If you’re in the UK or EU, I’d recommend you check it out. If you’re in the US, it’s also worth checking out. Cash in those frequent flyer miles – the sessions were very informative and organizers Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy do a great job in putting together a compelling program. It’s not an easy time for higher education in the UK right now, so any tips, tricks and best practices that web professionals can learn will be well worth it.

From the conference call for propsals:

Last year we recognised that turbulent times were ahead. We are now working in different political, economic and environmental times. Yet change brings with it many opportunities. There are opportunities to reform old systems, to adapt working practices, to look at new markets, to work with new partners, to consider niche areas and to embrace new technologies. This year’s theme will be: Responding to Change.

This year’s conference will be held July 26-27, 2011 at the University of Reading. The deadline for proposal submission is February 4, 2011.

I’m thinking of submitting a plenary talk – I’ll just have to check under the couch cushions for some money for airfare.

I presented a BarCamp session about some trends in US higher education web development and a longer, parallel session about Amazon Web Services, including a hands-on component.

I think my favorite part about the hands-on part of the many AWS workshops I do is when the light goes on above someone’s head and they see how easy it is to get these services up and running into production. People tend to walk in as n00bs, but after an hour of instruction, they get it. Several people had not only fired up EC2 instances, they had Rails running and were poking around a sample app – and going from nothing to app took about 10 minutes. Amazing. Tweets like this make it all worth it:

Couldn’t make it to Essex last week? No problem – Karine Joly has done web recordings of two of the sessions, including mine and they’re available to watch for free at HigherEdExperts.com.

Thanks to the iLab team at Essex, who had a great room prepared for me and were very helpful in getting all the software plugins and more I asked for installed and ready to go.

Finally, thank you to Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy, conference organizers, for inviting me to attend and participate. It was a great conference and I learned a great deal and met lots of new friends.