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  • Extending the Vendor Floor

    By Joshua Kim November 9, 2009 9:08 pm EST

    Can someone help me understand the aggression of ed. tech companies on the EDUCAUSE vendor floor and their passivity in the blogosphere and social media environment?

    Why is it that I could not walk from one end of the vendor floor to another without being assaulted by offers to sit in on a presentation, have a deep conversation about a product or service and the future of education, or receive some SWAG - yet we continue to have very few examples of people who work for ed. tech companies authentically and actively engaging in online debates and conversations?

    My brain does not respond well to come-ons on the vendor floor. I don't want to have a conversation with someone I don't know. I don't want to sit for a presentation that may take more time then I have, and may not contain the information that I need. I don't want any crap to lug home on the airplane. But what I do want is to have conversations with people I already know. Conversations with people I've met through their blog, or on twitter, or who have responded to my blog. I like these conversations because I know and like these people. I understand what their background is and where their passions lie. They have explained what their company is all about and why they get up early each morning and stay late at night to play a part in building their company. I have engaged with these people, and I want them to succeed.

    Why is it the ed. tech. companies are so willing to spend all those dollars to rent a big booth in a prime location, then transport, house and feed so many employees to staff the conference booth, all the while absorb all the work not being done at the home office - and at the same time fail to carve out time, incentives, or policies to get these same people in to the online conversation?

    Some recommendations to ed. tech. companies to extend the vendor floor:

    1. Relationships: Recognize that face-to-face conversations, whether at conferences on the vendor floor or during campus visits or webinars, will be much more productive if a relationship has already been established. Schools don't get to know companies, people who work for schools get to know people who work for companies. The blogosphere and the social media space are essential opportunities to begin and grow these relationships.

    2. Leadership: The leadership and management of ed. tech. companies must make it a priority to set-up incentives, policy, and time for all members of your organization to participate in the online discussion.

    Incentives: The leadership and key managers need to set the tone by either starting a blog themselves or actively participating in the comments of existing blogs. This can also include tweeting posts you find particularly relevant. Participating in the social media conversation around the goals of the companies product/services should be promoted as an important aspect of building a professional career within the field and the company. Anyone working for and ed. tech. company should be able to find opportunities to engage in conversations and debates, to make arguments based on evidence, and to demonstrate strong levels of social intelligence in order to build relationships.

    Policy: Develop a written policy for participation in online conversations around education and technology. This policy should be as progressive and liberal as possible, encouraging members of your organization to feel empowered to represent your company, make critical comments about your companies policy (but not the people), and develop arguments for where they think we should all go in the future. Make sure your people know that they will make mistakes and say things that will piss people off, but that is okay as long their is a willingness to learn from these mistakes. Offer training opportunities for effective online communication, advocacy and relationship building. Make sure that everyone in the organization is equally empowered to have a voice online.

    Time: The biggest reason I here that people who work work for ed. tech. companies don't start blogs, or contribute actively to existing blogs, is a shortage of time. Participating in the online conversation should be budgeted into regular work - it should not be seen as an extra. If a company is going to reward people for participating (incentives), and develop clear policy and training for effective participation in online conversations then it is necessary to provide people the time. Just as time is scheduled on the vendor floor time can also be scheduled and allotted for the social media floor.

    3. Authenticity: Finally, it is critical that participation in the social media conversation around educational technology be authentic. This requires a willingness for companies to move beyond the rhetoric that "our people make the difference" to actually empowering your people with the training, autonomy, authority, incentives and time to actively participate. If your companies core values are shared by your staff then their will be no reason to worry about editing or approving their voices. Make sure that you provide a place on your companies sites that link to your people's blogs and profiles. Create easy channels for follow-up conversations. Giving everyone in your company a place in the online conversation, one that is supported and honored, will be your best sales, retention and recruitment tool. The danger if you do not engage in these activities is that colleges and universities (and other customers) will bypass the for-profit culture and decide to invest their resources and time in community driven, open-source projects.

    Questions:

    Seems like their is a great business waiting to be born to help companies and their employees participate effectively in the read/write Web. Another site I'd love to see is one that tracked, like Google Analytics, all the participation of ed. tech. employees and all the conversation around ed. tech. issues in one place. Does anyone know of any business or site currently doing this?

    Can anyone point to examples of companies in the ed. tech. space that understand the upside of empowering their employees to participate in the conversation?

    Any ideas about why ed. tech. companies and their employees seem slow to join the conversation? Does this diagnoses of the current state of affairs ring true to you?

Go to comments (7) »
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Comments on Extending the Vendor Floor

  • Couldn't agree more
  • Posted by Ken McElrath , CEO at Skoodat on November 10, 2009 at 8:15am EST

  • I agree that ed tech companies should spend more time in the blogosphere, but you may have missed one key point. Make that two points.

