You returned from your last EDUCAUSE Annual Conference energized, inspired, and armed with enough ideas to fill three notebooks and six strategic planning meetings. You can't wait to tell your colleagues about the brilliant sessions you attended, the innovative campus initiative you discovered, and the conversations that completely changed your perspective.
Then you spend the next month trying to explain it all.
There’s an easier way: bring your team! (Pssst! We love this idea so much, there’s even a team registration discount.)
In a conference packed to the gills with opportunities to learn, connect, and discover what's next in higher education technology, one of the biggest advantages of attending as a team is experiencing it together. After all, the “divide and conquer” method works best when you’re not an army of one.
For example, your CIO can attend sessions on strategy and leadership. IT staff can explore emerging technologies and operational best practices. Teaching and learning professionals can dive into innovations impacting the classroom. Information security teams can focus on protecting institutional data and systems. Then everyone gathers at the end of the day to compare notes, share insights, and connect the dots.
It's basically crowdsourcing professional development.
Attending as a group also creates opportunities to have the conversations you rarely have time for back on campus. Removed from overflowing inboxes, back-to-back meetings, and the daily grind, teams can step back and think bigger. A session on AI might spark a discussion about institutional priorities. A conversation in the EDUCAUSE Commons could lead to a new approach to student success. An unexpected hallway chat might provide the missing piece for a challenge your team has been trying to solve for months.
The ideas are valuable. The conversations about the ideas are where the magic happens. One past participant agrees:
“My favorite track is the leadership one. I find that the opportunity to learn and grow with others at varying stages of their leadership journey is priceless.”
And we haven’t even touched on the networking advantage. Your team arrives with an instant community and leaves with an expanded one. As you meet peers from other institutions, you'll build a larger professional network that benefits not just one person but your entire institution.
Plus, conferences are simply more fun when you have people to share them with. Whether you're debriefing after a thought-provoking session, exploring the latest solutions in the exhibit hall, or grabbing dinner in Denver after a packed day of learning, the experience becomes a great teambuilding opportunity for you and your colleagues..
The best part? The value doesn't end when the conference does.
When multiple people return to campus energized by the same experience, momentum builds quickly. Ideas move faster. Insights spread further. And turning inspiration into action becomes a whole lot easier.
So this year, skip the post-conference marathon of “here’s everything I learned at #EDU26.” Bring your team and enjoy the experience…without all the pressure.
