Given that I love alternative search engines, I am always looking for possible places for them to get the word out about themselves to potentially influential audiences. Here are two possibilities.

In the first case, the first audience would consist of CIOs and lesser lights in the tech realms of higher education. And in the second, librarians—all big buyers of e-services.

I know that when I went to the Health 2.0 conference, I was very impressed by some of the simple demos that search and Web 2.0 developers gave. Seems a pretty cost effective way to reach well-connected people at well-funded institutions who also tend to blog about things they like–and those blogs are often widely read.

I got an email announcement the other day about this call for presentations:

Beyond Next-Gen.Edu: Mastering Digital Worlds–Call For Presentations

Here is the site for the 2008 gathering, if you need a taste of what was featured, and here are some topics for the 2009 conference:

Session Proposals for Campus Technology 2009 are being sought for topics related to.
* Web 2.0 and Social Software
o Foundation Technologies for Social Software and Web 2.0 Services
o Next-Gners Here and Now/New Directions in Online Learning
o Imagining Web 3.0+
* New Media for Instruction
o 3D Virtual Environments/Knowledge Webs/Serious Games/Experiential Learning
o Class Capture/Course Management/Collaboration Technologies
o Video Literacy/Video Annotation/Digital Media Production/Podcasting
o Instructional Design/Faculty Support
* Learning Infrastructure
o Data Management/Resource Management/Research Infrastructure
o Open Learning/Open Knowledge/Open Source/Learning Commons
o 21st Century Classroom Models/Flexible Learning Spaces/Incubator Classrooms
o New Assessment Strategies/Student ePortfolios
o Networking/Communications Infrastructure
o Regional Networks/Scientific Computing and Visualization
* The Digital Campus
o Security
o ERP/Administrative Computing
o Globalization/Outsourcing
o IT as a Service/SaaS
o Student Systems/CRM/Student Information Systems/Lifelong Learning
o Institutional ePortfolios
o Funding/Budget/Strategic Planning Issues
o Governance and IT Leadership Issues
o Business Intelligence
o Web Publishing/Digital Rights
* Going Green
o Control Systems
o Lifecycle Management/Purchase Programs/Recycling Programs/Vendor Partnerships
o Room Scheduling/Calendaring
o Outreach/Help Desk/Promoting Green Computing
o Leading Green Computing Initiatives

Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2008.

Sounds like some opportunities there for the kind of whiz kids that read this blog. It also says, “We are seeking presenters who will impart expertise in Web 2.0 and 3.0 (including cloud computing and worldware), the latest instructional tools and learning infrastructures, the development and optimization of digital campus communities, immersive learning, new-age student services, and more.” Never hurts to wow academics. They are surprisingly powerful.

And so are librarians. Here is another venue that search companies (especially, obviously, those working on mobile search) should consider presenting at:The Second International m-Libraries Conference Vancouver, 23-24 June 2009

Here is some information from the site:

“The conference will bring together researchers, technical developers, managers and library practitioners to exchange experience and expertise and generate ideas for future developments.

If you would like to be involved in this exciting conference submit your abstracts (up to 300 words) to M-Libraries-Conference@open.ac.uk by December 15th, 2008. These will be subject to peer review and authors will be notified by mid-January.

We expect that papers may include research reports, demonstrations of technical developments, practical case studies or reviews. Posters are also invited.

Themes will include:
* service models for library services delivered to mobiles
* cost and sustainability factors for m-library service development
* the changing relationships between libraries and users resulting from innovation in ubiquitous computing
* partnership projects for developing integrated services to mobiles
* implications of mobile technologies on library space planning
* reconfiguring library collection development to enhance ubiquitous access to resources
* exploring methodologies for evaluating the impact of mobile and ubiquitous computing on library service development”

For those in search looking for new markets, this might be the place to get to know librarians. And librarians certainly need to get to know techies.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Alts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.