Company

Those of you who have bookmarked the BbWorld ’08 website may have noticed that we’ve announced the client-led program!  I’m really excited to see so many clients speaking on such great topics. 

There are three general conference "themes" this year: Assess, Engage, and Manage.  Schedules, Blackboard-led sessions and partner-led sessions will be available soon.

One of the questions I often am asked is "How do you select sessions for BbWorld?"  Well, the answer is that I don’t, really.  Our clients do. 

This year we had 55 clients volunteer to be a part of our client program committee.  These 55 clients, plus about 10 Blackboard folks, reviewed the 325 sessions submitted for BbWorld ’08 and the Blackboard Developers Conference.  All told, there were over 3500 individual session reviews – each session was looked at by an average of 10 people.  Let me explain the process.

This month Blackboard hired a new vice president of Client Support.  His name is Tony Mandaro, and prior to Blackboard he worked for a software company managing operations for 12 years.  Tony’s experience is just what Blackboard needs.  He served in the United States Navy, received his BS and a Masters in Education from the University of Connecticut, and taught high school in Virginia for seven years!

While interviewing for his new position, Tony asked me some of the typical questions you would expect any interviewee to ask: What is the staff like?  How do you measure success?  What are the key operational challenges I will encounter, walking in the door?  What do Blackboard users perceive as their biggest challenges?  Where do I get a good cup of coffee around here?

Besides the coffee question, most of the answers were not short.  Tony and I had a long discussion about the challenges we’ve encountered while the company and the size of our client base have grown, the benefits of our solutions and how we can exceed our clients’ expectations of us.  One of Tony’s questions in particular did catch me off guard.  Tony asked, "What is the one most important thing Blackboard can do to help clients view Client Support in a positive way?

As you may be aware, we recently made the decision to partner with Sutherland, a best-in-class support company based in Rochester, NY.

We recently finished several weeks of training the Sutherland staff on all of our products, support tools and processes.  We did this by sending a rotation of some of our best people from the DC Support team to be onsite in Rochester.  Our Rochester team went through detailed training and then we looked over their shoulders as they began performing case work. 

The feedback from the DC training team has been wonderful.  They have been impressed by the enthusiasm of the Rochester staff and how quickly they’ve absorbed the material, and their best practices for implementation give us a ton of confidence they are ready to handle the support work ahead of them.

Hey, folks.  It’s me, Kerry Jo, knee deep in the session selection process for BbWorld ’08 in Las Vegas.  But that’s not what I’m going to write about today.  Nope!  Today I’m giving a shout out to BbWorld Europe ’08 in Manchester, UK!

We’re only about a month away from the event in Manchester, and I’m so excited to make the trip across the pond to meet up with my favorite Blackboard users in Europe.  There are tons of great events at the conference – from special events like the University of Manchester Campus Tour to pre-conference workshops and client-led sessions.   

I thought I could take this opportunity to share a little about my absolute favorite conference tool – the MyBbWorld Planner! 

If you’re anything like me, you like to have a plan when you arrive at a conference.  I like to know what sessions I should attend and what exhibit booths I’d like to visit.  Well, the BbWorld Planner can create a personal program just for you.

So try it out – go to the MyBbWorld Planner for BbWorld Europe and create a login.  Then search the program for the sessions you’re interested in (e.g. innovative tools for learning) and click the little “+” to add it to your personal session list!  Then, before you come to the conference, you can print out your personal itinerary.  You can also search out partners that you’d like to visit. 

Hope this little piece of organizational help will be as useful to you as it is to me!

Cheers!  See you in Manchester.

I know it is clichéd to talk about all the new things that Spring brings but I can’t help it.  Here in DC the cherry blossoms are nearly at their peak, daffodils and tulips abound, and it seems that nearly every day I get an email announcement from a friend or co-worker who has had a baby.  While I enjoy each of these things in their own special way, I can’t say that I was there to help. 

Now, I can!  Tomorrow I am going to be at the Arkansas Blackboard Users 2008 Conference in Little Rock.  And I’ll be working with the attendees on forming a brand new user group.  To keep you posted I’ll be tweeting while I’m there and afterwards I’ll blog about the experience.  Little Rock – here I come!