    The first is competition and the second is unfair criticism. They are closely related.

    I think many companies are reluctant to speak openly about the flaws and benefits of one technology over another, particularly their own. Historically, ed tech has been anything but open, either architecturally or about missteps. Openness and transparency are the best ways to build trust, but it seems that many institutions don't see openness as a viable path to financial success. This applies to ed tech companies and on-premises IT departments at schools.

    An example: Google is very open and transparent about their downtime, yet despite the fact that their small outages represent a small fraction of the downtime experienced by most schools' internal email systems, Google has been berated mercilessly by educators and institutional IT departments. Are Google's critics willing to do the same, opening a portal to show how often their own internal email systems and servers have issues? It takes a lot of guts for Google and their mentor for transparency, salesforce.com, to be this transparent. They are setting a standard that other companies will likely refuse to live by. "Closed" companies hope that by their silence we will assume their products to be superior. "Closed" companies hope that by locking up their code they will prevent clients and competitors from mucking up their business plans. This way of thinking should go the way of the dodo.

    Personally, I hope my own company can contribute to changing all of this, even turn it completely around. Like most educators, I'm an idealist and I won't give up on the possibility for growth and positive change.

    No company wants to enter the blogosphere only to be faced by an angry cybermob of tweets and posts (the digital version of pitchforks and shovels). They don't want to give any edge to their competition or give someone an excuse not to buy. Yet entering this risky, vulnerable space is exactly what we are trying to do at my own company, because the future of education depends on transparency, openness and trust. I can only hope that people will lay their weapons down long enough to appreciate what these new pioneers of trust are doing. It's nothing short of revolutionary.

  • Just say no
  • Posted by Mack Donald , Learning & Teaching Center at MTSU on November 10, 2009 at 11:00am EST

  • I guess I can't understand why you'd be in the vendor hall if you didn't want to engage with vendors. Having worked for companies that exhibit at academic conferences, I can assure you that each company designs specific marketing strategies for the products they are selling. Those strategies include attending conferences, advertising, and other ways to develop relationships with potential users. Many of these companies maintain websites that include informational & promotional blogs. With your permission you can sign up for emails of regular communication about products. Upon request, a company might even send a rep to visit your school for a customized presentation.

    But as the other poster indicated, requiring people to post in blogs, tweets, etc. is not using their time effectively (it takes a lot of time to read & write posts) when other strategies produce more valuable returns. In addition, academics often complain when business people, whose objective is to get you to use their product, infiltrate the conversation. I would imagine you'd complain even more if you had to scroll through hundreds of posts from edtech companies to get to those from colleagues.

    Some suggestions. If you aren't interested in the vendors, don't go to the vendor hall. If you do go, plan your stroll beforehand by marking the vendors you want to see and noting their locations--walk quickly and with purpose. And, finally, if you are assaulted by a salesperson, just say, no.

  • Posted by Marcia A. Daniel , Associate VP for Client Development at CollegeNET, Inc. on November 10, 2009 at 12:00pm EST

  • Mr. Kim, I do agree with you, in part, about relationships being a strong requirement for doing business in higher education. Please allow me to say that I fear you have "painted all vendors with a broad brush" when you refer to the barkers, the giveaways, and other behavior. My company, CollegeNET, Inc., does not give away candy, pens, notepads, etc. We do look forward at each conference to seeing old friends, putting faces with the names of new friends, and hearing what the ups and downs of our campus friends are. Our overriding company development mission is focused upon tools that assit institutions in developing and maintaining accoutability measures. I will hasten to say that I was recruited to work for CollegeNET, Inc. after announcing the end of a 30 year career in higher education. My hiring was the result of the vision of our company president to employ someone who understands, firsthand, the struggles and needs of those employed in higher ed. Since you and I do agree on a number of your points, I look forward to meeting you the next time I am on the vendor floor.

  • Posted by Shari Pobjecky , Senior Enterprise Sales Executive on November 10, 2009 at 12:00pm EST

  • As a professional salesperson and 12+ year veteran of educational vendor fairs - both K12 and higher ed - I agree with your assessment of the organizational pain that conference attendees endure while passing throught the exhibit hall. Know that the vendors experience all that and much more.

    In a related matter, my husband asked just this weekend, "why do these companies continue to send us the same junk mail week after week?!?" My answer: Because it works. Somewhere...someone is buying the stuff.

    Interruption marketing in education will continue as long as foundations, associations and organizations build their conferences on the backs of the exhibitors. You do realize that the conferences are all funded, and the attendees' fee underwritten by the vendors? Informed, erudite individuals like you, Joshua are not incented by the noise, clutter, SWAG and high drama of the exhibit floor - but many in K12 and academe are. They pick up the brochures, have their card swiped, and answer the phone when we call the next week. Teachers go through the halls with bags stuffed full. Corporate marketing folks are convinced by this that educators are listening.

