Session: The grass is always greener: What do other CMSs offer higher education?

Date: Saturday, July 14, 2018
Time: 1:30 - 2:15 pm (CDT) (UTC-05:00)
Location: Simon Hall 110
Format: General Lecture Session

Session description

While WordPress has a substantial presence in higher education, it's not the only game in town. Most colleges and universities have multiple content management platforms in play across campus: used by different schools, departments, research centers, labs, facilities, libraries, athletics, alumni and admissions. Even some smaller colleges, in my experience, end up with 3-4 different ways of managing and presenting web content—and don't even get me started on learning management systems, student information systems, marketing automation and so on.

For this talk I'll focus on the other CMS platforms. What do they offer that is attractive to the higher education market? How do they differentiate themselves from WordPress? How can WordPress better compete?

Put more bluntly, how on earth did someone convince the business school to use Sitecore? Why does the college of engineering insist on Drupal? Why are so many campuses on Cascade Server?

Snark aside, you'll leave better equipped to have the inevitable conversations about the dreaded other platforms—and just might find they're doing some things we can learn from as we look to bring the joy of WordPress to more campuses.

Presenter

John Eckman

Headshot of John Eckman
CEO, 10up

After a first career as an academic, John’s been working in digital agencies for the last 18 years, and with WordPress for the last 10. He has been one of the organizers for WordCamp Boston since 2010, and the CEO of 10up since early 2014. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife and dogs. He blogs (very occasionally) at Open Parenthesis.

Sessions

  • General Lecture Session: The grass is always greener: What do other CMSs offer higher education?

Session video