HighEdWeb 2015 Conference: Oct 4-7

Saturday, Oct. 3

Wright Ballroom A, Hilton fourth floor

Wright Ballroom C, Hilton fourth floor

Wright Ballroom B, Hilton fourth floor

1:00 - 5:00 p.m.	Academies
1:00 - 5:00 p.m.	Leadership Academy	Integrated Marketing Academy	Technical Academy
2:30 - 2:45 p.m.	Refreshment break for Academy attendees Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor Room: Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor

Sunday, Oct. 4

Wright Ballroom A, Hilton fourth floor

Wright Ballroom C, Hilton fourth floor

Wright Ballroom B, Hilton fourth floor

7:30 - 8:00 a.m.	Breakfast for Academy attendees Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor Room: Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor
8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.	Academies
8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.	Leadership Academy		Integrated Marketing Academy		Technical Academy
11:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.	Conference check-in and information First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center Room: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.	Lunch for Academy attendees, pre-conference workshop attendees and presenters Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor Room: Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor
1:00 - 4:30 p.m.	Workshops
1:00 - 4:30 p.m.	Words. Words. Words. How to Write Sizzling Content That Gets Read and Gets Action Words. Words. Words. How to Write Sizzling Content That Gets Read and Gets Action Presenters Donna Talarico - Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center We talk about content A LOT at HighEdWeb. But what about the actual words? This workshop -- or can we call it a wordshop? -- is all about finessing your wordsmith skills, no matter what the medium. In this practical, interactive workshop, we’ll cover, among other things: Why brevity rules – how you can make that academic report of a webpage into a lively, user-geared paragraph. And how you can turn that stuffy paragraph into a compelling sentence. How repurposing works – repurposing content is key to efficient web/marketing operations, especially when you’re short staffed. But repurposing does not mean slapping up a PDF of a magazine onto a web page. You’ll leave this workshop with tips on how to effectively tweak existing content to fit various mediums. If you want, bring a piece of writing you want to make better, or an outline for a current project. How to add sizzle to your sentences – OK. So you weren’t an English major. You might not recall the terms, but you know when a headline is catchy or a story is compelling—we’ll look at the actual language and explore why that writing sounds so darn good. We will explore some tried and true literary elements and journalistic techniques that make content pop—repetition, alliteration, those sorts of things. Finally, we’ll talk about those sensory details that connect people to content. In all, this workshop will help you, no matter what your skill level, become a better writer and self-editor for any medium. It will be part lecture, part discussion and part break-out group work, including inspirational “in-class” assignments (such as paging through magazines for content examples), and a chance to share your work with others. With each exercise/lesson, Donna will share a case study example so you can see the concept in action. View Details	Storytelling with On-Brand News Content Storytelling with On-Brand News Content Presenters Rick Allen - MeetContent Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center News content plays a big role in higher ed marketing and communications. It takes center stage on our website homepages and many top landing pages -- not to mention our email newsletters, alumni magazines, and social channels. We rely on it to maintain a timely, engaging web presence. Above all, we rely on news content to help tell our story. But, does our news content tell the story we want to tell? News articles are snapshots of a larger, complex picture. To tell a meaningful story -- conveying the culture and values of our institution -- messaging and communication goals must first lead the way. News content needs purpose and vision to support our brand. Simple, cookie-cutter stories that appear to rehash old news, like a press-release-turned-featured-news-story, rarely answer our users’ complex questions, like: “Why should I care about your school?” Join this workshop and learn how to: 1. Define messaging and communication goals to give news content purpose and vision. 2. Identify relevant news topics and create on-brand news content -- as well as make use of existing content by giving it new meaning. 3. Develop a multi-channel, on-brand editorial calendar for multiple authors to tell a clear and consistent story across your institution. View Details	Managing a Large Site With WordPress Managing a Large Site With WordPress Presenters Curtiss Grymala - University of Mary Washington Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center WordPress has come a long way in the past few years toward supporting large and complex websites, but that doesn't mean everything is simple or perfect when using it for a large organization. In this workshop, we'll review some of the tips and tricks we've used to keep our sites running smoothly, along with some pitfalls we've faced along the way. This workshop is meant to be extremely interactive, and will go where the attendees take it. If you're facing specific issues or have specific questions about getting a large site moved into WordPress or keeping a large WordPress site running efficiently, we'll be working with you to answer those questions for the benefit of all attendees. We intend to discuss some technical aspects about getting a large site set up and running as smoothly as possible with WordPress, but we'll also tackle a lot of general tips and pitfalls related to running large, unwieldy sites. View Details	Developing and Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop Developing and Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop Presenters Doug Tschopp - Augustana College Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center This popular HighEdWeb workshop is a great way to start off the conference! Using some of the cornerstone topics in communications and public relations, this workshop examines the development of good web content. The second half of the workshop looks at research techniques available for developing and assessing websites. View Details	Responsible Responsive Responsible Responsive Presenters Peter Anglea - Bob Jones University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center So, you’ve got a responsive website? Great job. Unfortunately, it’s looking a little flabby. Y’know… slow and overweight. In fact, the average size of higher education web pages is getting bigger and bigger all the time, even as more and more traffic shifts from desktop/broadband to mobile. Let’s tackle this problem. In this workshop, we’re going to cover facets of responsive web design relating to speed, performance, and optimization. What does it mean to develop “mobile first” and what does that look like? How can I make my website load faster on mobile devices? Why should I spend time doing performance testing? And what’s the deal with responsive images? This workshop assumes that you have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and responsive web design. We’ll cover simple steps that you can take right now to boost your website’s performance as well as technical tips and tricks for those with savvier skill sets. View Details
2:30 - 3:00 p.m.	Refreshment break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
5:00 - 6:00 p.m.	Conference welcome and orientation session Empire Ballroom, Hilton second floor Room: Empire Ballroom, Hilton second floor
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.	Welcome Reception Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor Room: Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor

