Who You Calling a Jesse?

The first Canadian Post-Secondary Education Web Conference (or just PSEWEB) has come and gone . Wow what a fun conference! For a conference that started as an idea at HighEdWeb 2009 it became a great little conference with 140 in attendance, some amazing speakers, and a unique focus on not just web technology or content but how to use the web with marketing, communications, and student/staff/faculty engagement.

With other conferences like CANHEIT and OUCC being technology driven, it is refreshing to see a scrappy little upstart focus not only on all of post-secondary education web pros but also on the utilization of the technology and the people consuming content. The other two are very technology driven and focused on different things. There is the CCAE conference as well but quite honestly it is a very high priced conference that doesn’t get into the more leading edge stuff people are trying and a bit too advancement focused.

What I really enjoyed about the conference is meeting some great professionals from across the country and sharing war stories from the years of working on the web in higher ed. Sure I can do that at HighEdWeb in the US but they are well ahead of Canadian schools in many things and have a different type of student market. It’s not that a ton can be learned by going to HighEdWeb 2010 (I highly recommend it) but there is something really good about having a bit of a sanity check measured against peers in your own country.

The other really surprising and pleasant thing… Brock University has a really nice campus and community surrounding it — I never really had a chance to appreciate that before.

Big thanks to Melissa for bringing this all together and anyone else who helped her Have a look on twitter (pseweb) for some great insights and I will be posting a bit more about my presentations later this week. For an American’s perspective (and a great overview) have a look at canada’s 1st highered web conference a success: a foreigner’s perspective.