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This is part 2 of 3 of What We've Learned So Far Creating Alumni Event Videos.

Ignite Boulder is an engaging evening of insightful and fun presentations on a variety of topics. Leeds hosted the pre-parties for Ignite 8 & 9 at the Boulder Drafthouse. We used Twitter and Facebook to bring people out for casual networking, for an opportunity to learn more about Leeds, and share in some awesome beers.

The Ignite 8 pre-party was my first live event use of the Flip cam and I focused on trying to get quick, interesting quotes. Since Ignite is about presenting your ideas, I asked people what they would present on if they made it on, and some interesting stuff came up! I also met actual presenters and they shared on their presentations and some Ignite history. We ended up getting some good quotes because I brainstormed questions beforehand with my teammates. The final video was very DIY and fun! Viewers told us they really liked it:  the quotes, and especially seeing themselves and their friends on camera. 



For Ignite 9, I followed a similar video strategy, but this Ignite was tied to Boulder Startup Week, so I interviewed people on their involvement with the week: what was informative, engaging, etc. At the Ignite event, I also shot b-roll (background footage) of the band, as well as the incredible throngs of people filling the Boulder Theater. This allowed us to give our viewers a deeper context and flavor; it put the event into a physical space, and give a visceral feel to the venue and the incredible crowds of people.



What I learned:
Ignite 8: While it is great to get quotes from a variety of people at an event, make sure find out who the important people are (like organizers, speakers) and get some quotes from them! For these people are very invested and will have interesting things to share! And the more people you interview and the more quotes you get, that will help round out your video and make it compelling.

Ignite 9: Make sure you actually hit the record button! I was looking to get a quote from Andrew Hyde, the main organizer of the event. But Ignite was packed, people everywhere, and then suddenly he was standing a few feet away from me. So I ran up and grabbed him for a quick word. It was great! Good quotes, he's a very nice person and very excited about how much the event had grown. I walked back to my seat euphoric! I got Andrew Hyde! We had rounded out our story with his great quotes. Well, on my way out I checked the camera, and what I got was me walking up the stairs toward Andrew, and he getting ready for me to turn the camera on. Then it cuts to the camera coming away from Andrew, sliding down the wall and me thanking him for his time. What? Where was the interview? Turns out I hit record accidentally on the way up, turned it off when I interviewed him, and turned it back on after we were done. Ouch!

Lesson? Ignite is pretty rowdy and action-packed event. People are everywhere, it is dimly lit and loud. This can be true for many events. So if you see something you want to record, you really need to slow down and double, double check that your little red record light is going! Cause the brutal truth about video is always the same (just like the old saw supposedly asked at weddings): Get it now, or forever hold your peace.

I've done a lot of events in the course of my career, all types and size of events from small and simple gatherings to very large and complex events involving high-profile individuals and lots of moving parts. Experience has taught me there are elements you can control and there are those you cannot. Pick the one thing that, if it fails, the event fails and manage around that one thing. Knowing and planning around these elements are key to event planning sanity and, for the most part, success.

Take our two most alumni gatherings in Los Angeles and Chicago as example. We had a great turn out in L.A., granted we have a very large concentration of alumni there, and we have an absolutely fabulous venue provided to us by one of our loyal and successful alumni Evan Greene. In addition, we provided the food and beverages which even sweetened the event draw for attendees. In the "elements you cannot control" category, we were also very fortunate to have our event fall on an evening in between the playoff nights as the L.A. Lakers were battling the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals. Several members of our alumni community did mention to me that there would be no way they would have attended should the event have fallen on a playoff night. If it had fallen on game night, I would have moved the informal welcome and presentation to earlier in the event and made sure all of the televisions in the venue were tuned to the game.

Chicago presented a different challenge in that the weather became a player in the evening event. And, I have also learned, weather trumps all in event planning. For our October building dedication, the wind blew incessantly up until just before the event. Then, it stopped.This was good because culmination of the dedication involved the unveiling of two 50 foot banners off of the side of the building. Wind would definitely have put the cabash on that. As it turned out, the 700 attendees never knew that the unfurling was ever in question.

