Attending the 2018 University of Illinois Webcon

By Timothy Howard, Media Relations Coordinator

You can take the man out of Texas, but you can never take Texas out of the man. I recently traveled more than 1,300 miles to the University of Illinois Webcon, a three-day conference for digital marketers and web professionals who work in higher education. Though I was a little nervous about traveling to the Midwest for the first time, I had no idea that I would carry back an even greater knowledge and passion for how we can better serve our distance students at Texas Tech University.

After traveling from sunny and warm Lubbock, Texas, and landing in snowy and cloudy Champaign, Illinois, I knew that I was out of my element. I mean, blizzarding cold weather during the spring? What had I gotten myself into? As the conference kicked off, I began meeting new people and one thing became clear: I was one of the only people from Texas in attendance. Most of the people I would meet had never even been to Texas, had never heard of Lubbock and would have probably thought that Raider Red was a type of hot sauce. I even showed someone a picture of Raider Red and they said, "Whoa, Yosemite Sam is your mascot?"

No, that's Raider Red!

Even though the lack of familiarity made me feel far from home, I began to notice that the passion held by all of the professionals in the auditorium was shared. No matter where we were from, what job we had or what school we represented, we all wanted to get the message out about educational opportunities that could change lives. Webcon taught us not only about specific methods and tools that we should be using to spread our messages, but also the power of storytelling, creativity and meeting students where they are.

The first keynote presentation was from Denise Jacobs with her presentation titled "Swipe Left! Transform Self-Talk to Banish Your Inner Critic and Do Your Best Work." On day two, the keynote presentation was from Jeff Gibbard with his presentation titled "Social Media MBA: How to Bring People and Organizations Together Through Social Technologies." During these keynote presentations I learned how important it is to remove the roadblocks from my own creative processes to craft the best messages that I can for our distance students. They also helped me evaluate the way that eLearning & Academic Partnerships is creating a community with our students who live outside of the Lubbock area by using social technologies.

In addition to the keynote presentations, I also attended several other helpful breakout sessions. "Empathy and the User Experience: Creating Brand Loyalty by Being Real" refocused my attention on the importance of giving our students even more behind-the-scenes looks into what it takes to keep eLearning & Academic Partnerships running day-to-day. "How User Experience Design Addresses Unconscious Bias" gave me even more insight into how we can keep our digital marketing channels free of bias that would favor one group of people over another. Lastly, "Intentionally Instagramming" gave me more ideas as to how we can improve our Instagram and engage with even more students on that platform.

After attending Webcon, I feel that my creativity has improved, my ability to create content for our students has been refined and my appreciation for the marketing team that I work with has increased even more. It was encouraging to see the passion that higher ed professionals across the nation have for serving their students. I want to apply that passion toward spreading a message that no matter where a student lives or what stage of life they are in, Texas Tech University can bring an education directly to them. We give you the freedom to succeed!

 

Flying to Illinois

 

University of Illinois Campus

 

A Morning at Webcon