Monday, Oct. 5

	Applications, Integration and Mobile	Development, Programming and Architecture	Marketing, Content and Social Strategy	Management and Professional Development	Technology in Education	Usability, Accessibility and Design	Sponsors
7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.	Conference check–in and information First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center Room: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center
7:30 - 8:30 a.m.	Breakfast Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
8:30 - 9:15 a.m.	Searching for Direction: Using a Search-Based Homepage to Direct Users #AIM1: Searching for Direction: Using a Search-Based Homepage to Direct Users Presenters Rob Liesland - Xavier University Greg McMullen - Xavier University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center In the spring of 2015 Xavier University moved to a search-based homepage, with the goal of more efficiently getting users to their desired content. We’ll review the basics of the implementation, how the data is managed, and, most importantly, what we have learned from the actual usage. Do the users even use the search? Does it consistently deliver the results they are looking for? Is this the future? View this presentation online Tags redesigns data measuring View Details	A Fresh Perspective on Responsive Web Design #DPA1: A Fresh Perspective on Responsive Web Design Presenters Josh Palmeri - Stony Brook University (SUNY) Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Responsive web design has been quite the trend in web development since Ethan Marcotte introduced the term in 2010. As people of the web, we have used the term so frequently in recent years... but do we understand what it really means to implement RWD effectively and sensibly? Using real-world examples from award-winning projects completed at SUNY Stony Brook, Josh will offer a fresh look at RWD, along with valuable tips, tools, and techniques to execute a successful RWD initiative. The session will offer a new way of approaching the design and development process when "going responsive," and you'll walk away with the tools necessary to help you do RWD successfully! View this presentation online Tags RWD front-end View Details	Your Email Is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad, Too #MCS1: Your Email Is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad, Too Presenters Jens Larson - Eastern Washington University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Admit it: your institution sends millions of emails each year, and you have no idea what they look like. Are they mobile friendly? Are they easy to read? Do they get results? Gasp in horror and start building your to-do list as you see the results of a secret shopping experiment that involved 300 institutions, 2,000 emails, and the mother of all Excel spreadsheets. Using real emails from real universities, you’ll dive into email marketing, explore how it connects to your content, mobile and web strategies, and walk away with checklists and guides that you can use to make immediate improvements at your institution. Tags marketing measuring View Details	Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Fighting a Hard Battle #MPD1: Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Fighting a Hard Battle Presenters John Wagner - Princeton University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center We all have times when our real life impacts our work life, when what is happening to us, or in our families, or to our close friends makes doing the daily grind especially hard. Or we may be fine, but we see our colleagues struggling. We know that we're supposed to be supportive. But what should we do? A directed discussion of being a supportive boss or colleague when those around you are in the middle of burdening occurrences in their lives. View this presentation online Tags directors and managers View Details	Create a Batman, Not a Robin -- How to Get the Most of Your Student Staff #TIE1: Create a Batman, Not a Robin -- How to Get the Most of Your Student Staff Presenters Kareem Rahaman - Ryerson University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center We generally hire student staff for lower level tasks, along with positions that need student to student interactions to succeed. However, how many of us are hiring with the sole purpose of creating the best possible job candidate after graduation? I will go into the step-by-step plan and framework that goes into how I build my student staff program to churn out job-ready Batmans ready to take on Gotham. View this presentation online Tags directors and managers students View Details	Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard #UAD1: Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard Presenters Melissa Dix - Beloit College Bill Mortimer - Beloit College Jason Hughes - Beloit College Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center When Beloit College retooled its recruitment materials and positioning, the approach hinged on the college’s ability to showcase the accelerated pulse of what seemed, from the outside, to be a small and sleepy campus. Under the theme “Liberal Arts Amplified”, the communications and web team set out to illustrate this energy on the website and elsewhere, and found along the way that in this case, less was more (and more was more). Borrowing from new approaches (in HTML5) and best practices, we built a new site that serves to highlight campus life, offerings, and students, and to do so in a way that is more authentic, more powerful, and less time consuming than preparing video package after video package. Along the way, we found that we could easily and cheaply replicate this approach across campus, through retargeting, and even on livestreaming holding slides -- and do all that with a ¼ time videographer and a half dozen student workers. This session will provide an overview of how we implemented video across our site (the plan, process, and implementation) and what we’ve seen and heard as a result. We’ve discovered that while a picture might be worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. View this presentation online Tags redesigns marketing visuals View Details	The Wizard of Optimization #COR1: The Wizard of Optimization Presenters Seth Galligan - The C2 Group Nicholas Fuller - The C2 Group David Tarnow - The C2 Group Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Optimization – making incremental changes to websites and applications – is a low-effort, high-impact practice. Being able to track how a site or app is used enables marketers and technologists to make meaningful changes that can dramatically influence outcomes. Before considering a site redesign, hit the Yellow Brick Road to Optimization with The C2 Group. We’ll discuss how some small, yet significant practices can yield big gains in your conversion activities. View Details
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.	Sponsor exhibits open Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
9:30 - 10:15 a.m.	Open-source Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools #AIM2: Open-source Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools Presenters Jon Gunderson - University of Illinois Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center The Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) 2.0 and AInspector Sidebar are open-source tools to evaluate and inspect compliance with the requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.0. WCAG 2.0 is an international standard and part of the Section 508 refresh for information technology. Open-source tools can be freely used and customized for individual needs. View this presentation online Tags accessibility View Details	Demystifying Responsive Email #DPA2: Demystifying Responsive Email Presenters Peter Anglea - Bob Jones University Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center I won't sugarcoat it. Creating responsive email isn't easy. In fact it's hard. Like, harder-than-coding-for-IE6 hard. But everyone is saying how valuable email marketing is. Furthermore, having responsive email designs is just as important as having as having a responsive website when you consider that more than 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device. Multiply that by the millions of emails your institution delivers annually, and that adds up to a big problem. Or a big opportunity, depending on how you look at it. In this session, we'll roll up our sleeves and cover the best practices in responsive email. Like responsive web design, mastering responsive emails involves changes in how we write, design, and code. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. View this presentation online Tags RWD code marketing visuals View Details	I Shouldn't Need a Doctorate to Read Your Website #MCS2: I Shouldn't Need a Doctorate to Read Your Website Presenters Alison West - Mount Holyoke College Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center In higher education, there's a belief that parents want to read websites that are written in an academic style, or at a higher level than one might find when reading the hottest, most popular fiction book. But is this really true? Can a website with content written at a lower grade level instill confidence in parents that their children are receiving a high quality education? Using research, let's dispel the myth perpetuated by academia. But easy to read and understand content is difficult to write, isn't it? I'll share some tips, tools, and tricks to help your content breathe and read much, much easier. Because after all, if prospects can read your website and understand it, aren't they more likely to feel welcomed on your campus? View this presentation online Tags words View Details	How to Boil the Ocean #MPD2: How to Boil the Ocean Presenters Chris Amelung - Washington University in St. Louis Ted Elsas - Washington University in St. Louis Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Can anyone go to a meeting without someone saying, “We need a website for this” -- whatever this might be? Do you struggle with defining and adhering to a set of priorities, and find yourself saying “Yes” to every request, even if you don’t know how you’ll ever get it all done? Are you expected to custom build every website no matter how big or small? Does it feel more realistic to boil the ocean than tame your portfolio of work? The Digital Communication team at Washington University in St. Louis is facing all of those challenges, and more. But through a fortunate mix of planning, timing, and good old fashioned luck, we have defined a clear set of priorities and are in the process of transforming our team culture and establishing effective channels for managing our work. Whether your team serves your entire university or a single department, we believe the lessons we’ve learned through our transformation can be applied to meet your own unique needs, and help you boil your ocean of work. View this presentation online Tags directors and managers View Details	Creating the Competitive Edge: Making Student Learning Experiences Valuable for the Job Market #TIE2: Creating the Competitive Edge: Making Student Learning Experiences Valuable for the Job Market Presenters Conny Liegl - California Polytechnic State University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center As a student supervisor of a team of six at Kennedy Library, I am challenged not just with providing services to clients and stakeholders, but also carry a moral responsibility for my employed students. Students are essential to my daily work, and indispensable for many large-scale, high-visibility projects. It is important to identify individual students’ needs and goals, as well to recognize current stressors and worries. It is essential to me to provide student assistants with valuable experiences that directly apply to their interests and their future job tasks. To mentor effectively also means to collaborate broadly with colleagues from different disciplines and other colleges in hands-on partnerships. Class assignments, senior projects, and staff collaborations provide opportunities for students to experiment, explore, and broaden their skill sets. To ensure the library project demands are in alignment with students' future job requirements, and to support each student individually, regular check-ins are mandatory. My entire student team meets regularly once a week over lunch, and assigns upcoming projects, reviews tasks and developments and invites constructive feedback for designs and approaches. We also discuss future dreams, possible career options, and potential areas of improvement. Students’ performance is evaluated on a regular basis. My ten rules for an effective student-supervisor relationship, which I will elaborate in my presentation, are: 1. Give pointers and directions, not orders. 2. Teach only what you’re good at. 3. Take students seriously. 4. Talk and sketch together. 5. Listen. 6. Watch. 7. Learn. 8. Experiment. 9. Keep problems away. 10. Have fun! To prove the effectiveness of these simple rules, I will highlight library projects, faculty collaborations, and successful partnerships with examples from Outstanding Student Employees of the Year, Hackathon competitors, and successful graduates. View this presentation online Tags directors and managers students collaborating View Details	Universal Interaction Design: Making It Click for Everyone, Everywhere #UAD2: Universal Interaction Design: Making It Click for Everyone, Everywhere Presenters Nikki Massaro Kauffman - Penn State University Sonya Woods - Penn State University Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Your sites may use responsive templates. You may have tested you content with the plugs-in like Fangs and FireEyes, or even with JAWS. But have you tested your interactions to work with keyboard navigation? On tablets? For visitors with low vision? For visitors with low vision, using keyboard navigation? For visitors with hearing impairments who use tablets? For visitors who want to print what they read? For visitors stationed overseas? In our session we will talk about what we learned from integrating accessibility testing and interaction design, from types of testing to interaction best practices to overall design and development processes. View this presentation online Tags accessibility measuring front-end testing View Details	Web Redesign 101 – Redesign Done Right, the First Time #COR2: Web Redesign 101 – Redesign Done Right, the First Time Presenters Mark Greenfield - University of Buffalo Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center A website redesign can be a daunting proposition. It is a huge investment in time and money and something that you will live with for years to come. Even more importantly, it’s also often your first point of contact with potential students and parents. While there is a tremendous amount of work involved, the reward is a new site that will better meet your business objectives and communicate your institutions’ goals to your target audience, whether that is incoming students, new faculty, or alumni networks. This presentation will walk you through the entire web redesign process from research and planning to launch and post-launch analysis. Emphasis will be placed on understanding when and why to redesign your site. A redesign project is the perfect opportunity to examine your web strategy and how it aligns with the overall organizational strategy. It is also a great time to analyze your current operation approach to the web and how to build a site that is sustainable moving forward. There will also be an emphasis on user-centered design and how to balance user goals with business goals. Everyone wants a user-friendly site, and we will explore how to involve users in all phases of the redesign process, as well as how iterative testing throughout the project will save time and resources. Whether you are redesigning your website in-house or working with an agency, this webinar will provide you with a redesign framework that will streamline the process and position your higher education site for success. What You Will Learn: - The full redesign process from start to finish - How to keep your project on time and on track - How to utilize the experiences with you current site to inform decisions about the new site - How to plan for post launch - The common mistakes with a web redesign project and how to avoid them Who Should Attend: - Chief Marketing Officers - Digital Managers - Web Managers - Marketing and Communications Professions Tags directors and managers marketing View Details
10:15 - 10:45 a.m.	Refreshment break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
10:45 - 11:30 a.m.	Data “Silo” SMACdown : Enter the EIP #AIM3: Data “Silo” SMACdown : Enter the EIP Presenters Jim Kittle - The Ohio State University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center The continuation of last year’s presentation “Let Your Data Run Free and Run Your University” by Steve Fischer, Jim Muir, and OSU and HighEdWeb fixture Glenn Donaldson. The Ohio State University had the vision and initiative to implement an Enterprise Integration Platform [EIP]. What does this mean? Now direct database access and the political battles that follow are a thing of the past, as well as the sea of firewall requests. Leadership bought in to the hype and moved forward building a "Data Integration"-Hub*. API Manager [APIM] is the storefront that allows developers and system integrators to come to a common place to see the available enterprise-level web services/APIs, the data they are comprised of, and the ability to subscribe/request access for their systems/applications. Enterprise Service Bus [ESB] is the nexus of integrations where services/APIs can be mediated and transformed from SOAP->REST, XML->JSON and vise versa. ESB can also be the center where composite service creation happens. Data Services Server [DSS] is where a developer can turn a commonly used query into a consumable service used by many. This presentation is about the how the data is "freed" and consumable by the community in an efficient, effective, and secure manner. View this presentation online Tags data back-end View Details	Stop Reinventing the Wheel: Build Responsive Websites Using Bootstrap #DPA3: Stop Reinventing the Wheel: Build Responsive Websites Using Bootstrap Presenters Gaurav Gupta - Virginia Commonwealth University Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Web development has become increasingly complex, with the advent of smartphones, tablets, and multiple browsers with varying capabilities. Bootstrap makes the process faster by providing pre-written HTML, CSS, and Javascript that has been thoroughly tested and debugged. Learn how to get started with this framework, and build a responsive web page. Explore commonly used components such as buttons, tabs, tooltips, pop-ups, and third-party plugins. See examples of beautiful websites built on Bootstrap. View this presentation online Tags RWD code front-end View Details	How to Use Data to Drive Content #MCS3: How to Use Data to Drive Content Presenters Matt Hames - Colgate University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center When you have a great idea for content, there are two things you can do. The first is to use your experience of creating great content to create the content. The second is to use data to determine what works the best, and how to make it better. Maybe your tweets get more attention in the afternoon. Maybe half of the people who watch your videos leave half way through. This presentation will suggest you still go with what your gut says will work; it will simply show you how to use data to back up your gut. Tags data measuring View Details	It Takes A Campus To Raise A (Web Professionals) Community #MPD3: It Takes A Campus To Raise A (Web Professionals) Community Presenters Rachel Carden - The University of Alabama Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Every year, you look forward to the big HighEdWeb conference. You count down the days until October and then, high on that wonderful feeling of community, networking, and professional development, you return to your campus, ready to kick-start all of your new ideas. But the fun doesn’t have to stop just because you left Milwaukee. Conferences are a wonderful outlet for igniting your creative and collaborative juices, but you don’t have to be limited by your budget, and one or two annual trips, to engage with -- and find inspiration from -- your peers. You can have your own mini-conference every month by starting your own web professionals community right on your own campus. In this presentation, Rachel Carden will share how she started a web professionals community at The University of Alabama that went from a ten-member group that met every couple months at the campus coffee shop to a seventy-plus member community that meets every month to hear from presenters and discuss topics ranging from social media to crisis communication. All with no budget. This year her community, WebTide, also hosted and organized the HighEdWeb Alabama regional conference. Rachel will share what she did right, what she did wrong, and what she learned along the way, as well as tips and resources to start your own community and to help it flourish. View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	Social Storytelling, Student Orientation, and a New Way to Knowledge #TIE3: Social Storytelling, Student Orientation, and a New Way to Knowledge Presenters Jennifer Montminy - Penn State Katie Motycki - Penn State Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Each year, new-student orientation is a blur of new people, new places, and (lots and lots) of new information that is overwhelming at best. This makes delivering content that is both educational and entertaining a perennial challenge for orientation planners, which is where social media comes in. By now we’re all using social media to market our institutions, but what about using it to engage and teach our incoming students? At Penn State, incoming students learn about technology resources at the university by following Jordan, an imaginary student, on his social media journey through the technology resources, failures, and (ultimately) successes during his first year at Penn State. Complete with corny humor and silly gifs, the presentation makes potentially dry content relatable and memorable, and gives students both a physical and digital way to engage with Jordan through in-person questions and a hashtag challenge in the backchannel. In this session, Montminy and Motycki will discuss how you can use social media, storytelling, and student presenters to increase student engagement, interest, and retention during orientation sessions. They will walk attendees through the strategy behind this approach, how it was executed, and the positive (and lasting) impact this session had at the university. Tags social students View Details	Doing Accessibility Right the First Time -- or Maybe the Second #UAD3: Doing Accessibility Right the First Time -- or Maybe the Second Presenters Sarah Anderson - Grinnell College Donna Dralus - Grinnell College Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Sometimes it takes a horrible event (like a disastrous website launch) to get all the resources in place to finally do things right. Hear how Grinnell College royally messed up, but then took the opportunity to rebuild an accessible site from the ground up. Whether you have a "pretty accessible" site or are starting from scratch, learn how to get internal buy-in (without manufacturing a disaster), secure internal and external resources, and manage the project from start to finish. View this presentation online Tags accessibility redesigns collaborating View Details	Getting to the Good Stuff or Why Less is STILL More #COR3: Getting to the Good Stuff or Why Less is STILL More Presenters Joel Dixon - Hannon Hill Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Digital marketing and content management have really transitioned from the stage of HOW to maintain/update fresh content on the site to WHAT content to maintain. We fundamentally need to focus on asking the question, “Even if we CAN do it, SHOULD we do it?” Should we be on all social media channels? Should we be placing this image/video/text on the homepage, web page, etc.? Or is less really still more? The areas of content strategy, content creation, content management, and content marketing truly are so interrelated, and each one is necessary for effective web management, but none works best in a silo. This session is meant to encourage direct action in how you consider the marketing efforts you pursue, the content you develop, and the channels (social and otherwise) where you focus your marketing. View Details
