Re-introducing myself

Well here I am, entering the blogosphere again. Blogosphere...I really hate that word.

Those of you who are going to stumble upon this blog probably know me from the world of college admissions from my work as the Interactive Recruitment Manager at a small, private, tier three school that shall remain nameless. I quietly dropped off the face of the earth a few months ago and since then, I've received a lot of e-mails asking "What happened??? Why did you leave admissions???" The easy answer is I got lured away by a better job at a better school, where I work as the Web Producer in the development office.

The next question will be something like "But you were just starting to get a lot of recognition for your work...why the timing?" I don't say that to be arrogant or to pat myself on the back. I say it because it's all I've heard for the last two months and in the absence of an answer, the higher ed rumor mill is starting to flow LOL. I swear, sometimes you guys are worse than a knitting circle.

There are any number of things I could say to answer that question. The biggest reason, though, is that I thought it was a great opportunity to do in development what I had done in admissions. I was very lucky: I got in on the ground floor of the use of interactive technologies in admissions. I got to do some cool things, experiment and really take risks. I was never one to hold to convention so I didn't pay much attention to what had traditionally been done in higher ed marketing. As a consequence, I implemented strategies that other colleges were too squeamish to and never really thought anything was special about it.

I'm a bit less naive now....and because of that, I'm all the more grateful to be able to do it all over again in development. You see, development is where admissions was five years ago. It's just starting to dabble in these things. Couple that with the fact that Millennials are starting to graduate from college and thus entering the potential donor pool and all the potential for innovation is there again. I was also given the opportunity to work for someone that truly gets "this Web 2.0 thing", which sold the job to me almost as much as the position itself. If there's one thing I learned in the two and a half years I was in my last job, it's that someone that truly understands Web 2.0 in higher education is a rare find.

So what do I hope to get out of this blog...well, I started the since-deceased interactive recruiting blog because I wanted a place to store my thoughts on the topic and it just so happened that a lot of people found value in it. I suppose I'm looking for the same thing here. Primarily, it will be a place for me to store my ideas and crazy thoughts on the topic of the general use of interactive technologies in higher education, specifically development. If others find value in it, that's only a bonus.

Thanks for reading :-)