Thoughts on the HighEdWeb 2009 experience
On the way home yesterday I wrote this post in my head about dozen times. Lots buzzing around after some great discussions and some late nights in Milwaukee. HighEdWeb is by far the best conference focused on web technology, strategy, and networking in higher education. It isn’t because of the speakers (although some were simply amazing), it is because it brings together people from the most diverse collection of schools from across North America all with similar problems but different solutions.
Messages I kept hearing:
- Web teams in some schools are already starting to evolve as they grow while other schools still have layers of committees (Web Task Force – WTF – is my favorite) duplicating work and removing accountability. Not many teams of one left out there.
- Usability testing is required, it is not an option. I would slide towards more of ‘usability monitoring’ along with iterative improvements is the way to go. Not many schools are there yet but enough are going there to see a trend starting.
- Engaging your audience using Web 2.0 tools with Web 1.0 thinking doesn’t work. You probably don’t know you are doing it.
- CMS deployments solve one problem, create many others that aren’t as bad as the original problem. No surprise here.
- Problems or challenges: budgets are being slashed, recruitment is getting scary, web initiatives are underfunded even though they could have a big ROI.
There were some extremely entertaining moments around the keynote from the second day. The presenter was well out of touch with the audience, slides were poorly designed and outdated, and his content was poorly delivered. He got mobbed on twitter (and isn’t on twitter himself even though his topic was on using the web to engage your audience) with the outside audience reacting in a funny way. The backchannel was rough on him but honestly if I did that I would expect the same reaction.
As for my presentation, I think it went ok, people seemed to appreciate it. I got totally nervous given how packed the room was though. I am sure they noticed but nothing nasty on twitter 
In retrospect, I tried to cover too much in a 45 min slot. I could have easily broken it in half and I think people would have got just as much out of it. Project Management is a workshop, a lighter overview is a presentation. Maybe they will let me do that next time. Really looking forward to HighEdWeb2010 or 101010. My slides are here: