Registration
Individuals:
Early-bird Rate (register by 11 October, 2019 ) €300
Standard Rate €375
Networking dinner (optional): €20
Groups:
Early-bird Team Rate (minimum 2 registrations) €275
Standard Team Rate: €300
Workshop details
Who is it for?
Communications and Marketing span the entire school community. This conference welcomes communications and marketing experts and those who work daily with them to achieve their goals (administrators, advancement and alumni professionals, graphic and digital designers, and web and data specialists.
Schedule
Day 1
8:30-9:00 - Registration open. Continental breakfast offered.
09:00 – 10:20
Keynote Address + Q&A - Teens and Media Consumption (TBC)
10:20 – 10:30 - Coffee Break
10:30 – 12:00 - CRISIS 2.0 – What every school should know and do before, during, and after a crisis.
Jim Hulbert, The Jane Group
(Part 1 of a two-part series)
When a crisis hits your school, time is the enemy, not the media, parents or other constituents. The school must respond quickly, yet carefully. While we can’t predict most crises, schools can take important steps in advance to be as prepared as possible. This workshop addresses the ten most crucial steps to take during a crisis including the balancing act of when, what, and how to communicate in crisis times. Managing the media can be difficult and create more stress to an already stressful time. We will look at proven management techniques and communication guidelines that will help you. A crisis will eventually go away. HOW it goes away is what matters.
12:00 – 13:15 - Lunch + Optional tour of School
13:15 – 14:30 - THE CRISIS PLAN – What every good crisis plan should include.
Jim Hulbert, The Jane Group
(Part 2 of a two-part series)
Do you have a comprehensive crisis plan in place? An effective crisis plan should reflect the
newest vulnerabilities and types of crises that independent heads are facing. It should include a list of outside resources you may need to call upon in a crisis. It should have a current list of contact lists with all the crisis team members trained and ready to hit the ground running, should a harmful situation occur. This workshop will help you with your existing plan or help create a new plan.
14:30 – 14:40 - Coffee Break
14:40 – 16:00 - Design Thinking
Led by Stephine Corso, International School of Paris
Design thinking is a process used to stimulate creativity and innovation, and it can lead to unexpected solutions to difficult problems across industries. The process demands empathy, placing the needs of the end user at the nexus of all reflection. There are many design thinking processes to explore, but the first and most critical step in all of them is defining customer needs by creating personae – fictive profiles that faithfully describe your customers’ concerns, expectations, hopes, activities and more.
We will give participants the tools they need to create personae and to kick-off a design thinking process at their own schools including leading participants through the following processes:
Describe a problem currently faced in social media, website strategy, marketing, internal communication, crisis management, alumni.
Transform the problem description into a big question – a question for which the answer cannot be found by doing a Google search.
Decide who the customer/end user is: student, parent, teacher, admin, other school stakeholder.
List the questions you would ask your customer if s/he was present.
Create personae by answering the questions.
Hear about the personae created in the other groups.
Refine the problem question.
Brainstorm improvements that could be made to your current strategy based on the persona’s needs and your refined problem question.
DINNER - Approx. 18:30 – Location to be announced shortly
*This is an optional dinner for this evening. If you wish to attend, please be sure to check the box on the registration form and to fill in your dietary requirements.
DAY 2
8:30-9:00 - Registration open. Continental breakfast offered.
09:00 – 10:20 - How Creating Strategic Partnerships with Internal Stakeholders Boosts Brand Authenticity
Led by Ariel Janzen, American School of Dubai
At top international schools, a communications office supports a large and varied group of stake-holders—often three or four school divisions plus multiple offices within the central administration, students, parents, and a board of trustees. How can the communications team create opportunities for buy-in within the school community while maintaining a consistent brand and advancing the school’s mission? How can that help to create an environment of proactive, strategic partnership instead of reactive, standard service? And how can involving the students—the most important stakeholders—help support brand authenticity?
In this session, you will learn:
• How to encourage strategic partnerships with internal stakeholders
• How to involve students, faculty, and staff in rebranding efforts
• How to support student initiatives while maintaining brand standards
10:20 – 10:30 - Coffee Break
10:30 – 12:00 - Website Redesign 101 - Basics and Beyond
Led by Liz Allen and Lydia Crump, American School of London
Taking on a website redesign might seem like a daunting challenge: so much to consider, and where to start? In this session, we'll take you through the entire process step by step with examples for the following topics:
Developing a project timeline, taking into account the work to be done and the best time of year to launch.
Strategies for engaging key stakeholders, including senior leadership, parents, admissions, advancement, faculty and staff.
Using data-driven analysis of your current site and best practice to make smart decisions on content and navigation.
Integrating social media and news stories into content strategy.
12:00 – 13:00 - Lunch
13:00 – 14:20 - SEO for websites
Led by Elizabeth Joss, English Communication Consultancy, The Hague
Let’s explore various SEO copywriting tips and tricks that have been used to persuade audiences. This session will take a deep dive into the psychology of writing persuasively so that we can reach our target audiences more efficiently and connect with them in a more purposeful and meaningful way. You will walk away equipped workshop with a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) under the umbrella of content marketing and will learn about the main SEO elements required to improve your organization’s visibility in search engines as well as useful tools for supporting your SEO efforts.
14:30 – 14:40 - Coffee Break
14:40 – 15:20 - The New Grown Ups - New Ways to up Your Online Game
Mike Miello, Freelance Designer for Educators, Webodew.
It’s not just the cool kids… as marketers, we want to do fun things online too. We want beautiful websites, great content and ultimately, we want to be proud of the work we create for our organizations. But innovating and taking risks are hindered by the daily grind, budgets and surprisingly simply not knowing what’s possible nowadays with new approaches.
So what’s possible nowadays? How about building an app with Google sheets. How about creating visual stories on Instagram that will create more engagement. How about publishing a podcast from your phone? Or repurposing content quickly to be used on various platforms?
Mike is a web solution designer creating websites and story-driven content for startups, schools, and businesses looking to improve their online presence. As someone outside the school environment, he sees what’s going outside and will demonstrate some examples that can be applied to schools.
15:20 – 16:00 - Table Talk Breakout Sessions and review
Take time to share your challenges, best practice and sage advice at the table (topic) of your choosing.
– Social Media
– Website Strategy
– Crisis Management
– Marketing Strategy Mix
– Internal Communications
– Data Protection and Children
Evening Free
DAY 3
9:00 - 11:00 - Using Visible Thinking Concepts to Change the Way You Showcase your School
Lisa Verkerk, ISA Project Zero and Lower School Curriculum Coordinator
Erika Harriford-McLaren, ISA Communications Manager
For almost two decades, the International School of Amsterdam has been working with the Harvard School of Education’s Project Zero programme to instill the principles of Visible Thinking into our curriculum and culture. We are now looking to extend this concept to other areas of our school (communications and admissions) to give a deeper and richer experience to our stakeholders through the exploration of the principles of Cultures of Thinking routines.
11:30 - 12:00 - Table Talk Breakout Sessions and farewell