So, what kind of conference do you want?

Greetings!

So, I am catching up on a little lite reading and reviewing blogs I follow.  One caught my attention this afternoon.  Karylyn Morissette shared her views on what she feels is wrong with most Higher Education Marketing or Technology conferences.  (too bad she didn't attend this year's James Tower "Technology in Student Recruitment" conference.  Maybe she would have felt differently!!)

However, she raises many good points and it got me to thinking.  For our James Tower conference, we have always been very deliberate in ensuring the conference is NOT about just selling James Tower products and services.  We try very hard to provide presentations, actionable information, ideas, collaboration opportunities and strategies that attendees can use regardless of whether they work on their own, with others or with James Tower.  (obviously, we want you to work with us.  I would be lying is I said otherwise, but it isn't a "James Tower this...James Tower that...." environment.  Just ask attendees or anyone that has attended one of my presentations.)

The one thing we don't necessarily ask though-which is central to Karylyn's post-is what do YOU want?  In this era of user-generated content, we sometimes loose the "user" in that discussion.  So, I want to dig into my journalism background and pose the following questions:

If you go to just ONE professional conference next year:

• What "specific" topics would you want discussed to help you do your job better or learn something new?
• Where would you want your conference to be, if it could be anywhere in the 48 contiguous United States?
• Why do you specifically attend a conference?
• How many days should a conference be?
• To what extent should a conference discuss solutions versus theory/concepts?
• Who do you feel has something interesting to say about technology/marketing/higher education?

For purely selfish reasons-and to assure the best conference possible next year for attendees-I would be very interested in any thoughts you might have.  Any and all thoughts are welcome in this blog or to my email, drwacker@jamestower.com

Ma halo

Comments

[Karlyn]

LOL....I swear, if I still worked in recruitment, your conference would have been on my list ;-) And I will vouch that your presentations are very information oriented rather than "let me sell you my product" oriented.

You know, I think that its hard for people who aren't conference junkies to really identify what they need in a conference. To a certain extent, its a case of not knowing what you don't know.