The leaves are changing. Hotels are booked. Extra business cards are printed. Yup, you guessed it. It’s conference season! All over the US right now are this year’s Higher Ed leaders converging to discuss the latest trends and technologies in our markets. Though the ROI isn’t the most quantifiable for college administrators attending these events, I think we could all agree on the amount of learning that’s done when we get there.

As college administrators spend their days strategizing on how to save money, increase yield, spread their institution’s message, and engage their audience, we spend our days figuring out how they can use Facebook to do all of those things. At Inigral, we see conferences as an opportunity to help college administrators solve those problems by educating them on Facebook’s value add in Higher Ed. Our three week fall conference tour started in Denver at Educause, then over to Dallas for AACRAO SEM, then to Boston for AMA.

EDUCAUSE

At this year’s Educause conference, our CEO Michael Staton co-presented a poster presentation on Schools on Facebook’s impact on retention at Arizona State University. Director of ASU Online, Emily Dalton Smith, discussed the school’s reasoning for working with Inigral to implement Schools on Facebook on their campus, while Staton addressed Inigral’s approach to addressing the specific retention challenges ASU had, through our Facebook application.

AACRAO SEM

In Dallas, AACRAO SEM 2009 was great to get a chance to meet a group of folks who were all trying to figure out how to solve their challenges around enrollment and yield by using social media. During our presentation, there was only standing room to hear about using Facebook to achieve enrollment management goals. Inigral’s president, Mark Triest, did an excellent job keeping the audience captivated and engaged for a whopping 90 minutes! I guess it comes naturally after having 20 years worth of higher ed technology stories to accent the Schools on Facebook value proposition!

AMA

And today, our team just wrapped up in Boston for the 2009 AMA Marketing Symposium. Yesterday evening, we sponsored a networking event for the attendees. While , we had the opportunity to attend some of today’s sessions, including one with folks from National Louis University on the new communication gap.

After the dust settles back in Berkeley, we’ll be writing a more in-depth summary of what we learned from this year’s conference season. But until then, keep on learning!