Fresh off this month’s successful HigherEds Huddle in Ann Arbor, Laurel Thomas Gnagey, our genial host and director of internal communications at the University of Michigan, had these bits of advice for other schools considering following in her footsteps. (It’s never too soon to volunteer to host Huddle 2013!)

• Consider collaboration with area universities. I found the help from Doris, Sonya and Steve invaluable and I think they welcomed the chance to help a peer from the Midwest.
• Use this as an opportunity to invite area colleges and universities to attend. Ohio State, Wayne State, Eastern Michigan and Washtenaw Community College were very excited to have this information and meet with others. Might open the doors to other collaboration. HigherEds probably got a few new folks, I suspect.
• One of the things that I worried about but that turned out to be great is that I asked some people who don’t do internal communications to come and share what they are doing, knowing that their work is more focused on external but that the overall concepts still apply. This was especially true in social media, and I think it was a hit. I don’t think everything needs to be narrowly focused on our internal publications and practices. I know I started out building the agenda that way and worried once I “strayed” about the fit, but it turned out just fine.
• The bus tour was a hit. I haven’t been to many of these but my sense is that such things have not been a part of the plan before. Generally, I think people want to experience the campuses they visit, and a 60-90-minute bus tour didn’t seem to be too much on top of our first long day.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff. I kept telling everyone here that this group is so laid back and that participants are just grateful for a good program and the chance to get together. Although we worked hard for a strong program and a great experience, I knew if it had not turned out perfectly that this group would be forgiving.

We’ll also resurrect some financial advice shared last year on the HigherEds listserv by Carla Cantor of Rutgers University, host of the Huddle in July 2011:

If any of you are trying to convince your higher ups on hosting, here’s some expense info.

The total Rutgers tab for last year’s Huddle was $3,200. We had a few unexpected costs, like the IT Department charging more than we thought they would for equipment and setup. We also ordered more food than we needed for the 60+ attendees each day.

My feeling is that you could put on a great conference for about $2,000 if you can get space and equipment for free. $1,000 of the $3,200 was for equipment ($500)and giveaways ($500), which really aren’t necessary. (Does anyone use their Rutgers bags?)

A detailed expense spreadsheet is attached (MS Excel).

Conference attendees huddle at Michigan Stadium in July as part of our tour of the U of M campus.

Whether you traveled to Ann Arbor, participated virtually on UStream, or just wished you were there, you can now relive the highlights of this summer’s HigherEds huddle online. Links to presentations (mainly PowerPoint) from most of the sessions have been added to the Huddle 2012 agenda that we posted last month. I’ll be adding links to the websites featured in the closing Show and Tell! presentation as soon as I receive them.

We had some requests for the Huddle video that was shot and edited for the session yesterday. Marcin sent this through: http://youtu.be/6RUcU7k3cWs

Great sessions so far at the 2012 Higher Eds Huddle at the University of Michigan. So far today we’ve covered melding print and online publications, the many guises of social media, and creating video without breaking the bank. Next up: paying for (some of) it all through advertising sales. I’m hoping to get copies of the presentations linked from this site later today, as soon as we can get them copied off the master laptop. And as Monette noted a bit earlier (howdy to College Park!), Andrea Alexander, from Rutgers, is streaming the Huddle on UStream, both live sessions and archived presentations: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/michigan-huddle

The 2012 Higher Eds Huddle is barely a fortnight away, and plans and schedules are coming together, thanks to Laural Thomas Gnagey and the team at our host school, the University of Michigan. If you’re a real procrastinator, there’s still room to join in if you email them right away (before Wednesday, June 27) at ehuddles@umich.edu. We’ll also try to get presentation slideshows and handouts posted here on the HigherEds site, for those of you unable to make it to Ann Arbor.