    The type of marketing approach that appeals to you (and me) is "permission marketing," where we would readily give a vendor an opening to sell once we have been engaged and the vendor has shown a knowledge of and interest in what concerns us. I agree with other commentors here that high quality social networking, white papers, research forums, and webinars can make a much bigger impact on education's understanding of products. Vendors want to participate in these venues, but are often prevented from same because educational entities do not welcome vendors into that world easily. In addition, the permission marketing approach does not yield the quick turnaround that corporate entities (READ: shareholders) need. Relationship selling is very important, but doesn't keep the lights on by itself - sales must be made and made more quickly if schools want to see competitive pricing, quality service and innovation.

    As a professional educator and salesperson, I do not see an end to the "exhibit floor" experience. The education market remains cluttered, noisy and confusing. Schools and colleges often don't know how or what or when to buy, and as a result put pressure on vendors in ways that don't reward relationship and thought leadership in the buying and selling process.

  • Here's An Example
  • Posted by Kyle Johnson on November 10, 2009 at 12:15pm EST

  • Check out the folks at OmniUpdate (particularly Jeremy Rex). I was engaged with him on twitter (@j_rex) even before I *knew* he was a vendor, and we finally met face to face at EDUCAUSE this year. We're actually in the market for a solution that OmniUpdate provides, and that relationship helps keep them in the game as we evaluate potential partners.

  • now this is the dialogue I'm hoping for
  • Posted by Joshua Kim at Dartmouth College on November 10, 2009 at 1:45pm EST

  • Hi Ken, Mack, Marcia, Shari and Kyle....all great posts. And honestly - just the sort of dialogue that I'd like to be able to participate in. What is often missing from discussions within academe is a good back-and-forth and the introduction of different perspectives. Reading all your posts made me think twice about some things, and think harder about others - a process that is all to the good.

    Couple of points: Ken - after reading your post my first thought was that academic technology units should follow Google's lead and publicly post uptime stats etc. We need to be as transparent as possible. My guess is that their will be a "healthy debate" about investing resources in our own transparency. Also went and checked out http://skoodat.com/ - a company I did not know - and it looks like you are doing amazing things. Now I have a person (who I know has strong opinions and really cares about this work) to connect with the company. Awesome.

    Mack.... appreciate your counter to my characterizations of the vendor floor. I should be clear that folks working the floor have the hardest jobs at conferences. I spent some time (during the dot com years) in the for-profit ed. tech / publish world (for Britannica.com Education) - and I know how demanding this work is. What I should be clear about is that the vendor floor is useful to me once I've made the connection...usually in social media. For example, next conference...I'm going to look up Ken McElrath at Skoodat so I can talk with him about our challenges and his solutions.

    And Marcia...great to hear that CollegeNet is taking a different approach - and hiring people like you who have a deep understanding of college/university culture. You are correct that it is wrong to paint all vendors with such broad strokes. I'd be interested where I could follow you work and thinking online (as with everyone in this discussion).

    Shari...thanks for giving some perspective on how the sales/marketing process actually works. I found your post very informative. The key, I think, is for all of us to find a way to break down barriers between schools and companies so both are welcome in each others discussions and debates. How can we make that happen? I wonder if the traditional divide at EDUCAUSE between schools and vendors is artificial and outdated - we are all people working in higher ed. trying to make college better - shouldn't the organization of the conference reflect this? I'm hoping this space and others can be used to flesh out ideas about increasing authentic communication and understanding across our ed. tech. domains.

    Kyle...thanks for that great example with twitter and OmniUpdate (Jeremy Rex)....I wonder if there is a way to measure, collate, and support stories like this?

    Again...I'm enjoying the discussion....in some ways I wish we had a better platform for discussion - and I hope to have opportunities to continue this dialogue.

  • Many Vendors have Strict No Blogging Policies
  • Posted by Vicki Tambellini , CEO at edu1world.org on November 11, 2009 at 11:30am EST

  • After more than a year of actively trying to engage vendors in commenting, blogging and posting on our site, we have found that many vendors have strict "no blogging and no commenting" policies. The large vendors such as many that participate in EDUCUASE try very hard to control their corporate messaging and do not allow employees to post in any web communities. A few vendors have appointed staff members who are allowed to blog within very limited topics.

    Generally, while technology and platforms exist to support open collaboration between vendors and institutions, the barriers for individuals remain quite high. What we need is for corporations to support and encourage collaboration from the senior management team down. I agree and support your suggestion that more open dialogue and transparent communications are not only desirable but necessary.

    Vicki Tambellini
    CEO edu1world.org

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