Yesterday I spent an hour sharing stories of how ETS is using social tools to create and engage our communities. The talk was titled, "Engaging Communities" was relatively well attended and seemed to capture the attention of the audience. The best stuff happened during the question and answer period at the end when we got into a real conversation about how we could be thinking more broadly about engaging our audiences. People really seemed to want to discuss Twitter in particular — the initial reaction is always centered around, "this is the dumbest thing I have heard of." We talked through how Twitter is connected to our primary website and how it has become our number one source of traffic at the ETS site. I think that kind of stunned people. The other thing that stood out was when I showed the ETS is ranked number 2 in search results for "education technology services" … right behind our friends at Berkeley … and in front of about 64 million other results. All in all it was an enjoyable hour and am more than happy to share more thoughts from it.
Presentation: 07/24/2008: TLT Talk
Presentation slides are available as a low resolution PDF … tlt_talk_2008_02.pdf