Might you indulge us just a bit? We know moments of accomplishment can be off-putting if done poorly, but when so many industry experts re-affirm our value proposition…well, suffice it to say we are genuinely excited. Plus, our good fortune might just translate to your own!
Educause 2018 is in the books. Thousands of college and university professionals descended on Denver, Co, under the big-blue-bear, and networked, ideated, and generally seemed to learn. For us, it was an honor to be a part of it!
As we blogged recently and was made obvious by the banner on our website, we were admitted to the “Start-Up Alley” program through Educause. So, along with 48 other emerging companies, we were able to showcase our solution(s) throughout the conference, talking with dozens of CIO’s, VPAA’s, eLearning Directors, and more.
We Won An Award
The first notable experience for us was tremendous success in the “Under the Ed Tech Radar” pitch competition. We were delighted to be included in the competition, sponsored (and judged) by Amazon AWS. Other judges included Tom Andriola (CIO of the University of California system), Sabina Saksena (Founder and CEO of Cytilife – last year’s pitch winner), and Chris LaConte (Chief Strategy Officer of SpyCloud – last year’s pitch competition runner-up). But as excited as we were to present, it was incredibly re-affirming to be chosen as the runner-up! (The first place winner had the sexiest of products…artificial intelligence grading for computer science class work…replace your Teaching Assistants today! Congratulations to Sense Education.)
Very exciting was the feedback we received about the need in higher education for a far more connected experience. Also compelling was that one judge really wanted us to win, but conceded to the bleeding edge technology play. This led to a lot of traffic from audience members who want to talk about how to better connect their systems and content, but also their people. We loved hearing that so many college and university administrators have finally come to understand the power in that, even though they are struggling to find many solutions…at least until now!
The Connectedness Grant
But despite the winning position, the scads of conversations / demonstrations we gave, and the (literally) dozens of meetings we will be having with those schools in the next month or so, it cannot be lost that the “Connectedness Grant” we are co-sponsoring went live.
The Institute for Inter-Connected Education delivered a powerful, pre-conference workshop on how to build, work, and “live” within a learning ecosystem. The culmination of that workshop was the unveiling of the grant and we were thrilled to take part as we helped those education leaders and administrators see how to start building a much better learning ecosystem with Campus.
For those of you who are seeking those same kinds of things – connectedness for your people, integrated experiences with systems, and ROI on a portal / mobile app experience specific to enrollment, retention, and beyond – please apply! The grant is open from November 2, 2018 – February 1, 2019!
All in all, thanks to anyone who came by to see us at Educause. We hope our enthusiasm was obvious and maybe even infectious. It’s truly compelling to us to see our solution(s) be met with approval and affirmation from so many education leaders. Thank YOU for helping us turn student success into a truly collaborative experience.
The Campus Team
