Colleges and universities do not exist to create websites. Crazy, right? But true. However, our schools’ digital presences have become vital assets that allow our schools to accomplish what they do exist to do: to recruit, retain, and educate our students; to create knowledge through research; and to serve our local, national, and global communities.
Every year, the HighEdWeb Annual Conference allows those of us who build those websites and work in digital to get together — not matter what silo you may sit in — to learn from and teach each other.
You may work in an IT office, or in marketing and communications, or admissions, or alumni relations, or advancement, or the libraries, or a specific college or professional school. You may write code, or you may write strategy documents. You may test or you may tweet. No matter where you sit or what you do, as a web professional you support your school’s ability to do its work and meet its goals.
Our program tracks for the conference this year reflect that reality: that our work as web and digital professionals supports the overall missions of our schools and institutions. Rather than label the tracks based on what we do — social media, content strategy, programming and development, etc. — this year the track names underscore why we do it.
Those tracks this year–along with some of the topics you can expect to find covered there–are:
- Supporting our Audiences (AUD): user experience, web accessibility, inclusive design
- Supporting our Communities (COM): social media management, community engagement, equity and inclusion
- Supporting Innovation (INN): advanced techniques/technologies, best-in-breed applications, future-forward tech/platforms
- Supporting our Students (SNT): student employees, classroom technology, prospective students and enrollment
- Supporting our Strategies (STR): strategic planning, content strategy, goals, analytics
- Supporting our Teams (TEA): professional development, governance, leadership, team structure mentorship
Returning attendees will notice that, rather than thinking of one or two tracks as the “technical” ones, you will find technology-heavy sessions across all the tracks. Similarly, sessions related to “content” also appear in every track.
As always at HighEdWeb, attendees can attend any session in any track that they wish during the three days of the conference, moving between and among them without having to choose any tracks or sessions in advance. Because technology, design, accessibility, user experience, strategy, writing, doing, making, measuring: all if it is necessary to build the web in higher ed.
Some of us are specialists, some of us are generalists. Some of us lead teams, some of us a part of teams large or small, and some of us are teams of one. If you help build the web in higher ed, you’ll find something for you at HighEdWeb that you can take home and immediate apply to your work, and something that you never expected could affect how you think about the work.
Visit the conference website for the complete schedule. With more than 100 total sessions, we’re sure you’ll find something that supports you as you develop your knowledge, skills, and abilities as a higher ed web professional.
