So despite spending a significant amount of time bitching about this headcold I have, I’m having a great time at the 40th CASE/NAIS conference here in NYC.
One thing that has struck me is the lack of social media presence here. Granted this isn’t a tech conference. They have been advertising the #casenais hashtag, but I’m guessing that there are only a half dozen twitter users using it- a number not helped by the fact that there isn’t wireless in the conference rooms thus why I’m writing this on my iPhone.
I think that scenario sums up the over all situation with these tools and how independent schools use them. They understand it’s important and that it’s where their young alumni (and I would argue that their not so young alumni and current parents) are. They understand it’s where they need to be but they’re not serious in their approach to how they use these marketing tools.
Ignorance is an ugly word, but I see it in the use of social media here. I sat in on one session where the presenters encouraged the audience to make up a fake personal profile for their schools. Thankfully someone in the crowd stood up and pointed out that to do so is against Facebook’s TOS and could result in the profile getting nuked.
I’m not pointing this out to be critical, but rather I see a huge opportunity for rockstars. These schools are just diving into these media, and there are only a handful that do it well.
This gets me so pumped! I feel like this is the new frontier and we’re pushing west baby! More challenges to be sure. We’re working with minors, and in my case, an elite (can’t pretend it’s not) school with a lot of old school New England prep school history. That beast is not one that loves change and openness that the Web 2.0 world requires. That being said, we’ve got resources. We got talented students, alumni, and parents. There’s no reason we can’t be rockstars.
Groton had and maybe still has a reputation for being old school and behind the times when it comes to this stuff. I want to change that. I want to be at the top. I want people to think of us when the think of schools who are doing this social media thing right. I know we can get there.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
@drewmillikin 
You hit it on the nail with “ignorance.” It doesn’t take long to jump in and read some blogs and figure out how Twitter and Facebook pages work, but I got the feeling at CASE/NAIS that a lot of our colleagues were just too busy telling themselves that they don’t have time to read about it and investigate the possibilities that social media will open up for their schools.
Nice to connect with you, fellow rockstar.