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.	Building WordPress to Scale #AIM4: Building WordPress to Scale Presenters Jordan Thompson - Illinois State University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center Stories.Illinoisstate.edu is a WordPress site that centralizes Illinois State University news. Since its inception, it grew steadily as additional departments and units also started contributing to the content. Eventually, the infrastructure supporting the site was unable to handle the traffic it was receiving, causing poor response time and crashing. To rectify the issues, its infrastructure was completely recreated using Amazon Web Services, Nginx, PHP-FPM, and other technologies. The infrastructure was built to be redundant and automatically scalable under load using functionality built into Amazon Web Services and extensions to WordPress. This presentation will walk through the process of improving performance, and explore what room there is for further developments. View this presentation online Tags back-end View Details	Let’s Get Sassy: Responsive Design with Foundation and Sass #DPA4: Let’s Get Sassy: Responsive Design with Foundation and Sass Presenters Ali Gray - Portland Community College Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center By now, we all know the importance of giving our users a consistent and engaging experience on any device they choose. We’ve listened to presentations and read articles about the best ways to handle content strategy, calls to action, and site navigation for mobile. Now, we’re ready to tackle a responsive design for our website. The question is, how do we actually build this responsive website? By using a front-end HTML framework and CSS preprocessor, of course! With our busy schedules, we no longer have the time to build a website from scratch, especially one that will work on every screen size imaginable. Writing plain CSS with lines and lines of duplicated code is not only time-consuming, it’s difficult to maintain and update. In this presentation, using examples, we will take a look at the hows and whys of using Zurb’s Foundation framework to quickly build a responsive website layout, and at using Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) to make writing and updating CSS not only quick and easy, but enjoyable. View this presentation online Tags RWD code front-end View Details	Bare Bones Content Strategy: Simple Ideas for Sustainable Change on the Web #MCS4: Bare Bones Content Strategy: Simple Ideas for Sustainable Change on the Web Presenters Rick Allen - Meet Content Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center As content professionals, we strive for clear, concise communication on the web. We cut clutter, hone our message, and plan for purposeful content. “Simple” is understandable and useful. “Complex” is confusing and time-consuming. To sustain positive change on the web in our organization we must extend this mindset to all of our content work. Ongoing content strategy requires cultural support for governance with buy-in from the top and bottom of our org chart. This means clearly communicating value for stakeholders and providing useful tools and training for content contributors. Web content is complex. It’s our job to simplify it -- for everyone. Join this session and learn how to: • Focus on what matters to hone your content strategy and create a sustainable governance plan • Get internal stakeholders to care by clearly communicating the value of content strategy • Develop content guides and tools that simplify content workflow, governance, and training Tags content strategy View Details	Playing Politics, Level Up! Managing Up, Down, and Sideways in the Human Workplace #MPD4: Playing Politics, Level Up! Managing Up, Down, and Sideways in the Human Workplace Presenters Karlyn Borysenko - Zen Workplace Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Last year, one-third of HighEdWeb attendees packed into a session about playing politics. This year, I'll take that talk to the next level. I'll start with a brief review of the principles I discussed last year to get everyone on the same page, and then apply the framework directly to real world situations. What do you do when your boss just doesn't get it? How do you handle that admissions director who thinks they are a web expert, or that guy who thinks he's your boss? What do you do when the right answer is clear as day to you, but you need to rally internal support for it? And the faculty. Oh yes, the faculty. I'll cover all this and more, and teach attendees how to manage their bosses, their peers, and their subordinates more effectively. As with last year, if you attend the presentation you can get a complimentary custom DiSC Profile to help you navigate the human aspects of your job ($50 value!). View this presentation online Tags collaborating directors and managers View Details	Fostering A Culture of Collaboration and Learning Among Social Media Managers #TIE4: Fostering A Culture of Collaboration and Learning Among Social Media Managers Presenters Chris Barrows - New York University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Only a few years ago, New York University lacked a central team to oversee its social media presence, and there was very little sense of community among social media managers in various departments across the university. Through the creation of a new position and a Social Media Ambassadors group, the university has dramatically refocused its efforts in the social media realm -- and achieved some striking results. Two actions played a key role in these successes. First, the New York University Social Media Ambassadors group was formed in 2012, and now counts as members more than 175 community managers from across NYU. From online meetings and knowledge sharing through the use of Google Groups to in-person meetings twice a semester -- featuring presentations from representatives of industry giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram -- the group has created a professional development opportunity for NYU’s community managers to share and learn. Secondly, social media training was implemented through the use of NYU's iLearn program, as well as one-on-one and group consultations with school and department employees. The opportunity to learn, share, and lead has led to an increased interest and sense of community in social media across the university's global campus. This presentation will provide guidance on creating community of learning and leading, tips for forming a collaborative university group of your own, and lessons learned over the course of the past two and a half years. View this presentation online Tags collaborating social View Details	Data-Driven Design and Digital Marketing Strategy #UAD4: Data-Driven Design and Digital Marketing Strategy Presenters Zach Richard - University of Notre Dame Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Thanks to software like Google Analytics, New Relic, Crazy Egg, and others, data about your digital marketing efforts is available in excess. How can you display the information in a way that gives you leverage to act on the relevant data points? How do we use this data to make better design and strategic marketing decisions down the road? In this session we'll discuss successful case studies from the University of Notre Dame on how to take SEO, usability, and goal conversion data and make design decisions, set up A/B experiments, and improve search results to maximize the effectiveness of websites and applications. View this presentation online Tags marketing data measuring testing View Details	The Most Important Page of Your Website #COR4: The Most Important Page of Your Website Presenters Jason Pontius - White Whale Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Nothing on your website is as important as your calendar. Calendars aren't just about when and where events are happening. They're the single best marketing and storytelling opportunity on your entire site. The best illustration of the personality of your school is what's happening on campus. If there are interesting and diverse events on the calendar, visitors will think of your school as an interesting and diverse place. And if not— if your calendar is a clunky, broken-looking page with only a handful of internal events in plain text— well, you can finish that sentence yourself. Jason runs the team that makes LiveWhale Calendar, an event calendaring solution in use at colleges and universities around the world. In this presentation he'll talk about what makes great calendars great, and how to get the most mileage out of your campus events, no matter what calendaring system you use. View Details
12:30 - 1:45 p.m.	Lunch, sponsored by OmniUpdate Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
1:45 - 2:45 p.m.	General Session
1:45 - 2:45 p.m.	Bill Nye
3:00 - 3:45 p.m.	Slacking Off at Work #AIM5: Slacking Off at Work Presenters Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center SLACK. It's no longer a bad word at work. Slack is the communication platform that will change how your team works. In this session we'll explore how Vanderbilt University implemented Slack in their Web Communications office, integrated it with their help desk, project management system, code repositories, and how it completely changed the culture of the office. (Oh, and there may be some incoming Slack messages from some of our friends in Milwaukee ... and some at home!) View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	Information Architecture: The Steps to a Smooth Redesign #DPA5: Information Architecture: The Steps to a Smooth Redesign Presenters Cecelia Thomas - Georgia Regents University Diane Kuehn - VisionPoint Marketing Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center The foundation of a successful website from a user's perspective is rarely the technology nor the design. The information architecture (IA) is the base upon which a website is built, and yet IA is often overlooked during a web redesign project. Join Georgia Regents University and VisionPoint Marketing for an in-depth explanation of IA and a review of the steps needed to properly structure your website. Attendees will learn about the sitemap and page schematics that facilitate a smooth implementation of a redesigned website. View this presentation online Tags redesigns View Details	Learning to Live with the Anonymous User #MCS5: Learning to Live with the Anonymous User Presenters Jason Fish - Purdue University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Yik Yak, Fade, Secret, Erodr, Cloaq, Whisper, Jah -- just to name a few. If you haven’t had to deal with issues arising from one of these anonymous social apps, consider yourself lucky. However, if we look through the negativity and shocking posts that stems from allowing “anonymous” usage, is there something we can learn? - What is it about these apps that have students coming back for more? - When is the right time for the institution to step in and do something? - Where should the line be? - How can we leverage the platforms for good? - Why can't we use the same addictive techniques? During this presentation, we will explore the dark back room that is the anonymous social app and discover that it doesn't have to be a place of filth. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to manage anonymous social apps on their campus, how to use the power of anonymous for good, and how to handle issues when they do arise. Tags social View Details	How I Get My Geek on in a Cost-Cutting Atmosphere #MPD5: How I Get My Geek on in a Cost-Cutting Atmosphere Presenters Maren Walz - University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center I work in Higher Ed, in Wisconsin. We've been in the news and we've been under the microscope, and we know we're not alone. "Slashing budgets." "Cutting to the bone." It's dramatic language for dramatic times, and we are all feeling the pain. I'm on a team that serves the campus community through a decentralized web editing model. We have an uncommon vantage point: We are familiar with the whole campus' web content, and with that we see a broad cross-section of processes, workflows…and problems. Well, I geek on continuous quality improvement (CQI), and lately this has been particularly handy. I'll share some CQI concepts and tools that anyone can use to identify opportunities for improvement (and cost-savings) on campus. • Recognize waste in the system (redundancies, variation, common frustrations, etc.) • Gather and study data about work processes and systems • Make information-based decisions for solutions • Show real results Even if you don't geek on CQI like I do, you can help simplify and streamline day-to-day tasks of colleagues, and you can measure and communicate about how you are easing the burdens of shrinking budgets and growing workloads to strengthen the work of your institution. Tags directors and managers data View Details	Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students Through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns #TIE5: Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students Through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns Presenters Kristofer Karol - Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Gone are the days when we could get away with sending out a tweet to a news release or posting a mugshot of an award-winning faculty member on our Facebook page. Leadership demands results and, when it comes to students, we need to think outside the box to engage them and build our brands (and ambassadors). Learn how Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis went from a social media graveyard to a thriving online community thanks to creative campaigns such as "50 Things to Do Before You Graduate," "Positive Post-It Day," and an April Fools' Day prank that saw cats roaming the campus. View this presentation online Tags marketing social students View Details	Lessons Learned on the Road to Accessibility #UAD5: Lessons Learned on the Road to Accessibility Presenters Christian Vinten-Johansen - Penn State Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center In the fall of 2010, the National Federation of the Blind filed a complaint against Penn State. So began a broad initiative shaped by the unique strengths of the institution and the choices we made in triage. From training to triage to organizational change, these are some of the important lessons learned in our journey toward delivering an accessible learning and working environment. We will discuss: 1. A general roadmap your institution can follow to get started. 2. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and what impact they have on an individualized implementation plan. 3. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to reaching your goals. 4. Measuring progress and maturity of IT accessibility in your institution. View this presentation online Tags accessibility View Details	Powering video content with your DAM & CMS #COR5: Powering video content with your DAM & CMS Presenters Kathy Wilson - University of Michigan Jake Athey - Widen Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center This session focuses on the making of the new University of Michigan Athletics recruiting website, ThisIsMichigan.com, using Wordpress CMS and Widen digital asset management (DAM). Join University of Michigan and Widen for a discussion on the impact your DAM can have within your website. Attendees will learn the steps University of Michigan took to lay the groundwork for a successful launch of a recruiting website encompassing all 29 sports, while leveraging their DAM system in the process. View Details
3:45 - 4:15 p.m.	Refreshment break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
4:15 - 5:00 p.m.	Tree Testing for the Win: How to Improve the UX of Your IA with Tree Testing #AIM6: Tree Testing for the Win: How to Improve the UX of Your IA with Tree Testing Presenters Alan O'Neill - Optimal Workshop Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center "Getting to the right page within a website or intranet is the inevitable prerequisite to getting anything done." Jakob Nielson People visit our websites to get stuff done. If they can find what they're looking for quickly and easily, everybody wins. But if our labels are ambiguous, or the hierarchy of our information is illogical and confusing, we risk not following through on the very product or service we are offering. Tree testing (getting people to complete tasks on a text-only version of your website) can tell you exactly where and why people get lost. This engaging presentation will turn your tree-testing skills into a winning formula. Tags measuring View Details	JQuery has Coding Standards? Now You Tell Me... #DPA6: JQuery has Coding Standards? Now You Tell Me... Presenters RJ Bruneel - University of Central Florida Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Over the past several years, we've all been taking advantage of jQuery to fast-track development and quickly add features and interactivity to our websites. It's a quick and easy tool to produce interactive, efficient, and cross-platform-compatible JavaScript code. What is less known are the formal coding standards and documented best practices that, when used correctly, can save you time and headaches when managing page load time and code updates. With an increased need for sites to load quickly and perform well on a wide variety of networks and devices (Wi-Fi, mobile, etc.), an understanding of how to properly code jQuery is essential for maintaining clean and quality code. I will explain how to get the most out of jQuery by demonstrating how to code to the standard and take advantage of chaining, caching, detachment, and design patterns, avoiding the overuse of anonymous functions. View this presentation online Tags code front-end View Details	The Web Culture Shift #MCS6: The Web Culture Shift Presenters Alaina Wiens - Flint & Genesee Chamber of Commerce Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center A successful web content strategy requires support from people all across an organization -- people with a wide range of experience and comfort levels when it comes to web work. To get our people invested in web content and thinking strategically, we first need to change the culture and thinking surrounding “web” in our institutions. This session will offer practical advice for influencing culture change on your campus, and convincing your people that they have a part in the “web” after all. Tags content strategy collaborating View Details	Metropolis and Gotham, A Tale of Two Cities: Two Different Approaches to Enterprise Site Development #MPD6: Metropolis and Gotham, A Tale of Two Cities: Two Different Approaches to Enterprise Site Development Presenters Jeff Stevens - University of Florida Health Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center In the last five years, UF Health's web services team has launched two enterprise-wide web projects, supporting six colleges, six hospitals, and twenty thousand staff and students. Our Metropolis was an external web presence supporting more than six hundred websites, built in the light of day as a positive affirmation of our future as an organization. Our Gotham was a new intranet, built on social networking and web best practices, constructed internally and away from the light but nonetheless as important. This talk will focus on the strategies used in building both, a web team that can support both, and the lessons learned in the process -- building and guiding consensus, overcoming the rogues gallery of barriers that pop up, and managing expectations. View this presentation online Tags redesigns View Details	From MySpace to Mobile: How Ten Years of E-Expectations Research Informs Future Digital Strategies #TIE6: From MySpace to Mobile: How Ten Years of E-Expectations Research Informs Future Digital Strategies Presenters Stephanie Geyer - Ruffalo Noel Levitz Lance Merker - OmniUpdate Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Since 2005, the E-Expectations research project has tracked the online preferences of college-bound high school juniors and seniors. The e-recruitment and technology landscape has changed considerably in that time. Facebook and YouTube were just beginning to go public, Twitter had not yet launched, and the iPhone was still two years away. Over that time, how have the expectations of prospective college students changed? How will they continue to evolve? This session will examine ten years of E-Expectations research data, and will discuss how the identified trends might apply to the future development of websites, mobile, social media, and email. The presenters will also discuss how campuses can create an effective mix of online recruitment strategies that will both engage students and be manageable for those overseeing campus technologies. Participants will leave this session with a better understanding of how to increase the quality and consistency of their online content across multiple channels. Tags marketing students content strategy View Details	Redefining Content with Infographics #UAD6: Redefining Content with Infographics Presenters Jennifer Riehle McFarland - NC State University Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center There are a million reasons to use infographics. Studies have shown over and over how fascinated we are by graphics and images, and how averse we are to text. Infographics are -- when done right -- entertaining, informative, and enticing. So why don't we see them more in higher ed? Well, they can be difficult to create. It's hard to know where to start. And they take a heck of a lot longer to design than it takes to write a paragraph or two. In an industry that's often short on staff, how do we find a way to take advantage of the infographic in higher education? This session aims to educate on infographics in and for educational institutions. We'll start with a background on infographics and why they're so compelling. We'll look at all the different kind of infographics out there. We'll then consider when it's appropriate to create infographics, and talk about some of the ways it can be done -- whether that's using a simple, free tool, or opening InDesign or Illustrator and getting your hands dirty. Finally, we'll look at examples of when infographics do and don't work, and the range of outcomes, both good and bad. View this presentation online Tags visuals View Details	Pics Or It Didn't Happen: Why Photos are Key to Building Your Brand and Generating Revenue #COR6: Pics Or It Didn't Happen: Why Photos are Key to Building Your Brand and Generating Revenue Presenters Martin Vloet - Libris Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Photography is becoming the language we speak every day - from the personal to the professional. The smartphone and social media revolutions have created an exploding need for organizations of all sizes to communicate visually. Institutions of higher learning have an incredible opportunity to share their stories through photos - from shots of the winning football team to selfies of your students. In this session, we’ll show you how to harness the power of your images to build your brand and generate revenue. View Details
5:00 - 8:00 p.m.	Dinner on your own Room:
8:00 - 11:00 p.m.	HighEdWeb After Dark, sponsored by mStoner / Higher Ed Live Miller Time Pub, Hilton Milwaukee Downtown Room: Miller Time Pub, Hilton Milwaukee Downtown