Homecoming, generally held under a giant tent outside for 300 plus alumni in was driven inside by a series of snow storms last year. We were fortunate to, 1. be forewarned, 2. have adequate space inside and a flexible caterer and, 3. have an active Social Media program that let us notify folks that the show was still on.

Chicago, however, was a different story in that the inclement weather (wind, rain and tornado warnings) came on suddenly and coincided with the beginning of our alumni reception at the Union League Club of Chicago. To their credit, many of our alumni still braved the elements to show up, but we also did have a good deal of attrition. And who can blame them? In this instance, there was absolutely nothing that we could do to adjust to the weather other than again, use Social Media to notify folks it was still a go. All in all, we still had a very nice event with good conversation and interaction with our loyal grads.

I am collaborating with two Alumni Relations colleagues, Jennifer Eury of the Smeal School of Business at Penn State and Joseph Russell at The Goizueta School of Business at Emory University. We are presenting a panel on metrics around alumni relations (and in my case, communications) at an upcoming Association of Business School Alumni Professionals (ABSAP) conference. I have never met these folks, but we did conference call recently around our preso and our common theme about metrics: it's a moving target.

As we've explained in previous posts, in our office, we measure everything. Well, almost everything. At this point, we have very few ways to measure alumni engagement. There are the usual: alumni giving, event attendance, providing mentorships or internships, speaking in class. These, it can be argued, are indications of a level of engagement. We recently added an alumni blog that I would also argue demonstrates a level of engagement and building relationships, conversations and community.

In any event, whether measuring alumni giving or alumni engagement, why is it important? Well, to be honest, my boss and our advisory board think it is important. But even beyond this consideration, there are a number of reasons metrics are meaningful in my world:

• They help me determine where to invest time, effort and resources;
• They reveal what efforts and initiatives are and are not working;
• They expose obsolete practices and pave the way for new and innovative ideas;
• They educate internal stakeholders about the relevance, impact and success of creating alumni relationships;
• And, they can be inspirational to me and my colleagues for work well done.

My ABSAP colleagues are doing some innovative work themselves in the area of metrics. Smeal is launching a 1-5 scale to measure engagement and how it might relate to philanthropy. Emory is now including alumni participation in Social Media in how it analyzes alumni engagement and possible philanthropic tendencies.

In the end, no matter which strategies and tactics our programs employ, we will continue to seek the best information possible to inform us about what is relevant and important to our alumni want and how we can deliver.

Leeds Social Media Panel July, 2009

I came across an online discussion about the threats and challenges to Alumni Relations in the new media world sparked by a post by social media pioneer Jeremiah Owyang and with corresponding excellent points by Alumni Relations professional and social media pioneer in higher education, Andy Shandlin.  The upshot: absent some strategic response by Alumni Relations programs, social media platforms could soon render these institutions obsolete. The concern is that alumni are being lured away by Social Media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn where they can connect without having to rely on us.  When I launched the Leeds alumni relations effort seven years ago, necessity was the mother of invention. I had no money, no staff, and limited time; these factors amongst others led me to rely on email as a main form communication. Then as now, I also supplemented my communications with limited print pieces promoting large events such as Homecoming. However, recently I have come to the conclusion that:

• Print communications in alumni relations communications are circling the drain;
• Social media and strategic online communications platforms will rule the day.

Several years ago (in part because of Andy Shandlin), I recognized the landscape was changing for communicating with and engaging alumni, especially since the launch of Facebook. More recently, when we combined our alumni relations and communications offices, once again, limited time and financial resources convinced me to eliminate high-maintenance, low-impact print projects for the school as a whole. Concurrently, I was able to create a position dedicated to creating a robust online presence. Since that time, we have established a social media presence in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs (side note: get your institution's SM real estate before someone else does. We were fortunate that an alumnus had already established LinkedIn for Leeds, but was more than happy to hand over management to us when we reached out to them). Subsequently, we are seeing our numbers grow in each of these platforms and more importantly, in increase in the quality of engagement in these platforms.

