In one word, the experience: LIAISON conference in Seattle was “validating.” Higher education and technology conferences often treat community college attendees as an afterthought, but at experience: LIAISON, that was not the case. The Client Success Managers (CSMs) with community college clients facilitated connections between all of us, space was made (physically and metaphorically!) for us to discuss our unique challenges at lunch, and there were many sessions led by community college attendees.
Working in a district with two institutions under its umbrella, I engage in a lot of conversations about resources for our implementation as well as governance for CRM roles and responsibilities. To cap off both days of the conference, I attended sessions about building our CRM dream team as well as a model for successful governance, respectively. I also appreciated that the sessions were so specific to the application of the TargetX tools. Many sessions took on a collective discussion model, with the presenter also serving as facilitator, and the ability for everyone’s experience to be shared.
Walking away from the conference, I feel inspired to make meaningful improvements to our TargetX CRM with our existing resources and I see a vision for our org that I couldn’t before. Not only do I have business cards from fellow attendees, but I had the ability during the conference to make new connections with those attendees, and look forward to us serving as mutual resources for one another in our implementations and org improvements.
The February 2022 experience: LIAISON conference in Seattle was the most well-designed and executed higher education conference I have attended, from thoughtful scheduling to the professionals in attendance and healthy food provided. I look forward to next year!
Author: Erin Schultheis, Community Colleges of Spokane – CRM System Administrator