Tuesday, Oct. 6

	Applications, Integration and Mobile	Development, Programming and Architecture	Marketing, Content and Social Strategy	Management and Professional Development	Technology in Education	Usability, Accessibility and Design	Sponsors
7:30 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.	Conference check-in and information First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center Room: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center
7:30 - 8:30 a.m.	Breakfast Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
8:30 - 9:15 a.m.	Finding Your Way #AIM7: Finding Your Way Presenters Aaron Knight - SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center Wayfinding and map data: so many (conflicting) data sources out there, so little time . And so much potential for losing your future students before you can even make the pitch. We’ll look at ways to correct your campus data in major mapping systems, and then look at some fairly easy-to-build and inexpensive options for building mobile-friendly interactive maps for your campus. View this presentation online Tags data visuals View Details	Make the Web Faster: Web Performance Best Practices You Should Be Using Today #DPA7: Make the Web Faster: Web Performance Best Practices You Should Be Using Today Presenters Shahab Lashkari - OmniUpdate, Inc. Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Should that script tag go in the head or at the bottom of the body? Do you really need to be using CSS sprites? What triggers a browser reflow and why should you care? How does the new HTTP/2 spec play into all of this? In this session, Shahab will run through the most common mistakes that lead to slower page loads and poor browser performance. You'll learn how the browser actually processes your code, which tools you can use to test your own sites, and what you should be doing to improve page performance immediately. Let's make the (higher ed) web faster! View this presentation online Tags measuring code front-end View Details	Tragedy, Pitchforks and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media #MCS7: Tragedy, Pitchforks and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media Presenters Amy Grace Wells - University of South Carolina Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center It was a tough spring at University of South Carolina. With a campus shooting, blackout, and a student incident that went viral, in addition to weather-related updates, the social team has been busy... busy learning lessons on how to manage mobs, keep parents calm, and provide timely communications in complicated situations. Being strategic and staying on brand can happen in times of crisis. In this session you'll learn: • How to work with executive leadership to get messages out without the paralysis of crafting the "perfect" message. • How to manage a mob and keep a cool head. • How to move forward and get back to normal after the worst case scenario. View this presentation online Tags social View Details	Secret Agent Man: How to Work with an Outside Partner #MPD7: Secret Agent Man: How to Work with an Outside Partner Presenters JP Rains - Soshal Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Most institutions have a roster of external vendors and partners, but how can you make the most out of this relationship? JP Rains will share his insight as a client for five years at Laurentian University, and as a Strategy Director at Soshal for the past 16 months. This session will help you understand what type of information your external partners need from you, and how you can get the most value out of your work together. Whether you are entry level or senior level, this session will improve your ability to work with external partners. This isn't about procurement, this is about end results -- this is the session your agency and vendors don't want you to attend. Sections covered in the talk: - Proposals and contracts - Joint strategy - Project management - Delivery View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	The .edu Manifesto: A Call to Action for Higher Ed to Get Digital Right #TIE7: The .edu Manifesto: A Call to Action for Higher Ed to Get Digital Right Presenters Mark Greenfield - University at Buffalo Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center The importance of a college website cannot be understated. It is mission critical. Imagine what would happen if your website disappeared tomorrow. Could your campus still function? And as we move from a physical campus to a digital campus, the stakes will be even higher. Despite this landscape, most college websites remain mediocre at best, underfunded, and mismanaged. Part rant, part history lesson, part hope for the future, the .edu Manifesto is a call to action for higher ed to get the web and digital right. Mark will make the case on why the web matters (more than you think) and how to harness the full potential of digital. Tags directors and managers View Details	Carousels, Dropdowns, and Modal Dialogs: Accessibility and Common Web Widgets #UAD7: Carousels, Dropdowns, and Modal Dialogs: Accessibility and Common Web Widgets Presenters Terrill Thompson - University of Washington Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center This interactive session will explore web accessibility by examining three common web widgets: A carousel, a dropdown menu, and a modal dialog. We will ask: Is this widget accessible to all users? Is there any group of users who might find it difficult or impossible to use? How can it be tested? How can it be improved? What are our options as designers and developers for ensuring our web widgets are fully accessible to all students, employees, and visitors? View this presentation online Tags accessibility front-end testing View Details	Project Kickoffs That Work #COR7: Project Kickoffs That Work Presenters Allison Manley - Palantir Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center This session will walk you through some of Palantir’s top tools and tips for client experience-building through awesome kickoff strategies. Successes and takeaways on recent projects will also be discussed. So, you’ve got your sticky notes, colored markers, and enough stakeholders to fill a room; but, how do you make the most use of your time face-to-face with your client when you start a project to ensure a great client experience? We’ve all been in those kickoff meetings at the beginning of a project — the room is tense, half the people are checking their phones, and your time with the key stakeholders is limited. What do you do? In this session, Allison will walk you through some of our thinking about building great client experience through awesome onsites. We’ll share some real world tips and tools, and also discuss successes and takeaways on recent projects, large and small. View Details
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.	Sponsor exhibits open Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
9:30 - 10:15 a.m.	Little Yellow Boxes: Search is the Content King-Maker #AIM8: Little Yellow Boxes: Search is the Content King-Maker Presenters Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center We can all agree that CONTENT is KING ... well, GOOD SEARCH is the KING MAKER. Come see how Vanderbilt uses their Google Search Appliances to make sure their website visitors can always find what they're looking for. Learn how to use GSA collections, front ends, keymatches, synonyms, filters, biasing policies, freshness tuning, and customizing the crawl. If your institution already has a GSA, or is thinking about implementing it, this is a "don't miss" session for you! View this presentation online Tags measuring View Details	Light up the Web! An Intro to Building Apps with Firebase and Angular #DPA8: Light up the Web! An Intro to Building Apps with Firebase and Angular Presenters Ryan Christie - Illinois State University Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center AngularJS is a super-powered front-end framework developed by Google. Firebase is an almost magical realtime app platform that recently joined the Google team. Combined, they are an unstoppable force of awesome. Join me and learn how quickly you can go from nothing to delighting your clients and users while hearing a chorus of oohs and ahhs. View this presentation online Tags code front-end back-end View Details	Measuring In-Person Recruitment Effectiveness With Social Media #MCS8: Measuring In-Person Recruitment Effectiveness With Social Media Presenters Samantha Read - Ryerson University Kareem Rahaman - Ryerson University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Our Undergraduate Admissions and Recruitment department, like all institutions, has multiple interaction points with students before they make the all-important choice of where to attend school in September. We see many students multiple times throughout the fall and winter recruitment seasons and at on-campus events before they accept their offers. So how can we measure the effectiveness of our efforts and get a sense of the sentiment of our prospective students and applicants? Through extensive use of event- and cycle-specific hashtags and enterprise tools, we tag and match students throughout the recruitment and admissions cycle with the ultimate goal – a tweet that they will be a #futureram. We will discuss this pilot project, which has transitioned us away from typical feedback routes such as event surveys, and has allowed us to correlate tweet sentiment and virtual touch points with admission decisions. Tags social collaborating measuring View Details	Come Together, Right Now #MPD8: Come Together, Right Now Presenters Matt Ryan - Carleton College Tabita Green - Luther College Melissa Dix - Beloit College Carolyn Zinn - Kalamazoo College Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Collectively, we in higher ed pour a lot of resources into reinventing wheels and solving problems others have solved elsewhere. There have been many efforts across higher ed to remedy this by pooling resources, but often this has foundered because the only thing slower and more painful than committee-based decision making within your institution is committee-based decision making involving multiple institutions! The schools that are part of this presentation have worked together on an open-source project for several years. We'll share things we've learned about intercollegiate cooperation, how can we build structures that effectively help us support each other, and point out models for shared projects in higher ed. View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	The Next Generation: Post-Millennials...the iGeneration #TIE8: The Next Generation: Post-Millennials...the iGeneration Presenters Douglas Tschopp - Augustana College Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Now that the millennial generation has not only gone to college, but entered the workforce, what’s next on the horizon? Is the next generation about technology? The green movement? Self-serving? Career-driven? How do they define success? What traits does this generation have, and what impact will they have on the work you do? The presentation will review current research on the iGeneration and late millenials. Tags marketing students View Details	Looking Good, Looking Forward: Tips and Tricks to Give Your Content a Visual Makeover #UAD8: Looking Good, Looking Forward: Tips and Tricks to Give Your Content a Visual Makeover Presenters Danielle Poupore - John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center We live in a visual world. With the growing popularity of apps such as Instagram and Snapchat -- and with Facebook and Twitter becoming increasingly more image-driven -- it is essential that higher ed marketers and social media managers be able to engage student audiences through dynamic imagery. Information that used to be presented in text-heavy flyers and emails is now forced to compete for our students’ attention alongside Grumpy Cat memes and ten-second Vines. If you’re not a graphic designer nor professional photographer, this new landscape can seem pretty scary! But here’s the good news: By following a few simple tips, anyone can create beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and effective visual content. This presentation will guide you through the process of visual content creation, including tips and tricks for planning your image strategy, taking the perfect photo with just a smartphone, editing and adding text, applying basic design principles, and implementing your new and improved material into existing communications channels. View this presentation online Tags visuals content strategy social View Details	Storytelling + Experiences: Ingredients of a Successful Redesign #COR8: Storytelling + Experiences: Ingredients of a Successful Redesign Presenters Piero Tintori - TERMINALFOUR Mike Schulz - mStoner, Inc. Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center It was time for Loyola Marymount to rethink LMU.edu—to design a digital experience that underscores the university’s unique academic quality, location, and Jesuit foundation and showcases its gorgeous campus. Another important goal for the site included creating a better framework for storytelling through images, video, and text. A team from campus worked with mStoner, Inc., and TERMINALFOUR to rebuild LMU.edu from the ground up and develop a roadmap to extend the brand new interface through the LMU domain. Learn about some of the challenges, the strategy, and solutions to arriving at the university’s new responsive design. View Details
10:15 - 10:45 a.m.	Refreshment break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
10:45 - 11:30 a.m.	Schlemiel, Schlemazel, Digital Signage Incorporated! #AIM9: Schlemiel, Schlemazel, Digital Signage Incorporated! Presenters Mark Bennett - University of Iowa CLAS Web Services Mark Fullenkamp - University of Iowa CLAS Web Services Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center When faced with the challenge of creating an easier-to-use and cheaper option for digital signage, the CLAS Web Services Group from the University of Iowa overcame the obstacles, by changing the system itself. Learn how and why the University of Iowa developed a digital signage solution that you can implement using the Drupal CMS; one that is responsive and accessible to all users. See how the process started, the challenges we had to overcome, the release of a new version of the product, and where we go in the future. We're gonna make [y]our dreams come true! Doin' it our way! View this presentation online Tags RWD accessibility View Details	Building an Organized, Automated, and Sustainable Workflow Using Bower, Grunt, and Github #DPA9: Building an Organized, Automated, and Sustainable Workflow Using Bower, Grunt, and Github Presenters Will Jones - University of Alabama Libraries Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Web projects are getting more complex. With a few open source tools, you can wrangle this complexity. Github will make it easy to organize your web projects into modular repositories. Bower can manage your modules and third party dependencies. Grunt ties it all together, compiling and optimizing, with one command. View this presentation online Tags collaborating back-end View Details	As Easy as Herding Squirrels: Managing Social Media on Your Campus #MCS9: As Easy as Herding Squirrels: Managing Social Media on Your Campus Presenters Tiffany Broadbent Beker - College of William & Mary Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Social media accounts are created every day by student organizations, academic departments, programs, and countless other units across your campus. How do you support and coordinate all of these accounts when they're managed by dozens (or hundreds) of people scattered throughout your institution? In this session we will explore the tools and methods that William & Mary uses to tackle this challenge, from guidelines for starting a social media account, to the best ways to keep track of existing accounts, to how to create and sustain a social media users group (SMUG), and how you can bring all of these ideas back to your campus so you can start to wrangle your own herd of social media squirrels. View this presentation online Tags social collaborating View Details	The Blues Is #1: Lessons from the Blues Masters on Weathering the Storms of Change #MPD9: The Blues Is #1: Lessons from the Blues Masters on Weathering the Storms of Change Presenters Jesse Lavery - Allegheny College Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center “I done seen better days, but I’m putting up with these.” Rabbit Brown sang those words in the early 1900s, but many of us in higher ed could say the same today. Our schools are going through changes that can give you the blues, if you let ‘em. For most of us, we don’t have a voice in those changes -- we have to pick up the pieces of budget cuts, staffing shortfalls, and leadership turnover, all without succumbing to the fear and pessimism they can bring. I’ve had my own share of unexpected changes in my higher ed career so far: five years, one school, four different organizational structures, five different offices, and nine different bosses. (Yes, really.) I’ll share lessons from my troubled past and teach you how to combine modern systems and tools with wisdom from the old blues masters to be prepared for change, plan for troubled times, and find opportunity in turmoil. No hoodoo or mojo hands required. View this presentation online Tags directors and managers View Details	Personalizing the New-Student Onboarding Experience #TIE9: Personalizing the New-Student Onboarding Experience Presenters Mark Mazelin - Cedarville University Joshua Erlandson - Cedarville University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Incoming students are the lifeblood of every higher education institution. Yet once the new student has applied and been admitted to our university, we so often nearly drown them with things that they must do, forms they must fill out, and website after website they need to visit before they begin their classes in an upcoming term. At Cedarville University, we tried to address this issue with the creation of a personalized admitted student portal that launched in January 2015 for the fall freshman class. Once a student’s application for admission was processed and the student was admitted to the university, they were invited to join this new portal. This portal was the re-creation of a static list of tasks that we wanted the incoming student to perform. One big problem with the static list was that students would complete the task, but then have no indication that it was completed. They would return to the website and find the same old tasks glaring at them. Mocking them. Come see how we are working to improve the incoming student onboarding and engagement processes. We’ll discuss the problems we were trying to solve, how tasks and announcements are released, the creation of a private Facebook group where students could meet (and how we limited access to it), and how parts of the task list is integrated with other campus systems to provide automatic completion notifications. We’ll even include some pretty graphs and charts for the statistics we collected along the way (and shared with counselors for follow up!), touch on the related communications plan, and give a peek at where we plan to go in the next iteration. View this presentation online Tags students data code directors and managers View Details	Accessibility 101 #UAD9: Accessibility 101 Presenters Stephen Fornal - Tarrant County College Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center In the higher education web design environment, accessibility is paramount. The web team at Tarrant County College endeavored to greatly improve their accessibility by conducting extensive research, and by meeting with disabled users to experience firsthand how they access web content. In this session, Stephen will discuss their testing and research processes, the results, and best practices garnered from this initiative. Learn about a diverse collection of techniques and quick fixes that you can implement on your website immediately. Find out how to improve accessibility in your existing site, how to guide decisions in a redesign, and most importantly, how to guarantee equality of access for all students on your campus. View this presentation online Tags accessibility redesigns measuring testing View Details	Selling UX: Lessons from the Firing Line #COR9: Selling UX: Lessons from the Firing Line Presenters David Poteet - NewCity Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Ever had to fight for the budget to do real audience research? Convince someone of the value of usability testing? Explain how your research informed the design you created? We took a huge gamble in 2005 when we sold Virginia Tech on the idea of doing mental models to inform their redesign. Since that initial foray, we’ve been selling the value of a user-centered, research-informed approach to web design – not just in a proposal or pitch, but throughout the process. In this workshop I’ll share NewCity’s best tips for making the case for user experience (UX). What You'll Learn: - How to explain the importance of research in the strategy process to your stakeholders - How stories make UX meaningful - How involving people in the UX process builds inside champions - How to not geek out when sharing UX methods or findings with the uninitiated (i.e. unwashed masses) - Things you should be doing to prove the impact of UX in your organization (but this won’t be an in-depth analytics course) View Details
11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.	Techies and Writers Unite! Ohio State's New Content Aggregator Serves Coders, Marketers, Users #AIM10: Techies and Writers Unite! Ohio State's New Content Aggregator Serves Coders, Marketers, Users Presenters James Burgoon - The Ohio State University Kristen Convery - The Ohio State University Mike Butsko - The Ohio State University Corey Hinshaw - The Ohio State University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center Ohio State's manifesto: Simplify the university’s bureaucratic structure and put users first! At a complex place, writers post web content; social media managers tweet; web geeks ponder digital strategy. Enter Media Magnet, a uniform content aggregation system and a joint venture between Interactive and Editorial. See how we’ve applied this system on osu.edu and beyond. View this presentation online Tags words code data marketing collaborating View Details	Drupal 8: The Crash Course #DPA10: Drupal 8: The Crash Course Presenters Larry Garfield - Palantir.net Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center One of the most widely-used and mature content management systems on the planet, Drupal runs more than one in fifty websites in the world. However, it has always been something of an odd duck, with an architecture and design very different than anything else in PHP. Enter Drupal 8: Almost a complete rewrite under the hood, Drupal 8 is a modern, PHP 5.4-boasting, REST-capable, object-oriented powerhouse. Now leveraging third party components from no fewer than nine different projects, Drupal 8 aims to be the premiere content management platform for PHP. But how do you use all this new-fangled stuff? This session will provide a walkthrough of Drupal's key systems and APIs, intended to give developers a taste of what building with Drupal 8 will be like. Prior familiarity with Drupal 7 is helpful but will not be assumed. View this presentation online Tags code front-end back-end View Details	Managing the Unmanageable #MCS10: Managing the Unmanageable Presenters Mark Greenfield - State University of New York at Buffalo Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Tags redesigns collaborating content strategy View Details	Building Internal Communities to Support Your Content Strategy #MPD10: Building Internal Communities to Support Your Content Strategy Presenters Georgy Cohen - OHO Interactive Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center In many organizations, especially decentralized ones as you often find in higher education, content owners and editors often operate independently, disconnected from best practices, organizational standards and style, or peers who face similar challenges in creating and managing content. In some cases, content is only a small and intermittent part of these individuals' jobs. To make our content strategy come to life, we need to make it accessible and relatable to the people we rely upon to execute it. And that means making those people accessible and relatable to each other. By organizing internal content communities within our organizations, we can better communicate the value of content strategy, and provide much-needed support to content owners and editors. Attendees will learn: - The value of organizing an internal content community - Strategies for launching and facilitating a content community - Best practices for making the community successful for both its members and the organization Tags content strategy collaborating View Details	Big Project, Small Staff, Tight Deadlines: How to Create the Perfect Storm for Inst'l Web Migration #TIE10: Big Project, Small Staff, Tight Deadlines: How to Create the Perfect Storm for Inst'l Web Migration Presenters Jay Massey - University of West Florida Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center How we migrated a 50,000-page, static, Dreamweaver-maintained website into a 6,000 page, responsive web design, accessible, searchable, content management system with only a two-person web unit. Tackling a seemingly insurmountable task when you have limited resources necessitates a confident strategy, diligent communication, involved leadership, and a bit of luck. View this presentation online View Details	Why a Beautiful Campus but a Digital Wasteland? #UAD10: Why a Beautiful Campus but a Digital Wasteland? Presenters Brian Hawkins - Indiana University Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Every college has access to shovels, soil, seeds, and trimmers, yet why are some campuses places of beauty for education while others are not? It's not the tools, it is an expression of values, leadership, and discipline that enable physical campus beauty over the decades. It's time to do the same in the digital environment. A content-management system, a few web developers, and varied ideas don’t make digital beauty (or effectiveness). It's time to bring the discipline from physical beauty to the digital campus. Tags visuals View Details	Showcase Your Alumni and Faculty with Incredible Profiles and Directories #COR10: Showcase Your Alumni and Faculty with Incredible Profiles and Directories Presenters Josh Palmeri - Stony Brook University (SUNY) Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center Learn how profiles and directories can do so much more than you ever imagined possible. In this session, Josh will discuss the strategy, design, and implementation of Stony Brook University’s award-winning 40 Under Forty website that features profiles of bright and innovative alumni. Additionally, he will reveal SBU’s brand-new Faculty Experts directory that allows website visitors to quickly and easily locate department specialists. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look into how the sites were built and integrated with OmniUpdate’s OU Campus CMS for a scalable performance and a simple editing experience. Featured tools of trade to be discussed include HTML5 history API, front-end search, HTML5 video, and CMS configuration to control site functionality. View Details
12:30 - 1:45 p.m.	Lunch, sponsored by Hannon Hill Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center An update on all things HighEdWeb with President Colleen Brennan-Barry Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center An update on all things HighEdWeb with President Colleen Brennan-Barry
2:00 - 2:45 p.m.	Refried Bean Counters: A Tasty Mashup of Accounting, Management, and Data for the Big Web Project #AIM11: Refried Bean Counters: A Tasty Mashup of Accounting, Management, and Data for the Big Web Project Presenters Jason Woodward - State & Plain Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center Bland old canned planning tools giving you indigestion? We'll show you how Cornell SHA used the ingredients we had on-hand, along with some old fashioned double-entry accounting and project management recipes, to whip up a tasty rendition of that old staple: the Big Web Project. Sure, it ain't Le Cordon Bleu, but it satisfies. We'll talk about how we applied the well-worn principles of double-entry accounting to managing the Big Web Project. We'll show how dashboards, queryable mashups, and data extractions from existing tools and vendor deliverables helped us plan, keep on track, check progress, spot inconsistencies, and minimize missed content often discovered too late in the project. We'll explain how we used these to fit into and support the existing workflows of the Information Architect, Content Strategist, and Web Programmer. There's no panacea here, but like any good side dish it doesn't leave you hungry. This is not a tech talk, but we'll mention technologies like WordPress, Drupal, Google Analytics, AngularJS, RDF, OWL and Stardog. OK maybe it's a little bit of a tech talk. Like a little bit of grated cheese on top. Tags data collaborating View Details	Web-Based Digital Signage System #DPA11: Web-Based Digital Signage System Presenters Nic Winn - University of Tennessee Health Science Center Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has experience with Cisco DMS, a digital signage system that uses screens, media players, a media server, and proprietary software. However, they found a way to create their own DMS using only the existing screens and network, while swapping out the media players for Raspberry Pis. Attend this session to learn how a browser on a single-board computer, such as a Raspberry Pi, can be set to access tailored content for its location. Nic will show how to set up responsive web pages that contain common assets and unique content, and how to use the pages for horizontal or vertical screens of varying sizes. Attend to find out how to migrate signage into the web, so your displayed content is accessible, interactive, and easy to update. View this presentation online Tags RWD code front-end marketing View Details	What a Tumblr Learned Meerkating His Periscope? :: The Future of Social Media and Higher Ed #MCS11: What a Tumblr Learned Meerkating His Periscope? :: The Future of Social Media and Higher Ed Presenters Ron Bronson - Stensland van Bers Kent & Partners Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Everybody wants to capture all the eyeballs. But how do you make people pay attention in a world with increasing amounts of distractions. In this talk, Ron Bronson reflects on a career of building online communities from the days of AOL to Tumblr, Twitter and beyond to show you how to apply the lessons of what works to your own institution's social media strategy regardless of the platform. Tags social View Details	Improv the Situation #MPD11: Improv the Situation Presenters Larry Falck - Francis Marion University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center No, that's not a typo. Improv, or improvisation, has made the leap from the stage and TV to the workplace. Actually, it's always been there -- rarely is anything in our life rehearsed. Larry has been a member of Ten Piece Bucket, an improvisational comedy troupe in Florence, South Carolina, for five years, and has been active in theater for more than twenty. His presentation will lay out the basic guidelines of improvisation and show you how to apply them to your workplace. Beginning at "yes, and," he'll also ponder whether the rules of improv can be directly applied to the workplace, or if some tweaking is needed. Be prepared to participate, there may be some demonstrations! View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	Building a Modern Course Catalog Search #TIE11: Building a Modern Course Catalog Search Presenters Jim Muir - The Ohio State University Scott Mascio - The Ohio State University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Have you ever wanted to replace the out-of-the-box course catalog search from your student information system? At Ohio State, we worked to export the data and build a modern search interface that prioritizes user experience above all. Taking concepts and ideas from Google and Amazon for the search interface, we were able to create an experience that users love. This talk will explore working with several groups around campus as well as the technical details of how we exported the courses from our student information system, indexed them with Elasticsearch, built a REST API to expose them, and created an accessible, responsive, and easy to use Angular.js web application to present everything. We’ll also talk about how the same REST API endpoint powers Ohio State's native iOS and Android mobile applications, while still empowering the desktop and mobile web users with more advanced functionality. Finally, we’ll wrap up with challenges we faced and how we waged through the political battle of accomplishing the successful replacement of the out-of-the-box search interface. Tags students front-end View Details	I Believe I Can See the Future: More Than the Typical Analytics Routine #UAD11: I Believe I Can See the Future: More Than the Typical Analytics Routine Presenters Joshua Dodson - Southern New Hampshire University Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Getting the metrics is not the hard part. Guessing at what it might mean will get you nowhere fast. Turning numbers into action is what makes the difference between a strong, contributing member of the team and a weak link. By using some simple methods of data analysis, you can go from generating a report to providing real value to your organization. This presentation will discuss examples from higher education and explain how statistical significance is not as daunting as it can sound. We will explore methods such as statistically significant A/B testing, intervention analysis, and time-series forecasting. You will be able to immediately apply techniques to improve your analysis and add value to your institution, and you will learn how this kind of analysis is used to make positive changes within higher education marketing and enrollment. View this presentation online Tags measuring data View Details	Popping the Higher Ed Digital Bubble -- What Higher Ed Needs to Learn from Corporate Websites #COR11: Popping the Higher Ed Digital Bubble -- What Higher Ed Needs to Learn from Corporate Websites Presenters Jason Smith - OHO Interactive Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center In multiple surveys, more than eighty percent of prospective students rank the website as the number one tool for research when selecting a school. Despite a desire to focus on prospects, most higher education websites are unable to power enrollments. Instead, marketing groups are slowed by internal politics, a lack of actionable data, and long funding cycles. Drawing on examples from both successful higher education and corporate clients, this session will provide a new framework for defining investment in your school’s website. We’ll highlight how marketing groups can: - Make the case for ongoing investment in digital - Define clear business goals - Measure and make decisions based on data, not opinion - Leverage analytics to take control - Comprehensive look at social, search, paid search, ads, email The session will translate corporate practices into a higher education context to provide you with actionable next steps. In addition, we’ll present an overall framework for socializing the evolution of websites -- and the required staffing and budget -- to invest in digital. (All of these concepts are not tied to a specific vendor or software solution.) View Details
3:00 - 3:45 p.m.	Is a Taco a Sandwich? (And Other Hard Questions) #AIM12: Is a Taco a Sandwich? (And Other Hard Questions) Presenters Jacob DeGeal - Web & Interactive Communications - Illinois State Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center For the past year and half, this simple innocent question has challenged friendships, hijacked whiteboards, and sparked heated happy-hour debates within our office. We were even able to tickle the fancy of Chris Hardwick during last year’s HighEdWeb keynote address. So why has this question become such an obsession to us? Because it’s not just about tacos. It’s about organization. Balance. As professionals in higher education, we work in systemic chaos every day -- from political posturing and institutional wrangling, to technology workarounds and daily droning maintenance. At Illinois State University, a recent redesign of our central news hub proved that this chaos could be tempered, dare we say controlled. It meant tackling the tricky balance of institutional marketing with distributed content creation. I will cover some of the tactics used to organize people, departments, and egos (both large and small) and how it lead to not only political victories, but new competitive ways to market the university. Tags redesigns marketing collaborating View Details	The Ultimate Time Saver: Building a Responsive Pattern Library #DPA12: The Ultimate Time Saver: Building a Responsive Pattern Library Presenters Jenny Slaughter - NewCity Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Take a look under the hood at three pattern libraries developed using popular responsive frameworks. Learn how designers and developers can work together to identify reusable layout components, and turn these into flexible building blocks. Of course, the hard part is teaching people to use the patterns the way they were intended. We'll share some successful examples of this, too. View this presentation online Tags RWD front-end View Details	Snapchat: More Than Selfies #MCS12: Snapchat: More Than Selfies Presenters Tony Dobies - West Virginia University Candace Nelson - West Virginia University Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Snapchat can be more than selfies. In fact, it can be a key recruiting and relationship-building tool for your university. We’ll take a look at Snapchat campaigns from West Virginia University and examples from other universities from around the country that are using the app successfully. For those already using Snapchat at their university, we’ll also talk about different strategies for overcoming some of the limitations of the app and discuss the future of the app in higher ed. In this session, you will learn: • Why you should be on Snapchat • How to use Snapchat as a University • Examples of successful Snapchat campaigns at universities • The future of Snapchat and how it could affect higher ed Tags marketing social View Details	How Life Lessons from Jane Austen Helped a One-person Communications Team #MPD12: How Life Lessons from Jane Austen Helped a One-person Communications Team Presenters Lisa Catto - Western Oregon University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single-person communications team must be in want of efficiency tips and commiseration. And coffee. Lots of coffee. In an era of declining budgets and expanding duties, many of us alone manage significant portions of the communications efforts at our campuses. While there is value to the flexibility of being responsible for everything yourself, it can be highly stressful and may lead to inefficient multitasking, losing track of tasks, or even worse, burnout. When I get stressed out, I often turn to Jane Austen and her brilliant stories and characters. I’ve found that her classic stories provide valuable life advice that is applicable to those bearing the burden of being a one (wo)man team. Pulling from my experience as the campus-wide media relations and social media expert for a mid-sized public university, I share suggestions for how to work smart, how to get support from others and how to...gasp...say “no” on occasion. Regency attire heartily encouraged. View this presentation online Tags collaborating directors and managers View Details	Building a DIY Student Portal from Scratch #TIE12: Building a DIY Student Portal from Scratch Presenters Gary Kuhlmann - Valdosta State University Keith Warburg - Valdosta State University Bobby Lacey - Valdosta State University Ashley Williams - Valdosta State University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center No one wants to remember another password. So why do your faculty, staff and students have to keep a list of passwords, IDs, and usernames for your campus email, classroom, and registration services? You may not have tens of thousands of dollars to put down on a service portal to gather everything; the Web Team at Valdosta State definitely didn’t in 2012 when they launched MyVSU. By creating partnerships across divisions with design, IT, communications and others, they developed a dynamic portal, maintained by the entire campus. Developing your own service portal in-house not only saves your institution expensive setup and service fees, but also allows the talented people you have on campus to flex their creative muscles and deliver exactly what your constituents need. By providing a single sign-on, customizable portal for all of your campus services, you can serve your students, faculty, and staff, while gaining a captive audience for targeted institutional communications. Imagine: A student failing Math 1101 receives an email alert with information about math tutoring, or any of the other thirty services offered! The portal also allows advisers to directly connect to their students via a messaging component, and more. The VSU Web Team will discuss the challenges and opportunities that arose during the implementation of the portal, as well as share the developments and evolution of the portal. Attendees will be able to ask questions about the portal, the design process, and the data warehouse project in order to help streamline web services on their campuses. Tags collaborating students data View Details	Web Strategery: An Effective Way to Say No to "Click Here" #UAD12: Web Strategery: An Effective Way to Say No to "Click Here" Presenters Todd Barber - University of Tennessee Health Science Center Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center Websites can quickly get out of control with input, advice, suggestions, and directives coming from every direction. During our recent redesign, we decided to align our site with the university's mission and strategic plan. Keeping these two items at the forefront of the redesign process allowed us to make key decisions that would have been difficult otherwise. We started with a single strategy and we quickly saw the shortcomings of trying to be too generic. We ended with an overall web strategy that has a four-pronged approach to emerging technology, architecture, content, and design. Each strategy (including the overall) has three or four goals associated with it, and represents many of the common issues faced as we build and maintain websites. For our web group, it allows us to continually keep our focus on what is important, and if needed, change a goal based on the ever-changing web world. For our campus community, the strategies are presented in a simple way and have been documented (which makes them "official"), so that they can easily be shared and taught. View this presentation online Tags redesigns content strategy View Details	Not Yet Scheduled
3:45 - 5:00 p.m.	Refreshment Break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
3:45 - 5:00 p.m.	Posters Ballroom A/B Foyer
6:30 - 10:30 p.m.	HighEdWeb Big Social Event Harley-Davidson Museum® Room: Harley-Davidson Museum®

