presentation.  One I will add to the mix is OmniUpdate's product, OUBlogs.  Check it out.

Thank you again to Lance and his entire team.  It was a phenomenal conference and I hope the James Tower Technology in Student Recruitment conference in June will be just as informational and valuable for attendees.