HE Connect Manchester 2022
Let’s make higher education better
The conference was tailored for digital leaders in higher education and featured 2 packed days with a carefully curated mixture of talks, workshops, activities and world class facilitators, thought-provokers, speakers and session leads.
Program
Tuesday, September 27
8:30 - 9:30: Breakfast and registration
9:30 - 9:45: Welcome & Opening
by our host Louis Georgiou, Code and our moderator Janus Boye, Boye & Co
How to overcome the challenges of running multi-channel campaigns
9:45 - 10:30
by Ashley Coidan, Head of Web and Email Communications at University of Cambridge
How does an 800-year-old institution plan and implement multi-channel campaigns with its alumni?
Hear how we look to overcome the challenges with a mixture of planning, goodwill and negotiation between channel teams.
Along the way, we'll look at volunteer-led WeChat groups, why we've abandoned split-tests in cross-channel campaigns and how we evaluate performance.
10.30 - 11:00 Coffee & networking
Staff intranets and student apps have completely different audiences, content, requirements and user needs... or do they?
How do we really know?
Take a peek into our discovery phase and what we've learned so far.
Re-engaging alumni, one milestone anniversary at a time
11.45 - 12.30
Led by Tina Schmechel, Alumni Communications & Digital Marketing Coordinator at Imperial College London
How can universities engage with graduates they don’t hold up-to-date contact details for? Graduates that haven’t connected with their alma mater in decades?
In 2020, Imperial College London’s Alumni Relations team set out to overcome one of the sector’s most persistent challenges and re-engage with alumni that left the College up to 70 years ago to celebrate the milestone anniversary of their graduation.
Tina Schmechel, Alumni Communications & Digital Marketing Coordinator at the College, will explore how Imperial’s ‘Time to Celebrate’ milestone campaign managed to incentivise alumni to reconnect with the College, resulting not only in a high percentage of email consent and updated address information but inspiring alumni to give to the College or volunteer their time to support current students.
Now in its third year, the campaign continues to build a sense of belonging and celebrate graduates’ lifelong connection with Imperial. It was recognised with a CASE Circle of Excellence Award in 2022.
12:30 - 1.30 Lunch
How do we make digital services more sustainable?
1.30 - 2.30
Led by Hannah Smith, Training and Operations Manager at The Green Web Foundation
Many people are still under the notion that digital is intrinsically green and even good for the environment. But if the internet was a country it would be the seventh biggest emitter of carbon in the world, and it's thought to produce more carbon emissions than the aviation industry.
The cloud isn’t as fluffy and harmless as we’re led to believe...
In this talk, we’ll discuss how:
digital technologies cause climate impacts;
anyone can take meaningful action to improve the sustainability of the tech they build, manage, or use;
to spot greenwashing in the digital tech sector.
2.30 - 3.00 Coffee & networking
Digital engagement, social learning and scaling up
15.00 - 15.45
Led by Tara Hawes, Senior Digital Platform Lead at Coventry University
While the benefits of social learning on a global scale via MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are becoming well known, the challenge of scaling up and incorporating learning design principles conducive to social learning into fee-paying degree courses has only grown.
At Coventry University Online, we started producing online-only degree courses designed to promote social learning well before the pandemic, so were in a good place to step up and share our content with the wider university group once Covid restrictions were put in place.
Now we’re moving into the ‘new normal’, the challenge only continues to grow. Discover the lessons we’ve learned along the way and how we’ve overcome some key challenges – and consider the challenges still to come as we continue to scale up at pace.
Ashley in your inbox
15.45 - 16.30
By Ashley Budd, Director of Marketing Operations at Cornell University
Each of us (easily) receives over one hundred emails each day. With all of this competition, how can you ensure your communication is getting in front of your readers?
See email examples from Cornell University’s advancement communication team, which boasts high open and unique click rates.
Learn how to curate quality content for your newsletter and boost engagement for each of your constituent emails.
4.30 - 5.00 Coffee & networking
5.00 - 6.00 Lightning Talks
As the name suggests, lightning talks give speakers a limited amount of time to make their presentation – around 10 - 15 minutes. They may or may not include slides.
Because lightning talks are brief, it requires the speaker to make their point clearly and rid the presentation of non-critical information. This, in turn, helps keep the attention of the audience. It also means many ideas can be presented in a short amount of time.
Talks:
* Domain discovery by Gavin Colborne, MD at Little Forest
* Making Search work by Francesco Martino, Web communications manager @ European University Institute
* Our UX Tech Stack by Claus Stadel, UX Designer @ Aarhus University
* Pesonalisation by Piero Tintori, CEO @ Terminalfour — view slide
* Tech for Good Initiative with Manchester Deaf Centre by Toby Burkill, Design Lead @ Code Computerlove
* Writing for accessibility by Simon Jones, Studio 24 — view slides
6.30 - 10:00 Social event
Our very own container is booked at Foundry Project on Thomas St. Join us for an informal networking dinner.
Wednesday, September 28
6:30 Morning Run
We meet in front of Code for a relaxed 25 minute run
8:30 - 9:30 Breakfast and networking
9:30 - 9.45: Morning welcome
Super-charged social – enhancing our online presence beyond the pandemic
9:45- 10.15
By Alistair Beech, SoMe & Digital Comms Manager at University of Manchester
Alistair will explore how one of the largest UK universities emerged from the pandemic and enhanced their online presence through impactful content related to research communications and student experience.
Learn how his team’s work via social media platforms led to positive outcomes with internal and external audiences.
More than compliance: a web development team’s perspective on building accessibility
10.15 - 10.45
Led by Lucy Anscombe, Web Development Manager at University of Stirling
As developers we love to streamline systems and processes, automate wherever possible, and try to prioritise building better for everyone.
In this session I’ll share how all of these ideas were challenged while working through our accessibility journey at the University of Stirling.
For once it's definitely a case of needing to sweat the small stuff!
10.45 - 11.00 Coffee & networking
Improving User Journeys in a multi-system landscape
11.00 - 12.30
By Claus Stadel, User experience designer at Aarhus University
If your institution is anything like Aarhus University, the student's digital experience is scattered across a vast range of touchpoints and systems. All of which are like day and night in design, architecture and tone of voice.
Our digital landscape at Aarhus University includes more than 20 different student facing systems.
Learn about how we’ve begun to create seamless user journeys across these systems, by bridging gaps, connecting touchpoints and breaking down silos.
I'll be giving a few live demos of how we bring down friction in everyday student life and we’ll have room for group discussions on how you can do it in your own institution.
12.30 - 1.30 Lunch
Panel: Preparing for what comes next
1.30 - 2.30
Panelists: Alistair Beech, Ashley Budd & Louis Georgiou
Moderator: Janus Boye