Wednesday, Oct. 7

	Applications, Integration and Mobile	Development, Programming and Architecture	Marketing, Content and Social Strategy	Management and Professional Development	Technology in Education	Usability, Accessibility and Design
7:30 - 8:30 a.m.	Breakfast Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
8:30 - 8:45 a.m.	Red Stapler (Best of Track) announcement Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.	Sponsor exhibits open Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
9:00 - 9:45 a.m.	AIM Red Stapler	DPA Red Stapler	MCS Red Stapler	MPD Red Stapler	TIE Red Stapler	UAD Red Stapler
	Slacking Off at Work Slacking Off at Work Presenters Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center SLACK. It's no longer a bad word at work. Slack is the communication platform that will change how your team works. In this session we'll explore how Vanderbilt University implemented Slack in their Web Communications office, integrated it with their help desk, project management system, code repositories, and how it completely changed the culture of the office. (Oh, and there may be some incoming Slack messages from some of our friends in Milwaukee ... and some at home!) View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	Demystifying Responsive Email Demystifying Responsive Email Presenters Peter Anglea - Bob Jones University Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center I won't sugarcoat it. Creating responsive email isn't easy. In fact it's hard. Like, harder-than-coding-for-IE6 hard. But everyone is saying how valuable email marketing is. Furthermore, having responsive email designs is just as important as having as having a responsive website when you consider that more than 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device. Multiply that by the millions of emails your institution delivers annually, and that adds up to a big problem. Or a big opportunity, depending on how you look at it. In this session, we'll roll up our sleeves and cover the best practices in responsive email. Like responsive web design, mastering responsive emails involves changes in how we write, design, and code. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. View this presentation online Tags RWD code marketing visuals View Details	Tragedy, Pitchforks and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media Tragedy, Pitchforks and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media Presenters Amy Grace Wells - University of South Carolina Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center It was a tough spring at University of South Carolina. With a campus shooting, blackout, and a student incident that went viral, in addition to weather-related updates, the social team has been busy... busy learning lessons on how to manage mobs, keep parents calm, and provide timely communications in complicated situations. Being strategic and staying on brand can happen in times of crisis. In this session you'll learn: • How to work with executive leadership to get messages out without the paralysis of crafting the "perfect" message. • How to manage a mob and keep a cool head. • How to move forward and get back to normal after the worst case scenario. View this presentation online Tags social View Details	Improv the Situation Improv the Situation Presenters Larry Falck - Francis Marion University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center No, that's not a typo. Improv, or improvisation, has made the leap from the stage and TV to the workplace. Actually, it's always been there -- rarely is anything in our life rehearsed. Larry has been a member of Ten Piece Bucket, an improvisational comedy troupe in Florence, South Carolina, for five years, and has been active in theater for more than twenty. His presentation will lay out the basic guidelines of improvisation and show you how to apply them to your workplace. Beginning at "yes, and," he'll also ponder whether the rules of improv can be directly applied to the workplace, or if some tweaking is needed. Be prepared to participate, there may be some demonstrations! View this presentation online Tags collaborating View Details	Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students Through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students Through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns Presenters Kristofer Karol - Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center Gone are the days when we could get away with sending out a tweet to a news release or posting a mugshot of an award-winning faculty member on our Facebook page. Leadership demands results and, when it comes to students, we need to think outside the box to engage them and build our brands (and ambassadors). Learn how Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis went from a social media graveyard to a thriving online community thanks to creative campaigns such as "50 Things to Do Before You Graduate," "Positive Post-It Day," and an April Fools' Day prank that saw cats roaming the campus. View this presentation online Tags marketing social students View Details	Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard Presenters Melissa Dix - Beloit College Bill Mortimer - Beloit College Jason Hughes - Beloit College Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center When Beloit College retooled its recruitment materials and positioning, the approach hinged on the college’s ability to showcase the accelerated pulse of what seemed, from the outside, to be a small and sleepy campus. Under the theme “Liberal Arts Amplified”, the communications and web team set out to illustrate this energy on the website and elsewhere, and found along the way that in this case, less was more (and more was more). Borrowing from new approaches (in HTML5) and best practices, we built a new site that serves to highlight campus life, offerings, and students, and to do so in a way that is more authentic, more powerful, and less time consuming than preparing video package after video package. Along the way, we found that we could easily and cheaply replicate this approach across campus, through retargeting, and even on livestreaming holding slides -- and do all that with a ¼ time videographer and a half dozen student workers. This session will provide an overview of how we implemented video across our site (the plan, process, and implementation) and what we’ve seen and heard as a result. We’ve discovered that while a picture might be worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. View this presentation online Tags redesigns marketing visuals View Details
	Poster: Learning to COPE: 110 Stories, 365 Days, 20% Increase in Organic Traffic
9:45 - 10:00 a.m.	Refreshment Break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center
10:00 - 10:30 a.m.	Awards and recognitions including Best of Conference Award Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
10:30 - 11:30 a.m.	General Session
10:30 - 11:30 a.m.	Scott Stratten
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.	Lunch Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.	Conference check-in and information First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center Room: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center
1:00 - 4:30 p.m.	Workshops
1:00 - 4:30 p.m.	The Content Strategist's Guide to Design: Holistic Thinking for Better Content The Content Strategist's Guide to Design: Holistic Thinking for Better Content Presenters Joel Goodman - Bravery Media Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center Designers. Am I right? Always needing content to fit in their boxes; more concerned with the font or color than the content. It'd be great to know why they think the way they do, but design seems so technical. The truth is all that design-y stuff is integral to our work having its greatest possible effect. Copy, user interface, typography, layout, color: all of these communicate something. So let's learn the language of design. In this workshop we will learn how design helps our content communicate by: * Learning design vocabulary * Exploring the concept of "designing for emotion" * Dipping our toes into the deep ocean of symbols and signs in communication * Looking at our content in real-world design scenarios View Details		Navigating Social Media in Higher Education Navigating Social Media in Higher Education Presenters Lougan Bishop - Belmont University Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center Social media has become a major tool for recruitment, marketing, and communications for many institutions. Creating social networks for your campus is free, but keeping them engaging takes time, planning, and effort. In this workshop, Lougan Bishop will explore the different ways an institution can set goals and measure outcomes. In addition, Lougan will share tips on gaining buy-in and input from different areas around campus. Finally, Lougan will give advice on creating student street teams to help plan and create awesome content. View Details	Effective Content Planning Effective Content Planning Presenters Georgy Cohen - OHO Interactive Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center Content planning is where the rubber of a content strategy meets the road of day-to-day execution. More than just knowing what’s going on the homepage next Tuesday, content planning entails people knowing their roles, content aligning with intended goals and messaging, making data-driven decisions, and trying to head off missed opportunities at the pass. In a sense, can our digital content manage to step outside in the morning without its shirt on backwards, phone and wallet missing, and TP trailing from its shoes? In this workshop, attendees will learn how to plan digital content publishing and promotion across multiple channels (including social media), how tools like content matrices and editorial calendars can facilitate content planning for both short-term projects or ongoing publications, how to support an integrated communications strategy on the ground, how to integrate analytics into your content decision-making process, and how to wrangle the human resources (and goodwill) required to put a content plan into practice. View Details	Moving Toward Organizational Maturity in Digital Accessibility Moving Toward Organizational Maturity in Digital Accessibility Presenters Sarah Horton - The Paciello Group David Sloan - The Paciello Group Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center Digital accessibility in higher education presents opportunities to improve the online experience for people with disabilities, whether current or prospective students, staff, or members of the public who interact with the institution. It’s also extremely challenging to move from a position of firefighting in response to actual or potential of legal action toward a more mature, strategic approach to accessibility -- one that is sustainable and delivers demonstrable positive change for everyone. In this workshop, we’ll provide tools to help participants identify the key challenges present that block meaningful long-term improvement in accessibility strategy at their institutions, and explore the opportunities that can be exploited as foundations for a cross-campus approach to improved accessibility. We’ll use our continuum of organisational accessibility maturity as a framework to discuss ways of implementing an accessibility strategy and supporting tactics that leads to successful engagement with leadership, central services, faculty, and student organisations to create a culture change across campus, and better digital user experiences for everyone. Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences, whether positive or negative, as case studies for discussion. The presenters combine over 30 years’ experience working in higher education. As accessibility and user experience consultants who work with universities on accessibility strategy, we bring a wealth of experience in understanding organisational complexity to define and deliver support to higher education organisations in adjusting strategy and activity to address accessibility across different domains. View Details	Supercharge Your Insight with Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager Supercharge Your Insight with Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager Presenters Aaron Baker - Harvard University Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center There are always new things to learn about Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. In this workshop we're going to move past the basics and do some real digging and wrangling. This workshop isn't for the basics -- we'll certainly start with a quick overview of data analytics strategy so that we can charge through the details of how and why we even go through the trouble of measuring web traffic. But then I'll show you how implementing Google Tag Manager and upgrading to Universal Analytics will supercharge your insight from mere clicks to actual conversions. We'll talk about moving past vanity metrics like "how many people visited my page" and get right to the more important questions like "how many prospects visited my page and took the action we wanted them to take." The latter implies conversion and it is essential to measuring the success of our web presence and marketing ourselves to prospective audiences. We'll also learn how to segment data into different target populations to make informed decisions about how to improve and optimize the website. View Details
2:30 - 3:00 p.m.	Refreshment Break Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center Room: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Track Key

Applications, Integration and Mobile
Development, Programming and Architecture
Marketing, Content and Social Strategy
Management and Professional Development
Technology in Education
Usability, Accessibility and Design
Corporate

Saturday, Oct. 3

1:00 - 5:00 p.m.

2:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Refreshment break for Academy attendees
Location: Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor

Room:Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor

Sunday, Oct. 4

7:30 - 8:00 a.m.

Breakfast for Academy attendees
Location: Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor

Room:Wright Ballroom Foyer, Hilton fourth floor

8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

11:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Conference check-in and information
Location: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

Room:First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Lunch for Academy attendees, pre-conference workshop attendees and presenters
Location: Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor

Room:Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor

1:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Workshops

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.

Refreshment break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

5:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Conference welcome and orientation session
Location: Empire Ballroom, Hilton second floor

Room:Empire Ballroom, Hilton second floor

6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Welcome Reception
Location: Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor

Room:Crystal Ballroom, Hilton fifth floor

Monday, Oct. 5

7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Conference check–in and information
Location: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

Room:First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

7:30 - 8:30 a.m.

Breakfast
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

8:30 - 9:15 a.m.

Searching for Direction: Using a Search-Based Homepage to Direct Users
Presenters
- Rob Liesland - Xavier University
- Greg McMullen - Xavier University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
In the spring of 2015 Xavier University moved to a search-based homepage, with the goal of more efficiently getting users to their desired content. We’ll review the basics of the implementation, how the data is managed, and, most importantly, what we have learned from the actual usage. Do the users even use the search? Does it consistently deliver the results they are looking for? Is this the future?
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A Fresh Perspective on Responsive Web Design
Presenters
- Josh Palmeri - Stony Brook University (SUNY)
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Responsive web design has been quite the trend in web development since Ethan Marcotte introduced the term in 2010. As people of the web, we have used the term so frequently in recent years... but do we understand what it really means to implement RWD effectively and sensibly? Using real-world examples from award-winning projects completed at SUNY Stony Brook, Josh will offer a fresh look at RWD, along with valuable tips, tools, and techniques to execute a successful RWD initiative. The session will offer a new way of approaching the design and development process when "going responsive," and you'll walk away with the tools necessary to help you do RWD successfully!
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Tags
- RWD
- front-end
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Your Email Is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad, Too
Presenters
- Jens Larson - Eastern Washington University
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Admit it: your institution sends millions of emails each year, and you have no idea what they look like. Are they mobile friendly? Are they easy to read? Do they get results? Gasp in horror and start building your to-do list as you see the results of a secret shopping experiment that involved 300 institutions, 2,000 emails, and the mother of all Excel spreadsheets. Using real emails from real universities, you’ll dive into email marketing, explore how it connects to your content, mobile and web strategies, and walk away with checklists and guides that you can use to make immediate improvements at your institution.
Tags
- marketing
- measuring
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Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Fighting a Hard Battle
Presenters
- John Wagner - Princeton University
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
We all have times when our real life impacts our work life, when what is happening to us, or in our families, or to our close friends makes doing the daily grind especially hard. Or we may be fine, but we see our colleagues struggling. We know that we're supposed to be supportive. But what should we do? A directed discussion of being a supportive boss or colleague when those around you are in the middle of burdening occurrences in their lives.
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- directors and managers
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Create a Batman, Not a Robin -- How to Get the Most of Your Student Staff
Presenters
- Kareem Rahaman - Ryerson University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
We generally hire student staff for lower level tasks, along with positions that need student to student interactions to succeed. However, how many of us are hiring with the sole purpose of creating the best possible job candidate after graduation? I will go into the step-by-step plan and framework that goes into how I build my student staff program to churn out job-ready Batmans ready to take on Gotham.
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Tags
- directors and managers
- students
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Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard
Presenters
- Melissa Dix - Beloit College
- Bill Mortimer - Beloit College
- Jason Hughes - Beloit College
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
When Beloit College retooled its recruitment materials and positioning, the approach hinged on the college’s ability to showcase the accelerated pulse of what seemed, from the outside, to be a small and sleepy campus. Under the theme “Liberal Arts Amplified”, the communications and web team set out to illustrate this energy on the website and elsewhere, and found along the way that in this case, less was more (and more was more). Borrowing from new approaches (in HTML5) and best practices, we built a new site that serves to highlight campus life, offerings, and students, and to do so in a way that is more authentic, more powerful, and less time consuming than preparing video package after video package. Along the way, we found that we could easily and cheaply replicate this approach across campus, through retargeting, and even on livestreaming holding slides -- and do all that with a ¼ time videographer and a half dozen student workers. This session will provide an overview of how we implemented video across our site (the plan, process, and implementation) and what we’ve seen and heard as a result. We’ve discovered that while a picture might be worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.
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The Wizard of Optimization
Presenters
- Seth Galligan - The C2 Group
- Nicholas Fuller - The C2 Group
- David Tarnow - The C2 Group
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Optimization – making incremental changes to websites and applications – is a low-effort, high-impact practice. Being able to track how a site or app is used enables marketers and technologists to make meaningful changes that can dramatically influence outcomes. Before considering a site redesign, hit the Yellow Brick Road to Optimization with The C2 Group. We’ll discuss how some small, yet significant practices can yield big gains in your conversion activities.
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9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Sponsor exhibits open
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

9:30 - 10:15 a.m.

Open-source Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
Presenters
- Jon Gunderson - University of Illinois
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
The Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) 2.0 and AInspector Sidebar are open-source tools to evaluate and inspect compliance with the requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) 2.0. WCAG 2.0 is an international standard and part of the Section 508 refresh for information technology. Open-source tools can be freely used and customized for individual needs.
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- accessibility
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Demystifying Responsive Email
Presenters
- Peter Anglea - Bob Jones University
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
I won't sugarcoat it. Creating responsive email isn't easy. In fact it's hard. Like, harder-than-coding-for-IE6 hard. But everyone is saying how valuable email marketing is. Furthermore, having responsive email designs is just as important as having as having a responsive website when you consider that more than 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device. Multiply that by the millions of emails your institution delivers annually, and that adds up to a big problem. Or a big opportunity, depending on how you look at it. In this session, we'll roll up our sleeves and cover the best practices in responsive email. Like responsive web design, mastering responsive emails involves changes in how we write, design, and code. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.
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I Shouldn't Need a Doctorate to Read Your Website
Presenters
- Alison West - Mount Holyoke College
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
In higher education, there's a belief that parents want to read websites that are written in an academic style, or at a higher level than one might find when reading the hottest, most popular fiction book. But is this really true? Can a website with content written at a lower grade level instill confidence in parents that their children are receiving a high quality education? Using research, let's dispel the myth perpetuated by academia. But easy to read and understand content is difficult to write, isn't it? I'll share some tips, tools, and tricks to help your content breathe and read much, much easier. Because after all, if prospects can read your website and understand it, aren't they more likely to feel welcomed on your campus?
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Tags
- words
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How to Boil the Ocean
Presenters
- Chris Amelung - Washington University in St. Louis
- Ted Elsas - Washington University in St. Louis
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
Can anyone go to a meeting without someone saying, “We need a website for this” -- whatever this might be? Do you struggle with defining and adhering to a set of priorities, and find yourself saying “Yes” to every request, even if you don’t know how you’ll ever get it all done? Are you expected to custom build every website no matter how big or small? Does it feel more realistic to boil the ocean than tame your portfolio of work? The Digital Communication team at Washington University in St. Louis is facing all of those challenges, and more. But through a fortunate mix of planning, timing, and good old fashioned luck, we have defined a clear set of priorities and are in the process of transforming our team culture and establishing effective channels for managing our work. Whether your team serves your entire university or a single department, we believe the lessons we’ve learned through our transformation can be applied to meet your own unique needs, and help you boil your ocean of work.
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- directors and managers
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Creating the Competitive Edge: Making Student Learning Experiences Valuable for the Job Market
Presenters
- Conny Liegl - California Polytechnic State University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
As a student supervisor of a team of six at Kennedy Library, I am challenged not just with providing services to clients and stakeholders, but also carry a moral responsibility for my employed students. Students are essential to my daily work, and indispensable for many large-scale, high-visibility projects. It is important to identify individual students’ needs and goals, as well to recognize current stressors and worries. It is essential to me to provide student assistants with valuable experiences that directly apply to their interests and their future job tasks. To mentor effectively also means to collaborate broadly with colleagues from different disciplines and other colleges in hands-on partnerships. Class assignments, senior projects, and staff collaborations provide opportunities for students to experiment, explore, and broaden their skill sets. To ensure the library project demands are in alignment with students' future job requirements, and to support each student individually, regular check-ins are mandatory. My entire student team meets regularly once a week over lunch, and assigns upcoming projects, reviews tasks and developments and invites constructive feedback for designs and approaches. We also discuss future dreams, possible career options, and potential areas of improvement. Students’ performance is evaluated on a regular basis. My ten rules for an effective student-supervisor relationship, which I will elaborate in my presentation, are: 1. Give pointers and directions, not orders. 2. Teach only what you’re good at. 3. Take students seriously. 4. Talk and sketch together. 5. Listen. 6. Watch. 7. Learn. 8. Experiment. 9. Keep problems away. 10. Have fun! To prove the effectiveness of these simple rules, I will highlight library projects, faculty collaborations, and successful partnerships with examples from Outstanding Student Employees of the Year, Hackathon competitors, and successful graduates.
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Universal Interaction Design: Making It Click for Everyone, Everywhere
Presenters
- Nikki Massaro Kauffman - Penn State University
- Sonya Woods - Penn State University
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Your sites may use responsive templates. You may have tested you content with the plugs-in like Fangs and FireEyes, or even with JAWS. But have you tested your interactions to work with keyboard navigation? On tablets? For visitors with low vision? For visitors with low vision, using keyboard navigation? For visitors with hearing impairments who use tablets? For visitors who want to print what they read? For visitors stationed overseas? In our session we will talk about what we learned from integrating accessibility testing and interaction design, from types of testing to interaction best practices to overall design and development processes.
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Web Redesign 101 – Redesign Done Right, the First Time
Presenters
- Mark Greenfield - University of Buffalo
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
A website redesign can be a daunting proposition. It is a huge investment in time and money and something that you will live with for years to come. Even more importantly, it’s also often your first point of contact with potential students and parents. While there is a tremendous amount of work involved, the reward is a new site that will better meet your business objectives and communicate your institutions’ goals to your target audience, whether that is incoming students, new faculty, or alumni networks. This presentation will walk you through the entire web redesign process from research and planning to launch and post-launch analysis. Emphasis will be placed on understanding when and why to redesign your site. A redesign project is the perfect opportunity to examine your web strategy and how it aligns with the overall organizational strategy. It is also a great time to analyze your current operation approach to the web and how to build a site that is sustainable moving forward. There will also be an emphasis on user-centered design and how to balance user goals with business goals. Everyone wants a user-friendly site, and we will explore how to involve users in all phases of the redesign process, as well as how iterative testing throughout the project will save time and resources. Whether you are redesigning your website in-house or working with an agency, this webinar will provide you with a redesign framework that will streamline the process and position your higher education site for success. What You Will Learn: - The full redesign process from start to finish - How to keep your project on time and on track - How to utilize the experiences with you current site to inform decisions about the new site - How to plan for post launch - The common mistakes with a web redesign project and how to avoid them Who Should Attend: - Chief Marketing Officers - Digital Managers - Web Managers - Marketing and Communications Professions
Tags
- directors and managers
- marketing
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10:15 - 10:45 a.m.

Refreshment break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

10:45 - 11:30 a.m.