Media Channel 
Since we combined our programs, we are now operating more like a media channel in that we create all of our content and distribute it across our various platforms. For example, we put a lot of time and effort into our alumni magazine (yes, I said print was dying, but we are currently transitioning our magazine from its historic online PDF to include more dynamic content). Our YouTube postings are a staple now as we have posted over 100 videos of faculty research, faculty and student awards, and students and alumni since we established the account several years ago. Our videos also aid our public relations efforts as we embed the them into the press releases we send to our media contacts. We are also pleased that our faculty now request videos related to their research and ask that they be posted prominently on our website homepage.  

Social Media Engagement
Rather than threatening our existence, we see SM as collapsing geography.True, we don't have to rely on annual membership dues for our funding, though a significant part of our mission is alumni engagement and cultivation with the hope that they will see fit to support the school financially. It's notable that recently the University of Colorado Alumni Association eliminated its dues-based membership and launched its Forever Buffs program. They charge incoming freshman a one time fee and offer an online community to engage students and alumni. For us, we use our social media platforms to extend our brand and reach to our current students and alumni. As I say to my colleagues, we have to meet them where they are and then create interesting, educational and relevant content to enforce our value proposition. How do we measure our reach in these areas? We do an annual brand and alumni communications survey and we also track our metrics in all SM platforms, website analytics and press release data as well. See my colleague's Metric Messiah post for more detail. Across the board, all of our metrics are increasing dramatically. But are we engaging? Recently, an alumna asked to blog for us; which we consider a new wave of engagement. Subsequently, we've had many more alumni asking to participate as well. I consider these developments as signs of much more online alumni engagement to come.

By Sarah G. Martens

I recently received an email from a successful young alumna who is now an MBA student (at the Thunderbird School of Management) and an entrepreneur who developed her eco-friendly business concept while working in the Peace Corps in Peru. She wrote to me:

"Would it be possible to write some sort of blog on the [Leeds School] website about my experience as an entrepreneur and how Leeds helped me to get where I am today? Blogging is my initial thought, but I'd be really excited to take advantage of any ideas you may have."

What a great idea! The only thing is - we didn't have an alumni blog. Yet. One of the wonderful things about working for this small-but-mighty shop that is the Office of Alumni Relations and Communications is that everyone embraces a good idea and these ideas can be implemented quickly and nimbly.

After an informal conversation with the Director and Assistant Director, the alumni blog concept was approved and ready for take-off. The Assistant Director, aka the Blog Guru, went to work and created the new alumni blog, currently titled Alumni Dispatches. The woman who originally emailed me with the idea, Kate Robertson, was our inaugural post and as of this moment we currently have a total of 3 posts submitted, with several more in the queue.

We are excited to see where this goes, as I expect it will be well-received. We are promoting it through our alumni e-newsletter (to 19,000+ people) tomorrow so I'm anxious to see what kind of response we'll get. It's a simple and easy way to engage alumni as well as learn where they are and what they have been up to. What could be better?!? We plan to promote the different posts through social media and I'm confident that some will generate great story ideas for the Portfolio alumni magazine.

So, thank you to Kate for her email and thanks to the team for recognizing and supporting a great suggestion and running with it. If you are an alumnus interested in blogging, please contact Dean.Pajevic@colorado. We'd love to hear from you!

You can check out the variety of Leeds School of Business blogs at www.cuboulderblogs.com

Last week, Leeds sponsored Ignite Boulder 8 (or Igneight as some dubbed it) at the Boulder Theater, Boulder, Colorado. Ignite, for the uninitiated, brings together techies, geeks, artists, and hipsters to hear select speakers address often zany, crazy topics and hilarity ensues (for more, see Melanie's earlier post). Ignite 7 was the first  I attended, though I did watch part of Ignite 6 online. I7 was the reason I decided Leeds should sponsor I8. Not only did one of our professors, Peter McGraw present, but also Leeds MBA Joel Gratz as well, plus the crowd of over 800 attendees included many alumni and current students.

