The Partnership that Propelled Alliance 24 to New Heights
We took decisive action to modernize the look and feel of Alliance 24. Partnering with Beyond Academics took us there and beyond.
As the HEUG’s flagship annual conference, Alliance continues its reemergence from the pandemic, we’ve seen steady growth in our attendance numbers and vendor participation—a certainly positive development! Yet, the entire mission of the HEUG is continuous improvement through collaboration and our conference gets no exemption. As part of regular self-reflection exercises, the HEUG board and program committee took inventory of what worked well in Seattle and St. Louis, heavily informed by community members and vendor feedback.
Our charge was straightforward: Keep the highly-rated foundation—peer-led sessions—while modernizing the conference feel, introducing fresh formats, and giving the entire event lots more polish. We had some ideas, but as an organization of volunteers, we needed help developing and refining the ideas, determining feasibility and execution, and looked for a well-known partner who had a reputation for outside-the-box thinking, high levels of production, and lots of energy.
Enter:
Familiar to our membership through their long-standing participation in thought-provoking HEUG in-person and virtual events, like ThinkSpace, and broadly recognized throughout higher education for their exclusive focus on transformational projects (rather than maintaining the status quo), we found a rewarding partnership with Beyond Academics spearheaded by Joe Abraham and Matt Alex. Together, we were able to evolve the conference program to include new session platforms, like the HEUGx talks—inspired by TEDx events—which would enrich the Alliance experience with insightful discussions, challenges to traditional viewpoints, and thought-provoking ideas. But Beyond Academics also helped us drive an exceptional event by supporting high-polish execution like hosting town hall panel discussions, a student cloud intensive, and the MainStage environment.
We’re thankful for our partnership with Beyond Academics, the support of Joe and Matt, and the efforts of the hardworking team members they brought with them to Phoenix in helping us all experience those “Ooh Aah” moments at Alliance 24.
From the desks of,
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Joshua Vincent
President, Board of Directors
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Brittany Moon
HEUG Executive Director
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