Data “Silo” SMACdown : Enter the EIP
Presenters
- Jim Kittle - The Ohio State University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
The continuation of last year’s presentation “Let Your Data Run Free and Run Your University” by Steve Fischer, Jim Muir, and OSU and HighEdWeb fixture Glenn Donaldson. The Ohio State University had the vision and initiative to implement an Enterprise Integration Platform [EIP]. What does this mean? Now direct database access and the political battles that follow are a thing of the past, as well as the sea of firewall requests. Leadership bought in to the hype and moved forward building a "Data Integration"-Hub*. API Manager [APIM] is the storefront that allows developers and system integrators to come to a common place to see the available enterprise-level web services/APIs, the data they are comprised of, and the ability to subscribe/request access for their systems/applications. Enterprise Service Bus [ESB] is the nexus of integrations where services/APIs can be mediated and transformed from SOAP->REST, XML->JSON and vise versa. ESB can also be the center where composite service creation happens. Data Services Server [DSS] is where a developer can turn a commonly used query into a consumable service used by many. This presentation is about the how the data is "freed" and consumable by the community in an efficient, effective, and secure manner.
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Tags
- data
- back-end
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Stop Reinventing the Wheel: Build Responsive Websites Using Bootstrap
Presenters
- Gaurav Gupta - Virginia Commonwealth University
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Web development has become increasingly complex, with the advent of smartphones, tablets, and multiple browsers with varying capabilities. Bootstrap makes the process faster by providing pre-written HTML, CSS, and Javascript that has been thoroughly tested and debugged. Learn how to get started with this framework, and build a responsive web page. Explore commonly used components such as buttons, tabs, tooltips, pop-ups, and third-party plugins. See examples of beautiful websites built on Bootstrap.
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How to Use Data to Drive Content
Presenters
- Matt Hames - Colgate University
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
When you have a great idea for content, there are two things you can do. The first is to use your experience of creating great content to create the content. The second is to use data to determine what works the best, and how to make it better. Maybe your tweets get more attention in the afternoon. Maybe half of the people who watch your videos leave half way through. This presentation will suggest you still go with what your gut says will work; it will simply show you how to use data to back up your gut.
Tags
- data
- measuring
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It Takes A Campus To Raise A (Web Professionals) Community
Presenters
- Rachel Carden - The University of Alabama
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
Every year, you look forward to the big HighEdWeb conference. You count down the days until October and then, high on that wonderful feeling of community, networking, and professional development, you return to your campus, ready to kick-start all of your new ideas. But the fun doesn’t have to stop just because you left Milwaukee. Conferences are a wonderful outlet for igniting your creative and collaborative juices, but you don’t have to be limited by your budget, and one or two annual trips, to engage with -- and find inspiration from -- your peers. You can have your own mini-conference every month by starting your own web professionals community right on your own campus. In this presentation, Rachel Carden will share how she started a web professionals community at The University of Alabama that went from a ten-member group that met every couple months at the campus coffee shop to a seventy-plus member community that meets every month to hear from presenters and discuss topics ranging from social media to crisis communication. All with no budget. This year her community, WebTide, also hosted and organized the HighEdWeb Alabama regional conference. Rachel will share what she did right, what she did wrong, and what she learned along the way, as well as tips and resources to start your own community and to help it flourish.
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- collaborating
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Social Storytelling, Student Orientation, and a New Way to Knowledge
Presenters
- Jennifer Montminy - Penn State
- Katie Motycki - Penn State
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Each year, new-student orientation is a blur of new people, new places, and (lots and lots) of new information that is overwhelming at best. This makes delivering content that is both educational and entertaining a perennial challenge for orientation planners, which is where social media comes in. By now we’re all using social media to market our institutions, but what about using it to engage and teach our incoming students? At Penn State, incoming students learn about technology resources at the university by following Jordan, an imaginary student, on his social media journey through the technology resources, failures, and (ultimately) successes during his first year at Penn State. Complete with corny humor and silly gifs, the presentation makes potentially dry content relatable and memorable, and gives students both a physical and digital way to engage with Jordan through in-person questions and a hashtag challenge in the backchannel. In this session, Montminy and Motycki will discuss how you can use social media, storytelling, and student presenters to increase student engagement, interest, and retention during orientation sessions. They will walk attendees through the strategy behind this approach, how it was executed, and the positive (and lasting) impact this session had at the university.
Tags
- social
- students
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Doing Accessibility Right the First Time -- or Maybe the Second
Presenters
- Sarah Anderson - Grinnell College
- Donna Dralus - Grinnell College
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Sometimes it takes a horrible event (like a disastrous website launch) to get all the resources in place to finally do things right. Hear how Grinnell College royally messed up, but then took the opportunity to rebuild an accessible site from the ground up. Whether you have a "pretty accessible" site or are starting from scratch, learn how to get internal buy-in (without manufacturing a disaster), secure internal and external resources, and manage the project from start to finish.
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Getting to the Good Stuff or Why Less is STILL More
Presenters
- Joel Dixon - Hannon Hill
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Digital marketing and content management have really transitioned from the stage of HOW to maintain/update fresh content on the site to WHAT content to maintain. We fundamentally need to focus on asking the question, “Even if we CAN do it, SHOULD we do it?” Should we be on all social media channels? Should we be placing this image/video/text on the homepage, web page, etc.? Or is less really still more? The areas of content strategy, content creation, content management, and content marketing truly are so interrelated, and each one is necessary for effective web management, but none works best in a silo. This session is meant to encourage direct action in how you consider the marketing efforts you pursue, the content you develop, and the channels (social and otherwise) where you focus your marketing.
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11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Building WordPress to Scale
Presenters
- Jordan Thompson - Illinois State University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
Stories.Illinoisstate.edu is a WordPress site that centralizes Illinois State University news. Since its inception, it grew steadily as additional departments and units also started contributing to the content. Eventually, the infrastructure supporting the site was unable to handle the traffic it was receiving, causing poor response time and crashing. To rectify the issues, its infrastructure was completely recreated using Amazon Web Services, Nginx, PHP-FPM, and other technologies. The infrastructure was built to be redundant and automatically scalable under load using functionality built into Amazon Web Services and extensions to WordPress. This presentation will walk through the process of improving performance, and explore what room there is for further developments.
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- back-end
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Let’s Get Sassy: Responsive Design with Foundation and Sass
Presenters
- Ali Gray - Portland Community College
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
By now, we all know the importance of giving our users a consistent and engaging experience on any device they choose. We’ve listened to presentations and read articles about the best ways to handle content strategy, calls to action, and site navigation for mobile. Now, we’re ready to tackle a responsive design for our website. The question is, how do we actually build this responsive website? By using a front-end HTML framework and CSS preprocessor, of course! With our busy schedules, we no longer have the time to build a website from scratch, especially one that will work on every screen size imaginable. Writing plain CSS with lines and lines of duplicated code is not only time-consuming, it’s difficult to maintain and update. In this presentation, using examples, we will take a look at the hows and whys of using Zurb’s Foundation framework to quickly build a responsive website layout, and at using Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) to make writing and updating CSS not only quick and easy, but enjoyable.
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Bare Bones Content Strategy: Simple Ideas for Sustainable Change on the Web
Presenters
- Rick Allen - Meet Content
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
As content professionals, we strive for clear, concise communication on the web. We cut clutter, hone our message, and plan for purposeful content. “Simple” is understandable and useful. “Complex” is confusing and time-consuming. To sustain positive change on the web in our organization we must extend this mindset to all of our content work. Ongoing content strategy requires cultural support for governance with buy-in from the top and bottom of our org chart. This means clearly communicating value for stakeholders and providing useful tools and training for content contributors. Web content is complex. It’s our job to simplify it -- for everyone. Join this session and learn how to: • Focus on what matters to hone your content strategy and create a sustainable governance plan • Get internal stakeholders to care by clearly communicating the value of content strategy • Develop content guides and tools that simplify content workflow, governance, and training
Tags
- content strategy
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Playing Politics, Level Up! Managing Up, Down, and Sideways in the Human Workplace
Presenters
- Karlyn Borysenko - Zen Workplace
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
Last year, one-third of HighEdWeb attendees packed into a session about playing politics. This year, I'll take that talk to the next level. I'll start with a brief review of the principles I discussed last year to get everyone on the same page, and then apply the framework directly to real world situations. What do you do when your boss just doesn't get it? How do you handle that admissions director who thinks they are a web expert, or that guy who thinks he's your boss? What do you do when the right answer is clear as day to you, but you need to rally internal support for it? And the faculty. Oh yes, the faculty. I'll cover all this and more, and teach attendees how to manage their bosses, their peers, and their subordinates more effectively. As with last year, if you attend the presentation you can get a complimentary custom DiSC Profile to help you navigate the human aspects of your job ($50 value!).
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- collaborating
- directors and managers
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Fostering A Culture of Collaboration and Learning Among Social Media Managers
Presenters
- Chris Barrows - New York University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Only a few years ago, New York University lacked a central team to oversee its social media presence, and there was very little sense of community among social media managers in various departments across the university. Through the creation of a new position and a Social Media Ambassadors group, the university has dramatically refocused its efforts in the social media realm -- and achieved some striking results. Two actions played a key role in these successes. First, the New York University Social Media Ambassadors group was formed in 2012, and now counts as members more than 175 community managers from across NYU. From online meetings and knowledge sharing through the use of Google Groups to in-person meetings twice a semester -- featuring presentations from representatives of industry giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram -- the group has created a professional development opportunity for NYU’s community managers to share and learn. Secondly, social media training was implemented through the use of NYU's iLearn program, as well as one-on-one and group consultations with school and department employees. The opportunity to learn, share, and lead has led to an increased interest and sense of community in social media across the university's global campus. This presentation will provide guidance on creating community of learning and leading, tips for forming a collaborative university group of your own, and lessons learned over the course of the past two and a half years.
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- collaborating
- social
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Data-Driven Design and Digital Marketing Strategy
Presenters
- Zach Richard - University of Notre Dame
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Thanks to software like Google Analytics, New Relic, Crazy Egg, and others, data about your digital marketing efforts is available in excess. How can you display the information in a way that gives you leverage to act on the relevant data points? How do we use this data to make better design and strategic marketing decisions down the road? In this session we'll discuss successful case studies from the University of Notre Dame on how to take SEO, usability, and goal conversion data and make design decisions, set up A/B experiments, and improve search results to maximize the effectiveness of websites and applications.
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The Most Important Page of Your Website
Presenters
- Jason Pontius - White Whale
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Nothing on your website is as important as your calendar. Calendars aren't just about when and where events are happening. They're the single best marketing and storytelling opportunity on your entire site. The best illustration of the personality of your school is what's happening on campus. If there are interesting and diverse events on the calendar, visitors will think of your school as an interesting and diverse place. And if not— if your calendar is a clunky, broken-looking page with only a handful of internal events in plain text— well, you can finish that sentence yourself. Jason runs the team that makes LiveWhale Calendar, an event calendaring solution in use at colleges and universities around the world. In this presentation he'll talk about what makes great calendars great, and how to get the most mileage out of your campus events, no matter what calendaring system you use.
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12:30 - 1:45 p.m.

Lunch, sponsored by OmniUpdate
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

1:45 - 2:45 p.m.

Bill Nye

3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

Slacking Off at Work
Presenters
- Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
SLACK. It's no longer a bad word at work. Slack is the communication platform that will change how your team works. In this session we'll explore how Vanderbilt University implemented Slack in their Web Communications office, integrated it with their help desk, project management system, code repositories, and how it completely changed the culture of the office. (Oh, and there may be some incoming Slack messages from some of our friends in Milwaukee ... and some at home!)
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- collaborating
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Information Architecture: The Steps to a Smooth Redesign
Presenters
- Cecelia Thomas - Georgia Regents University
- Diane Kuehn - VisionPoint Marketing
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
The foundation of a successful website from a user's perspective is rarely the technology nor the design. The information architecture (IA) is the base upon which a website is built, and yet IA is often overlooked during a web redesign project. Join Georgia Regents University and VisionPoint Marketing for an in-depth explanation of IA and a review of the steps needed to properly structure your website. Attendees will learn about the sitemap and page schematics that facilitate a smooth implementation of a redesigned website.
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- redesigns
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Learning to Live with the Anonymous User
Presenters
- Jason Fish - Purdue University
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Yik Yak, Fade, Secret, Erodr, Cloaq, Whisper, Jah -- just to name a few. If you haven’t had to deal with issues arising from one of these anonymous social apps, consider yourself lucky. However, if we look through the negativity and shocking posts that stems from allowing “anonymous” usage, is there something we can learn? - What is it about these apps that have students coming back for more? - When is the right time for the institution to step in and do something? - Where should the line be? - How can we leverage the platforms for good? - Why can't we use the same addictive techniques? During this presentation, we will explore the dark back room that is the anonymous social app and discover that it doesn't have to be a place of filth. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to manage anonymous social apps on their campus, how to use the power of anonymous for good, and how to handle issues when they do arise.
Tags
- social
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How I Get My Geek on in a Cost-Cutting Atmosphere
Presenters
- Maren Walz - University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
I work in Higher Ed, in Wisconsin. We've been in the news and we've been under the microscope, and we know we're not alone. "Slashing budgets." "Cutting to the bone." It's dramatic language for dramatic times, and we are all feeling the pain. I'm on a team that serves the campus community through a decentralized web editing model. We have an uncommon vantage point: We are familiar with the whole campus' web content, and with that we see a broad cross-section of processes, workflows…and problems. Well, I geek on continuous quality improvement (CQI), and lately this has been particularly handy. I'll share some CQI concepts and tools that anyone can use to identify opportunities for improvement (and cost-savings) on campus. • Recognize waste in the system (redundancies, variation, common frustrations, etc.) • Gather and study data about work processes and systems • Make information-based decisions for solutions • Show real results Even if you don't geek on CQI like I do, you can help simplify and streamline day-to-day tasks of colleagues, and you can measure and communicate about how you are easing the burdens of shrinking budgets and growing workloads to strengthen the work of your institution.
Tags
- directors and managers
- data
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Check Yo Self(ie): Connecting with Students Through Engaging, Meaningful Social Media Campaigns
Presenters
- Kristofer Karol - Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Gone are the days when we could get away with sending out a tweet to a news release or posting a mugshot of an award-winning faculty member on our Facebook page. Leadership demands results and, when it comes to students, we need to think outside the box to engage them and build our brands (and ambassadors). Learn how Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis went from a social media graveyard to a thriving online community thanks to creative campaigns such as "50 Things to Do Before You Graduate," "Positive Post-It Day," and an April Fools' Day prank that saw cats roaming the campus.
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Lessons Learned on the Road to Accessibility
Presenters
- Christian Vinten-Johansen - Penn State
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
In the fall of 2010, the National Federation of the Blind filed a complaint against Penn State. So began a broad initiative shaped by the unique strengths of the institution and the choices we made in triage. From training to triage to organizational change, these are some of the important lessons learned in our journey toward delivering an accessible learning and working environment. We will discuss: 1. A general roadmap your institution can follow to get started. 2. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and what impact they have on an individualized implementation plan. 3. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to reaching your goals. 4. Measuring progress and maturity of IT accessibility in your institution.
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- accessibility
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Powering video content with your DAM & CMS
Presenters
- Kathy Wilson - University of Michigan
- Jake Athey - Widen
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
This session focuses on the making of the new University of Michigan Athletics recruiting website, ThisIsMichigan.com, using Wordpress CMS and Widen digital asset management (DAM). Join University of Michigan and Widen for a discussion on the impact your DAM can have within your website. Attendees will learn the steps University of Michigan took to lay the groundwork for a successful launch of a recruiting website encompassing all 29 sports, while leveraging their DAM system in the process.
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3:45 - 4:15 p.m.

Refreshment break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

4:15 - 5:00 p.m.

Tree Testing for the Win: How to Improve the UX of Your IA with Tree Testing
Presenters
- Alan O'Neill - Optimal Workshop
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
"Getting to the right page within a website or intranet is the inevitable prerequisite to getting anything done." Jakob Nielson People visit our websites to get stuff done. If they can find what they're looking for quickly and easily, everybody wins. But if our labels are ambiguous, or the hierarchy of our information is illogical and confusing, we risk not following through on the very product or service we are offering. Tree testing (getting people to complete tasks on a text-only version of your website) can tell you exactly where and why people get lost. This engaging presentation will turn your tree-testing skills into a winning formula.
Tags
- measuring
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JQuery has Coding Standards? Now You Tell Me...
Presenters
- RJ Bruneel - University of Central Florida
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Over the past several years, we've all been taking advantage of jQuery to fast-track development and quickly add features and interactivity to our websites. It's a quick and easy tool to produce interactive, efficient, and cross-platform-compatible JavaScript code. What is less known are the formal coding standards and documented best practices that, when used correctly, can save you time and headaches when managing page load time and code updates. With an increased need for sites to load quickly and perform well on a wide variety of networks and devices (Wi-Fi, mobile, etc.), an understanding of how to properly code jQuery is essential for maintaining clean and quality code. I will explain how to get the most out of jQuery by demonstrating how to code to the standard and take advantage of chaining, caching, detachment, and design patterns, avoiding the overuse of anonymous functions.
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Tags
- code
- front-end
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The Web Culture Shift
Presenters
- Alaina Wiens - Flint & Genesee Chamber of Commerce
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
A successful web content strategy requires support from people all across an organization -- people with a wide range of experience and comfort levels when it comes to web work. To get our people invested in web content and thinking strategically, we first need to change the culture and thinking surrounding “web” in our institutions. This session will offer practical advice for influencing culture change on your campus, and convincing your people that they have a part in the “web” after all.
Tags
- content strategy
- collaborating
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Metropolis and Gotham, A Tale of Two Cities: Two Different Approaches to Enterprise Site Development
Presenters
- Jeff Stevens - University of Florida Health
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
In the last five years, UF Health's web services team has launched two enterprise-wide web projects, supporting six colleges, six hospitals, and twenty thousand staff and students. Our Metropolis was an external web presence supporting more than six hundred websites, built in the light of day as a positive affirmation of our future as an organization. Our Gotham was a new intranet, built on social networking and web best practices, constructed internally and away from the light but nonetheless as important. This talk will focus on the strategies used in building both, a web team that can support both, and the lessons learned in the process -- building and guiding consensus, overcoming the rogues gallery of barriers that pop up, and managing expectations.
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- redesigns
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From MySpace to Mobile: How Ten Years of E-Expectations Research Informs Future Digital Strategies
Presenters
- Stephanie Geyer - Ruffalo Noel Levitz
- Lance Merker - OmniUpdate
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Since 2005, the E-Expectations research project has tracked the online preferences of college-bound high school juniors and seniors. The e-recruitment and technology landscape has changed considerably in that time. Facebook and YouTube were just beginning to go public, Twitter had not yet launched, and the iPhone was still two years away. Over that time, how have the expectations of prospective college students changed? How will they continue to evolve? This session will examine ten years of E-Expectations research data, and will discuss how the identified trends might apply to the future development of websites, mobile, social media, and email. The presenters will also discuss how campuses can create an effective mix of online recruitment strategies that will both engage students and be manageable for those overseeing campus technologies. Participants will leave this session with a better understanding of how to increase the quality and consistency of their online content across multiple channels.
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Redefining Content with Infographics
Presenters
- Jennifer Riehle McFarland - NC State University
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
There are a million reasons to use infographics. Studies have shown over and over how fascinated we are by graphics and images, and how averse we are to text. Infographics are -- when done right -- entertaining, informative, and enticing. So why don't we see them more in higher ed? Well, they can be difficult to create. It's hard to know where to start. And they take a heck of a lot longer to design than it takes to write a paragraph or two. In an industry that's often short on staff, how do we find a way to take advantage of the infographic in higher education? This session aims to educate on infographics in and for educational institutions. We'll start with a background on infographics and why they're so compelling. We'll look at all the different kind of infographics out there. We'll then consider when it's appropriate to create infographics, and talk about some of the ways it can be done -- whether that's using a simple, free tool, or opening InDesign or Illustrator and getting your hands dirty. Finally, we'll look at examples of when infographics do and don't work, and the range of outcomes, both good and bad.
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- visuals
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Pics Or It Didn't Happen: Why Photos are Key to Building Your Brand and Generating Revenue
Presenters
- Martin Vloet - Libris
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Photography is becoming the language we speak every day - from the personal to the professional. The smartphone and social media revolutions have created an exploding need for organizations of all sizes to communicate visually. Institutions of higher learning have an incredible opportunity to share their stories through photos - from shots of the winning football team to selfies of your students. In this session, we’ll show you how to harness the power of your images to build your brand and generate revenue.
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5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Dinner on your own
Location:

Room:

8:00 - 11:00 p.m.