What is amazing about the event is how fun it is; the presentations range but can include techy clever, borderline insane, marginally uncomfortable and downright touching. What sets the event apart is how consistently authentic it is. Though I have only been to two now, they both exhibited the same great level of excitement and energy.

During our pre-party, photo above, at the Boulder Draft House, we had a chance to talk with presenters and attendees about what makes Ignite Boulder special. So, don't just take my word for it, check out what they had to say. Many thanks to Andrew Hyde and the other Ignite volunteers for such a great event!

We are happily sponsoring tonight's Ignite Boulder, AND it is sold-out! Looking forward to a fun and informative show. For those, like me, who have never been before, Ignite is:

"...a night of presentations with a twist. Presenting on a subject of their choice, speakers have exactly five minutes to teach something, enlighten us, or simply inspire--backed by twenty slides auto-advancing every fifteen seconds."

From the videos I have seen of previous presentations, the slides advancing every fifteen seconds really puts the pressure on and quickly separates a greenhorn PowerPoint newbie from a hardened corporate/start-up seeker of V.C. funding PowerPoint jockey. But the fun part is you never know who's going to to flail and who will shine under the bright lights of the Ignite stage.

So, from the Ignite blog, tonight's presentations are:

Ryan Wanger: Topic: (Almost) Nothing is Irreversible: A Guide to Decision Making
Kate Brown: MacGyver your way through dangerous situations: Lifesaving hacks from the sport of triathlon
David Mejias: A baby, a bird and an Afro: How to plan for and make conceptual photographs.
Ali Schultz: Game (ig)Night: The shortest distance between two people is a good laugh.
Tara Anderson: Pain & the Art of Long-Distance Backpacking
Cris Silva: Brazilian Portuguese for Foreigners

Josh Mishell: Minimize Your Hangover & Maximize Your Awesomeness: How to Thrive at a Beer Festival
Lisa Seaman: Clap Happy!
Leela Turnage How Drug Smuggling and A Run-In With the Mexican Army Helped Me Ace Spanish Clas
Matthew Lenda: There IS such a thing as bad music, and it will be the end of us all.
Nick Armstrong: Nerd-gasm AKA The Life Lessons of Geek Heroes
Julie Wallace: Working with SCIs
Gina Bugiada: Drugs, Sex, Love and Environmentalism: 20 things I've Learned During My Move From NEW YORK to Boulder

Learn more about Ignite and join us beforehand for free food and beer from 5-6pm at the Boulder Brew House, or on Twitter @bldrdrafthouse.

Browsing Google Reader at the blogs that I follow, I noticed a new post from Andy Shaindlin's Alumni Futures blog titled: 2010 Alumni Relations Issues for the Year Ahead.  As alumni relations is what I do here for the Leeds School of Business, I figured it would be beneficial to see what Mr. Shaindlin had to say. His main points asked how alumni relations professionals can continue to be relevant and useful and meaningful to our alumni in the face of changing times and advanced technology. With the proliferation of social media and peoples' ability to organize into groups through online tools - do they still need and want us to do that for them? With the extensive reach of Google, Facebook and the white pages online, do alumni still need our help finding and connecting with other alumni?

Andy suggests the answers are yes, and I tend to agree. In this day and age, our alumni EXPECT that we have a presence in these new online spaces and they WANT to be a part of the School's official fan page, group, etc. on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

And we are happy to have them.

