This year the University of Pennsylvania is hosting a new conference specifically geared towards IT/Web professionals in higher education. I actually think their schedule looks extremely promising if you're looking for practical and applicable knowledge, more-so than the usual suspects of the conference circuit.
Full disclosure, I won't be attending. After being disappointed by higher ed conference after higher ed conference I'm focusing on other events that are outside our specific realm to see what inspiration I can draw from them. But if I had a larger professional development budget, I would definitely give this one a shot. Visit their website for more information.
My next conference: An Event Apart in Boston.
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4 comments:
You should take a look at the eduWeb Conference. First, and most importantly, it's in Atlantic City in July! Also there going to be a few cool people there speaking, Karine Joly and Mark Greenfield are the Key Note speakers.
Hi Kyle,
I should probably put a rant warning on this LOL. Actually I presented at eduWeb last year....and went the year before. Hate to say it, because I feel like the idea has potential, but I remain unimpressed. It's FAR too vendor-oriented for my liking. I'm fundamentally opposed to anything that is more about sucking up to a vendor or shameless self-promotion than actually helping practitioners and that's really what I feel like it is. Also, I was never "wowed" my a presentation I saw there. SXSW wowed me. Tufte wowed me. Anything CASE related (though they are far less vendor oriented, which is good!) or eduWeb I've just been like "ehhhh...." Will it be different this year? I don't know....but I've given it two tries already so I'm going to put my professional development budget elsewhere.
I understand... I read the regional CASE presentations for this past Feb conference and blew it off. I talked with a Web Developer for another school in town a few weeks later and he said it was unimpressive. I'm really more excited about going and connecting with Higher Ed people that I am meeting through blogging. Higher Education is point blank behind the curve.
Vendors aren't a bad thing as long as you have the string to sway budgetary decisions. I don't, but I can definitely have some strong influence.
I hear where you're coming from. For networking, I would say that eduWeb is a worthwhile thing. And I don't think that vendors are bad LOL. They are very necessary since most of us don't have robust in-house staffs. I suppose my problem comes in when a conference is built around presentations by vendors (who many times are just pimping their product) with advisory boards entirely built up of vendors. For me, it should be all about practitioners and I think a lot of time vendors lose touch with what its like to actually be implementing and maintaining these things at the ground level.
I hope you enjoy eduWeb and Atlantic City :-)
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