And so it begins, HighEdWeb 2010, Cincinnati, October 10-13, 2010. This is Worf, the Tribble. He’s my travel buddy.
Tag: heweb10
What’s Trending
Debra Goldentyer asked the following question on the HighEdWeb Ning site: “What’s the big buzz this year? mobile? apps? social media? CMS revisited?”
The quick answer is yes.
I think people going to the conference are doing all of these things – just check Twitter for the conference hashtag #heweb10: make a mobile site before the mobile app; WordPress 3 Basic; dotCMS; social media expanding into location applications like foursquare, facebook touch, Gowalla, Yelp, Google Latitude, etc.
Perhaps the latest buzz is location based applications for smartphones because no one has really come full circle on them yet. We don’t know the full extent or what’s possible.
Like the others said, location based applications are growing. They offer more precise control of information distribution – e.g. on the campus tour a visitor could get a building’s information, services housed there, etc. Location applications also offer local search (precise down to the building or room) – e.g. foursquare now offers university services…so a student searches foursquare for coffee at 11pm and finds all the spots on campus that are open that serve coffee and gets a map to each. Also, your services like campus bookstore could offer “specials” through foursquare. The marketing possibilities are virtually endless.
Contrary to location based applications, most universities (at HighEdWeb) have gotten their feet wet with a CMS or three. They’ve made (or are making) mobile sites and mobile apps. I think the term “social media” has become mainstream and benign. Some universities jumped in feet first are now they’re trying to figure out what to do in social media; evaluation after experimentation. I think “Social Media Policy” is trending.
P.S.
“Buzz” is so 2007. Now it is “trending.”