But this major shift in how we communicate with our alumni was not obvious or immediate. Many universities and schools had and still have online communities exclusively for their alumni (including CU's Forever Buffs Network and Leeds' LeedsLink). However, as the space of social media has developed, we've come to learn that exclusivity is not always where it's at. For instance, we have been posting job openings to LeedsLink thinking our alumni would find this as an exclusive benefit and visit the site in order to see what jobs were listed. However, my director and I met yesterday with our Career Connections staff to discuss using LinkedIn instead of LeedsLink to post jobs. The group consensus was to find alumni where they already are and to make our LinkedIn group more relevant and dynamic by giving people what they want - opportunities for jobs. Instead of assuming alumni would want to take the extra step to look for jobs on LeedLink, we recognize that we should provide value to them in the space that they already inhabit, LinkedIn.

As this is a brand new change to how we operate, we don't yet know how it'll go, however, I'm optimistic that it will be well received. Exclusivity is sacrificed as alumni could easily forward and share the job posting with whomever they please in their various networks, however, that is the way the world works these days and who are we, alumni relations staff, to stop them!

For a complete list of how you can connect to the Leeds School using social media, including Linkedin, please visit: www.leeds.colorado.edu/socialnetworking

 

Our graphic designer Kristen Weber (who is amazing by the way), just dropped by today to drop off the cutest EOY gift for the office. That got me reflecting on all of the many people and businesses who have positively and generously helped our office and the Leeds School itself over the last year.

Certainly Kristin through her company SugarDesign (@Sugardesigninc on Twitter) has helped shape the look an feel of most all of the Leeds School's publications over the last several years. So, Kudos Kristin. I'd like to give a shout out to many of the others as well so here they are in no particular order:

• Kathryn Marshall, Mitchell Ashley, Elaine Schoch and Patrick Ward at (104West.com) for their assistance in helping us craft a Socal Media strategy as well as helping educate our faculty and staff about SM.
• Amber Hickory, MBA '05 and Pete Burridge and all of the folks at Greenhouse Partners for their expertise, creativity and surely patience in working on new branding and messaging for the school.
• Michael Warden, Associate Vice Chancellor at CU-Boulder for providing cover through this branding process.
• Patrick Walker at Goodbye Blue Monday for his excellent service with all of our special promotions over the year.
• The amazing Carol Ross who helped on two fronts with our alumni and current students through the Naturally Networking teleseminars and the our team through her coaching work a Carol Ross and Associates.
• Marley Hodgson, MBA '03 and founder of Mad Greens that catered our recent Tweetup.
• Gary Bennett at D & K Printing and Kim Warner of CU Communications for guiding our efforts and press checks with our biannual 36+ pager 4 color Portfolio magazine.
• Jeremy Tyson at NSO Press who also does amazing print work on many of our other publications.
• Leeds Alums Nora and Patrick and crew at Front Range Catering for their professionalism and flexibilty when our Homecoming event for 300+ suddenly had to move inside when we were visited by the proverbial 6-8 inches of "clear to partly cloudy" snow.
• Brady Foster and crew at Hip Gifts for saving our alumni awards and thus the alumni awards ceremony from less the perfect recognition items.
• Award-winning photogs Glenn Asakawa and Casey Cass and Andi Farber and Patrick from our photo department.
• Our media liasons, Bronson Hilliard, Greg Swenson, Peter Caughey and Malinda Miller-Huey.    
• Mark Detterick and Bryn Samuelson, our erstwhile budget people (some say bean counters, but these folks are non-trad accountants---hey, they love The Office).
• Christy Orris and Visda Carson for hanging in there with us as we crunched out a strategic plan.
• Finally, the Leeds Alumni Relations and Communications team, Dean Pajevic, Sarah Martens, Melanie Sidwell, and current and former students Tyler McAnelly, Molly Rettig and Gabrielle Makray who manage to get an incredible amount done and done well in '09.

Of course the problem with a list is that I might leave someone out here who really deserves our thanks. If I have done that, I am sorry. Again, my/our most sincere thanks to these folks for all of their support. Also, thanks to the many alumni, donors, friends, business people and businesses who have suppored the school in so many ways this past year. Have a great 2010 everyone!