HighEdWeb After Dark, sponsored by mStoner / Higher Ed Live
Location: Miller Time Pub, Hilton Milwaukee Downtown

Room:Miller Time Pub, Hilton Milwaukee Downtown

Tuesday, Oct. 6

7:30 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Conference check-in and information
Location: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

Room:First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

7:30 - 8:30 a.m.

Breakfast
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

8:30 - 9:15 a.m.

Finding Your Way
Presenters
- Aaron Knight - SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
Wayfinding and map data: so many (conflicting) data sources out there, so little time . And so much potential for losing your future students before you can even make the pitch. We’ll look at ways to correct your campus data in major mapping systems, and then look at some fairly easy-to-build and inexpensive options for building mobile-friendly interactive maps for your campus.
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Tags
- data
- visuals
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Make the Web Faster: Web Performance Best Practices You Should Be Using Today
Presenters
- Shahab Lashkari - OmniUpdate, Inc.
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Should that script tag go in the head or at the bottom of the body? Do you really need to be using CSS sprites? What triggers a browser reflow and why should you care? How does the new HTTP/2 spec play into all of this? In this session, Shahab will run through the most common mistakes that lead to slower page loads and poor browser performance. You'll learn how the browser actually processes your code, which tools you can use to test your own sites, and what you should be doing to improve page performance immediately. Let's make the (higher ed) web faster!
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Tragedy, Pitchforks and Twitter: Managing Campus Crises on Social Media
Presenters
- Amy Grace Wells - University of South Carolina
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
It was a tough spring at University of South Carolina. With a campus shooting, blackout, and a student incident that went viral, in addition to weather-related updates, the social team has been busy... busy learning lessons on how to manage mobs, keep parents calm, and provide timely communications in complicated situations. Being strategic and staying on brand can happen in times of crisis. In this session you'll learn: • How to work with executive leadership to get messages out without the paralysis of crafting the "perfect" message. • How to manage a mob and keep a cool head. • How to move forward and get back to normal after the worst case scenario.
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- social
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Secret Agent Man: How to Work with an Outside Partner
Presenters
- JP Rains - Soshal
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
Most institutions have a roster of external vendors and partners, but how can you make the most out of this relationship? JP Rains will share his insight as a client for five years at Laurentian University, and as a Strategy Director at Soshal for the past 16 months. This session will help you understand what type of information your external partners need from you, and how you can get the most value out of your work together. Whether you are entry level or senior level, this session will improve your ability to work with external partners. This isn't about procurement, this is about end results -- this is the session your agency and vendors don't want you to attend. Sections covered in the talk: - Proposals and contracts - Joint strategy - Project management - Delivery
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- collaborating
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The .edu Manifesto: A Call to Action for Higher Ed to Get Digital Right
Presenters
- Mark Greenfield - University at Buffalo
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
The importance of a college website cannot be understated. It is mission critical. Imagine what would happen if your website disappeared tomorrow. Could your campus still function? And as we move from a physical campus to a digital campus, the stakes will be even higher. Despite this landscape, most college websites remain mediocre at best, underfunded, and mismanaged. Part rant, part history lesson, part hope for the future, the .edu Manifesto is a call to action for higher ed to get the web and digital right. Mark will make the case on why the web matters (more than you think) and how to harness the full potential of digital.
Tags
- directors and managers
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Carousels, Dropdowns, and Modal Dialogs: Accessibility and Common Web Widgets
Presenters
- Terrill Thompson - University of Washington
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
This interactive session will explore web accessibility by examining three common web widgets: A carousel, a dropdown menu, and a modal dialog. We will ask: Is this widget accessible to all users? Is there any group of users who might find it difficult or impossible to use? How can it be tested? How can it be improved? What are our options as designers and developers for ensuring our web widgets are fully accessible to all students, employees, and visitors?
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Project Kickoffs That Work
Presenters
- Allison Manley - Palantir
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
This session will walk you through some of Palantir’s top tools and tips for client experience-building through awesome kickoff strategies. Successes and takeaways on recent projects will also be discussed. So, you’ve got your sticky notes, colored markers, and enough stakeholders to fill a room; but, how do you make the most use of your time face-to-face with your client when you start a project to ensure a great client experience? We’ve all been in those kickoff meetings at the beginning of a project — the room is tense, half the people are checking their phones, and your time with the key stakeholders is limited. What do you do? In this session, Allison will walk you through some of our thinking about building great client experience through awesome onsites. We’ll share some real world tips and tools, and also discuss successes and takeaways on recent projects, large and small.
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9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Sponsor exhibits open
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

9:30 - 10:15 a.m.

Little Yellow Boxes: Search is the Content King-Maker
Presenters
- Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
We can all agree that CONTENT is KING ... well, GOOD SEARCH is the KING MAKER. Come see how Vanderbilt uses their Google Search Appliances to make sure their website visitors can always find what they're looking for. Learn how to use GSA collections, front ends, keymatches, synonyms, filters, biasing policies, freshness tuning, and customizing the crawl. If your institution already has a GSA, or is thinking about implementing it, this is a "don't miss" session for you!
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- measuring
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Light up the Web! An Intro to Building Apps with Firebase and Angular
Presenters
- Ryan Christie - Illinois State University
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
AngularJS is a super-powered front-end framework developed by Google. Firebase is an almost magical realtime app platform that recently joined the Google team. Combined, they are an unstoppable force of awesome. Join me and learn how quickly you can go from nothing to delighting your clients and users while hearing a chorus of oohs and ahhs.
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Measuring In-Person Recruitment Effectiveness With Social Media
Presenters
- Samantha Read - Ryerson University
- Kareem Rahaman - Ryerson University
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Our Undergraduate Admissions and Recruitment department, like all institutions, has multiple interaction points with students before they make the all-important choice of where to attend school in September. We see many students multiple times throughout the fall and winter recruitment seasons and at on-campus events before they accept their offers. So how can we measure the effectiveness of our efforts and get a sense of the sentiment of our prospective students and applicants? Through extensive use of event- and cycle-specific hashtags and enterprise tools, we tag and match students throughout the recruitment and admissions cycle with the ultimate goal – a tweet that they will be a #futureram. We will discuss this pilot project, which has transitioned us away from typical feedback routes such as event surveys, and has allowed us to correlate tweet sentiment and virtual touch points with admission decisions.
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Come Together, Right Now
Presenters
- Matt Ryan - Carleton College
- Tabita Green - Luther College
- Melissa Dix - Beloit College
- Carolyn Zinn - Kalamazoo College
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
Collectively, we in higher ed pour a lot of resources into reinventing wheels and solving problems others have solved elsewhere. There have been many efforts across higher ed to remedy this by pooling resources, but often this has foundered because the only thing slower and more painful than committee-based decision making within your institution is committee-based decision making involving multiple institutions! The schools that are part of this presentation have worked together on an open-source project for several years. We'll share things we've learned about intercollegiate cooperation, how can we build structures that effectively help us support each other, and point out models for shared projects in higher ed.
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- collaborating
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The Next Generation: Post-Millennials...the iGeneration
Presenters
- Douglas Tschopp - Augustana College
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Now that the millennial generation has not only gone to college, but entered the workforce, what’s next on the horizon? Is the next generation about technology? The green movement? Self-serving? Career-driven? How do they define success? What traits does this generation have, and what impact will they have on the work you do? The presentation will review current research on the iGeneration and late millenials.
Tags
- marketing
- students
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Looking Good, Looking Forward: Tips and Tricks to Give Your Content a Visual Makeover
Presenters
- Danielle Poupore - John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY)
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
We live in a visual world. With the growing popularity of apps such as Instagram and Snapchat -- and with Facebook and Twitter becoming increasingly more image-driven -- it is essential that higher ed marketers and social media managers be able to engage student audiences through dynamic imagery. Information that used to be presented in text-heavy flyers and emails is now forced to compete for our students’ attention alongside Grumpy Cat memes and ten-second Vines. If you’re not a graphic designer nor professional photographer, this new landscape can seem pretty scary! But here’s the good news: By following a few simple tips, anyone can create beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and effective visual content. This presentation will guide you through the process of visual content creation, including tips and tricks for planning your image strategy, taking the perfect photo with just a smartphone, editing and adding text, applying basic design principles, and implementing your new and improved material into existing communications channels.
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Storytelling + Experiences: Ingredients of a Successful Redesign
Presenters
- Piero Tintori - TERMINALFOUR
- Mike Schulz - mStoner, Inc.
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
It was time for Loyola Marymount to rethink LMU.edu—to design a digital experience that underscores the university’s unique academic quality, location, and Jesuit foundation and showcases its gorgeous campus. Another important goal for the site included creating a better framework for storytelling through images, video, and text. A team from campus worked with mStoner, Inc., and TERMINALFOUR to rebuild LMU.edu from the ground up and develop a roadmap to extend the brand new interface through the LMU domain. Learn about some of the challenges, the strategy, and solutions to arriving at the university’s new responsive design.
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10:15 - 10:45 a.m.

Refreshment break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

10:45 - 11:30 a.m.

Schlemiel, Schlemazel, Digital Signage Incorporated!
Presenters
- Mark Bennett - University of Iowa CLAS Web Services
- Mark Fullenkamp - University of Iowa CLAS Web Services
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
When faced with the challenge of creating an easier-to-use and cheaper option for digital signage, the CLAS Web Services Group from the University of Iowa overcame the obstacles, by changing the system itself. Learn how and why the University of Iowa developed a digital signage solution that you can implement using the Drupal CMS; one that is responsive and accessible to all users. See how the process started, the challenges we had to overcome, the release of a new version of the product, and where we go in the future. We're gonna make [y]our dreams come true! Doin' it our way!
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Tags
- RWD
- accessibility
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Building an Organized, Automated, and Sustainable Workflow Using Bower, Grunt, and Github
Presenters
- Will Jones - University of Alabama Libraries
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Web projects are getting more complex. With a few open source tools, you can wrangle this complexity. Github will make it easy to organize your web projects into modular repositories. Bower can manage your modules and third party dependencies. Grunt ties it all together, compiling and optimizing, with one command.
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- collaborating
- back-end
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As Easy as Herding Squirrels: Managing Social Media on Your Campus
Presenters
- Tiffany Broadbent Beker - College of William & Mary
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Social media accounts are created every day by student organizations, academic departments, programs, and countless other units across your campus. How do you support and coordinate all of these accounts when they're managed by dozens (or hundreds) of people scattered throughout your institution? In this session we will explore the tools and methods that William & Mary uses to tackle this challenge, from guidelines for starting a social media account, to the best ways to keep track of existing accounts, to how to create and sustain a social media users group (SMUG), and how you can bring all of these ideas back to your campus so you can start to wrangle your own herd of social media squirrels.
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- social
- collaborating
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The Blues Is #1: Lessons from the Blues Masters on Weathering the Storms of Change
Presenters
- Jesse Lavery - Allegheny College
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
“I done seen better days, but I’m putting up with these.” Rabbit Brown sang those words in the early 1900s, but many of us in higher ed could say the same today. Our schools are going through changes that can give you the blues, if you let ‘em. For most of us, we don’t have a voice in those changes -- we have to pick up the pieces of budget cuts, staffing shortfalls, and leadership turnover, all without succumbing to the fear and pessimism they can bring. I’ve had my own share of unexpected changes in my higher ed career so far: five years, one school, four different organizational structures, five different offices, and nine different bosses. (Yes, really.) I’ll share lessons from my troubled past and teach you how to combine modern systems and tools with wisdom from the old blues masters to be prepared for change, plan for troubled times, and find opportunity in turmoil. No hoodoo or mojo hands required.
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- directors and managers
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Personalizing the New-Student Onboarding Experience
Presenters
- Mark Mazelin - Cedarville University
- Joshua Erlandson - Cedarville University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Incoming students are the lifeblood of every higher education institution. Yet once the new student has applied and been admitted to our university, we so often nearly drown them with things that they must do, forms they must fill out, and website after website they need to visit before they begin their classes in an upcoming term. At Cedarville University, we tried to address this issue with the creation of a personalized admitted student portal that launched in January 2015 for the fall freshman class. Once a student’s application for admission was processed and the student was admitted to the university, they were invited to join this new portal. This portal was the re-creation of a static list of tasks that we wanted the incoming student to perform. One big problem with the static list was that students would complete the task, but then have no indication that it was completed. They would return to the website and find the same old tasks glaring at them. Mocking them. Come see how we are working to improve the incoming student onboarding and engagement processes. We’ll discuss the problems we were trying to solve, how tasks and announcements are released, the creation of a private Facebook group where students could meet (and how we limited access to it), and how parts of the task list is integrated with other campus systems to provide automatic completion notifications. We’ll even include some pretty graphs and charts for the statistics we collected along the way (and shared with counselors for follow up!), touch on the related communications plan, and give a peek at where we plan to go in the next iteration.
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Accessibility 101
Presenters
- Stephen Fornal - Tarrant County College
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
In the higher education web design environment, accessibility is paramount. The web team at Tarrant County College endeavored to greatly improve their accessibility by conducting extensive research, and by meeting with disabled users to experience firsthand how they access web content. In this session, Stephen will discuss their testing and research processes, the results, and best practices garnered from this initiative. Learn about a diverse collection of techniques and quick fixes that you can implement on your website immediately. Find out how to improve accessibility in your existing site, how to guide decisions in a redesign, and most importantly, how to guarantee equality of access for all students on your campus.
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Selling UX: Lessons from the Firing Line
Presenters
- David Poteet - NewCity
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Ever had to fight for the budget to do real audience research? Convince someone of the value of usability testing? Explain how your research informed the design you created? We took a huge gamble in 2005 when we sold Virginia Tech on the idea of doing mental models to inform their redesign. Since that initial foray, we’ve been selling the value of a user-centered, research-informed approach to web design – not just in a proposal or pitch, but throughout the process. In this workshop I’ll share NewCity’s best tips for making the case for user experience (UX). What You'll Learn: - How to explain the importance of research in the strategy process to your stakeholders - How stories make UX meaningful - How involving people in the UX process builds inside champions - How to not geek out when sharing UX methods or findings with the uninitiated (i.e. unwashed masses) - Things you should be doing to prove the impact of UX in your organization (but this won’t be an in-depth analytics course)
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11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Techies and Writers Unite! Ohio State's New Content Aggregator Serves Coders, Marketers, Users
Presenters
- James Burgoon - The Ohio State University
- Kristen Convery - The Ohio State University
- Mike Butsko - The Ohio State University
- Corey Hinshaw - The Ohio State University
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
Ohio State's manifesto: Simplify the university’s bureaucratic structure and put users first! At a complex place, writers post web content; social media managers tweet; web geeks ponder digital strategy. Enter Media Magnet, a uniform content aggregation system and a joint venture between Interactive and Editorial. See how we’ve applied this system on osu.edu and beyond.
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Drupal 8: The Crash Course
Presenters
- Larry Garfield - Palantir.net
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
One of the most widely-used and mature content management systems on the planet, Drupal runs more than one in fifty websites in the world. However, it has always been something of an odd duck, with an architecture and design very different than anything else in PHP. Enter Drupal 8: Almost a complete rewrite under the hood, Drupal 8 is a modern, PHP 5.4-boasting, REST-capable, object-oriented powerhouse. Now leveraging third party components from no fewer than nine different projects, Drupal 8 aims to be the premiere content management platform for PHP. But how do you use all this new-fangled stuff? This session will provide a walkthrough of Drupal's key systems and APIs, intended to give developers a taste of what building with Drupal 8 will be like. Prior familiarity with Drupal 7 is helpful but will not be assumed.
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Managing the Unmanageable
Presenters
- Mark Greenfield - State University of New York at Buffalo
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
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Building Internal Communities to Support Your Content Strategy
Presenters
- Georgy Cohen - OHO Interactive
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
In many organizations, especially decentralized ones as you often find in higher education, content owners and editors often operate independently, disconnected from best practices, organizational standards and style, or peers who face similar challenges in creating and managing content. In some cases, content is only a small and intermittent part of these individuals' jobs. To make our content strategy come to life, we need to make it accessible and relatable to the people we rely upon to execute it. And that means making those people accessible and relatable to each other. By organizing internal content communities within our organizations, we can better communicate the value of content strategy, and provide much-needed support to content owners and editors. Attendees will learn: - The value of organizing an internal content community - Strategies for launching and facilitating a content community - Best practices for making the community successful for both its members and the organization
Tags
- content strategy
- collaborating
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Big Project, Small Staff, Tight Deadlines: How to Create the Perfect Storm for Inst'l Web Migration
Presenters
- Jay Massey - University of West Florida
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
How we migrated a 50,000-page, static, Dreamweaver-maintained website into a 6,000 page, responsive web design, accessible, searchable, content management system with only a two-person web unit. Tackling a seemingly insurmountable task when you have limited resources necessitates a confident strategy, diligent communication, involved leadership, and a bit of luck.
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Why a Beautiful Campus but a Digital Wasteland?
Presenters
- Brian Hawkins - Indiana University
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Every college has access to shovels, soil, seeds, and trimmers, yet why are some campuses places of beauty for education while others are not? It's not the tools, it is an expression of values, leadership, and discipline that enable physical campus beauty over the decades. It's time to do the same in the digital environment. A content-management system, a few web developers, and varied ideas don’t make digital beauty (or effectiveness). It's time to bring the discipline from physical beauty to the digital campus.
Tags
- visuals
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Showcase Your Alumni and Faculty with Incredible Profiles and Directories
Presenters
- Josh Palmeri - Stony Brook University (SUNY)
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
Learn how profiles and directories can do so much more than you ever imagined possible. In this session, Josh will discuss the strategy, design, and implementation of Stony Brook University’s award-winning 40 Under Forty website that features profiles of bright and innovative alumni. Additionally, he will reveal SBU’s brand-new Faculty Experts directory that allows website visitors to quickly and easily locate department specialists. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look into how the sites were built and integrated with OmniUpdate’s OU Campus CMS for a scalable performance and a simple editing experience. Featured tools of trade to be discussed include HTML5 history API, front-end search, HTML5 video, and CMS configuration to control site functionality.
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12:30 - 1:45 p.m.

