Month: September 2009

Brand Management Summit canceled

I’m saddened to report that Educational Marketing Group‘s Brand Management Summit has been canceled. EMG president Bob Brock posted about the cancellation last Thursday on EMG’s Brand Manager’s Notebook blog. The summit was scheduled for Oct. 19-21 in Denver, and I was on the schedule to present as the recipient of EMG’s inaugural International Brand Master award.

While I’m bummed out about not being able to attend this summit, I can certainly sympathize with EMG and understand the reasons for canceling it. Tight budgets, travel restrictions and concerns about H1N1 all combine to create a perfect storm scenario that will probably affect a lot of conference plans this fall. And for a small, specialized event like this summit, which can’t absorb many cancellations, the current state of economics and health worries has got to be even more trying.

“It was a difficult decision,” Bob writes in his blog post. “But the truth is that over the past few weeks we’ve fielded many serious concerns from Summit registrants over deepening budget cutbacks, freezes on travel, and an increasing number of incidents of the H1N1 virus across the country.”

Since we are committed to maintaining the Summit’s premier quality and highly interactive nature, we believe that it’s in the best interest of all of our registrants to cancel this year’s event.

We do so only reluctantly, since we know the decision will disappoint many marketing professionals who were looking forward to this year’s Summit. We were, too.

It really is the only venue of its kind where marketing practitioners can truly focus on discussing and creating real-world branding strategies and tactics for their institutions. And we’re absolutely committed to bringing the extraordinary Summit event back next year, bigger and better than ever.

I hope to make next year’s summit. I like the idea of a smaller, more focused conference, and would love to participate in such an event.

Friday Five: places to go, people to see

It’s Friday Five time:

  1. As reported here earlier, Elizabeth Allen (@lizallen on Twitter) is now blogging. Huzzah! Liz’s blog is called Adaptivate, and it should be on everybody’s blogroll, RSS feed, delicious faves, whatever you use to manage your required reading resources. Liz is associate director of alumni relations at the Caltech Alumni Association and is one of the best around when it comes to integrating social media tools with traditional alumni relations practices. Her blog may be new, but Liz is no stranger to the craft of blogging. She’s guest-posted here a couple of times — first, about her lessons learned from a CASE conference we attended in April 2008, and more recently some good insights about working with unofficial Facebook groups.
  2. Another newcomer to the higher ed blog scene is Davina Gould (@davinagould), who started her graduate/professional school marketing blog in August. Davina is a marketer at a law school somewhere in Florida, and her blog (so far) offers practical and thoughtful insights on such topics as promoting social media on your campus, using Google Documents as a productivity tool and handling the death of a campus public figure. Welcome aboard, Davina!
  3. Have you tested Facebook Lite yet? It’s got a third less sidebar gunk than the regular Facebook. Great taste, less filling. Here’s a review of the new interface.
  4. The CASE website has a new look. The site also provides a nifty section to guide you through the changes.
  5. Remember what happened on this date eight years ago. Here’s a video to help you remember: 9/11: Stories of Survival and Loss, from the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Or if music’s more your thing, listen to Bruce Springsteen’s Into the Fire, from his album in memory of 9/11, The Rising. I think I may listen to that entire album today.