Lunch, sponsored by Hannon Hill
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center
An update on all things HighEdWeb with President Colleen Brennan-Barry

2:00 - 2:45 p.m.

Refried Bean Counters: A Tasty Mashup of Accounting, Management, and Data for the Big Web Project
Presenters
- Jason Woodward - State & Plain
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
Bland old canned planning tools giving you indigestion? We'll show you how Cornell SHA used the ingredients we had on-hand, along with some old fashioned double-entry accounting and project management recipes, to whip up a tasty rendition of that old staple: the Big Web Project. Sure, it ain't Le Cordon Bleu, but it satisfies. We'll talk about how we applied the well-worn principles of double-entry accounting to managing the Big Web Project. We'll show how dashboards, queryable mashups, and data extractions from existing tools and vendor deliverables helped us plan, keep on track, check progress, spot inconsistencies, and minimize missed content often discovered too late in the project. We'll explain how we used these to fit into and support the existing workflows of the Information Architect, Content Strategist, and Web Programmer. There's no panacea here, but like any good side dish it doesn't leave you hungry. This is not a tech talk, but we'll mention technologies like WordPress, Drupal, Google Analytics, AngularJS, RDF, OWL and Stardog. OK maybe it's a little bit of a tech talk. Like a little bit of grated cheese on top.
Tags
- data
- collaborating
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Web-Based Digital Signage System
Presenters
- Nic Winn - University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has experience with Cisco DMS, a digital signage system that uses screens, media players, a media server, and proprietary software. However, they found a way to create their own DMS using only the existing screens and network, while swapping out the media players for Raspberry Pis. Attend this session to learn how a browser on a single-board computer, such as a Raspberry Pi, can be set to access tailored content for its location. Nic will show how to set up responsive web pages that contain common assets and unique content, and how to use the pages for horizontal or vertical screens of varying sizes. Attend to find out how to migrate signage into the web, so your displayed content is accessible, interactive, and easy to update.
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What a Tumblr Learned Meerkating His Periscope? :: The Future of Social Media and Higher Ed
Presenters
- Ron Bronson - Stensland van Bers Kent & Partners
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Everybody wants to capture all the eyeballs. But how do you make people pay attention in a world with increasing amounts of distractions. In this talk, Ron Bronson reflects on a career of building online communities from the days of AOL to Tumblr, Twitter and beyond to show you how to apply the lessons of what works to your own institution's social media strategy regardless of the platform.
Tags
- social
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Improv the Situation
Presenters
- Larry Falck - Francis Marion University
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
No, that's not a typo. Improv, or improvisation, has made the leap from the stage and TV to the workplace. Actually, it's always been there -- rarely is anything in our life rehearsed. Larry has been a member of Ten Piece Bucket, an improvisational comedy troupe in Florence, South Carolina, for five years, and has been active in theater for more than twenty. His presentation will lay out the basic guidelines of improvisation and show you how to apply them to your workplace. Beginning at "yes, and," he'll also ponder whether the rules of improv can be directly applied to the workplace, or if some tweaking is needed. Be prepared to participate, there may be some demonstrations!
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Tags
- collaborating
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Building a Modern Course Catalog Search
Presenters
- Jim Muir - The Ohio State University
- Scott Mascio - The Ohio State University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
Have you ever wanted to replace the out-of-the-box course catalog search from your student information system? At Ohio State, we worked to export the data and build a modern search interface that prioritizes user experience above all. Taking concepts and ideas from Google and Amazon for the search interface, we were able to create an experience that users love. This talk will explore working with several groups around campus as well as the technical details of how we exported the courses from our student information system, indexed them with Elasticsearch, built a REST API to expose them, and created an accessible, responsive, and easy to use Angular.js web application to present everything. We’ll also talk about how the same REST API endpoint powers Ohio State's native iOS and Android mobile applications, while still empowering the desktop and mobile web users with more advanced functionality. Finally, we’ll wrap up with challenges we faced and how we waged through the political battle of accomplishing the successful replacement of the out-of-the-box search interface.
Tags
- students
- front-end
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I Believe I Can See the Future: More Than the Typical Analytics Routine
Presenters
- Joshua Dodson - Southern New Hampshire University
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Getting the metrics is not the hard part. Guessing at what it might mean will get you nowhere fast. Turning numbers into action is what makes the difference between a strong, contributing member of the team and a weak link. By using some simple methods of data analysis, you can go from generating a report to providing real value to your organization. This presentation will discuss examples from higher education and explain how statistical significance is not as daunting as it can sound. We will explore methods such as statistically significant A/B testing, intervention analysis, and time-series forecasting. You will be able to immediately apply techniques to improve your analysis and add value to your institution, and you will learn how this kind of analysis is used to make positive changes within higher education marketing and enrollment.
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Tags
- measuring
- data
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Popping the Higher Ed Digital Bubble -- What Higher Ed Needs to Learn from Corporate Websites
Presenters
- Jason Smith - OHO Interactive
Location: 101C, Wisconsin Center
In multiple surveys, more than eighty percent of prospective students rank the website as the number one tool for research when selecting a school. Despite a desire to focus on prospects, most higher education websites are unable to power enrollments. Instead, marketing groups are slowed by internal politics, a lack of actionable data, and long funding cycles. Drawing on examples from both successful higher education and corporate clients, this session will provide a new framework for defining investment in your school’s website. We’ll highlight how marketing groups can: - Make the case for ongoing investment in digital - Define clear business goals - Measure and make decisions based on data, not opinion - Leverage analytics to take control - Comprehensive look at social, search, paid search, ads, email The session will translate corporate practices into a higher education context to provide you with actionable next steps. In addition, we’ll present an overall framework for socializing the evolution of websites -- and the required staffing and budget -- to invest in digital. (All of these concepts are not tied to a specific vendor or software solution.)
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3:00 - 3:45 p.m.

Is a Taco a Sandwich? (And Other Hard Questions)
Presenters
- Jacob DeGeal - Web & Interactive Communications - Illinois State
Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center
For the past year and half, this simple innocent question has challenged friendships, hijacked whiteboards, and sparked heated happy-hour debates within our office. We were even able to tickle the fancy of Chris Hardwick during last year’s HighEdWeb keynote address. So why has this question become such an obsession to us? Because it’s not just about tacos. It’s about organization. Balance. As professionals in higher education, we work in systemic chaos every day -- from political posturing and institutional wrangling, to technology workarounds and daily droning maintenance. At Illinois State University, a recent redesign of our central news hub proved that this chaos could be tempered, dare we say controlled. It meant tackling the tricky balance of institutional marketing with distributed content creation. I will cover some of the tactics used to organize people, departments, and egos (both large and small) and how it lead to not only political victories, but new competitive ways to market the university.
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The Ultimate Time Saver: Building a Responsive Pattern Library
Presenters
- Jenny Slaughter - NewCity
Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center
Take a look under the hood at three pattern libraries developed using popular responsive frameworks. Learn how designers and developers can work together to identify reusable layout components, and turn these into flexible building blocks. Of course, the hard part is teaching people to use the patterns the way they were intended. We'll share some successful examples of this, too.
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Tags
- RWD
- front-end
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Snapchat: More Than Selfies
Presenters
- Tony Dobies - West Virginia University
- Candace Nelson - West Virginia University
Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center
Snapchat can be more than selfies. In fact, it can be a key recruiting and relationship-building tool for your university. We’ll take a look at Snapchat campaigns from West Virginia University and examples from other universities from around the country that are using the app successfully. For those already using Snapchat at their university, we’ll also talk about different strategies for overcoming some of the limitations of the app and discuss the future of the app in higher ed. In this session, you will learn: • Why you should be on Snapchat • How to use Snapchat as a University • Examples of successful Snapchat campaigns at universities • The future of Snapchat and how it could affect higher ed
Tags
- marketing
- social
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How Life Lessons from Jane Austen Helped a One-person Communications Team
Presenters
- Lisa Catto - Western Oregon University
Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single-person communications team must be in want of efficiency tips and commiseration. And coffee. Lots of coffee. In an era of declining budgets and expanding duties, many of us alone manage significant portions of the communications efforts at our campuses. While there is value to the flexibility of being responsible for everything yourself, it can be highly stressful and may lead to inefficient multitasking, losing track of tasks, or even worse, burnout. When I get stressed out, I often turn to Jane Austen and her brilliant stories and characters. I’ve found that her classic stories provide valuable life advice that is applicable to those bearing the burden of being a one (wo)man team. Pulling from my experience as the campus-wide media relations and social media expert for a mid-sized public university, I share suggestions for how to work smart, how to get support from others and how to...gasp...say “no” on occasion. Regency attire heartily encouraged.
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Tags
- collaborating
- directors and managers
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Building a DIY Student Portal from Scratch
Presenters
- Gary Kuhlmann - Valdosta State University
- Keith Warburg - Valdosta State University
- Bobby Lacey - Valdosta State University
- Ashley Williams - Valdosta State University
Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center
No one wants to remember another password. So why do your faculty, staff and students have to keep a list of passwords, IDs, and usernames for your campus email, classroom, and registration services? You may not have tens of thousands of dollars to put down on a service portal to gather everything; the Web Team at Valdosta State definitely didn’t in 2012 when they launched MyVSU. By creating partnerships across divisions with design, IT, communications and others, they developed a dynamic portal, maintained by the entire campus. Developing your own service portal in-house not only saves your institution expensive setup and service fees, but also allows the talented people you have on campus to flex their creative muscles and deliver exactly what your constituents need. By providing a single sign-on, customizable portal for all of your campus services, you can serve your students, faculty, and staff, while gaining a captive audience for targeted institutional communications. Imagine: A student failing Math 1101 receives an email alert with information about math tutoring, or any of the other thirty services offered! The portal also allows advisers to directly connect to their students via a messaging component, and more. The VSU Web Team will discuss the challenges and opportunities that arose during the implementation of the portal, as well as share the developments and evolution of the portal. Attendees will be able to ask questions about the portal, the design process, and the data warehouse project in order to help streamline web services on their campuses.
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Web Strategery: An Effective Way to Say No to "Click Here"
Presenters
- Todd Barber - University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center
Websites can quickly get out of control with input, advice, suggestions, and directives coming from every direction. During our recent redesign, we decided to align our site with the university's mission and strategic plan. Keeping these two items at the forefront of the redesign process allowed us to make key decisions that would have been difficult otherwise. We started with a single strategy and we quickly saw the shortcomings of trying to be too generic. We ended with an overall web strategy that has a four-pronged approach to emerging technology, architecture, content, and design. Each strategy (including the overall) has three or four goals associated with it, and represents many of the common issues faced as we build and maintain websites. For our web group, it allows us to continually keep our focus on what is important, and if needed, change a goal based on the ever-changing web world. For our campus community, the strategies are presented in a simple way and have been documented (which makes them "official"), so that they can easily be shared and taught.
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Tags
- redesigns
- content strategy
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Not Yet Scheduled

3:45 - 5:00 p.m.

Refreshment Break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

3:45 - 5:00 p.m.

Posters

6:30 - 10:30 p.m.

HighEdWeb Big Social Event
Location: Harley-Davidson Museum®

Room:Harley-Davidson Museum®

Wednesday, Oct. 7

7:30 - 8:30 a.m.

Breakfast
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

8:30 - 8:45 a.m.

Red Stapler (Best of Track) announcement
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Sponsor exhibits open
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Red Stapler: Slacking Off at Work

Presenters

Lacy Paschal - Vanderbilt University

Location: 102B, Wisconsin Center

SLACK. It's no longer a bad word at work. Slack is the communication platform that will change how your team works. In this session we'll explore how Vanderbilt University implemented Slack in their Web Communications office, integrated it with their help desk, project management system, code repositories, and how it completely changed the culture of the office. (Oh, and there may be some incoming Slack messages from some of our friends in Milwaukee ... and some at home!)

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Presenters

Peter Anglea - Bob Jones University

Location: 102D, Wisconsin Center

I won't sugarcoat it. Creating responsive email isn't easy. In fact it's hard. Like, harder-than-coding-for-IE6 hard. But everyone is saying how valuable email marketing is. Furthermore, having responsive email designs is just as important as having as having a responsive website when you consider that more than 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device. Multiply that by the millions of emails your institution delivers annually, and that adds up to a big problem. Or a big opportunity, depending on how you look at it. In this session, we'll roll up our sleeves and cover the best practices in responsive email. Like responsive web design, mastering responsive emails involves changes in how we write, design, and code. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

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Presenters

Amy Grace Wells - University of South Carolina

Location: 103C, Wisconsin Center

It was a tough spring at University of South Carolina. With a campus shooting, blackout, and a student incident that went viral, in addition to weather-related updates, the social team has been busy... busy learning lessons on how to manage mobs, keep parents calm, and provide timely communications in complicated situations. Being strategic and staying on brand can happen in times of crisis. In this session you'll learn: • How to work with executive leadership to get messages out without the paralysis of crafting the "perfect" message. • How to manage a mob and keep a cool head. • How to move forward and get back to normal after the worst case scenario.

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Presenters

Larry Falck - Francis Marion University

Location: 102C, Wisconsin Center

No, that's not a typo. Improv, or improvisation, has made the leap from the stage and TV to the workplace. Actually, it's always been there -- rarely is anything in our life rehearsed. Larry has been a member of Ten Piece Bucket, an improvisational comedy troupe in Florence, South Carolina, for five years, and has been active in theater for more than twenty. His presentation will lay out the basic guidelines of improvisation and show you how to apply them to your workplace. Beginning at "yes, and," he'll also ponder whether the rules of improv can be directly applied to the workplace, or if some tweaking is needed. Be prepared to participate, there may be some demonstrations!

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Presenters

Kristofer Karol - Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Location: 103B, Wisconsin Center

Gone are the days when we could get away with sending out a tweet to a news release or posting a mugshot of an award-winning faculty member on our Facebook page. Leadership demands results and, when it comes to students, we need to think outside the box to engage them and build our brands (and ambassadors). Learn how Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis went from a social media graveyard to a thriving online community thanks to creative campaigns such as "50 Things to Do Before You Graduate," "Positive Post-It Day," and an April Fools' Day prank that saw cats roaming the campus.

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Presenters

Melissa Dix - Beloit College
Bill Mortimer - Beloit College
Jason Hughes - Beloit College

Location: 101B, Wisconsin Center

When Beloit College retooled its recruitment materials and positioning, the approach hinged on the college’s ability to showcase the accelerated pulse of what seemed, from the outside, to be a small and sleepy campus. Under the theme “Liberal Arts Amplified”, the communications and web team set out to illustrate this energy on the website and elsewhere, and found along the way that in this case, less was more (and more was more). Borrowing from new approaches (in HTML5) and best practices, we built a new site that serves to highlight campus life, offerings, and students, and to do so in a way that is more authentic, more powerful, and less time consuming than preparing video package after video package. Along the way, we found that we could easily and cheaply replicate this approach across campus, through retargeting, and even on livestreaming holding slides -- and do all that with a ¼ time videographer and a half dozen student workers. This session will provide an overview of how we implemented video across our site (the plan, process, and implementation) and what we’ve seen and heard as a result. We’ve discovered that while a picture might be worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.

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9:45 - 10:00 a.m.

Refreshment Break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

10:00 - 10:30 a.m.

Awards and recognitions including Best of Conference Award
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

10:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Scott Stratten

11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Lunch
Location: Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom C/D, Wisconsin Center

11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Conference check-in and information
Location: First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

Room:First Floor Foyer, Wisconsin Center

1:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Workshops

2:30 - 3:00 p.m.

Refreshment Break
Location: Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Room:Ballroom A/B, Wisconsin Center

Annual Conference 2015

Saturday, Oct. 3

Sunday, Oct. 4

Words. Words. Words. How to Write Sizzling Content That Gets Read and Gets Action

Presenters

Storytelling with On-Brand News Content

Presenters

Managing a Large Site With WordPress

Presenters

Developing and Maintaining Web Content: An Idea Generating Workshop

Presenters

Responsible Responsive

Presenters

Monday, Oct. 5

#AIM1: Searching for Direction: Using a Search-Based Homepage to Direct Users

Presenters

Tags

#DPA1: A Fresh Perspective on Responsive Web Design

Presenters

Tags

#MCS1: Your Email Is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad, Too

Presenters

Tags

#MPD1: Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Fighting a Hard Battle

Presenters

Tags

#TIE1: Create a Batman, Not a Robin -- How to Get the Most of Your Student Staff

Presenters

Tags

#UAD1: Your Website Is a Window, Not a Billboard

Presenters

Tags

#COR1: The Wizard of Optimization

Presenters

#AIM2: Open-source Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Presenters

Tags

#DPA2: Demystifying Responsive Email

Presenters

Tags

#MCS2: I Shouldn't Need a Doctorate to Read Your Website

Presenters

Tags

#MPD2: How to Boil the Ocean

Presenters

Tags

#TIE2: Creating the Competitive Edge: Making Student Learning Experiences Valuable for the Job Market

Presenters

Tags

#UAD2: Universal Interaction Design: Making It Click for Everyone, Everywhere

Presenters

Tags

#COR2: Web Redesign 101 – Redesign Done Right, the First Time

Presenters

Tags

#AIM3: Data “Silo” SMACdown : Enter the EIP

Presenters

Tags

#DPA3: Stop Reinventing the Wheel: Build Responsive Websites Using Bootstrap

Presenters

Tags

#MCS3: How to Use Data to Drive Content

Presenters

Tags

#MPD3: It Takes A Campus To Raise A (Web Professionals) Community

Presenters

Tags

#TIE3: Social Storytelling, Student Orientation, and a New Way to Knowledge

Presenters

Tags

#UAD3: Doing Accessibility Right the First Time -- or Maybe the Second

Presenters

Tags

#COR3: Getting to the Good Stuff or Why Less is STILL More

Presenters

#AIM4: Building WordPress to Scale

Presenters

Tags

#DPA4: Let’s Get Sassy: Responsive Design with Foundation and Sass

Presenters